Checkmate By Andy Thomas 2008 Yin Ling operated the console from within the darkened expanse of the state-of-the-art subterranean base. Remotely, she was manipulating the former USA space satellites. Her french-manicured nails clicked furiously over the keyboard as she tapped in the commands. Characters flitted across the terminal screen. It could be said that a great part of destiny were in her hands then. The Dragon was ascendant. Dressed smartly as all agents of her level were wont to be; in her stretch satin orange and red minidress, open-toed stiletto heels, garter belt and cuban stockings, with sheer bra and bikini panties; and with bright red lipstick and cascading raven-black hair; everything was in place. The air about the room wafted of honey, as she and her fellow Chinese women operatives worked their magic over their discrete yet interconnected terminals. Chinese commandoes swarmed in stealth over the HAARP facilities in Alaska, and the JORN installation in Australia. Both were being commandeered, and their myriad powers being harnassed for the Chinese big play. The newly former Taiwanese navy was in rendevous with the missile frigates of the People's Liberation Army or PLA. Likewise, with Beijing and Tapei united under a single flag, their air forces combined in operation; their armies arrived under a single command; the Formosan missiles were re-programmed. South of the USA border, a large Chinese Army linked up in secret with its Latin American compadres, and the united force - led by Mexicans and Chinese - fixed to slash its way North. In every port up and down the West coast of the USA, Chinese-owned freighters prepared to unleash their deadly cargo. Army units of the PLA, totalling 200,000 marines set to surge forth from the bowels of the freighters with their plasma rifles, in a bid to take the cities. Additional commando teams rallied at their positions at every mountain pass along the Cascades and Sierras, awaiting the order to wreck the roads. The Western USA would soon be isolated by land from the remainder of the country. In the cities, foreign agents prepped their deadly biological loads. They had perfected viruses which would attack only USA citizens. The dawning of the Asian century proceeded apace. On her throne in Beijing, the Queen of China lounged in langour, adorned as she were in a traditional satin dress, and with layers of satin and sheer lingerie and nylons beneath. Her eunuchs saw to her every need, each of them basking beneath and within that flowering glory which was She - the ultimate visage of female perfection; a god-woman, in direct metaphysical contact with the very Dragon King. In the war rooms beneath the Rockies, NORAD paid scant attention to the unfolding machinations to the East, North, and South of them. They were being fed false data. Their computers had been compromised. It weren't as though it really mattered, for many of the officers who haunted to the place were already under the sway of Chinese paymasters. Each of them had been bought and sold in his own individual fashion. The Chinese were very good at this. For many of them it had been as simple as being satisfied in an ongoing, nuptual fashion by the beauty that is the Chinese woman. For those not interested in women, other means had been employed. Overall, only a few of them held out, and though they might have harbored a suspicion here and there, most of them had simply gone about their prescribed, day-to-day duties in service of the soon-to-be-defunct USA, blissfully unaware of the national traitors in their midst. Suffice it to say that it isn't difficult to compromise a cadre in a land ultimately ruled by priests of the Devil's temple. A small percentage of acolytes of the same throughout the USA armed forces had kept their loyalties intact; and an even smaller percentage of others had stayed the course, mainly out of a misguided sense of morals. The vast majority had at one point or another, each of them seen the writing on the wall, and as events unfolded they had without exception looked for another power to align themselves with. For in truth, what does the Devil's temple offer, other than a litany of rules and regulations, lies on top of lies, unsound money, and buzzwords such as 'democracy' and 'compassion' to mask the underlying tyranny? With nothing more to be gotten than this, the officers of the USA military had been jumping the ship of state for decades, yet the turncoats had gone from a mere trickle as during the days of perceived material prosperity; yet as that same prosperity had waned, and the form of the underlying power had ever more revealed its true colors; the previous trickle of inner defection could presently be described as a stampede. It appeared to several neutral observers that the USA had truly become a paper tiger, at least in the sense of military command structure. Civilian life wasn't far from that same disarray. People would go about their days, mumbling beneath their breath about the way it had once been, seemingly unaware that their once-great nation had never amounted to anything more than a fiction; that the priests of the Devil's temple had ruled from the beginning, and that the sum total of the supposedly glorious national history had been nothing more than the scrawlings upon a mere cell in an otherwise, vastly sprawling cosmic ledger sheet. For a time, the populace of the USA had been fattened calves; as but birds in the gilded cage. Of course, once you remove the bread and the gold, you're left with a population of slaughterhouse sows; and a cage which is only a stark prison; the gold long-since having been purloined to reveal the stark, underlying reality of economic and social captivity. The tent cities grew. Asians had already been buying out a great number of the failed home mortgages. The priests from the Devil's temple had always laughed at their own ability to manipulate the human cattle; both their own in-born adherents, and those outside of the temple. Many of those from without the temple had tried to get in, and live as well as the Devil's spawn. This was a loser's game all around. Time after time, the veil of the promised temporary gain had been rent, only to reveal the ugly reality beyond. The fantasy had ended in cold and darkness. Even those of the temple itself were set to meet their fate in this way. The Devil ultimately uses and discards, whether a person were once deemed 'chosen' by the temple or not. The financiers and priests of the Devil's temple had always thought their own funny money, and promulgation of false religions upon the unwashed as being at once clever on their own part, and hilarious overall. Time after