Camp Zester, USA

Four days meant lots of time to watch TV, read a novel, and eat unhealthy room service food. The hotel had a nice swimming pool, weight room, and treadmill, so I kept up my workout schedule. It didn't feel right doing yoga without Bari, the almost-elderly lady who had taught me yoga and meditation techniques and who I noticed frequently stared at my body with some degree of either appreciation or lust. She was fun, but I wasn't going to mess up my ethics clause.

Finally, in the insane dark-thirty, I walked over to the terminal and caught my plane to Seattle. That's all I knew about where I was going.

Plane Arrival

Arriving at Seattle-Tacoma "SeaTac", I had a simple set of Must-Do instructions: Eat, bathroom, and then "insurance".

That is, I was supposed to eat a HUGE meal - utterly gorge myself (their words) at any convenient SeaTac restaurant or food court, right after I arrived. Food SHOULD be unhealthy and overstuffed -- the next travel leg might not have food service for a while, so I did as ordered and went to town on high-fat high-protein stuff.

I knew from hiking, sugar was the enemy of staying sated for long. On the plus side, that inspired me to use my debit card to fill most of my available backpack space with trail mix (allowed) and candy bars (allowed, but not usually my style).

After that, they insisted I MUST use a restroom for numbers 1 AND 2, whether I wanted to or not.

Departing the restroom, I followed their instructions and went to the baggage claim area to find the 'travel insurance' kiosk. It was easy to find; a very stern looking but somewhat sickly-looking elderly man with a crew cut said, 'Can I help you?'

I answered in the scripted reply, "Just wondering, how much does it cost to insure a pet?"

He replied, "Ah, yes. We'll get you that answer. Hold on." He pinched his belt and said into his headset microphone, "One, B-12." (I could see we were in baggage claim 12)

It was a crappy headset. I could overhear - it said, "Okay. 3 minutes, Red."

Turning to me, he said, "Your ride is an older red minivan at the curb outside."

I nodded, thanked him, and went outside and waited. Sure enough, in a minute or two, up pulled a dark-red Honda Odyssey minivan, side door opening automatically for me. Two people were already inside; the driver said, "Back seat, we'll be full."

I got in, filling up the backseat row, and the door auto-closed right behind me.

We drove off, and he pulled the van back into traffic, circled around the parking area, and then into a waiting/loading area and parked, engine running.

I nodded, and looked at the other people in the van with me. Both were girls, or women I should say, whatever, a bit older than me maybe, with the same kind of backpack I had. Both were reading novels, waiting. I got out my novel again and settled in.

About 10 minutes later we were full up, 6 of us plus the driver.

We didn't get far; about 5 minutes away from the airport, he pulled into an industrial area, and then up to a loading dock area under a large tent. There were 6 school buses there, lined up in parallel, with drivers in them, waiting. As we pulled up right next to the first bus, we stepped out of the van and right up onto the first bus, which was about half full. Everyone was in the back. Of course, the driver said, "Go to the back. When we're full, we'll go."

Filling up the bus didn't take but another couple of minutes. A procession of minivans, cars, limos, and trucks all pulled up, dropped people off, and sped off again. Once our school bus was full, the driver shifted into gear and we got back on the highway. The bus's windows were really dark-tinted, but we could see out just fine. This was turning out to be a larger internship program than I thought it might be, at least several hundred people.

Everyone in the bus was about my age, 19 to 25 or so, I guessed, which is pretty much what I expected. The unexpected part was the gender ratio. There were only a couple of guys, and all the rest were women. Almost everyone (both genders) had shorter hairstyles - shoulder-length or less. These were practical haircuts, none of the fancy long-ponytails, braids, buns, or other vanity-driven hairstyles. I'd seen the directives about appearance, but mostly didn't have to worry since most of them didn't apply to me, especially the 'short fingernails', 'no fingernail polish', 'no watches, jewelry, earrings, studs or metal of any kind', and even 'no other piercings whatsoever'.

I wasn't exactly the piercings kind of guy, but having to leave my running watch behind made me feel naked.

Our bus drove steadily through morning traffic for about a half hour, giving us a sightseeing tour of... boring interstate! Eventually, we got off at the exit marked, 'Joint Base McChord', south of Tacoma. There were a fair number of school buses queued to get past the guard gate in front of us, and I could see more of them behind us. As we pulled up through the gate (without really stopping), we passed big concrete barricades and some serious-looking MP's, unconcerned with us but making the one car that had pulled up between us pull out and turn around.

