Camp Hero

In the peaceful town of Montauk, Long Island stands a piece of history. A monument to one of man’s greatest achievements, a commemoration of the full cooperation of science and military spending, and the extravagance of the human mind. Yet, at the same time, it is a simple radar dish.

Built to watch over the uncharted skies of the Midwest, surveying through the clouds for red freedom naysayers, the dish was decommissioned in 1954 due to the rising population in the area threatening its facade as a sleepy New England fishing town. The dish sat on its hill, an orphan reminder to middle America of the outlandish spending habits of the U.S. Military.

Around 1961, enough “heat” from the Philadelphia Experiment had blown over to continue diving into more frivolous scientific research. With renowned outsider scientist Martin Kane at the helm, an unnamed project was presented to Congress. It was to be a facility that gathered the best scientific minds to explore the fields of time travel, meta-human experiments, subliminal message systems, aircraft prototypes, teleportation, bioengineering, and the melding of country music with rock ‘n’ roll. Having run out of space on the official form, Kane summed the research up as “General Scientific Boobery.” The project was officially denied funding due to the astronomical expense but received discrete backing from an unnamed government think tank. Conspiracy theorists claim the funding could be traced to a cache of Nazi gold, worth roughly ten billion dollars that was discovered by American troops in Northern Germany after the Second World War. Each member of the elite 8 man squadron that discovered the gold was meticulously assassinated utilizing very clever and exciting methods, but those will not be discussed further here, but trust me when I say it was fucking gnarly.

The project was too large to house in the original three-bedroom apartment in which the Philadelphia Experiment was based and unfortunately, like in most fields, breakthroughs seldom occur without a giant radar dish to set the mood. The problem was rectified when it came to the attention of Congress that the fine people of Montauk had been telling the government to do something with the eyesore that the decaying radar dish had become or they would “burn it the fuck down.” Under the guise of beautifying the decaying edifice to keep the locals happy, contractor Jerry Cole was brought in to design and build a subterranean facility in the hill underneath the radar dish to house Martin Kane’s project. 

What Cole brought to the project was as multi-layered as his performance on the solo album Bad by Myself that he would release months later. Some critics derided the album as a vanity project, but as time has passed, it has become something of a cult favorite for seedy government engineers. The housing of twelve subterranean floors dedicated to outsider scientific research was the first of its kind. The first ten levels housed their own departments, with two levels leftover for pet projects, empties, the occasional quinceañera, and some kick-ass chili cookoffs. 

While some locals questioned why it took an army of men and equipment seven months of round-the-clock work to seemingly do nothing more than apply, poorly it’s been added, a few coats of white paint to the radar dish, most were just happy that something had been done to disgrace that had been lowering their property values for years. They slept peacefully, unaware of the radical scientific breakthroughs occurring in their own backyards. Martin Kane christened the facility “Camp Hero” after his favorite sandwich, and in 1961, the facility was opened.

When the government agreed to fund the project, Martin Kane claimed he would bring in the best scientists in their respective fields. This, along with many of the promises Kane had made, was a lie. He had an incurable penchant for hiring “bad boy scientists.” Their out-of-the-box thinking and undeniable skill set came with rockstar attitudes. Fraudulent degrees, shady backgrounds, and an affinity for call girls were the norm among the group of hires that Kane made. Their actions would put a serious strain on the cover that was meticulously constructed by the government. People that owned the houses near the base would often complain about the cigarette butts thrown over their fences and the general vulgarity of the conversations overheard while scientists milled about out in the open on their breaks.

One of Martin Kane’s more controversial ideas was the “Prank Wars'' that began soon after Camp Hero opened. The idea was to create some lighthearted fun and bonding between departments, and for a time was successful. The loud and jockish Meta-Human Division revelled in tormenting the outcasts comprising the Artificial Intelligence Department, once going as far as to send a drunken, partially invisible man (himself a victim of a failed experiment) to sabotage the AI scientists’ cherished collection of pornography. The AI team held the upper hand, however, as self-aware defence turrets made short work of their partially visible foe. In retaliation, the invisible parts of the man were strewn throughout the offices of the Meta-Human floor, necessitating the use of high-level government janitors with cutting-edge thermal-goggle technology to sweep the area anytime the department was overwhelmingly malodorous with decaying flesh. Although the Meta-Human Division swore they’d get revenge, this incident was the official end of the “Prank Wars.” The AI Division was declared the winner and, more importantly, got the babes. 

