Chesterfield Act Registry of the Non-Expressive Database
File #31 May 2019 05:18
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 Clint Eastwood |
I was born in 1951, in one of those jumped up small towns in the middle of Ohio; it'd be fair to say that I've been a bastard from birth, in every sense of the word. No idea who my dear old dad is; don't really give a shit, either. He obviously didn't give a shit about me or ma.
Mom married quick, and I wound up with Curtis for a stepdad. He was small-town lawyer with political aspirations, which is even worse than being a lawyer is by itself. He proved you didn't have to be born out of wedlock to be a bastard. Never raised a hand to ma — I'da killed him if he had — but he was the sort who liked his evening gin. The sort who said mean shit to his wife when he got into his cups, made her cry. The sort who'd never let a stepkid forget they were a stepkid. I'd say that maybe that was why I was a shithead growing up, but no. That was just me being a shithead. That made ma cry some, too, and I kinda regretted it, but being a shithead, I just couldn't seem to stop myself from being a shithead; thankfully my half-siblings didn't take after me. They were alright, even if they did have Curtis for a father.
At 18 I stepped into a little bigger pile of shit, got the choice to enlist or go to jail. I chose to enlist, in the hopes of getting the hell out of Ohio. More astronauts come from Ohio than any other state in America; something about the place just makes people want to leave the planet. Sure as hell made me want to get out. Besides, prison in Ohio might've sucked more than Ohio did.
Wrong reasons, but it was the best decision I ever made. Had a drill sergeant who finally managed to motivate me to straighten my shit out. I still remember what he told me: that here it wasn't about my ma, or my pa, or my friends, or anyone else. Here, it was just me, and I had to choose whether I wanted to keep being a fuckup or whether I wanted to make something of myself. I was the only one who could determine how far I'd go. I chose to make something of myself. And I did. I pushed myself, and I kept pushing until I had nothing left. Then I pushed some more. I decided I was gonna aim for the goddamn sky and not stop until I got there. I went in for Special Forces. Biggest challenge I'd ever faced, and by God I beat it, earned my green beret and my 18D. I wouldn't have thought to put a guy like me on medical duty, but apparently the tests said I'd have an aptitude for putting people together. And maybe they were right; I've saved more than I lost.
That was my life, for… years. We went wherever we were needed. Met lots of interesting people, killed some, saved others. A lot of the shit I've done I can't talk about; a lot of it I… try not to even think about. When I finally kick the bucket, I imagine that God — if He exists — is gonna be giving me some hard looks about some of the things I've done, some of the things I was part of. That's fine; I'm gonna be giving Him some hard looks right back, for making it necessary. Because it was necessary, and I stand by the belief that even if some of the things we did were awful, the world is a better place because of them.
So that's what I did. For years and years, the Army, the Job, was my life. Even when I wasn't deployed, being 18D meant I got to do a couple of months a year on trauma duty rotation in a hospital ER. Less shooting people, at least, though I got to patch up a lot more people who'd been shot. Now and then, whenever I had to, I popped up to check in with the family; we'd drifted apart. Ma got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer somewhere along the way; I found out about it right after Panama, so… probably '89. For all that Curtis was a bastard sometimes, he stuck with her to the end; I may never like him, but I'll give him respect for that. He went less than a year after she did; not much of a surprise, honestly. He wasn't looking too hot when I saw him last. I didn't make either funeral — the Job again. Sibs never forgave me for it.
And I was starting to get old, too. I was still OD-A at that point — got to go back to Backassistan when Iraq invaded Kuwait and play in the big sandbox for awhile — but I was getting long in the tooth. I knew that if I kept at it, sooner or later I was gonna blow something, sometime when it'd wind up in someone having to haul my ass off the field. The options I had were to either retire, transfer to OD-B and pilot a desk, or to move to a teaching position. I chose teaching; at least that way I could be passing my skills on while I wound down my career.
Retirement was coming, whether I liked it or not… so I did what I would for any enemy. I prepared. All the guys called me Doc anyway; might as well make it official. I started working towards my doctorate. Maybe I was getting past the age of jumping out of helicopters and turning shitheads into mincemeat, but my eyes were still good and my hands were still steady. And it helped that Uncle Sam likes getting vets educated; makes a good soundbite for the politicians. I officially became Doctor Harrison Carver six months before my official retirement.
I was in New York, doing one last trauma rotation before I hit mandatory retirement when the first Bomb hit.
Jesus.
Even in Backassistan, taking fire from three sides with no clean escape route, I've never been in a worse situation. I still remember what was going through my head then, surrounded by radiation victims, burn victims, concussions, trauma. How could this have happened? How could we have let this happen?
