If you sit down with any phreak worth his knowledge in gold you'll find, amongst his tales of phreakdom hood, a true tale of horror. A story about a night when everything that could go wrong did, and thensome. This is one such story. It was relayed to me by a phone phreak of French Canadian roots named "The Phantom Monstre." It's all about how 3 boil down to 1.
I had one of my digital voice recorders on me and, with the permission of "The Phanton Monstre", recorded his exact words and transcribed them for you below. Note that while I cannot gauge the full truth of the story (for I was not there to witness it personally) the Phantom Monstre's emotional reactions to his own telling of the story were more than enough to convince me of its likely truth or, at worst, a slight exageraton of the horrors that had been witnessed. Though this was a story of utter reality I decided to give it a name nevertheless. I call it...
"The TNI on the Edge of Oblivion" (Harlan Ellison, eat your heart out!)
(recording starts here.)
Are you recording this now? Ah, okay, good. So like I was saying, I didn't have my license at the time and so a friend of mine, Switchboard Charlie, used to ferry me about in his car whenever we wanted to go on any little phone adventure. Like this one time we went onto the New Jersey Turnpike just to see this little row of full-sized phonebooths. Like the old kind that you see in the movies. Ayways, another one of my friends, I mentioned him before, "Bill Elliot" had gotten into phreaking not too long before and he showed some promise. He loved beige boxing. In fact it was him who suggested that we drive around various places, late at night, and beige out from the local houses' TNI boxes. And so we did. Hit up about 3 neighborhoods until one of us, either Switchboard Charlie or me or, maybe even "Bill Elliot"came up with a brilliant idea. Why not drive to older areas. Places that are semi-abandoned, you know? They're bound to have older equipment in their C.O.'s so we might find ourselves beiging on a line served by some old switch. Like a 1AESS or something close. We were all 5E kids ourselves. Served by the same switch.
(There's a pause and you can hear the Phantom Monstre take a sip and then a gulp of some coffee. He exhales or, possibly, sighs, and, after a second of recollection, continues.)
I don't know how we found the place. It was an old, old town. I don't remember where it was. Probably lower New Jersey. Yeah, probably by the Pine Barrens. It was some place. Little Arkham or something or other. Anyways, we drove into it and it was so old and beaten up that we knew that we might've hit the jackpot with this place. The moon was full that night and we could see pretty well. So we drove around and found a hose with its TNI box hidden away from the view of other houses but swinging open in the wind. Only there was no wind as I can remember now. None of us found that strange though. We parked a block or two away and made our way to that place.
We couldn't figure out if the house was inhabitted. It was old and filthy. The windows were almost brown with dust in fact and the lawn hasn't been mowed for ages. Yet the mailbox had been painted white not too long before and there seemed to be a little new garbage in the tipped over garbage cans. We kept quiet and got to the TNI.
"Bill Elliot" brought his Harris butt set TS-22 that he got off eBay. We also brought our adapters so you could use a butset with an RJ-11 jack. We hooked it all up and turned it on expecting to hear a 1AESS on the line. "Bill Elliot" spoke up first.
"It's a fucking 5E! Motherfuck!"
I grabbed the buttset from him and picked up the phone. The clicks sounded like a 5E. I pushed # and, sure enough, got a reorder. A 5E serving this remote area of New Jersey? Damn! Luck wasn't on our side. I passed the buttset on to Switchboard Charlie.
He dialed an ANAC. It was one of the MCI ANACs. And began listening intently. Suddenly his eyes grew wide in surprise and confusion.
"What the fuck? It just read out my home phone number!"
That's when I saw something flicker right behind his neck. No, now it was on his neck! It was the cord of the butt set! Like a snake it crawled around his neck, made itself into a noose and, before any 3 of us could do anything, jumped.. Yes, that's right. It JUMPED straight up towards the moon and snapped Switchboard Charlie's neck.
Me and "Bill Elliot", we fucking RAN. We had no clue about what just happened but we left all our tools right there in front of that old, falling apart house and ran to Switchboard Charlie's car. It was only two blocks but when we reached it we knew that we fucked up. Switchboard Charlie's car keys were still in his coat pocket! One of us had to go back and get them if we wanted to get the hell out of there. "Bill Elliot' started crying and sobbing like crazy. I couldn't blame him. I was totally freaked out myself. But then he just stopped responding and sat down next to the car just sobbing away and cryng and crying and calling out for his mom.
Fuck, that meant that I had to go back to that house and whatever it was that just killed him in front of our eyes. How could "Bill Elliiot"'s fucking buttset move like that on its own?! Like a snake with two tails! How could it jump like that? What the fuck was going on?!
So I ran back to that house, and around it. To the TNI box. And puked. Switchboard Charlie was still there. But now there was no buttset, no tools! And, as I walked over to Switchboard Charlie's corpse laying in the overgrown grass I saw that he was missing his head! Cut clean off. Brownish blood spilling from his neck. You might see a beheading in movies or videogames but it's nothing like actually seeing it in real life. Your eyes just follow the shape of the body and then you see something missing. It's impossible to describe. Like not noticing the air conditioner is on until it just shuts off one day. You don't realize that you expect to see a human shape with its head. But then, when you see one headless.. Oh my god.
(He paused again. As if to calm himself down. I noticed that his hands were shaking. I offered to stop recording but he said it was alright. That he was almost finished.)
Yeah, so I puked when I saw the body. But then I realized that I still needed to get his keys and get the hell out of there. So I quickly reached into his pocket and pulled them out. Then I started to run as fast as I can back to the car.
I don't know what made me look back though. I don't know if it were my eyes playing tricks on me but, as I ran around to the view of the other houses, I noticed that the TNI box that we had beiged off was now gone! It was there when I saw Switchboard Charlie without his head. But now it was gone! I kept on runing.
And then I got to the car. The driver's side window was smashed open and there was blood and, and hair impaled in some of the borken glass. Black hair. "Bill Elliot"'s black hair. I quickly opened the driver's side door, pushed as much glass as I could off the driver's seat, got in, started the car, locked ALL of the doors, and began to drive around the neighborhood looking for "Bill Elliot".
I don't know if I found him but, at one turn, I saw what looked like two large men hitting what looked like a garbage bag with clubs as hard as they can while some animal that looked like a hairy black giant dog bit and chewed at it. . I still hope that it was a garbage bag and not "Bill Elliot" but it sure did look like "Bill Elliot" rolled up into a ball, bleeding out of his head. Thick cracks against his skull. Oh my god.
(He paused again.)
I drove the hell out of there. And I kept on driving. I dumped the car in some abandoned part of Queens and took the subway back home. Later on I drove out to the New Jersey pine barrens looking for "Little Arkham", hoping to see Switchboard Charlie or "Bill Elliot" again but I never again found the town or saw those two ever again.
Oh my god... ohmygod.
(I stopped recording. Somebody slipped The Phantom Monstre some rum and he poured it into his coffee. Later on he became a bit less depressed but wouldn't talk about his background any more. We never did see him at the nyc2600 meetings again.)
EDIT: Fixed numerous spelling mistakes.