Despite this semi-sanctioned buffoonery, legitimate breakthroughs were made at Camp Hero, specifically in the ESP department. Much of the town’s homeless population volunteered for the projects. The promise of a cot, three squares a day, and all the cigarette butts they could scoop up proved too alluring for most. By bombarding the vagrant’s “soul” with electromagnetic radiation, they found they could increase the subject’s psychic abilities to such a point that many could simply produce objects out of thin air. Unfortunately, the objects produced were relatively “ho-hum” in the grand scheme of things. Automobile air filters and banana trees were the items most conjured from the beyond. To be fair to the volunteers, the scientists never thought to ask for anything else. The best of the group was able to produce high-quality speaker wire, much to the thrill of the audiophiles in the Jazz Division. 

One subject, A-45, had failed after several attempts to produce a Mexican dinner for Camp Hero’s Christmas party, instead only conjuring a pile of white dust. The scientist observing the experiment found the powder did not taste like Mexican food but noted that he was feeling “pretty rad” after snorting it. After a few weeks of productivity dropping and several of the scientists from the ESP Division flashing lots of cash, subject A-45 was terminated, and mandatory random drug tests were instituted in Camp Hero.

The extraterrestrial encounters department located in the eighth subfloor bore little growth in the period it was open. By 1966, the lab had several alien beings, but this was nothing new; in fact, aliens had been studied since the much-publicized Roswell incident. I won’t bore readers with the details since they are so well known, but, briefly for the uninformed: A UFO full of Venus’s best-looking aliens came to earth to compete in our bikini contests but ended up crashing their ship while trying to find an open liquor store in the dry county of Chaves, New Mexico. A passing Howard Hughes spotted the flaming wreckage and lured the Aliens into his 1939 Electric Duesenberg with the promise of a good day’s work for a good day’s pay. 

Like Hughes himself, the alien beings would spit on the floors and had very little regard for the “house rules” that had been posted in the cafeteria. The only significant breakthrough Camp Hero made was the amassing of evidence that the alien culture was a rude and bitter one, which was thought to be to our advantage. They were so much like us, but assholes hate assholes and that’s just the way she goes. 

Between 1969 and 1973, the Time Travel Department was performing tests with something they called a “time tunnel.” The science behind this great feat is shaded in mystery, due to the unique method employed by the department. What the group colloquially called “bangin’ some shit around” was much like a jazz combo or the modern-day comedian. The scientists would get together and “jam” or “riff” on an idea. This technique has its place when you’re hammering out a minor chord progression or explaining the difference between men and women to a crowd of yokels at the Laugh Hole in Andover, but it’s considered irresponsible when working with antimatter and other dealing of the unknown.

What we do know from the various eyewitness accounts and filed reports is that the team accidentally harnessed a black hole. It was decided that Maurice, a loveable vagrant with an always positive attitude and a constant smile on his face, would be the first to travel through the time tunnel. His face lit up like he was helping the prison orphans on Christmas day when he heard the news. Confined to a wheelchair after having been hobbled the day before for trying to escape Camp Hero, Maurice was given a quick pep talk about what to expect, handed a tuna sandwich, and gingerly ghost-ridden into the perpetual black unknown. He never returned.

As months went by, the lazier scientists began throwing the contents of their wastebaskets into the hole, an activity that escalated to days spent tossing office supplies, children’s toys, empty liquor bottles, and, on the night of a rather spirited edition of the Camp Hero Christmas Party, a thunderous amount of human waste was evacuated into the void. What started out as a cheeky dare became routine by the following spring of 1972. During this time the chief scientist on the project, Dr Felt, had been given the “Underground Scientist of the Year” award for the tunnel, a prize which in the early 70s consisted of twelve hundred dollars and a “sharp” red smoking jacket. While the money was appreciated (Having assumed he was a shoo-in for the award months before, Dr Felt had already put a $900 steak on a layaway plan and used the rest to get caught up on back alimony), the jacket was the true prize. He cherished it and went to great lengths to see that no harm came to it. It was the pride of the division, being the only piece of clothing without cigarette burns or bloody tissues stuffed into the pockets.