Our procession of buses all drove through an on-base but deserted industrial district with one- or two-story nondescript military buildings. Finally, winding though and passing buses going the other way, we pulled into a giant outdoor tent attached to a large set of warehouse structures. As our bus pulled in, MP's waved the driver to stop and we picked up and filed off. All around us, the other buses were also offloading people and driving onwards, who knows where, and more buses were pulling in.

The tent we'd pulled under was huge and kept going for a long way -- there were a lot of people getting here all at the same time. This internship was even bigger than I'd thought, and getting bigger as we went.

Everyone had to walk into an open warehouse door, and then down a long blank corridor. The walls were curtained off to prevent us seeing in windows or something. Everything was covered in heavy black industrial-looking curtains, making our path a single corridor with nowhere to go but straight on and following the curves and turns of the hallways.

After several hundred meters, we exited the building into another sealed set of giant outdoor tents over parking lot space and into another warehouse, again following a serpentine path. As we walked, some other hallways converged with ours, merging in more people and mostly filling up the hallway with people, though we were still able to walk at a close-to-normal speed.

Alternating tents and buildings (airplane hangar, warehouse, hangar, etc), we came out into another large open warehouse-looking space, an obvious 'destination'.

This expansive open space was filled with long but moving queues of people waiting to go through sets of security checkpoints. Other doors next to the one I came in had other incoming streams of people, but it was obvious where we were all headed.

Scattered throughout this space, and especially up front, were lots of big garbage cans, with signs on them, all shouting the same message: "YOU ARE ALLOWED THE ONE STANDARD-ISSUE SPECIFIED BACKPACK WITH SPECIFIED CONTENTS. NO OTHER LUGGAGE OR ITEMS ARE ALLOWED. PUT TRASH / UNNEEDED / EXTRA ITEMS IN GARBAGE. ABSOLUTELY NO ELECTRIC OR ELECTRONIC ITEMS ALLOWED, EVEN WATCHES."

I saw some people throwing empty water bottles in the trash cans. Up near the front were three garbage trucks, parked with their backs open to us. One girl, being escorted by a guard, walked up to the garbage truck pulling a super-large rolling suitcase. Reluctantly and with some effort, she heaved it into the back of the garbage truck. The MP standing there, a gentleman so elderly as to be surprising he was standing up (much less wearing an MP uniform), triggered it and the scooper came down and pulled away her bag, full of whatever valuables she had intended to bring with her. I figured the old guy was there because it shamed the people into lifting their own luggage.

Watching this scene was about the only thing to do for about 15 minutes while we stood in line and gradually shuffled forward to the TSA-like security checkpoints at the front.

Each checkpoint line had a giant sign overhead, and as we walked forward people started putting pocket-change, belts, keys, and whatever else they had in their pockets into their backpacks. The sign authoritatively read:

DEPT. OF DEFENSE SECURE ZONE RULES APPLY.

NO CELL PHONES OR OTHER ELECTRONICS.

IF IT USES ELECTRICITY IT IS NOT ALLOWED.

NO FIREARMS OR AMMUNITION.

PUT BRAS CONTAINING METAL CLASPS OR UNDERWIRES IN YOUR BACKPACK.

NO LIVE ANIMALS.

BACKPACKS WILL BE SUBJECTED TO LETHAL RADIATION.

PLACE SHOES, WALLET/BANKCARDS, AND ALL OBJECTS CONTAINING METAL INTO YOUR BACKPACK OR THE BIN.

USE OF DEADLY FORCE TO ENFORCE THESE RULES IS AUTHORIZED.

Searching myself completely, I followed what everyone else was doing and put my spare pocket change into my backpack and took off my shoes. There had been a directive in the instructions about underwire bras, but I still saw a bunch of girls taking off their bras through their arm-holes while keeping their shirts on, which I always thought was a neat trick.

The first stage was the x-ray machine next to the metal detector. Signs told us to put our shoes in the tote-bin with our backpacks so we knew which backpack was ours. I liked the system, but I still put my shoes upside down to be more unique.

Parallel to our path and behind some plexiglass, the bins with our backpacks and other things flowed down a conveyor belt. Some of the backpacks were being dug through by the security people, and what looked like curling irons, alarm clocks, or whatever, were being extracted, thrown out, and re-x-rayed. Once in a while, when a backpack was rejected, someone would shout loudly back towards the lines of people, "NO CELLPHONES OR ELECTRONICS. IF IT USES ELECTRICITY THROW IT OUT."

After that, we queued for one of the brand-new versions of the whole-body scanners. This wouldn't have been interesting, but looking over at the next security line I happened to see around a barrier at what they were doing looking at that scanner's pictures. There, 3 matronly-looking older ladies were looking at the scanner's video feed, which showed a beautifully clear image in false-color of the person in the scanner -- Naked! The scanner looked through all the clothes as if they weren't there. I realized the ladies might be looking at me, but then I laughed inside because each of them had to be at least 70 years old. They'd get a thrill for a minute and then it'd be on to the next person.

After the scanner, I had to put my hand on a handprint scanner and tilt my eye into an eyecup for a retinal scan at the same time. When the machine beeped, we held out our right arm and an odd device spritzed the back of our hands with a barcode with our ID code below it.

It occurred to me at that point that almost everyone that was staffing this process was really elderly, and most were women. Some of them didn't look so good, like they were cancer patients or something. But, they processed us completely and efficiently.

After the handprint/eye scanner and barcoding, we walked around a corner and through a large cabinet / machine where we opened a door, the machine hummed and popped once, and then it let us out the other side. The only writing on the equipment was a logo for a company named 'TRW' and a set of three 8-digit numbers. I figured it was probably some kind of new classified scanner or something.

At that point, the bins with backpacks came into view again. A conveyor belt brought them forward towards another industrial-refrigerator-sized device. The lady in front would pull up the door, slide in the bin, close the door, and press a button. We'd hear a loud, "POP" sound, she'd open the door, pull it out, and push it towards whoever was waiting. No doubt, it was the lethal radiation part.

One of the bags, after it went in the fridge-sized device, instead of making a 'pop', it made a low "Boom" sound, and a small alarm went off. The lady shouted to us, "We said no electronics, including lithium batteries. You have some scorched clothes in there now."

I figured the chances of sneaking in a cellphone were asymptotically approaching zero.

Once we had our backpacks back, we put on our jackets, shoes, and belts and shuffled forwards through another doorway. Over that door was a sign that said, "Commit Point / point of no return / no exit from here until destination / ask guard if exit needed."

We all walked forwards.

Becoming Cargo

Through the commit-point door was another open room with a set of tall chain-link fences set up to make a corridor to walk down. The fences were covered in a thick material, and another set was immediately behind it, so there was no way of seeing beyond.

The home-store-height ceiling felt open, but we couldn't hear anything due to multiple jarringly different radio stations' music blasting from just behind the fences. After about 100 meters and a couple of turns, we came to a set of branch corridors. Down each branch, there was a set of huge set of handprint scanners and a hole in the curtain next to them. It turned out, they were armholes. The signs read:

NO TALKING. AT ALL. TO ANYONE.

UTTER SILENCE. WE MEAN IT.

Put hand on scanner.

Wait for green and beep.

Put arm through armhole.

Wait calmly, arm will be held and blood will be drawn. Only hurts a minute.

If you faint, try again.

Hand will be stamped.

Show hand stamp to next guard.

It went incredibly fast, maybe 2 minutes and I was done. Whoever they had taking blood, they were fast. There were lots of armholes, so the line moved along at a clip. The hand stamp was a second barcode spray-printed onto my hand. At the end of the area was a set of 6 people next to turnstyles with hand scanners, checking barcodes and letting people through who had them.

We walked another 100 meters and trudged out to find a cordoned line of people, slowly moving forwards towards a large open space ahead of us. First up, we saw a greeting sign:

OPSEC requires us to get you to your destination secretly.

This means a short trip in a well-appointed shipping container.

Air conditioning, food, water, and toilets are in containers.

Instruction manual is next to microwaves.

This made sense then, why they were putting us through this travel mode. Given the number of people involved (at least from what I saw in line with us), there had to be some trick to getting lots of people to a place without anyone knowing about our destination.

Past this first sign, we had to go through a turnstile and into the wider area. I figured the reason for that was to ensure that people had time to read the first sign.

After that, we were in an open space with paint on the floor to make a set of rectangular grids, each 3 spaces wide by 6 deep. People were filling in the closest grid. The sign ahead of us then made sense:

READ THIS ** WHOLE SIGN TWICE** BEFORE MOVING FORWARD.

NO TALKING!

PUT BACKPACK ON OVER BOTH SHOULDERS NOW

DIVIDE INTO GROUPS OF 18 PEOPLE.

FLOOR IS PAINTED, ONE PERSON PER SQUARE, 18 SQUARES!

ONCE HAVE GROUP OF 18, COUNT AGAIN!

ONCE CERTAIN, HOLD HANDS SIDE-SIDE.

PROCEED TO AN EMPTY DOCK - WALK IN FORMATION

NO TALKING! AT ALL!

ONCE AT DOCK, WAIT. KEEP HOLDING HANDS.

DOCK WILL OPEN. LOOK AT CONTAINER.