time, they had invaded a host culture and destroyed it, the original plan having been laid out in ancient books such as Deuteronomy and Leviticus; through the tireless working of replacing sound money with unsound; casting out folk ways and instead implementing their own, ostensibly hifalutin and ever-expanding set of laws; all of it invariably wrapped in high-sounding phrases like 'brotherhood,' 'justice,' or even 'the will of God;' yet without exception ending with the ultimate demise of the culture they had infected. That was Devil's role. The Devil would use and discard, make certain people feel 'special' whilst using them as agents in the ongoing misery and ultimate demise of others. Yet the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Whatever else one might say or do; the Devil would also one day be discarded. As for the machinations of those of the Devil's temple against the hapless masses human cattle; it takes two to tango. If the populace of the host nations had not been such a lot of rubes, the royal scams of the Devil's stealthy soldiers could have never taken hold. It would seem that, across all of humanity and both within and without the Devil's temple, people are so often looking for something from nothing. Yet only the innocent taste of the Holy Grail. To put it another way, whatever one might say of the priests of the Devil's temple, or the attendent financiers, foot soldiers in the judicial system, and various and sundry other acolytes; the agents of the same serve a certain purpose in the overall cascading drama as evidenced by the ongoing song which is sung by the whole thrush which is comprised of all of humanity. Be that as it may, on the crumbling streets of the cities, there was suffering. Electricity and telephone services - whether land or cellular - were by then intermittent. Sanitation was a problem. Fires burned in at random in the office suites above the sullen masses, meandering there about the lanes below. As the fires came and went, and more often than not were left to burn themselves out; the inner city landscape became a pastiche of charred, half burned, and visually intact buildings. Debris from where the fires had raged littered the streets below the blackened skeletons of the monoliths. Streams of smoke arose into darkened skies above the former teeming megalopoli. Along the former bustling avenues, auto traffic had become virtually nil, and fistfights broke out, there and about. Sporadic gunfire further punctuated the ghostly landscape. Where there had been adornments before, there were only greys and blacks of the tatters people wrapped themselves in as defense against the looming cold of approaching Winter. It was Autumn of the year 2009 or 2010, and this scenario played itself out across North America. A thinly stretched U.S. Army patrolled as best they could, but the bloodletting in the Middle and Near East had not abated. Stateside, municipal police were more or less defunct and left to fend for themselves. The police and emergency services found a way to mitigate their budget shortfalls in 'privatizing.' As for the acute lack of fuel, rumours ran rampant that the Fed was hoarding it all. People organized in armed gangs, and created redoubts where they could; sometimes sallying forth in raids upon the remainder of the unprepared populace, then retreating to their compounds with any loot they had gleaned. By June of 2011, Jack hacked into the database, eyes frantic as he worked the keyboard. The space auto had materialized in his living room, yet he did not have the key. If the corporate data could only be sifted, collated, treed, hashed, reconstituted, then he might gain that same key. Bingo! He had the key. He materialized the same on his cosmotender. In his jubilation and with key in hand, Jack rushed across the litter-strewed room and to the car. There were sirens outside his mansion. He could hear the front gates being violated by armored security vehicles. The Feds were closing in. He hopped into the car, and fired up the ignition as he closed the door. Nothing could stop him now! The car, itself a replica of a 1972 Buick Electra 225 2-door; began to levitate. He hit the thrusters and the thing lurched through the wall of the house and into the air above the yard outside. Tracers from automatic weapons fire dotted the air. The tinkling of bullets bounced off his hull. He heard an auto grenade launcher belching forth but in an instant he and the car were in outer space. He had made it; at least that far. Jack worked some buttons on the console and the cube device provided him with a hot meal; habanero salisbury steak with baked potato! He turned on some JS Bach as he flew around the Earth a few times. After that it was some random Chopin, and then Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto. He wasn't in any kind of decadent rock and roll mood at that moment. After awhile, he set a course for a cave on Mars. As he careened through space and reached the place in little more than an instant, he eased the mock Electra down into the depths of the red planet. In the cave, he couldn't make out much, except that its confines - if you could call them that - were vast. It appeared to be as though an alien city beneath the sands of Cydonia, where the Illuminati space base sat asleep on the surface immediately above. In all of their cleverness they had constructed the secret base, but they had missed the entry to the forbidden city below, hidden as it had always been by an antediluvian spectral array. Jack paused the ship. Below him were vast, incongruous structures. As he hovered above the unfathomable city below, he attempted to peer into the recesses surrounding the vast cave. There was a ramp leading up, diagonally along one of the curved walls, but the elsewhere there was simply empty space. He thought for a moment, and pondered how he at arrived there. He was in a vastly powerful supercar; The space auto. He had stolen it from military-industrial conglomerates. From scratch he had built the cosmotender, out of surplus electronics parts. It were as though; beforehand he'd been seized by the spirit of a sort of latter day Nyarlathotep. One day he'd been a dweeb in the call center. Only days later he'd found himself alone in a mansion, surrounded by strange symbols on the walls, a large library of ancient occultic books, and an anteroom full of surplus electronic parts. Days further he had finished the cosmotender, and as well had deciphered the gleanings of the secrets to the most cutting edge of experimental transport technology, itself no different in effect from the 'transporters' once portrayed on the television show, Star Trek. Then he'd