Months after Dr Felt received his award, the time tunnel began to act up. The thousands of cigarette butts that had been carelessly tossed into the tunnel had started to come back out hundreds at a time. Crumpled paper, half-eaten sandwiches, and tossed pornographic magazines soon emerged from the void as well. One of the more distressing things found in the regurgitated trash was a piece of sandstone with what appeared to be a few lines of text. After careful analysis it was translated from ancient Sanskrit to read, “Seriously, are you fucking taking shits into this thing?” Unfortunately, this message was decoded too late, long after the annual Camp Hero Olympics and its marquee event, “Toss 200 Pounds of Warm Ground Beef into the Time Tunnel.”

  It was early April 1972, when Camp Hero logged its first visit from the netherworld. Upon arriving at the office, the scientists gathered around the tunnel to fire their new company-issued pistols into the breast of the unknown. According to vague eyewitness reports, the tunnel began to wildly expand and contract before ultimately giving birth to a small purple creature that had been wounded by the aforementioned gunfire. Dr Felt reportedly removed his prized coat, wrapped the wounded creature in several towels, and bludgeoned it with his finest shovel. Witnesses claimed that just before leaving the facility with the creature stuffed in an old, weathered hockey bag, he proclaimed “This isn’t the first hole I’ve dug in the desert, and Lord knows it won’t be the last.”

Later on in the day, after Dr Felt had finished burying the first interdimensional being encountered by man, he returned to the office and found an alarming scene: spent shell casings, overturned furniture, the twisted disembowelled bodies of interns, his favorite jazz records just like . . . strewn about without any respect. Realizing he’d breached protocol by leaving his gun at his desk, he reached for the nearest weapon, his finest shovel.

The following account is taken from the 1994 young adult novel “Felt You Coming: Dead Without Remorse” by Dr Marvin Felt:

“Dr Felt slipped through the hallways like a snake, the training was kicking in, there was no doubt about that. In times like these he was far more comfortable using his guile over brute force, but today’s events had changed him. He looked forward to the blood, to the pain, to the battle, but a quick flash of Melissa’s face entered his mind. That sunset, that moment they had at the boat launch. “There was no time to think of that now,” He told himself. He peaked his head into the vault that contained the time tunnel and laid his eyes on the great purple beast. It towered 10 feet tall and had a set of great ivory horns. It wore flowing liturgical robes and it’s hair was black tangled like a cobra’s nest. It made eye contact with Dr Felt, there was no going back now. Bringing his good luck crucifix to his lips, he gave Jesus Christ a kiss and let his lord and saviour fall back to his chest.”

The novel sold poorly but received a boost in popularity when shock jock Howard Stern used pages from the book to wipe his ass with and then threw said pages at actress Elayne Boosler.

The true account was much less dramatic. In an effort to pump himself up for the ensuing battle, Dr Felt repeatedly did key bumps of cocaine that later tested positive to be so pure it would “Streak the most god awful hookers’ hair white.” The creature stood only around 4’8 and was dressed in more of a “bathrobe” than any ceremonial battle garb. Dr Felt knew that the creature’s one true weakness was to bludgeon it fifteen to twenty times in the head, but lost grip of the shovel when he raised it above his head. Falling to his knees, Dr Felt bagged for his life, and offered many co-workers and even family members to stand in his place to be killed as a pittance. Reaching down, the creature ran his hands over Dr Felt’s beautiful, deep red smoking jacket.

“Sharp coat,” it managed to say in garbled English. “Maybe . . . we make deal?”

