Eve of the Feast (96 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Coleslaw_Murphy (View user info) at 2006-10-10 11:59:12 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
Back and forth, back and forth... the little white ball had the crowd spellbound. It moved with a hummingbird's deftness, and served to accentuate the dexterity of the player that manipulated it, back and forth. The players traded what would be kill shots in any other match, quickly returning their opponent's attempts at game point. Each was looking for her precision-guided missile - a carefully placed blast to sail passed the other's reach.
Timor Lee tried a drop shop while her opponent Mai Tsu Chen was backed away from the table. Chen had already inched up in preparation for such a misdirection, and immediately pounced on the ball. Snapping her shot as fiercely as she ever had, she raised her paddle as if posing for a snapshot. The cameras flashed, and only a few people noticed how curiously the ball was returned by Timor: a slight flick of the wrist on her right hip. It was a normal shot that bounced twice on the table and then off, trickling passed the distracted celebrator.
A cavalier smirk had started on Timor's face before Chen's extraordinary spike, coming to fruition in the instant when none of the cameras caught it. There were plenty of pictures of the loser, however. Nobody understood how Timor had returned the volley; she wasn't sure either. She only knew that the match would play out just as it had. It was not merely confidence, but cognition. It was a premonition.
Her dream the previous night was so vivid, like she could feel the direction of where every shot was going. So when the first game of the match unfolded as in her dream, she was dumbfounded. She dared not mention any of this to the reporters afterward. Instead she countered clichéd sports questions with clichéd answers. Service; volley; return volley. That is, until someone asked about her involvement with the Tibetan Liberation Front.
"The what?"
"Ms. Lee, you have been spotted in pictures with this man, the purported leader of the TLF," the reporter continued.
She was visibly agitated. She knew immediately that any associations, however loose, with groups such as the TLF would limit her movement in China. This would affect tournaments and sponsored appearances. This could affect her livelihood. Born in Taiwan to American expatriates and having seen many of the Chinese provinces, she understood the motivation of those willing to rebel. She also understood how this made their accusations easier. Her only defense was full disclosure.
"Yes, he's an old friend, but I don't know what you're talking about. I've known him since the Junior World Championships. We dated, we were even engaged once upon a time, but he kept certain things to himself. Actually, that's one of the reasons we were never married. He kept too many secrets. It would, however, surprise me to find out that he was involved in such a violent group."
"When was the last time you saw him?" The reporter took her full disclosure as a signal to press further.
"You have the pictures. You tell me." Timor pressed back.
"Do you sympathize with his cause?" The reporter went even further.
Service; volley; back and forth. She knew this game.
Timor returned, "Look, I play ping pong. That's all. I have never been involved with any political organizations. I would certainly never be involved with any violent factions. If I absolutely must choose, then I most likely identify with the non-violent approach of the 14th Dalai Lama. I will be available for more questions at the banquet."
The next day would be the conclusion of the men's tournament. The day after that was the banquet. Jubilation, upon winning her second consecutive world championship, was replaced by confusion and controversy. What would usually be a night of dinner and drinks with friends following a tournament, was now a night of solitude and room service. She took a hot bath and decompressed.
She had another dream.
It was equally vivid. It began with wonderful memories of her past love, except now her perspective on them was different. She remembered waking up early in the morning, on vacation at a beachfront house in Thailand, to find her fiancé Pano "tinkering with a new hobby" as he called it. Was his name even Pano? When it happened, she thought nothing of it as they watched the sun rise. Piled on the coffee table was wiring, circuit boards and soldering equipment.
The memories flashed forward through the present, to the next day after the men's championship match, on the eve of the feast. She saw two men wearing the uniform of the workers who were preparing the main room for the festivities the following day. One of them was Pano. They rigged explosives to the middle of the head table, where various government officials would be sitting along with the tournament champions - close to where she would be sitting. She saw herself going to security to warn them. She saw herself answering questions in a detention center. She saw the entire conversation take place that ended with her arrest. She was completely innocent, and yet she could not defend her position. She had no explanation for how she knew where the bomb was. Back and forth, back and forth, except she couldn't win this one.
She woke up with a gasp of air. Her heart was sullen at the callous disregard for her life that Pano was going to show. He would kill her too, but she was determined to stop him, even if it meant being thrown in jail.
An idea started to take shape in her mind, on her way to the tournament. This gift was already starting to take shape in her outlook. It wasn't mere foreknowledge. It was a sequence of cause and effect. Sure, she saw herself winning the tournament, but she still had to execute the shots. She realized that she wasn't simply performing the actions from the dream. She could execute them with variations, or not at all. The dreams were paths of inference.
She waited out the day, as if nothing was amiss, and made an anonymous tip the morning of the banquet. Pano was arrested. She wrote him a letter, "Pano, my dear. You are dead instead of me. I have returned your disservice."
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Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-06-04 23:03:49 EDT (#)
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