Operation Launchpad, the Shocking Facts     the Official Truth: by Joe Young, Minister of Propaganda, KAOS Otago

I was halfway down Great King Street heading south when the novelty began to wear off. I had a bag of peppermint sweets, a notebook, my Indonesian cane, assorted MA paperwork, legwork, spadework and shirked work, a copy of Hunter Thompson's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas to plagiarise from, and a scoop of Flying Squid crinkle chips, about the last significant savoury food I would eat for the next 32 hours.

It was the chips that worried me. I was on my way to a KAOS symposium, charged by the Dictator with providing a written record of the first big hootenanny she'd organised in her capacity thereas. From what I could gather I was going to be awake and in the presence of much booze, cigarette smoke, party pseudofood and silly people for the next day or two. I knew from personal experience that there is no puke, not that from camphylobacter, motion sickness or being forced to watch Home And Away, that is more abrasive coming up and less pleasant for observers to observe than that resulting from an overindulgence in fish and chips. So as the scoop began to coalesce at the base of my sternum and grin up at me with the nasty smugness of a peace activist, I began to worry. The last thing I wanted to do was get lemon-flavoured liquid sandpaper all over the Dictator's Lackey's kitchen floor.

I dumped the empty bag in a bin in the Octagon and headed south into the gloomy, hippie-infested dead zone that is the Dunedin Exchange. The party was being held at more or less the lowest ebb of the neighbourhood, in an apartment on the fourth floor of a converted office building on the fringes of what Dunedin has instead of a red light district. The apartment looked as if it had been dipped in disinfectant, and so did most of its occupants. Everyone was chirpy, bright, dewy-eyed, and, it seemed, freshly attired and showered. I had been on my feet for fourteen hours and, I am sure, exuded little of the delectable Cold-Water-Surf-and-ambergris scent that wafted over me when the door opened. I swallowed hard and entered the fray.

Most of the people who were already there I knew. Dunedin's KAOS politburo were there in their goofily-dressed entirety, as were a smaller contingent of what I suppose you'd call the junior members. The politburo sat around telling KAOS jokes. The junior members stood around giving the kind of enthusiastically bewildered looks you have to be fresher to pull off. As New Order's 'Blue Monday' thumped from a Playstation in one corner, other people began to traipse in, in couples and trios, some wearing KAOS tees and most wielding bottles. Each new arrival was greeted with affectionate shouts. At eightish, when there were seventeen of us, the Dictator delivered a speech some arsehole had written for her. It wasn't actually such a bad speech, as these things go, about five minutes long and not wholly devoted to stroking the politburo's egos. I also think it had some jokes in it. Therefollowed a symposium, which rather made a mockery of the division between "First Meeting" and "First Party", as there were no plans or points and nary a mention of KAOS made through the remainder of the evening. Which was alright. Some people caught up with friends from the opposing city, but most seemed to be doing what they did every day - sitting in a rough circle talking, talking as only young educated people can, about everything that can be imagined and nothing worth remembering. Christchurch people nattered about other things. One woman seemed for a moment to be trying to chat me up, but then I reminded myself that there are some things that simply do not happen in real life. Tony sat on the couch looking Teutonic.

I figured this might happen, and for the purposes of having something to write about I organised a game, one I had played as at Kea Scout camps fifteen years ago. I figured it would go down pretty well because the atmosphere was, booze aside, pretty much the same here as it was back then - youthful exuberance, subdued lighting, furtively-consumed sweets, tittering expectation of fun on the morrow, complicated sleeping arrangements. The game consisted of sitting in a circle with a large chocolate brownie, a pair of gloves, a blindfold and a knife and fork in the middle. People in the circle take turns rolling a die. If anybody gets a 6, they must don the gloves and blindfold and, using the knife and fork, eat as much of the brownie they can before someone else rolls a 6. People seemed to enjoy this game, if only because it gave us a chance to sit and laugh when the Multi-Purpose Adjustable Wench blindly tried to consume a piece of brownie the size of a floppy disk and, more importantly, chuckle quietly and watch as the Dictator's Lackey made a mess and wailed "You guys better be rolling!!!" Which we were - honest.

Daniel was drinking mead. This is a drink made by taking a great quantity of honey and letting it rot and reduce in a large wooden vat for several months. It's apparently fairly hard liquor, but Daniel didn't seem much the worse for it. I'm not a very good judge of these things but, given the amount that was being consumed, few people seemed to be getting noticeably drunk. The Goon started to get surly at about 10pm, and you could tell the Multi-Purpose Adjustable Wench got pretty wide because she turned down an offer of cake. The Dictator's Lackey claimed to be hammered, though if she was she was coping pretty well. The Dictator wasn't really drinking so far as I could see, and neither the Dictator's Floozy nor her Pet seemed any the worse for wear. Most of the Christchurchians spent so much time trying to find a liquor store that they didn't have time to do much with the results of this endeavour and so sat around discussing classical mythology (but of course). The sight of a dozen and a half twenty-somethings just about behaving themselves around alcohol was one of the more memorable of the weekend.