hacked into the global network, commandeered the space auto, and materialized the key. Yet he wasn't Jack at all. Somewhere along the line, Jack had died. Where once Jack may have had at least some small semblance of will, the body formerly known as Jack was now simply a container for some terrifying powerful entity, which for whatever reason had chosen Jack as a possession. It is difficult to explain, for Jack weren't entirely erased, but he had no sense of control. It were as though he yet lived as but a small observer in the body he'd formerly inhabited alone. Something was utilizing his brain cells in ways that the old Jack had never been able to. Something had turned Jack into an overnight, independently wealthy, reclusive genius. Someone - or Somethng - had chosen and used Jack to make an end run around all of the secret cabals and their ostensible plans. Now their pride and joy - the space car - was in the hands of 'Jack.' To add to that, these earthly agencies had no idea as to where the car had gone. Certainly its range was nearly unfathomable. To add to that, the entity which had arranged for the theft had instantly rewired the car so that its homing beacons were disabled. Jack had become the fly in the proverbial ointment of so many spiritual, financial, social, and military interests. The members of the cabals back on earth were beside themselves. Jack began to have his own thoughts again. Sometimes it seemed as though this were allowed, as though he and the overarching entity within had arrived at some kind of unspoken truce. They would both pretend that Jack was Jack, and that was that. But they both knew differently. Be that as it may, Jack wondered why the only motivations seemingly ever offered humanity had been severe pain, or the promise of some great pleasure which never actually arrived. The pain was a matter of fact. The pleasure was always off in the distance. The budding flower of wonderous fantasy always met its dismal end at the blade of cutting reality. At some point Jack had screamed at no one in particular, "Is that all you've got to motivate people? The threat of terror, the promise of unending pain? You act as though something wonderful and beautiful and great is just around the corner, yet it never is reached!" It was his argument with God; or the Devil; Jack had long since lost the ability to discern. Perhaps it were only Abraxas; God and the Devil in one hideously beautiful combined package. Jack set his thoughts aside and inched closer to the blackened edges about the cave. Nothing was to be made out. He flipped on a searchlight and was astonished at the sight; dragons. There were Dragons everywhere. They were asleep, yet awakening. What could it portend? Some were immense, the height of skyscrapers on earth. Some were tiny, perhaps no larger than a small automobile. The wings were unmistakable. The reptilian features gleamed in the pale light. Eyes seemed to open and close. They were the watchers. They were awakening. Their destination was Earth. How could he know? Of what little were left of the original Jack which remained inside his body, he was aware of one thing; that the nearer your destination, the more you're slipping and sliding away; and that he was torn between an Apsara and a Jewess; and perhaps a Latina and Kaasteen of the Tlingit; a Filipina and a Romanian Copperhead, etc. He chuckled as the dragons took flight. He could have gone insane at the sight, but he laughed instead. The dragons passed by Jack's ship in a stupendous rush. For some reason they studiously avoided him. They thundered past as they went. The winds from their wings rocked the space auto. Jack sense a sort of elated trepidation, and turned the craft, and followed up the shaft on impulse power. Pindar studied the console as the numbers ran past. He was commander of the Illuminati Mars Base. There he had all manner of women at his disposal. There were Russians, and Finns; you name it. There were French and English, Dutch and German; all kinds. He had to himself Nigerian, Ethiopian, and Ugandans; every stripe. There were Latinas and Lakotas; Cambodians and Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Since he was one of the only heterosexual males in the entire Masonic organization; and being of well endowment, he'd been chosen to spearhead a new race of humans thereby populating the ostensibly heretofore sprawling emptiness of the red planet. Of course, Mars wasn't red at all, and the atmosphere was readily breathable. There are things the Illuminati know, which the hoi polloi do not. Such things are thought to be simply too mind-blowing for the bloviating herd to ever be made aware of; that sprawling mass; the target of contempt known as the proletariat; apparently easily satiated by fairy tales, sprawling ledgers of public debt, ream piled upon ream of byzantine regulations, and lottery tickets; nearly without exception cowed into submission by the promise of a better tomorrow, whatever the actual facts of today. The women at the base flitted about in their shimmering silver mini-dresses, stiletto heels clicking along the gleaming floors as they busied themselves as Pindar's assistants. They all had brightly colored 'pageboy' haircuts like the air traffic controllers of Moonbase Alpha under Commander Stryker had once had. In the nursery, a new breed of human was being raised by robots. Pindar had sensed a disturbance, an anomaly in the figures running the length of the screen. It was already too late. The dragons emerged from the gap, and quickly formed in the skies over Mars, blocking out the sun. They dived without mercy on the Illuminati base. The faux dragons had met the real deal. Within minutes the base was a smoking ruins, and many of those who had inhabited it were dead. The survivors actually morphed into dragons on the spot, and freed from the shackles of the uncouth Pindar, joined their newfound allies in the skies. In a moment, all of the impossible dreams of the Freemasons had been smashed upon the alter of reality. The dragons reassembled without original loss, and with the new additions to their league, flew toward Earth. The Queen of China received the message from the Dragon King. It sent a sort of sensual wave through her superlative figure. In a Bavarian redoubt, Kurt sought again to penetrate the Vril; to release the keepers of the Midnight Sun. What might they do should they enter our very realm out of their own worlds, so seemingly distant yet in point of fact occupying the same ultimate space as this? How many times had he chased the Supermen through the Vril, only to - again and again - be faced with them as they might inevitably turn to face him; at which point he would invariably flee in a childlike terror at the visage of their ageless, adulterated, hideous glory? Perhaps it were he who were incomplete, retarded if you will. Perhaps the Keepers of the Midnight Sun were perfect, and their overarching supremacy were simply too much for the human mind to fathom. Perchance the only human who understood sat speechless in a straitjacket in a rubber room, consigned to each unfolding day; gurgling and gasping in attempting to describe the unseen, interdimensional terror to the sadistic orderlies as they tortured the same without end. Kurt had never gotten this far. His sidekick, a blonde named Mitzi and looking like a vintage Elke Sommers, aided him in this spiritual quest. If they could release the full force of the beings beyond the Vril, perhaps the old ways could begin anew. It would be the onset of Ragnarok, after which a new world might be born; a world without lawyers or moneylenders; a milieu so much closer to the human heart. At an Orthodox church in Moscow, Svetlana was having another vision. The Christ was pouring a Spirit through her. She moaned in a seeming orgiastic ecstasy, yet tempered by a sense of propriety and purpose. The time was near. Their armies were on the move. Large formations were in bivouac at the feet of the Carpathians; on the Polish frontier; in the Causasus. Might Mother Russia - and by the same token the Church of Orthodoxy - find victory at last? Might the spirit carry them to that final victory? If not, they were a spent force. All demographics argued against their ascendancy. It was now or never for the fabled Russian hordes. Svetlana's pleas simply had to reach the Christ. There needed to be an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon their armies, that their church might reign victorious for once and for all. Everything was in place. They had their chemical and biological agents set for release in both the East and the West. Their submarines were in nuclear attack mode. The Doomsday Bomb - a Tesla Super Scalar Weapon - was ramping up. Only the Spirit of the Lord would see them through in any event. As a representative of the one true Church of Christ - the Orthodox - Svetlana wept as blood began to ooze out of her feet and her wrists amidst her pleas for divine victory and mercy. It was stigmata. It was a divine sign. How many more days might pass before the final battle would be entered, for once and for all? The orders were passed by the observers. In a high tower in Tokyo, Sanae worked the earthquake machine. The members of the temple of Aum Shinrikyo, positioned throughout the floors of the sparkling megalith; chanted as the machine buzzed to life. Sanae would need every bit of inner calm as she worked the device for the ultimate play of the True Sect. She was dressed in a Team Mario racequeen outfit; blue, white, and green; with ample cleavage revealed by the top, and a miniskirt which alternated between stretch satin and outright sheer, her white panty lines clearly visible in either event. She had dispensed with the traditional platform shoes and instead had chosen mules. This furthered her ability to concentrate. She manipulated the machine with her agile fingers, and before long it was vibrating in concert with the chants reverberating throughout the building. They were going to hit St. Louis; split the USA in two. Sanae's former career as a bondage model had strengthened her in this. There was no woman more beautiful and full of resolve than Sanae Asoh. Mr. Alien had amassed a great fortune through software; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, marketing and hype; or pornographic pipelines. Mr. Alien owned much of the city of Sealth, and among his other, 'serious' enterprises there included two sports franchises. Of his American Football franchise, they had recently been defeated in the Championship Game; denied that ultimate prize; the Lombardi Trophy. After the loss, and as with so many inhabitants of the city, Mr. Alien had refused to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the organization, its coaches on the sidelines, and the players on the field. Instead, like his fan base and coaching staff he'd noticed how the referees had favored the winning team. They were without exception incredulous, although the same shouldn't have been. If the referees don't like you, your team simply has to be that much better than the opponent; theirs - the owner, the organization, the fans, the players - hadn't been. Of course, the NFL had long-since, been largely rigged by gambling interests operating as a branch of the temple of the Devil; said interests having operated out of Las Vegas for quite some time. Jobbed games were nothing new. At first, in wake of the defeat Mr. Alien had sent out private investigators to gather dirt on every referee the league over. His plan was to; in the following season blackmail the officials on the field into favoring his franchise. As it turned out, mob kingpins in Vegas had gotten wind of his doings, and had sent Mr. Alien dire warnings not to proceed. Then, he had toyed with the idea of hiring the Saigon and Vientienne mobs to enter into a classic gang war with the Vegas crew, but at the last moment had nixed the idea. Instead, he realized that he could make a lot of money off of the crooked fashion in which the league was operated. It might cost his own franchise any championship, but he took solace in the fact that he'd at least tried to overcome the mob interests influencing the league. The price of open gang warfare was simply too high. He was sure that the fans of his franchise would understand, were they 'ever to know.' Be that as it may and from then on, at each home game he had a bit of fun of his own by lacing the opponent locker room's water tap with a slight tinge of BZ; just enough to disorient them and give his own, home team a boost on the field. He had also piped in subliminal, defeatist sounds into those same opposing locker rooms, and in the event that the opposition might bring their own water to the contest, filtered a slight amount of LSD mixed with Prozac into the air within. Be that as it may, Mr. Alien had been a part of the consortium which had secretly designed the space auto. Now it had inexplicably gone missing. How could their own top secret technologies have been mimicked, overridden, hijacked, defeated? Now the car was in god-knew-whose hands, and he and his compadres in the establishment could only shake their fists in frustration and anger at some invisible, yet apparently irresistable foe. Sambath and Vannak were Apsara dancers in Phnom Penh. After a show one night, they sat and laughed as they took turns brushing one another's luxurious, sparkling black mane. They each had special golden brushes for this. They chatted in Khmer, their sing-song voices mingling amidst the giggles and laughter, all of it creating an irresistable music. They talked of how they might - each of them - marry a man. They spoke of how they hoped their husbands might be loyal to them; to love them so much as to eschew liason with any other woman. The dance of which they were trained to perform; the dance and its accompanying music; together it could be described as the height of all human civilization. The drums weren't too loud, allowing the melodies and harmonies of the instruments themselves to form the greater part of the music. Contrast their dignified music with the bass-heavy sounds found in the barbarian nations, and 'civilized' is one of the words one arrives at in attempting to describe the Apsara dance. When one of the dancers would sing, her voice would add to the overall music and bring it to a heavenly completion. Like their otherworldly beautiful music, the dance moves themselves bespeak an at once gentleness and sensuality which is simply not found in the modern dance forms of the barbarian nations. In the discos of the barbarians, one so often hears a thumping bass beat, and discordant 'melodies and harmonies' (if one could call them that). The dancers on the floors of the discos writhe in an frantic manner, drawn in by the decadence of the background 'music.' In contrast, the Apsara dancers move in a slow, sweet fashion, and when they sing it is really a song, and the background music soothes the soul. This is not to say that all of the music of the barbarian nations is beyond consideration; some of it might actually be considered edifying by any neutral observer; and this is true across genres. It's just that, in fact a great deal of it is decadent, and takes the listener in an untoward direction with regard to the human physiology. Perhaps a balance can be reached, and all expressions of music and dance have their place in the overall prism of life. It's simply that the Apsara dancers and their attendent music are the epitomy of artistic endeavor; the capstone of the pyramid; the bees knees; the feather in the cap. All other forms of music and dance are at some lesser level. Perhaps the divine music of the Apsara dancers could not exist without the lower-tiered expressions found in other forms; the lesser forms being the thing which gives contrast to, and at once proves the sublime profundity of the Apsara dance. Apsara dancers are great lovers of life, and not sinners. They lead not to the end, but to the beginning. Vannak and Sambath - as with the other dancers of their 'Cambodian classical ballet troupe' - were with large hearts, filled with at once great vision and overarching desire; both marked by no small tinge of sadness for what had happened under the Khmer Rouge, but in an even greater sense given over to what great things the future might reveal. They changed clothes, and in so doing dressed in Parisian lingerie; and layered over the same with traditional satin dresses, then sashayed slightly out the door into the rain. The downpour seemed to cover them with love as they walked, a short distance to the cafe where they might hear the latest Cambodian jazz guitar sensation, and sip French Roast coffee whilst eating spring rolls. They were going to have a gay time. Some men might meet them there; Khmer or Siem suitors of no small means. Someday the wounds of past war would be healed, and their land and its people would be admired once again as a leader amongst all of humanity. Real Apsara - spirits from the Angkors - watched over them in protection. Vannak and Sambath were special. The spirits would guide them along their way. The dancers did not yet know it, but it could almost be said that the fate of the world would soon be in the hands of the beauties known as Sambath and Vannak. There in a mountain cave near Geneva, the CERN Supercollider was approaching maximum overdrive. The chief scientist, Heinz Yamamoto rubbed his hands in some combination of anticipation, fear, and glee. He knew that the experiment could change the course of mankind. The giant, multi-kilometer tunnel was abuzz with the sounds of the collider as it approached its ultimate threshold. It were as though fabled spirits were whirring about, around the length of the thing as though it were some gigantic metaphysical racetrack. The sounds would whizz past them in the control room, almost like a ghost train; then fade away to the far reaches of the loop, only to return; again and again, each time with greater frequency; until at some point the speed of the passing were occuring so quickly that the din had become constant. The speed of light was approaching; perhaps surpassing. The next moments would tell that tale. Yamamato's staff, young and without exception female, minced about in tight knit skirts, accented by sheer blouses and satin bras underneath; bras so thin he could see their nipples poking through the revealing layers - bra and blouse - of fabric. The skirts themselves were also very thin, revealing a panoply of bikini and hip-hugger panty lines. Yamamoto had long-since specified that no thongs were allowed; only satin and sheer bikinis and hip huggers, and their cotton crotch panels had to be removed. He was a difficult taskmaster, but the young interns were so in love with his beautiful mind that virtually none of them had protested when he'd stipulated the requisite attire, during the course of their individual job interviews. They were a great support staff; beautiful and smart. One of the young vixen scientists had once brought a pair of sheer french panties for Yamamoto to puruse. When she'd handed him the wispy garment, and he'd felt it in his hands, obviously admiring the sheer body and lace ornamentation, along with the unique sort of 'mini-knicker' cut; she had somehow insisted that he wear panties too, and had convinced him from that day forth that if she and the others had to wear fancy panties, that he should too. So from then on he had worn panties as well. As it was, at the moment he had no time for ogling; no time for panty thoughts; not then. Everything was at stake. The female junior scientists worked the gizmos ably. Everyone concentrated on the experiment. Their collectively unique panoply of outerwear and underwear was the last thing on any of their minds. Collectively, they were the most brilliant quantum physics team in the known universe. For a moment, Yamamoto wondered about the unknown universe. The junior scientists continued to work the controls. The sound was constant to the human ear. One after another they donned earplugs. It was that loud. Some of the guards on the ramparts above the control room fingered their machine pistols. These males were chosen for their combat prowess. They were intimately familiar with all of the members of the scientific team. Their orders were to shoot intruders on sight. The thing was, from their Captain and on down through their ranks; they couldn't quite figure how there might ever be an intruder; there in the bowels of a mountain, with highest level security on the ground levels, and secured lifts leading into the underground facility. The captain sat in the guard booth and sipped coffee whilst chain smoking Gitanes. One by one; two by two; three by three; the guards under his command would break from their position and join him for a cigaratte. The guard room was the only place where they could smoke. The control room for the scientists, and the tunnel area were both smoke-free. They employed extra guards. This way their could be guards on break at all times. The Captain oversaw the entire thing from the guard room, there with a panel of video screens and his trusty coffee maker and carton of Gitanes. The guards on the loop would make their way back to the break room via tram. The entirety of the gargantuan tunnel had a sentry stationed every hundred meters. All of the guards were connected by special intercom. Radios were eschewed as their waves might alter the experiment. Cell phones for outside communication were out of the question. From the guard room, all communication with the surface was also by fancy intercom. Amidst the ruins of Yeha in Ethiopia, the sun beat down upon Kassa as he led the team from Addis Ababa Archeological Institute on their latest dig. They had, just moments before located the alien artifact, and at that moment the women could be heard in a sort of instant song as given by the whole of their combined cries of elation. Kassa knew that the fate of his country - and perhaps that of the world - rested upon the results of their operation. His staff, comprised of local women whose practical folk garb belied the incredible curves underneath, worked with great focus. Their pretty faces shined in the sun. As the sounds of their joy ebbed away and the tangible goal had actually presented itself, they returned to their work in determined silence. They were bound and determined to free the artifact intact, and in its entirety. It would be bigger than nuclear power. In the background a sort of dirge began to play. Apparently it were some locals on traditional musical instruments. As was his predilection, Kassa established percentages in his mind as to the possible significance of the forlorn song as it played. He figured that it was an 80% chance that the song were merely incidental to the milieu; 5% apiece that it were portending either a failure to procure the artifact intact, or that the same would be of no eschatological import whatsoever; and 10% that the song were a precursor of utter doom, should Kassa and his female team successfully free the artifact from its ancient prison, and unleash its powers over and about the world at large. The crew and Kassa continued their urgent, fragile dig. From his fortified HQ along the border with Saudi Arabia, Izzy Gold paled at the ramifications that the Samson Option was near. Perhaps the only way it could be avoided was through a flawless invasion of the entire Middle East. In Iraq the USA land forces were on the run. Their air support and resupply had become spotty at best, and irregulars from Iran were interdicting the overland routes from Baghdad and South past Basra through Kuwait. A major naval engagement was brewing in the Strait of Hormuz. It was a wonder the conflaguration hadn't already broken out. In either event, it was Zero Hour for Izzy and his IDF; time to let the dogs out. As far as Izzy were concerned, they should have invaded the entire Middle East years before. He was fanatical enough to know that their Israeli G-d would protect them against the bamboozled goyim; just as the same G-d always had, and come what may. He'd heard intonations of he and his kind being of the Devil's temple, but that had always been a psy-op, and an incredibly effective one at that. He also knew that, Khazar or not; he - like his green-eyed, copper-haired grandparents from the Lvov ghetto - had that special glittering spark of Jacob within his very soul; something which none of the goyim could claim. Of course, some of the goyim were honorary chosen. He liked them. The rest were ultimately cockroaches to be crushed beneath the Israeli boot; the manifestation of the very stark fist of removal as worn by the one and only Living G-d; such as it had always been. He left the bunker at dusk and climbed atop his Merkava tank, signalling to the positions to his right and to his left. In turn, these positions signalled on down through each direction of the line as they prepared for the jump-off. Engines revved. The air filled with electricity. Izzy felt apprehensive, yet with the additional sense that destiny loomed but mere moments away, at least in comparison to the yawning chasms of all of time and space. The final signal awaited confirmation from Tel Aviv. How many seconds, minutes, or G-d forbid, hours might that be? Satcha Kukulcan Tezcatlipoca Gonzales' breasts heaved richly beneath the sheer material of her blouse. She sat in the tent atop Monte El Silverado and chewed Salvia Divinorum leaf. Her head would spin as it was wont to do. The elves came and sang to her from within her heightened half-stupor. They were cheery, even though she was sad. Salvia always gave her such apprehension, even amidst the humor. There was simply something very strong about the leaf, and beneath the thin veneer of laughing elves and nonsensical joking, did it seem as though a very real and hideous power lurked. Was it the cosmic supercomputer? Satcha fingered the ancient tablet and tried as if by touch to decipher the very esoteric gleanings contained within. It was the script of the Toltecs, somehow long since hidden from the likes of the base, Friar Diego de Llanda and his ilk, preserved through centuries by the keepers of the old ways, and now within her lilting grasp. Something was coming for her. Was she in control of it, or rather did it have her? Who was she? Who - or what - was It? She was being filled, as if by some sensuous and kind spirit? Her insides kind of shuddered in a small ethereal orgasm, yet she was afraid. She saw the Feathered Serpent, beautiful and upon a throne at the edge of a field. In the field itself, Gourds and Maize grew to stupendous proportions. Brightly-dressed farmers danced in