For My First Act (424 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 4 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by spedmonkey <spedmonkey.at.gmail.com> (View user info) at 2005-07-17 01:07:32 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
The magician walked out onto the stage of Washington D.C.'s John F. Kennedy Center alone, carrying only a shimmering black cape on his arm. His eyes flashed as the stage lights dimmed, leaving only his face illuminated.
It's a handsome face, thought Jennifer Tonbury from three rows back in the audience. Although his body was small in stature, he had an inner strength to him that shone clearly from his face. Jennifer was an expert at judging faces. In her line of business, she had to be. But that wasn't why she was here. On this night, she just wanted to relax and enjoy the fruits of her labor.
He stood in the center of the stage now, hands akimbo. A soft fog began to spread across the floor of the stage, as the magician began to speak.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for coming to the show tonight," he said in a deep baritone. Jennifer liked his voice immediately. While it conveyed warmth, it also had a mysterious quality to it; some little accent that nonetheless gave it an exotic texture. "I will not keep you waiting. Let us begin."
As his voice cut out, a soft, haunting melody began flowing from the theatre speakers. Without warning, the cape in the magician's hand began moving, almost as if it were acting on its own. As it swam through the air, making shimmering patterns in front of the magician, the fog on the ground likewise ebbed and flowed with it.
The cape was suddenly tossed away over the magician's shoulder, and the house lights were snuffed. The three lit torches that had instantly appeared in his hands illuminated his face. He smiled.
"And now for my first act," he said. "Playing with fire."
The torches began leaping to and fro between his hands instantaneously, and Jennifer leaned back in her seat to watch. His voice played through her mind and she smiled. He was quite wrong, although neither he nor the rest of the audience was aware of it. The first act in the real show had been played out several years before. Now, finally, the performance was nearing the end.
<>
There is a theory shared among some environmentalists known as the Gaia Theory. Originally postulated by English scientist James Lovelock, the Gaia Theory, in its most basic form, states that the Earth is really a self-sufficient organism, which regulates itself so as to be more hospitable to life. Radical environmentalists, however, have taken it one step farther: some believe that the Earth, once wounded badly enough, will take measures to protect itself, which will include making itself inhospitable to life, thus killing off those that injure it and starting afresh.
Jennifer Tonbury was one of these believers. A member of the Sierra Club since her fifteenth birthday, she had always cared deeply about each and every plant, animal, and other form of life on the planet. So, when three strange men approached her one day about a way to save the planet from the greatest disease it had ever known, she readily accepted.
This disease, of course, was humankind. Indeed, Jennifer had always felt distant from her fellow men, even those in her family. The fact that they could be so callous about the rapidly accelerating demise of their own home disgusted her. At the same time, though, it was obvious that the planet's own defenses were beginning to come alive in its defense. Scientists the world over declared global warming to be the result of man-made chemicals, but from the moment Jennifer first heard of the Gaia theory, she knew the truth. Earth was finally acting to remove these parasites from her skin.
It wasn't going fast enough, though. More and more of her resources were stripped away every day. At the current rate, more than 50 percent of the world's trees would be dead, nearly five thousand animals extinct before the global temperature rose just a couple degrees.
So, said the men that fateful day, what if we help Gaia along some?
Thus began what Jennifer began calling "Operation Machiavelli". What if mankind could be manipulated to destroy itself? She swore her life over to the Plan; once high school was done, she flew to Australia to begin her work in earnest. There she received valuable training in the Outback, where no one was likely to be treading through the barren hills and chance upon the young woman practicing any number of new skills.
Three years later, when she left the Southern Hemisphere to begin the mission, no one would have recognized in her the gentle teenybopper of her past life. She had proved an exceptional learner, moving from lesson to lesson at seemingly inhuman speeds. It had taken her only a couple days to become intimately familiar with firearms; only a week and a half for her to become an expert with demolitions. Along the way she had also picked up many other elements of tradecraft, such as language skills, stealth, and unarmed combat as well.