As the night wore on and the Christchurchians drifted off to their billets, conversation turned inevitably to American foreign policy. Our hostess, the only person I've ever met who's genuinely qualified to discuss this subject, undertook to mediate this discussion with the same tired enthusiasm she adopts whenever this topic comes up, and did so rather well for someone who claimed to be stewed. Slowly the crowd thinned until it was just Daniel, the Lackey and I sitting around discussing personal development. This, we decided, was an altogether too profound subject to be properly discussed at 12:45 on a Saturday morning, so we disbanded. I staggered home, took a Panadol, washed it down with a packet of sweets and crashed into bed.

Meeting Photos

I was rushing down Great King Street heading north when the nausea really hit. My newly-discovered ability to acquire hangovers by proxy was, I decided, a negative development. It was one of those annoyingly glorious, 2% cloud cover, 24-degree late summer days, and I was wearing three layers of clothing, including a thick polar-fleece vest that was the closest thing I owned to a flak jacket. I mean, I was entering a warzone - death, blood, destruction, shrapnel, brutalisation of women, some of it caused by other people. I'd managed a kip that morning but didn't feel the slightest bit rested, I had already missed weapons inspection, and there were two pieces of toast and honey threatening to come up for air any minute. Things did not look good.

Things began to look better when I arrived in the warzone with about five minutes to spare and made myself known to both warlords. Christchurch KAOS had outdone themselves, with maybe twenty impeccably presented agents turned out in opposition to Dunedin's dozen or so plus about as many barbarian allies done up in armour and one of those guys around campus who like to pretend they're Celtic. There were also some of what looked like the Campus Crusade For Cthulhu, though of course they weren't really here and didn't really exist. Somewhere on the other side of the Leith half a dozen Alfs fussed with their leader's moustache. Tony strode around looking Teutonic.

Eventually representatives of all the warring parties met on neutral ground for a final attempt at parley. The Dunedinites accused the Christchurchians of coming in and invading their space. The Christchurchians admitted this but claimed they liked this bit better than the Dunedinites did. All of which strikes me as a perfectly good reason to have a punch-up.

I scurried over to the Christchurch side of the lawn to watch the first charge. There was a great battle-din and much chaos, some of it correctly spelled. I managed to get some by-lines off the Alfs, who had gathered in a tight protective knot behind a tree.

"May I ask why you are cowering behind a tree like little girls?", I asked them.

"Cowering behind trees like little girls is what made the British Empire what it is today!", claimed one.

"Yes", said another. "Alfs always enjoy hiding behind trees. Especially when there are little girls frolicking on the other side of them." He gestured with his weapon at a scuffle that had broken out between the Carthaginians and the Christchurch Screaming Schoolgirl Light Infantry, which the redcoats were watching avidly. At least they were until they were taken from behind by their treacherous allies, who massacred the lot of them and very nearly killed me into the bargain (I was saved by my press pass of protection +2). I did manage to interview Captain Darling, who used his dying breath to claim it was a great honour to die for the Queen. Sturdy chap.

Opening moves were inconclusive. The few survivors on either side regrouped at their respective base camps and nursies tended to those few wounded worth saving. In a brief moment between surgeries, I managed to ask one of these hard-working girls if she had a message for the world, preferably a pithy, touching comment on the futility of war that would win me a Pulitzer or at least get me a job in a real press corps.

"I'm absolutely speechless", she replied.

A moment later I very nearly became speechless myself as the second charge began and a stray shot caught me in the hip. People say that getting shot is a weird sensation - a brief, stabbing pain followed by total numbness around the wound. Well, that's not true. It's a horrible cold runny feeling, followed by a combination of worry about the embarrassing wet stain on your light-coloured trousers and frustration because the nursie you were interviewing has gone off to save the actual combatants and there's nobody to patch you up. I lay on the ground groaning, my self-respect pooling around me, for several minutes before a wonderful young lady came and saw to me. But the worst thing about getting shot was having to diplomatically avert my eyes as the nurse stepped over me to tend to a wounded barbarian nearby. We war correspondents undertake to give our readers the full story, but there are some places where the hemline must be drawn.