delight at the impending harvest, there beneath the Azure skies, accented by the glow of a friendly, warm orange sunlight. Something was happening at the throne. Another climbed the steps and sought council with the Feathered Serpent. She couldn't believe her vision. It was none other than the Keeper of the Smoking Mirror. The majestic, Feathered Serpent and his fallen brother had at last reached some kind of accord. Strangely beautiful music filtered throughout the scene. From within her tent, Satcha wept with joy at the revelation. Susanah Haute worked the scry. She was attempting to locate something - or someone. She didn't know; yet she knew. She wore her Daisy Duke Short Shorts and her breasts undulated from beneath the skimpy, red and white tied halter top. Outside, in the trailer park two meth heads were arguing. She blocked them out. Even the looming gunshots couldn't deter her. Susanah had journeyed to far for distraction to untrack her. The scry pointed to St. Louis. She arose, and dressed herself in her best satin jump suit. In the background could be heard "Every Rose Has Its Thorns" by Poison. She picked up the flitcher and switched to some Patsy Cline. Susanah smoked a cigarette - American Spirit Filterless - and pondered her next move as she luxuriated within the timeless melodies of the voice; that voice; the immortal sounds of Patsy Cline. Surely the time was upon her. She prayed some small prayer that indeed not all had been in vain. Susanah was a Kentucky native, there near the border of Indiana; where the blue grass grew and the locals referred to the immediate milieu as none other than, 'Kentuckiana.' She looked like Rebecca Gayheart, with such a pretty face framing beautifully alien blue eyes, and cascading golden hair; tan skinned figure filling out the satin jumpsuit perfectly. Somehow, and over time she had escaped the common ravages of the area; crystal meth and alcohol. The blue grass had always been enough for her; well, other than the occasional cigarette and much less frequent peyote button. She was on her way. She checked herself in the mirror, went through the items in her purse, and exited the trailer, undulating beautifully into the luxurious sheepskin bucket seat of her custom '68 Chevelle Malibu; itself in cherry condition and painted with silver flecked candy apple red. She eased out along the dirt driveways of the park, the fattened tires seeming to whisper on the heels of destiny as she left the place; perhaps forever, angling out onto the pavement of the highway and en route to St. Louis and most certainly beyond. Max Silverstein enjoyed himself at the dinner. Something was nagging him though. He had won the world, but had he lost his soul? There were beautiful women on immediate demand; not only because of his money, but also due to his high verbal articulation, witty demeanor, and last but not least his oversized package. American women, with their fascination with fast love were somehow enamored of that, although in truth the frictionless way of the Kama Sutra has nothing to do with the size or motion of anything. A classic beauty in the mold of the unforgettable Corrine Alphen sat to his left. Another stunner; a likeness so very similar to Gina Gershon sat to his right. They doted over him and brushed their satin-encased breasts up and down his arms as they did, the three of them making happy small talk. It would have seemed to any onlooker that there was so much of Max that the two women had no problem at all in sharing his attentions. He put up a good front, but his mind was on the previous night's temple ritual. Had they gone too far? How many sacrifices might the Devil demand? Of course it seemed worth it, and being resilient Max had always done a fair job of shifting gears from the oppression of participation in temple rites to enjoying his favorite things in life; fine dining, incredible women, fast cars, music, and golf. He'd never been a political or spiritual sort, but his upbringing had demanded his participation in the same. Something disturbed him. Unlike times past, he couldn't quite pass what had gone on the night before from his mind. Something gnawed at his very being. He put on a happy face. The caresses of the ladies barely assuaged his looming and utter inner breakdown. At one point he received a cell call from a fraternity buddy - another member of the temple or order - from across town. Max used this as an excuse for an early exit to the dinner, explaining to his companions that business had called. Neither of them appeared to be onto his angst. He told them both to meet him later back at the penthouse in uptown Manhattan. Once in the parking garage, Max gunned the Ferrari as he sped away from the place. He needed to go to his 'fortress of solitude.' His friend had basically called to say, 'hi;' or; had it been a check-up of some sort? His friend had always been a bit more uncouth and venal than Max himself had ever been. Was the friend a sort of handler? Max put the pieces together in his mind; birth, private schools, bar mitzvah, more schools, hifalutin college education, fast track to inside the bank, induction into the secret temple along the way. His friend had been there since the beginning. Yet his friend had always appeared stronger, less encumbered by any sort of conscience, less enamored with the simple things in life such as wine, women, and song; more focused on power for its own sake. Max loved the trappings of the fine life; his friend on the other hand seemed sort of maniacal, power-mad; even demonic. Who or what was his friend? Max made his way along the privatized road, and into the quiet neighborhood nestled there in an ultra-wealthy section of Long Island. He gunned the car past the automatic gates of his secret fortress, and in an instant screeched to a stop. He was a mess. Somehow his mind were reeling. He went inside, and took the elevator down to the basement shooting gallery. Chad Hagee broadcast from Air Force One. The jet had enough provisions for a week; 10 days tops. They could refuel by tanker and stay aloft for the duration. This was a national emergency. He basically told the population - those who were yet listening - to gird their loins. He couldn't go into the specifics of the fast-approaching disaster, but from what his assistants had told him, it didn't look good. What they didn't know was that, only days before he'd had a sort of personal revelation and was led by some spiritual development to - for once in his life - speak his actual mind; and his mind was clear then; clearer than it had ever been. His resolve peaked at that moment. It was Showtime. Prior to that, he'd been the happy-talking