tell me a story /x/ but make it a good one

DoKken was a hit band in 1987

>>17514164
Let me tell you the tale of the mysterious realm known as the "catalog"...

>>>/x/catalog

>>17514250
Ooo I like this story.

>>17514164
Creepypasta I wrote awhile ago, mostly true story. Probably shit, from /k/ BTW.

I served as a Cavalry Scout in Northern Iraq during one of the the more busy years of the war. The majority of our patrols we did in trucks, better known as Humvees or HMMWVs. Our trucks were Up-Armored, that still did not keep insurgents from killing quite a few of us in the Province, who would then move on to the famous "Fiddler's Green" for Cavalry who were killed in combat to rest. AIF (Anti-Iraq-Forces) in the region were quite effective in using deep-buried IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) and RPGs (Rocket-Propelled-Grenades) to inflict serious casualties.

I was trained to drive an M2A2-ODS (Operation Desert Storm) Infantry Fighting Vehicles A.K.A (Mini-Tank and Armored Personnel Carrier). Being a Cav Scout this was our designated vehicle of choice. I was a fan of the vehicle for its protection and firepower, beyond that I hated the Bradley. It is very claustrophobic, and if you live in a Bradley as a driver you live and sleep in what is called the “Hell-Hole”. Basically a small corridor from the driver’s compartment to the troop compartment in the rear of the vehicle, meant to allow communication to troops in the back and as means to escape in case of a catastrophic hit that disallows the driver to exit from his own hatch.

Part I

>>17514288
In the summer it was an armored oven, in the winter (even in Iraq) it was an armored freezer. I am thankful I have never been claustrophobic, but living and working within the interior you have little to none freedom of space. I was the driver for our Mike-Gulf (Master Gunner) in our platoon, I believed it was because I performed the role well.

Moving on, a quarter of the way into our deployment, our platoon was given another Q.R.F. detail (Quick Reaction Force) for one week. This means you assist any friendly unit in enemy contact, chase after AIF firing mortars at our Forward Operation Base, it is essentially a detail to respond to units in contact at a moment’s notice. Our platoon finished this week of non-stop operations tired, beat and in need of rest.

The same day that detail ended we were given another. Two Main Supply Routes (MSRs) were designated “Black”. This simply means that the routes were too dangerous to travel on, be it multiple IEDs or complex ambushes (IED, followed by small arms fire and RPGs). These two routes had nearly a dozen IEDs hit Coalition Forces within one day. The segment of our Troop (Company to units other than Cavalry) who operated Bradley’s was ordered to escort Combat Engineers and secure their ability to neutralize any other threats on these routes.

For those not familiar with clearing routes of IEDs with C.E.s, it is a slow and methodical process. By slow I mean travelling 5 MPH to allow our parties to identify any potential threats, regardless if anyone wants to shoot you or detonate any ordinance on your parties.

The four crews (including mine) from my troop were well versed in using our Bradley’s to escort the C.E. convoy, and what would end up being an long night.

Part II

>>17514292
We were allowed to use our headlights instead of the antiquated “Fish-Bulb” night-vision system that only allows a Driver to see five yards in front of the vehicle. Upside was an ability to see the road/terrain better, downside headlights in the middle of the night with a curfew in effect automatically makes you a target.

My Bradley crew was the front vehicle, beyond was another Bradley followed by a half-dozen Buffalo MRAPs (Mine-resistant-Ambush Protected) and two Bradleys in the rear searching for more of the eleven IEDs to detonate that day in the specified routes we were told to clear on that freezing night. We were asked later to speed ahead of the C.E.s to provide a rolling cordon on both routes ahead of them so they could clear the MSRs carefully.


That is when things got screwy, we were all dead tired from the previous week and recognized that. On convoys we would usually play games, such as connect one movie to another through the various actors that had been in them (a variation of “Six degrees of Kevin Bacon”). This patrol however was completely different. We had heard earlier on the Squadron Coms that one our Bradley’s was hit by an IED. No word on potential casualties or damage, not a surprise though since potential casualty scenarios were kept largely quiet and on the administrative Squadron channel until all facts were known and collected. I just hoped everyone was okay, a Bradley is strong but far from invincible.

We pushed on clearing our route, but among my crew not a word was said. We (I) kept driving, looking for threats to ourselves and the C.E.s. Eeriness set in when I attempted starting up convo through our CVCs (Combat Vehicle Crewman headset) with my crew. Silence from my crew, and after an IED on one of our vehicles there was silence on the Squadron Tactical Net. Thinking everyone was taking a combat-nap, I drove on at 5 mph in my cold isolated driver’s position.

Part III

My first attempt:
You know the lag you sometimes get on the Internet? Your game jumps around, a page takes too long to load, things don't quite work for a bit. It happens even with the fastest and most reliable connections, and it has for decades. People in the industry will tell you it's because of packets of data being delayed or mangled or lost. They'll tell you that's because networking is hard, or because computing is complicated, or maybe even because electromagnetism is weird. What they won't tell you is that doesn't cover every case.
Sometimes data utterly vanishes. It's not garbled or delayed or sent to the wrong place and discarded, but simply gone. There is no apparent reason for it not to reach its destination. It leaves no trace other than any logs kept by computers it passed through before vanishing. These packets are numbered, so when one or two go missing, they're noticed and generally sent again, which causes the data in them to be delayed in getting where it's going.
Some within the US military weren't satisfied with "the data's just gone", mainly for reasons of security and reliability. An investigation of these drops was conducted around the turn of the millennium by the MILNET group within DARPA, the same department and indeed some of the same people that initially laid down what you might call the bones of the Internet. It was one of the military's biggest experimental networking projects, and swiftly became its most secret.
What they found is still not fully understood.
After combing through every line of code and examining every piece of equipment, many of the drops were still unexplained. These happened within the networking equipment, rather than in cabling as was usually assumed. Theories were formed and the usual suspects appeared: terrorists, foreign militaries, esoteric things like secret societies, ESP, even magical or spiritual influence. In testing the theories all fell short... all but one. The drops are caused by an advanc

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271KB, 596x751px

>>17514303
Even with the engine inches away from me as the Driver, I felt no warmth, only cold.


After an hour (maybe more) of not hearing any communication from my own crew, the patrol or any other unit, I got scared.

I began to think, no, deduce that it was our Bradley that was hit. That I was dead, and driving 5 mph in a cold winter Iraqi night waiting to die, with no one to talk to, no one to break me from this spell of thought. This, this was my hell. Travelling slowly down that route forever, that dangerous road with friends neither seen nor heard. With no end in sight and a staggering cold that chilled every bone in my body. I had found my true “hell-hole”, and was stuck there for eternity having just past "Fiddler's Green".

http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Hell_Hole