What was learned in the following negotiations was that Maurice, the lovable vagrant-like character, had arrived in the creature’s dimension and was immediately placed into observation. Maurice would regale his captors with tall tales of the vagrant lifestyle: living off the land, high stakes bindle tying competitions, and goonie bat pummeling. He eventually rose to the rank of a leader due to his knowledge of the items that had been carelessly dumped into the time tunnel. With the various office supplies, he helped keep the dimension organized; with the human waste, he showed the beings how to plant crops; and with the hamburger, he showed them a “kick-ass” taco recipe. Maurice acted as an unofficial liaison for our dimension and often stressed that we were a loving and gentle species. Of course, this was before Dr Felt had beaten the interstellar ambassador to death with his finest shovel. The being had meant no harm to humanity; it only wished to make contact with us to impart the secrets of his universe in exchange for knowledge of ours.

In an act of vengeance, the beast in the shabby bathrobe was sent through the time tunnel to destroy our hostile universe. Fortunately, for humanity’s sake, the being had become quite smitten with Dr Felt’s smoking jacket, and a deal was brokered: The universe would be spared in exchange for Dr Felt’s smoking jacket and a conditional pair of slacks. The time tunnel would be, regrettably, disengaged, never to be opened again. 

After the creature said his goodbyes and the time tunnel shuttered for the final time, Dr Felt was overheard saying, “Only a universe of morons would worship a crippled hobo.” A true asshole indeed.

Martin Kane itched for new breakthroughs but acquiring new programs presented a practical problem for Camp Hero: a shortage of space. Every floor had become occupied in the years since the facility opened, and there was simply nowhere for the facility to grow. One obvious option was to eliminate the floor housing the more established scientist’s favorite candy bars, but this solution was defeated in a landslide when put to a vote. Martin Kane called a meeting with the most trusted members of his staff: a large teddy bear named Wallace and a full-length mirror. Save for a few cursory remarks, the bear was no help, and the full-length mirror only repeated what he said in a mocking fashion. Before boarding a plane to a private rehab facility, Martin Kane proclaimed that Camp Hero would purchase a trailer and park it behind a nearby grocery store.

As to not arouse suspicion, a Camp Hero intern would tow the camouflaged trailer from the grocery store to a neighbouring park, where it would stay for the night. The scientists would be set free in the park until dawn. The new programs housed in the trailer, Quantum Physics and Cryonics, felt disrespected by their placement in the mobile home. And they were. A majority of their work was analyzing old reports, not exactly the “sexy” science Martin Kane thought he was getting in his drug-fueled haze. The teams were seen as “fuddy-duddies” who would rather talk literature and politics than compete in the four-legged races and hot dog eating contests at the Camp Hero summer socials.

During a violent windstorm, the elaborate camouflage was torn off of the trailer. Weighing the cost of replacing the camouflage or selling the trailer outright for a profit, the newly sober Martin Kane shuttered both divisions, pocketed the $1,500 and immediately got very drunk. The scientists and analysts were set free in the park one last time, and some say that on a quiet night, you can still hear them talking about boring things that no one cares about.

By 1975, Martin Kane’s lifestyle started to put the future of Camp Hero in serious trouble. His dubious hiring practices continued when he spotted Arthur Collins while in line at a liquor store and insisted that he should check out his new car stereo. After agreeing that the stereo was very loud, the men spent the next several hours drinking on the steps of the neighbourhood youth gymnasium while trading stories and yelling obscenities at teenage girls. The issue of employment had come up, and, by coincidence, Kane had been looking for a bright up-and-comer to head up the Robotics Division at Camp Hero. He offered Arthur the job on the spot. Arthur scoffed at the idea, as he possessed only a seventh-grade education and had recently turned sixty-seven years old. He eventually accepted the offer after losing a best-of-nine series of rock paper scissors.

What Arthur Collins would bring to the Robotics Division was invaluable: an astonishing lack of humanity. Scientists’ wages were cut, as were holidays, sick, and personal days. Arthur also forced them to cut all ties with the outside world and live in the Camp Hero facility. Once, an intern planned to sneak out to attend his mother’s funeral. Arthur saw this as an act of betrayal and called in a bomb threat to the church where the funeral service was to be held, and the next night, Arthur blew up the church just to be safe. Months into this harsh schedule, which culminated in several scientists getting scurvy, the scientists decided to unionize. Upon hearing the decision, Arthur called his team into his office. He did not speak; instead, he silently punched a cement wall until he urinated in his pants. The word “union” was never uttered again.