The first target of Operation Machiavelli was the American ambassador to Lebanon. She flew into Beirut on an Aeroflot flight out of St. Petersburg. It only took a few well-placed inquiries and well-compensated embassy employees to determine where the ambassador usually left the building.
One well-placed sniper bullet later, Jennifer found herself running for her life through the streets of Beirut. She wasn't caught, but she did learn an important lesson: never go ahead with a mission without a definite escape plan ready.
That night, she snuck back to the embassy and planted C4 charges, manufactured in China, around its support structures. The embassy's patrolling guard force, although angered by the death of the ambassador, was easily evaded, and she managed to escape the grounds without being caught.
The next morning, at 0903 hours local time, the building imploded, killing or wounding hundreds of Americans and Lebanese. After carefully analyzing the evidence left at the scene, the United States angrily ordered its Pacific Fleet to increase readiness to DefCon 3. The People's Republic of China, however, vehemently denied all allegations, and elite unites of the People's Liberation Army began an accelerated training program in the Gobi Desert.
Meanwhile, Teshi Hong, Chinese Minister of the Interior, and Yang Zhao Ji, Minister of Defense, were both coincidentally killed the same day in Beijing, when a truck hit each official car on the way to the Politburo in the morning.
The next four months were a blur. Jennifer managed to visit nearly every civilized country around the globe, as well as many less-fortunate nations as well. She managed to evade death or captivity every step of the way, and in her wake lay pure carnage. In Paris, the CIA station chief was accidentally caught in a gang war and murdered; the alleged gunmen were found dead just a few hours later, a single bullet exploded through each head. A structure fire destroyed the Chinese embassy in Vienna three days later, followed by a similar incident in Berlin just fifteen hours after. And after each incident, angry notes would fly between the two governments, angry politicians would make patriotic speeches to an angry populace, and an angry military would increase its readiness one step further.
All that was necessary now to bring the show to its stunning climax was one more blow to be struck, as surgically precise as it was calculatingly deadly. This was the reason she had come to Washington.
<>
Jennifer opened her eyes and smiled. The final act was scheduled to begin any second now, after all. The magician still tossed the flames nonchalantly through the air, but as she began to watch again, he slowed down. He scanned through the audience, as if looking for something.
His eyes passed over Jennifer, and he paused. As the two stared into each other's eyes, the motion of the flames stopped altogether. Then he winked, and the moment passed. A flash of black, and the magician's back was turned to the audience. The loose-fitting clothes he wore billowed out. Suddenly, without warning, he turned and flung a single lit torch directly into the crowd, directly at Jennifer.
She laughed aloud as the audience members screamed and flung themselves out of their seats as it tumbled through the air above them. She could feel the heat on her face as she easily dodged; the torch flipped lazily past her head, and her head turned to follow its progress into the crowd. It headed directly for a man five rows behind her, who threw his hands up and shut his eyes tightly, braced for the impact.
And then the torch was gone. The man winced as the heat came dangerously close. After several seconds with no impact, however, he opened one eye, then another, to see the magician standing with the torches in his hand on the stage. Jennifer smirked silently as the man began laughing nervously. He was joined by the rest of the crowd, making light of his nervous escape.
Then the building was shook by an explosion. The lights flickered, and the venerable structure groaned. Dust fell from the ceiling, obscuring the scene briefly. As the laughs turned into screams, her smile broadened. This was her show now. She glanced back at the magician, who stood statuesque on the stage, mouth agape as the audience began streaming toward the exits. She caught his eye and winked, mirroring the gesture he had given her mere seconds before.
Then she turned toward the throngs of panicked people and followed them toward the packed exits. She couldn't help but laugh. The curtain was coming down now, after the greatest performance Earth would ever see. It was just too bad she wouldn't be able to take the bow at the end.
User Reviews
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-01-31 19:22:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by minimumdino (user info) at 2006-01-11 14:06:54 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
act like you can write
Submitted by minimumdino (user info) at 2006-01-10 18:48:52 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
the magician walked into a bar...
Submitted by DonkeyOnTheEdge (user info) at 2005-10-29 09:56:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment