|
Page 54.
Scene 25. Game Show: Ultimatum 1
 In three hundred of the top corporate boardrooms around the world, each was filled with a rapt audience of core executives and top shareholders. As of yet, the press had not gotten hold of the story—but the world was only one leak away from hysteria. The executives, who looked darkly at each other, knew fully well that the man about to speak was proving them to be helpless. They understood they were becoming a power vacuum. In history, some megalomaniac—Caesar, Napoleon, Lenin—always stepped in to take the reins of state. In this case it might well be the reins of world.
Dr. Night introduced himself and his organization, Black Umbrella, to the corporate world. His style was to utter a brief speech, and then pause for a full minute or two while his listeners absorbed and discussed what he said.
In an utterly self-assured, dry, almost mocking voice, Dr. Night followed the initial pleasantries thus: "You all have professional corporate and government intelligence organizations. You have heard of a shadowy organization that sells terror and death to anyone willing and able to pay for our services. Now I wish to announce to you—the world's leading corporate-government entities, or CGE as your dueling lawyers like to say—that a new world order is in place. Ladies and gentlemen, the world is no longer your playground."
People sat stunned. As he spoke, men began to twist their ties loose as sweat poured down their faces. Women dabbed at dissolving facial makeup. Staff rushed to turn thermostats down in some of the world's highest and most massive steel-and-glass towers.
"Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you are no doubt feeling the shock that happens, in evolution, when an animal that has enjoyed unchallenged supremacy suddenly hears the thunderous foot steps, hears the mile-wide roar, sees the bloody claws and teeth, of the next great thunder lizard.
"You three hundred CEOs and chair persons employ half the working people of the human race today. Your power is unprecedented. The biggest world governments are merely departments within your corporate structures. When you speak, they fall all over themselves to obey. Senators, prime ministers, presidents, and parliamentarians come running. Using the media, you have turned their own constituents into mindless, blabbering fools who unwittingly promote your corporate line under the guise of fake religion, fake values, and fake patriotism. You have no more use for morality or patriotism than a snake has. You add tea bags of lies to the already tepid water of their nonexistent grasp of history, geography, and even basic logic skills. Your hate-media demagogues made fortunes feeding their listeners' petty and unreasoning rage toward their fellow children in the sandbox of life. You're lazy. You're stealing my cookie, and I won't let you. You can't climb into my sandbox. I'm going to hit you with my plastic pail. I’m better than you. I can cut in line ahead of you because the voice on radio or television said so.
“Once you mix the potent brew of lies and rage in a moron's head, it can never be pried loose because to do so would require reasoning—and too many of your human tools—your useful fools as Lenin called their type, your urban mob as we speak of ancient Rome, your sans-culottes as we call the mobs of the French Revolution—do not possess critical thinking skills to accomplish that. This has happened time and again in history, as the masses are manipulated by liars who claim to be the opposite of what they really are—ruthless, greedy predators who let nothing stop them in clawing their way to the top. Your media manipulators will convince the mob that anyone trying to help them is the enemy, and the mob will tear the good guys apart while selling their souls and their children to their new corporate owners in the name of empty slogans. Guns, nationhood, Jesus, Mohammed, whatever is the hollow and misappropriated cause. Now, ladies and gentlemen, all that is about to change. Did you really think that your rulership by unreason would last forever? Your abdication from responsibility was the final step in proving that the limits of democracy begin where the average person’s grasp of facts and logic ends. I, Dr. Night, have come to declare that 1984 is over. Newspeak is no more. Your day is over.
"Now about you, CEOs, individually—as of this moment, each of you is a hunted animal. You will always look over your shoulders. You will prefer to remain indoors with your families. Nobody on earth is immune from our awesome and growing power."
He paused while babbling broke out in penthouse boardrooms across the world's skyscrapers in the world's twenty-five largest and most influential mega-cities.
"This is only the beginning, my friends. I am about to offer you a proof of concept."
On large viewing screens—usually reserved for self-congratulatory stock charts, video clips of corporate achievements, and annual awards—Dr. Night's technicians preempted the circuits and broadcast from the orbital communications network a specific BLUM feed.
The test signal, lasting a half minute, was of the BLUM logo—a circle with a line bisecting it horizontally. Over the line floated a powerful eye. Below the line of the earth was a beautiful but foreboding Gorgon face surrounded by an image of wriggling, hissing snakes. Then the live streaming video feed cut in, along with a soothing stream of orchestral music with violins, brasses, and piano.
"Please forgive the elevator music," Dr. Night said. "The designers of our program wanted to emulate one of your eminently successful television game show in every way, including the thematic and thrilling music. Now please give a round of applause for our leading lady on the show, Miss Megaera Spite. She prefers you just call her Meg. She is a member of what I call our Alecto Circus of key feminine Furies who put the oom in to BLUM—Black Umbrella! She is a real, weaving spitter!"
Laughter at Dr. Night's pun rumbled amid a wave of hand-clapping by an unseen audience—probably BLUM staffers—a beautiful blonde in a flouncy white dress stood before a large board in what looked like a game show set. The board had squares, to be filled with letters or numbers—it wasn't clear yet.
The blonde waited, holding an old-fashioned school-teacher pointer with rubber tip. She smiled dazzlingly.
"I thought it would be more dramatic if we organized this like one of your mind-numbing corporate game shows," Dr. Night said. "To avoid world panic, we will keep this among ourselves, d'accord? Ten billion ants in your ant farm don't need their day ruined all at once. It would lower their efficiency in your Fritz Lang Metropolis."
He paused to let the boardrooms bubble with shocked and angry commentary.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this will be a brief show without commercial interruptions."
The blonde went to a large wheel and spun it. Inside, what looked like rectangular chits, of white plastic, the size of large plastic credit cards, tumbled and glittered amid the ambient stage lights. Each chit had a man's or woman's full name and city of record on it in black ink.
Meanwhile, on a side panel a list of names and addresses scrolled for all to see.
"You see, on the side, the names of ordinary citizens of the world's cities. You'll note, for example, Mr. Yao of Beijing, an electrician. There is Mr. Yamato of Sapporo, a truck driver. There is Miss Brahma of Delhi, a jewelry expert and buyer. We see here Mr. Bonyo of Brazzaville, an accountant. And there is Mr. Chavez of Lima, a school teacher. And Mr. Thompson of Dallas, a policeman. And so on. I chose not to begin with something more spectacular like assassinating the chairman of the United Nations General Assembly, or the president of the United States, or someone far more important, like the CEO of Camelback or Anaconda. In our next game show, we will step up to the big time, but for now, this is just a proof of concept."
He paused again. Board members summoned aides, who frantically ran from the room with scraps of phone or digitexts listing the names of potential victims.
"You will not have time to contact police around the world, even if you had the phone numbers and addresses as we do. From among a thousand names in that bin, our Miss Spite will draw one unlucky name. We are about to demonstrate proof of concept by terminating that individual. Ready, Megan?"
The blonde strode about with a great gleaming smile and one happy arm raised high, while, with the other hand, she hiked up her long dress to show off full, pale legs.
TOP
Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
|