FIRST PERSON OPENS CONTAINER.

CONTAINER LOCK: LIFT LEVER ON LEFT SIDE OF DOOR, PULL.

EACH PERSON TAKES ONE FLASHLIGHT FROM BOX. PUT IN POCKET.

PROCEED INTO YOUR CONTAINER QUICKLY, ALL THE WAY IN, Keep Walking!

SILENCE IN THE CONTAINER!

ENSURE YOU HAVE 18 PEOPLE, COUNT OFF.

DO THIS EFFICIENTLY! CORRECTLY! QUICKLY!

SURE of count - LAST person pulls DOOR SHUT + shouts, "ALL IN CLOSE DOOR"

Door will be latched from outside. Watch Your Fingers!

SILENCE IN THE CONTAINER!

Hold on! Truck will start moving almost immediately!

Continue OPSEC while in transit!

INSTRUCTIONS FOR CONTAINER ARE IN MICROWAVE.

SILENCE IN THE CONTAINER!

You will be told at destination when OPSEC no longer required.

SILENCE IN THE CONTAINER!

I paused and read the sign, as everyone around me was doing.

I wasn't really in a rush, some people were, but I didn't see the point of it, it took as long as it took. Yoga lessons taught me something.

We all did as instructed, lined up, held hands, moved forwards, found a bay, and waited. About 5 minutes later, our bay garage-door opened and a container was right in front of us. The lead girl went up, opened the door, and we all filed in as instructed. At the entrance we had to duck through a gap between two heavy black curtains, but we came into a dimly lit bunk room space.

Once we were all inside, I heard a commotion behind me, and the last person yelled, "COUNT OFF!" We did, got to 18, and they yelled again, "COUNT OFF AGAIN!". This was silly, we'd seen everyone get in and been very sure of it all, but apparently they were taking no chances on the counts. Getting to 18 again, the last person yelled out the back, "ALL IN CLOSE DOOR".

One of the MP's had been walking around outside the container, watching us enter. We heard her say loudly, "ALL IN, CLOSING DOOR. WATCH YOUR FINGERS."

The door creaked shut, banged a bit, and then we heard the latches locking.

Container Life

Someone flicked the big switch on the wall labeled, "LIGHTS" and the overhead lights came on full so we could see what was around us.

We had walked in between bunks on either wall, 3 bunks high, end-to-end into the container. That, functionally, was 20+ feet of our container, a big part of the 53-foot length. At the end, near where I'd come to a stop, was a pair of big TVs on a stand, faced opposite directions, in a small center space. Next to the TVs were 2 microwaves, one above another, and an electrical circuit breaker box that led from them up to a 'Tesla Powerwall' mounted on the ceiling next to a whole bunch of other cages full of boxes.

Beyond the TVs were some cabinets and a full-size high-end stainless-steel fridge (crammed full, we later found). Almost all the space was filled, allowing only a narrow passageway to the port-o-lets at the 'front'. The ceiling cages didn't just hold boxes, we saw, they also had big bottles of water. Some of the larger boxes were marked 'MRE 50 CNT".

Against the end wall was a pair of portable toilet booths. Above the port-o-lets was an air conditioning unit that was blowing cool air at us in a slight breeze.

This wasn't a typical shipping container. It was a tight fit for everyone, and volumetrically it was pretty full up.

Oddly, it was pretty quiet. All the surfaces (walls, floor, and ceiling) were covered in a thick gray-shag carpet.

The TVs in the center were mounted back-to-back on a storage unit so they were chest-height, and were in an open-space so people could sit in 'front', either direction. Above and around them were built-in and wired some BluRay players, and another set of boxes labeled, "US Army / USO / DVD Dense-Pack / ASSORTED RANDOM / 2000 CNT". That sounded good to me. We probably wouldn't be bored.

Quickly, everyone decided to choose a bunk; middle from front-back view and against the ceiling. I was just putting my pack up there when the whole container jerked and we started moving. Happily, I was holding on. I heard some 'Oof!' and "Aggh!" sounds from someone as they fell, but we mostly stayed quiet as directed by the signs.

The truck hauling our container made some noise, and even smelled like old-style diesel fumes, decreasingly common as more and more trucks were silent electrics.

The ride wasn't designed for comfort, and at first, it didn't seem remotely possible to get up, lie down, or really do anything but hold on while the container was moving. We had to stand with legs bent, holding on, trying to cope with the constant hard, jarring road bumps. Left turn, right turn, bump, bump, bump; stop, wait, go, stop, left, right, highway speed, change lanes, all that was pretty obvious to us even without being able to see outside.