By the time I'd sorted myself out and taken a cold shower, a truce had been called to allow the recovery of the dead. As with most wars, it was between the shots that the really nasty stuff happened. The Christchurchians tied a quisling to a tree and did horrible things to him. Several barbarians were invited to an Alf tea party and served poisoned tea. Others were stalking around a section of the battlefield, disgracefully refusing to allow the KAOS operatives to recover the bodies of their fallen chums. When challenged to explain this they pointed out that barbarian invaders can't receive CNN and therefore don't feel the need to justify their actions to the media - true enough. One of the nurses was murdered or, at least, chatted up. Nor was it just the Christchurchians and the barbarians who were committing atrocities. In the interests of balanced coverage, I must point out that KAOS Dunedin itself performed at least one field execution without trial. Some poor girl was led out to the front of the camp in full view and, for no apparent reason I could discover, sprayed with bullets at close range. As she slumped to the ground I darted forward and asked a pretty dumb question.

"How does it feel to be the subject of a violation of the Geneva Convention?"

"I thought it was a wet tee-shirt competition!", she wailed. Of course, given the weapons involved, this amounted to much the same thing, and not for the first time that afternoon I gave silent thanks that nobody was wearing white.

But worse things went on - disgusting, unspeakable crimes that I'm a poorer man for having witnessed. No, scratch that - I'm a broken man, unable to keep from reliving the memory over and over. It was horrible. There was yoghurt. I can't have children. My childhood bedwetting problem has re-emerged. Every night I wake up screaming. Also dripping. Dairy products and live cultures haunt me. My wife doesn't understand. She doesn't know the terror, the suffering. They swallowed.

Still, the good thing about post-traumatic stress disorder is that it takes a while to emerge. So I was still in a fit state of mind - close enough - to cover the last charge pretty well. I was going to try to get an interview with the leader of the Christchurchians, but as I reached their camp I tripped over the Screaming Schoolgirl Light Infantry. As I picked myself up there was an ear-splitting shriek from the earth itself as the ground and my SAN score were rent asunder. It seemed that the Campus Crusade For Cthulhu - who weren't here and don't exist - had achieved their foul aim. Great Cthulhu himself rose from the bowels of the earth and strode forward, scattering puny humans, devouring minions and antagonists alike. During such apocalyptic happenings, such momentous events in the history of the universe, I did the only rational thing. I went up and asked for an interview.

"It's a simple matter of resources", said Great Cthulhu. "My zombies need brains, and you lot have them." I must say, it's refreshing to interview a world leader who's entirely up-front about his policies. The Devourer Of All was actually a pleasure to deal with - polite, well-spoken, his pods carefully manicured, his tentacles meticulously slimed. He lives in Ilam with his lovely wife and their 3,524,783,349,938 spawn. When not plotting the destruction of all existence on this planet, he enjoys driving high-performance automobiles and playing golf with his old university flatmate Yog-Sothoth, who's now an insurance salesman. His favourite colour is blue.

The coming of the end times took a while to have any effect on the battle. Both sides were in fact fighting themselves to a bloody and vicious stalemate, their sole concession to the coming of The Devourer Of All being that the entire Alf's Imperial Army contingent got kidnapped by the Campus Crusade For Cthulhu (who weren't here and don't exist) and turned into zombies.

"Now, troops", said their leader, "remember the new regulation battlecry - a monotone chant of 'brains, brains'".

It was, in fact, a pretty good last charge, with plenty of vicious violence perpetrated by all sides, conga lines breaking up under the strain of missile fire and laughing participants, barbarians seeking me out to slowly and clearly exclaim "Aiiie, I die" into my dictaphone and one of the Christchurchians running out of ammunition during her devious and unsporting attempt to assassinate the Dunedin Dictator and being carved to pieces by the politburo. Then there was a great cheer and the clean-up began.

I went and had a drink with the Alfs, where I learned that their Oamaru contingent had gone to the wrong park and been massacred by that most fearsome military juggernaut of our age, the Otago University Malaysian Student's Association annual picnic. Then I went for a walk in the Botanical Gardens, my mind alight with one thought - an interview with Great Cthulhu should be worth at least a spot on 60 Minutes.

Operation Launchpad Battle Page

I was snoozing under a tree near the rose garden when an innocent bystander happened to innocently stand by. Learning from her that it was now five past eight, I decided, grubby, sweat-streaked and off-colour as I was, to put in an appearance at the last stage of the weekend's festivities. This was a party or symposium or war crime or whatever it is you call twenty Christchurch KAOS agents, the Dunedin politburo, half a dozen Shadowrun players, four Alfs, two Celts, one baby Lindskii, the Queen Of Hearts, a goth in rubber pants, a handful of miscellaneous carbon-based organisms and one wretchedly headachy Minister Of Propaganda getting tanked and slam-dancing.

