If you’re ever driving in the Canadian outback, you might see a very peculiar sign. “Next right, the Cape Calp Cannon: Eighth Wonder of the World” If you’re like most people, you have a good laugh and drive on past that exit. Nothing out that way but dirt and ice, you’ll think, and you’d be right any other day. But the Cape Calp Cannon wasn’t a tourist trap. It was real. And we should all be ashamed for it.
As far as I can tell, the Cannon itself was built sometime around the Second World War. The Canadians were getting scared of a German sea invasion and so put a whole bunch of armaments along the shoreline. The Cape Calp Cannon was one of them. From the outside, it looks like a normal anti-ship cannon, the big ones you see nowadays on Navy Destroyers. It was pretty advanced for its time, and not just because of how powerful its rounds were and how fast it could fire. The entire thing was automated.
Hard to believe, I know. I didn’t believe it myself. But apparently, there were a whole bunch of documented accounts from soldiers, generals, and technicians who swore the machine worked on its own. It’s not hard to believe them either. If you go to see the cannon for yourself, you’ll notice that it has no gunner seat or anything that might let someone fire it. The closest you’ll find is a small metal box on the side marked “Property of the Royal Canadian Navy.” And by all accounts, it worked.
Over the course of its life, the Cape Calp Cannon is confirmed to have engaged with 51 different Axis scout ships, 13 naval craft, and 43 airplanes, downing several in the process. Soldiers posted at nearby bases would report seeing the cannon swiveling at its post at all hours of the day yet knew no one who worked on it. When asked, superior officers ordered all questions in the Cannon dropped and court-martialed anyone who did not comply. Not that many did, though. Not so long as the cannon was pointed at the enemy.
After the war, though, the cannon fell out of conversation. I can’t say for sure why, but here’s my best guess. Like the name implies, the Cannon was posted at Cape Calp, a relatively unimportant stretch of coastline. There aren’t any nearby towns, but there is a pretty big beach that a landing party could easily exploit. It’s the only reason any troops were sent out in the first place. My theory is the Cannon was still in its testing phase. That’s why it was sent out into the middle of nowhere. If it failed or backfired, there was no one to hurt. If it succeeded, then it would mark another stretch of land the higher brass didn’t have to worry about protecting. By the time the war ended, however, the project must have been shut down, but the cannon itself was never dismantled. Maybe the paperwork got lost somewhere, maybe it wasn’t worth the cost it would take to remove, or perhaps it was simply forgotten. Can’t say for sure. What I am certain of is what happened next.
On October 29nth, 2006, the fishing vessel Anderson docked at St. John’s with alarming news. The crew claims they witnessed something firing from the shoreline around Cape Calp. They report “an explosion” of some sort fired from Cape Calp and nearly missing their boat. Only one shell is fired before the ship flees the area. This news eventually works its way up to the Canadian Navy, which is where I come in.
At first, even I don’t think much of it. You see fortifications like that pop up all the time, and either the Providence doesn’t want to pay to dismantle it, or time and age had already done the job for them. The way I saw it, some lazy ass from the forties had left an unfired shell in the cannon, and an idiot tourist accidentally fired it. In all likelihood, it was a one-time thing, but protocol said we had to send someone out to look over the damn thing. And guess who got picked.
Admittedly, I am not the best technician. But I do know my way around those old machines. My grandfather worked at a war museum way back when and often made me and my siblings help assemble old machinery for show. That and an engineering course brought to you by the Canadian Navy did me wonders. So naturally, I got sent out to check out the old thing.
Aside from the malfunctioning anti-ship cannon, Cape Calp is actually a really nice place. The forest is pristine and beautiful, the beach isn’t so bad, and even the weather is wonderful, at least for Northern Newfoundland. Only problem I have is the tourist trap. Yeah, they were long gone by the time I arrived, but they left ugly footprints. Guess they figured they’d get blamed for the cannon going off and abandoned ship, leaving all their shit behind. Everything from the gift shop selling novelty crap to the concession stands had been abandoned. It was actually kinda creepy. Like the world had ended and someone forgot to tell me.
“HELLO!!!?” I remember calling out. All I got for a reply with a cold breeze passing through the place, rattling old wood and tossing discarded trash. The whole place felt dead, yet pitiful, like a corpse that didn’t know it was dead. Kinda sad, actually, but that only made me want to finish the job all the sooner.
The Cannon itself was parked at the edge of a cliff face, aiming out at sea. It wore its age on its sleeve. Rust ate away at its hull, chipping away at the rotting iron flake by flake. Moss had found a perch along its rim, although some had clearly been disturbed from when the Cannon fired. I’m sure it would have been admirable feet of technological innovation in its prime. Now, it stood as a moment to a long-forgotten time.
The inside, however, was very different. When I popped her open, I expected to find some old wires and maybe a few gears. You know, standard stuff for a weapon that old. Instead, what I found was possibly the most advanced piece of weapons technology the 1940’s ever made. A gigantic network of wiring ran through the machine, pumping electricity from dozens of different fuel cells to the rest of the body. Its guts were mainly made of old circuit boards arranged in ways I’d never seen before. They even had these weird appendages whose purpose I never found out. And then there were the power cells themselves. Each was big as my head and easily took up more space than anything else. Whoever built that thing wanted to make damn sure it never ran out of juice.
