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Since we know that both of our faithful visitors are incredibly interested in knowing the story behind our run from The Government, we attribute this unseeming lack of curiosity to blatant censorship by the aforesaid Government. There can be no other reasonable reason. So, to answer that unasked question, here is: The story of the raid on HLF HQ The date was July 3, 2002. It was a Wednesday. It was around 2pm and the offices at the HLF HQ were relatively quiet. Several of the strike teams had already gone home to prepare for their assignments on the next day, our on-call personnel had the afternoon off since they'd be rodenting the phones the next day, and I was in the conference room, looking at the big map on the wall with little pins marking confirmed, suspected, and potential gerbiling strongholds. All of a sudden, alarms began to blare throughout the complex. And they weren't the usual kind of alarms, either (you know, like when the pizza guy arrives or when someone spots an ice cream truck)--these were the Ultra High Security Alarms of Ultimate Danger tm. Immediately, I sprang into action, calling out for Shawn, our Director of Special Operations & Security Director, but he was nowhere to be found... he'd been MIA for some time and I'd forgotten all about it (much like he forgot about us...? No, no, I refuse to tread that path). So, understandably receiving no response from Shawn, I went to the window and looked out. And this is what I saw:
"Hmm," I thought, "I wonder what the alarm is all about." Then I looked out the other window:
"Ah," I said to myself, "they're bringing in the big guns." I took a couple of minutes at that point to send out a text message on our pre-programmed cell phones and pagers to all HQ staff, informing them of what I saw and directing them to implement Evacuatin Plan Alpha/9. Then I played Tetris for a couple of minutes, but I didn't beat my high score or anything. Finally, I was ready to evacuate the main portion of the building myself. I went to the bookcase, pulled down the wall sconce, and waited for the secret door to open. After a few minutes, I realized I was thinking of the old Batman TV show and that we didn't have anything like that in our HQ. So I went to the emergency staircase and started to climb, making sure to lock the security door behind me, turn on the motion-detectors as I passed by them, and activate the closed-circuit television monitors. Oh, all right... so we didn't have that stuff, either. But I did stack the empty soda cans in front of the door so we'd hear them fall over if someone tried to follow us--that's just as good as any of those security systems that actually cost money. So finally I got to the top of the tower and I realized one thing was for sure--I really should have actually used that membership to the YMCA instead of just going there to shoot baskets in the gym. But I was there, and after resting for a few minutes, I managed to crawl over to the windows to check on the latest developments... and I was shocked.
I don't think I have to tell you that the
words that sprang to my mind were, I picked up the emergency phone (yes, we had actually installed that piece of technology) and called the front desk; no response. That meant that the rest of the staff had implemented Evacuation Plan Alpha/9 successfully (if it was unsuccessful, the answering machine would have answered). That also meant I was the only staff member left in the building. I needed to now make my own escape. Gathering my strength, I went to the emergency fire escape on the back of the building and started climbing down. The Government never even posted anyone back there (thankfully we'd counted on that). I made it to the ground in record time and opened up the manhole cover... and then realized I hadn't disposed of any files. Silently cursing myself, I climbed the fire escape back to the top of the tower, went back down the staircase inside to my office, and then set fire to my filing cabinets. I also set off a hamster-dropping bomb in the office, too, just to dissuade anyone from touching the desk, computer, telephone, etc. Then I began to climb the stairs again and, once I reached the top, remembered there was an emergency exit to the sewer system in my office... but I went out the fire escape anyway. And so I made good my retreat to the Underground. Now, I'm sure you have all heard the stories about rats and alligators and giraffes in the sewer systems of major cities, but I'm here to tell you that there are definitely no alligators in the sewers beneath HLF HQ. What is there, however, are many helpful rodential revolutionaries who earned their cheddar that day by assisting with the escape of the entire HLF HQ staff. Not one staff member was nabbed by The Government. Of course, they got our beautiful HQ, but we were feeling it wasn't right to be striving for the common rodent and working out of such luxurious accomodations, anyway, so that was no big loss. At any rate, we stayed underground for a little over a year and then slowly emerged. We now have a new HQ (more befitting our purpose and goals), but we'll leave it undisclosed for now. Almost all of our staff have been reassembled. It was odd that none of our field offices were raided at the same time, but I heard through an undercover mole that The Government had forgot to synchronize their watches and, thus, all of the field officers thought they'd already missed the raid date, so they went out to play golf instead. And now we're back and ready for even more revolutionary activities. Thanks for reading this far. Viva la HLF! --gair |
All original text and images are © 1989-2006 Hamster Liberation Front. Images that are not original creation of the HLF retain their original copyrights. The
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