Then we found out. It wasn't a bomb. It was a person. A guy with a fucking nuclear superpower just decided to walk into fucking New York City and blow his fucking atomic load all over the place. That had been bad enough; a nuclear blast on U.S. soil? Hell, that was catastrophic. But then came the talking heads on CNN, spreading shit in the wounds to make sure it went septic. Over the next few years, I got a front-row seat to watch as civilization started eroding… or maybe the rot, the cancer, was there all along, and it was just now creeping to the surface? Fuck if I know; I'm a doctor, not a headshrinker.
All I can say is that over the next few years, people seemed to just… slowly devolve into fucking animals. Shitheads the likes of which I'd killed over in Crapistan and Panama and any number of other shitholes I'd been to over the years were now walking the fucking streets of America, with real-life fucking X-men sprinkled on top just for good measure. The world didn't make sense anymore. Nothing made sense anymore, and it kept getting worse. The fucking President suddenly flying off on national TV and blowing up New York again, that was bad enough… but the Cambridge Massacre. Kids being gunned down… after that, I decided that I'd had enough. De oppresso liber; that's what we were supposed to be about, that was what I had trained for, not… not the shit the Army was doing now. So… I said fuck it. I didn't just fuck off to parts unknown overnight — I stayed and did what I could for those wounded in the Second Bomb, at least — but once that was done and the caseload was down to something sane, I packed my bags and moved back to Ohio. Contrary to what I'd believed all my life, turns out there are some things worse than Ohio.
Turns out civil war is one of them. People were turning into animals out here, too; some things you can't run from. It was a mess, and it only got worse. The Army — my Army — had been doing some shady shit for awhile — the Cambridge Massacre was all the proof of that I'll ever need to see — but now it was getting worse, was going full fucking Nazi. People getting dragged off because they could do card tricks with their mind. Men, women, kids… it made me sick. Fucking Mitchell; my only regret is that they couldn't hang that Hitler fucking wannabe twice. So I did something about it. Had to leave Ohio — not that that was a big loss. I was done with people at that point, honestly. I found a nice little settlement in the middle of goddamned nowhere, dug myself a hole, and crawled in.
Thought I was safe from bullshit for awhile… but then came the Asshole Brigade. Bunch of Senior Grade Shitheads kicked down the doors, shot everyone who resisted, used the rest for slave labor. Still don't know what to make of the group that rescued us; they're better than the Asshole Brigade by a country mile, but I've got a feeling that maybe I shouldn't go digging too deep into their backyard. I don't want to start having to ask questions about what kinds of bones I might pull up…
Harrison Carver is a grumpy, bitter old man who's fought in shitholes around the world on behalf of his country, only for his country to turn into yet another shithole right under his feet. The experience has left him understandably bitter; while he can probably cure what ails you, but he's got the tender bedside manner of a crocodile with cavities.
"Fuck."
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Skills:
Carver's physical condition would be good for a man 20 years his junior; for someone his age, it's remarkable. This is something Carver works to maintain, through a combination of a meticulously balanced diet, an ironclad work ethic, and constant exercise.
On top of his good physical condition, Carver exhibits a frightening level of resilience when it comes to maintaining function in horrible situations, including pain, physical dysfunction, and psychological stressors. After all, in the middle of a firefight you didn't have time to curl up in a ball and start whining just because you'd been shot or broken your leg.
Carver is a Special Forces veteran, and as such has a deep grab bag of skills related to planning and executing operations in hostile territory. Examples include map reading, navigation, foraging, survival, asymmetrical warfare tactics and strategy, regional and environmental analysis, small unit tactics, urban operational tactics, survival, evading pursuit (including dogs), and resisting interrogation.
Carver is a Special Forces veteran; while he was a medic, he was still expected to be able to perform to a certain high standard of lethality while performing his medic duties. As such, he has Special Forces training in advanced marksmanship and close combat, armed and unarmed, rendering him a very skilled combatant. While he is not a good enough marksman to be considered a sniper, he is still a very good shot.
The lion's share of Carver's time in the military was spent as a medical sergeant (18D) in the Green Berets. His medic training included trauma management, diagnosis and treatment of various infectious diseases, cardiac life support, surgical procedures, and nutrition, along with a basic understanding of veterinary and dental medicine; he was expected to be able to provide both urgent and long-term medical care even when in the field for long periods of time, and even when in hostile conditions.
Additionally, his training included how to establish medical facilities to support unconventional warfare operations, as well as preparing the medical portion of area studies, operation plans, and orders. He attained his medical doctorate on top of that, and has spent a significant amount of time serving on trauma duty in major hospital emergency rooms; as such, he's generally pretty adept at treating what ails his patients. Just… don't expect a tender bedside manner.
Carver has been trained over the years in the speaking and reading of Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and Japanese. Recently, he has begun studying Farsi and Arabic, as well.