Strangest of all, however, was what rested at the heart of the beast. All those wires eventually arrived at a peculiar metal cylinder. It was plugged into every piece of hardware the Cannon had and had the words “Pilot Component” written on the side. Odd, I thought. I’d never seen anything like that, ever. Not even in the newest shit, they churned out, courtesy of the military-industrial complex. It was crude and unbelievably low-tech but had a complexity I never imagined inside a fucking cannon.
I spent hours on end just trying to map the damn thing out. The good news was that the shell it had fired previously looked like its last one, so I didn’t have to worry about setting anything off. Still, it took me a good few hours just to figure out what I was looking at. The whole thing was full of redundancies you didn’t see in new tech, but it was in remarkably good shape. I dare even say it might outlive me.
That begged the question, though: what fired the shell? All of the hardwire was in exceptional condition, so it couldn’t have been a malfunction. A tourist couldn’t have done it. Heck, no one could have. Not with no discernible controls. Even I couldn’t have, and I was elbows deep in wiring. I was starting to wonder how it could fire in the first place? The machinery was advanced but not automated. There wasn’t a computer to operate it, and there wasn’t a gunner seat either. At least nowhere I had looked yet.
After scouring every other inch of the machine, there was only one other place to look. The Pilot Component had to be the main computer or whatever counted for one in the Cannon. If something was wrong, it had to be there. Opening the damn thing was a bitch. All the screws had been rusted shut, and I had to pry them out with brute strength. As I did, a strange odor like that of formaldehyde began to waft from it and burn my nostrils. At first, I thought a squirrel or something might have crawled inside and died. If only.
Popping off the iron shell revealed a layer of glass just below, and inside was a sight I’ll never forget. Suspended in a strange discolored fluid was a brain. An actual brain whose edges strained against the glass. Wire wove throughout it before scurrying off to the sides of the containers, and bubbles floated above it, occasionally rising from the gaps in the gray matter. On the side of the glass was written something seared into my brain: Private Laurence Smith.
I didn’t take a second look after that. I just dropped my tools and fucking ran. Though I had no idea what the hell was going on with that Cannon, it was far above my pay grade. So I booked it back to civilization, screamed what I saw into the face of some pore army clerk, told anyone who tried to calm me down to go fuck themselves and stormed back home like an infant. Can you blame me?
There was a goddamn brain plugged into a cannon. And that name. Was it the brain’s? Did they actually put a person in that thing? How? Was it even still alive? Did it know what was happening to it? Could it see anything? Smell? Touch? Was it trying to speak? Was it screaming? I couldn’t imagine what that was like. Trapped in a metal shell, unable to move, talk, or do anything except fire that cannon.
I couldn’t sit with those thoughts forever. That’s why I started digging into the cannon and where I learned everything I posted above. Problem was I didn’t find much else. Right in the middle of my search, files pertaining to the Cape Calp Cannon began disappearing. Some were locked behind code classifications, and others were outright deleted. Everything I write here is all the knowledge I have on the Cape Calp Cannon, and I might die for it.
A few days ago, a couple of men showed up at my house. They were dressed innocuously enough. That was part of the problem. In my experience, no one dresses that mundane unless they’re planning to not get caught. They asked me some basic questions, and I told them nothing that I didn’t shout at that poor clerk.
“There is no such thing as the Cape Calp Cannon.” They told me as they stood up to go. “Do you understand?”
I wanted to tell them to go fuck themselves, but I’m not that stupid. So I nodded along, and they left without another word. I told myself that was the end of it and I should just forget about whatever I saw. But then I thought back to the brain in the cannon. It was a soldier. Probably even volunteered to be shoved into that thing. If I fought for this country like any other, giving up more than most ever would. But now the war was over, and the soldier was left to rust. After what he’d sacrificed, he couldn’t ever leave his post. I can’t imagine what it must have been like standing there for all that time, watching the world pass by, and praying to be useful again.
I’m now convinced that’s why the shot was fired. It wasn’t an accident. Whether the soldier finally cracked or he simply got sick of waiting, I don’t know. But I think he was trying to get someone’s attention. Trying to remind someone there was a person in the weapon. I guess he succeeded. Not sure he’ll like it, though. I imagine the army already sent a team out to secure and extract the weapon. Not sure what they plan to do with it, though. Best case scenario, they dismantle it for parts and let the soldier finally rest. I don’t even know what a worst-case looks like.
But I don’t think that’s what Private Smith wanted. Not entirely. It must have been hard being out there all those years, frozen to the spot. People came only to gawk at him like he was a piece of novelty junk only good for brief amusement. How can you stay a person like that? So that’s what I’m doing here: making sure people know the truth.
There is no Cannon on Cape Calp. There is a man named Laurence Smith, and for forty years, he manned his post. Don’t let his sacrifice be forgotten. And be thankful you don’t have to make it yourself.