Though one could argue with his methods, you could not argue with his success. What had been classified in the past as a group of second-rate toaster manufacturers was transformed by Arthur’s iron fist into an unparalleled giant in the world of robotics. In seven short months, the division had gone from a mannequin hand with painted nails to a fully functioning autonomous android. An unmatched triumph in the field, capable of operating with pre-programmed behaviour, completely independent of human interaction. It was thought that the robot, over a long enough period of time, would learn dozens, if not hundreds, of skills, but the prototypes had unexpectedly limited shelf lives. The robotics team managed to embed basic human emotions into the prototypes, and as such, their short lives were filled with anxiety and fear, exacerbated by Arthur’s drunken berating during routine examinations. After a thorough, top-down inspection, the robot would usually be reduced to a useless shell, either unable, or more likely, unwilling to continue operating in such a cruel, twisted environment.

There were many theories regarding the root of Arthur’s monstrosity. Some say he was hard on the scientist and prototypes because his son Dylan had lost his legs in a motorcycle accident and Arthur wished to see him walk again so Dylan could move out. Little is known about his life before Camp Hero, and even less is known about it after he left. One morning he was just gone. Arthur Collins would be the last of his kind at Camp Hero. Changes were coming–in part because Camp Hero was out of money.

As it turns out, Martin Kane had been fueling twenty-plus years of his rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle by skimming off of the Camp Hero budget. It should have been made apparent to the authorities when Kane tried to pay for a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 with a gold bar emblazoned with a swastika. Between Kane’s skimming, the unchecked budgets, and out-of-control spending, the Nazi gold cache was depleted. In February 1980, Martin Kane bleached his hair, bought a plane ticket for Venezuela, and was never heard from again.

The remaining funding from the government was a pittance compared to the seemingly unlimited budget Camp Hero had operated with for the first twenty years of its existence. Congress had changed significantly over the years. Sympathy, understanding, and negotiation ruled the day. Nanotechnology that could eat a human being from the inside out and reduce them to a pile of sausage casings was no longer desired, although the testing had been extremely successful. It was a new era of “mean people suck,” and the research team at Camp Hero was full of inarguably mean people.

The robotics lab and the Time Travel Department had especially bitchin’ parties before closing and tossed most of their equipment and classified documents into the unlocked Loomis bin behind a nearby apartment building. The office space was rented out, and the first six floors were soon occupied with catalogue sales and service. Science was no longer the priority–sales, sales, sales was now Camp Hero’s edict.

The bottom six floors were all that remained dedicated to science. While evicting the shuttered Archaeology Division, it was discovered that they had been digging into the foundation of the Camp Hero complex. Whenever the team hit a water or, more commonly, a sewer line, the team would usually “pack it in for the day.” The bottom four floors were declared condemned. The departments that were deemed cost-effective occupied the remaining two floors that were still available. The cloning department saved money by replicating the same scientist over and over to build a sizable staff while only paying out a single paycheque. This was heralded as a major “breakthrough in the workforce.” The program was shut down after being heralded by others as “White Slavery.”

But as the past slipped into the present, the era of over-the-phone customer service gave way to the internet, which, coincidentally, had been conceived at Camp Hero as a library system for the freakier scientist’s extreme pornography; the call centres and catalogue services ran out their leases and packed up. The foundation of Camp Hero had decayed to such a degree that it was cheaper to fill in the levels with concrete than to fix. Any scientific subjects still living at the complex were released to the public, leading to many humorous internet videos. Camp Hero was closed.

Now renowned as a kick-ass party spot, all that remains of Camp Hero is the radar dish. Teenagers can often be found congregating at “The Dish” on warm summer nights. Drinking, smoking pot and finger fucking each other, they are oblivious to the scientific breakthroughs made by Martin Kane and his band of scientific miscreants that occurred in the subterranean complex beneath their feet.