Like all parties it took a while to get going. It was being held in the flat of the Dictator's Floozy and her Pet, who, I noticed, despite being twenty years old and having been a going concern for several months, still maintained separate bedrooms, which I thought was rather sweet, not to say eminently sensible. People traipsed in, all impeccably dressed and cleaned up from the battle, some to such an extent that I didn't recognise them. For perhaps an hour most of what went on went on in the front yard, where people swapped tales of past KAOS shenanigans and expressed bewilderment about the lack of Dunedinites around the place. Slowly the party's centre of gravity shifted indoors, through a kind of living room into the kitchen where a great bowl of toilet-bowl-disinfectant-blue punch, various other intoxicants, various alternatives thereto and an assemblage of toy food had been arrayed. Here I was introduced to Alistair, a large, confident man with the kind of large, confident voice that can be heard across a crowded room even with Bowie's 'Let's Dance' is blaring at experimental volume from the lounge. Alistair's party piece was sucking the ears of any and every woman who would let him, which is to say all of them. They seemed to enjoy this almost as much as he enjoyed being seen to do it. In the interests of journalistic completism, I considered asking to participate in one of these sessions, but eventually I decided against it, which I suspect was the right decision. My significant other has a copy of her dental records and has been known to compare them with unfamiliar teethmarks. Also, 48 hours later virtually the entire female contingent of Dunedin KAOS were struck down by the dreaded lurgy. Take from this what you will.

There was great excitement among the Christchurch contingent when they discovered that the backyard is bordered on one side by a bare concrete wall. This, they decided, was a gift from God, and like all gifts from God it came with a string attached - the string being, "I bid thee hold thine executions against this wall". So they began casting around for excuses to hold one. Eventually they hauled someone up on trumped-up charges and placed him in front of a firing squad, but the cunning louse asked for a Pixie Caramel and while he was chewing they all fell asleep, allowing him to escape. Frankly I thought this was foolish of them. After all these years I'd have thought they'd know to only issue their firing squads with Crunchies.

Other people had found more interesting ways of passing the time. I was conversing with a couple of people beside a doorway when a little scene in the adjoining room nicked the corner of my eye. One of the Christchurchians was sitting on an inflatable sofa engaged in a mutual and meticulous tonsil-swabbing session with the young lady plonked in his lap. I reached out and discretely closed the door, which got me my biggest laugh of the evening. I'm apparently allowed to write about this because I don't identify either of them, and nor could I. I'm not sure I saw the young man ever again. The young lady I couldn't identify, of course, because she was only about three feet tall, scooted around the flat at ankle height and apparently turned into a very small pumpkin at midnight.

Actually, that might not be quite true. I think I saw her dancing. All the furniture had been moved out of the living room and a computer loaded with a great many highbrow heavy metal tracks moved in, creating a dance-floor of sorts. Here I got to see the Dictator, who is a bit less than five feet tall and not waiting with baited breath for her call to become an underwear model, slam-dancing. Then I spilled her drink performing an involuntary forward roll while engaged in a full-body headbang to "Bohemian Rhapsody". Apparently there's a photo of this. Personally I'd be more interested in a photo of the half-dozen or so goths, psuedogoths and wannabe goths Riverdancing to The Exponent's "Who Loves Who The Most", which I thought was rather striking, if a little confusing. By contrast the Alf slow-dancing with one of our lot to The Sisters Of Mercy's "Temple Of Love" made perfect sense. As the evening progressed and Andrew Eldritch's anguished warble gave way to contributions from bon Jovi and Toto, however, dancing became unaccountably less popular.

Topics of conversation varied widely. I once wrote there were three permissible topics at a student party - sex, religion and particle physics. Vid:

Other topics were also discussed. In keeping with a new law I seem to have missed the passing of, most conversations included condemnation of America. A Shadowrun player outlined his plans to exploit a loophole in the game's rules by creating a character with enchanted cyberware. I was challenged to explain the theory of the invisible hand to someone, but he didn't follow me. In retrospect this was my fault because there's no way I should have been trying to explain economic theory to anyone at 12:15 on a Sunday morning.

Then the tequila came out.

It was a pretty good party, as these things go. The music was loud but not deafening. I was the only one telling genuinely bad jokes. More than lip service was paid to non-alcoholic beverages. Tony stood around looking Teutonic. Nobody passed out or threw up that I saw. The ginger beer was cold and the women were ho... actually, I might be best to save that joke for my report on the perversion party next month.

Eventually I flagged. The Dictator's Lackey, Daniel, Laura and I shared a taxi back into town. I got out in the Octagon, where the Lackey stopped the cab to visit an ATM. The last thing I saw before traipsing up the hill to my flat was her skittering across George Street, looking oddly as if propelled by some external force.

Which actually ended up being more or less the case. The following afternoon she was hit by a car¹.

Party Photos

1. And walked away with a nasty bruise, admittedly, but you have to admit that's a pretty cool final sentence.