feel-good president, privately compromised as all politicians are wont to be; with public promises for everyone and always a laughable quip at the ready. His speeches had always been prepared by his handlers, they being agents of the Devil's temple. President Haggee was tired of being compromised. He was tired of being blackmailed for the pieces of his sordid past. Nothing mattered to him any more. The end was so near he could taste it. He wanted to go out with a clear conscience. This was where his revelation and resolve would at once shine forth. He covertly drugged all of the staff and secret service members aboard the jet, and while the pilots up front flew the plane, he launched into an alternative broadcast speech. A co-conspirator within a major media network; she as sick and tired of the same old song as the president himself; had only the day before sought herself to ensure an uninterrupted broadcast of the president's revised speech; and in that she had succeeded. As it turns out, at the network HQ there were others of like mind and spirit. Call it a miracle if you will. The other networks might cut out in an attempt at damage control as the speech unfolded, but hers would stay the course for as long as humanly possible. She told him going in that she could guarantee perhaps 5 minutes of uninterrupted airtime before they too would be cut off. So the president's speech began. A pre-recorded rendition of the original speech was piped through to the cockpit, so the pilots were unaware of the shenanigans taking place in the rear of the aircraft: "Fellow Americans, how about a bit of straight talk? No amount of happy banter is going to stave off the inevitable. Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia, Panama, Iraq; all were but among the precursors. Americans, it is time to reap the whirlwind. "All the pretentious talk of 'democracy' and 'fairness' can no longer paper over the ugly truth that is our USA. The nation has never been anything more than an arm of the international bankers. Some have fought along the way; given their very lives to free the same from the clutches of the temple of the Devil, but none has ever succeeded; thus the USA has been one of the chief thugs employed in the enforcement of global gangsterism, and going back literally hundreds of years; all within the machinations of the Devil; the priests; the acolytes. You, me; we bought into it; our forefathers, our relatives, our friends. Those who resisted were silenced in any number of ways. There was always the promise of enough material prosperity; full bellies and a roof over our collective heads; to keep the rest of us from rebelling. "Those of us who have along the way, so gladly given up our own folk traditions; we're all part and parcel of the monstrosity. It would appear it is so easy to tell someone, anyone, everyone; over and over again; tell them they're 'special' and they deserve something in recompense; that the 'others' are 'subhuman,' and/or 'guilty' of any manner of crimes; and thus deserve to be robbed, beaten, and killed outright if necessary; and all for the promulgation of some fairy tale of contrived but ultimately illusory rendition of human 'equality,' 'moral superiority,' and 'justice.' It has always been so easy for the Devil's disciples to sell us on the idea of 'democracy' or 'majority rule' which itself is nothing more than a great deceit. Now, there are no innocents among us. "The Devil's temple and its agents are at the center of this criminality. My own church in its dispensationalism has been no small part of that. Every one one of us who has ever fancied that the agencies of government might 'right' some, 'moral wrong' or institute any manner of 'fairness;' We are all participants in the criminality this nation has come to represent. In a legal sense, we should have never 'evolved' past the Articles of the Confederation. My predecessor was right, but perhaps not in the way he meant; when he said that the Constitution is just a scrap of paper. It's even arguable as to whether we needed the Articles. Certainly everything written after that fact is but another layer in what has turned out to be an overarching absurdity. In truth, Caveat Emptor should be the catch-phrase for a new America. If you want fairness or justice, look within yourself. No external agency will ever provide that for you. (Note: Up to this point, and for the remainder of the speech, in tandem with the speaking of each word or phrase shown here as surrounded by '', the president made little quotation symbols with his two hands. For the radio listeners, he altered his inflection to emphasize the same, 'quote unquote' manner of speaking.) "Of course, the vast majority of those who never quite subscribed to the ways of the Devil's league; those with what we used to refer to as common sense, which as the saying goes in this day and age is so - pardon me - damned uncommon; such hardy souls have nearly without exception lost their very lives amid that noise; the sound and fury signifying nothing; the thundering crescendo of the maddened herd, for whatever odd reason all too eager to discard their old ways and take on the prescriptions - and proscriptions - of the Devil's own. "In short, the only real discipline comes from within oneself. No battery of priests, judiciary, social workers, prison guards, tax collectors, police, politicians, and psychiatrists is ever going to change that. No amount of fine words will; in the end paper over the deceit that is external authority. "That external authority is your government! You have allowed us; you have begged us to do this to you! We are all; you and we; part of the same problem. We're all the same! The rest of us - those who wouldn't go along with 'the plan' - have been 'dealt with' along the way. "This is the horror. The biggest proponents of that same terror are most often the ones you might hear saying; and in righteous indignation I might add; saying, "So and so is in hell being raped forever by demons; I just know it!" These are the people who create the very hell on earth. These are the blamers; those who demand a pound of flesh for any offense, real or imaginary. "Say what you will about Hitler, Mussolini, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Slick Willie, Bush I and II, Churchill, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, Enver Hoxxa, ad naseum; on and on. Say what you want about any of our ilk; the politicians. People everywhere, and without fail always get the government they deserve. If you, the people making up the populace want to bleat like sheep and demand to be ruled, well by golly the temple of the Devil is set to step in and give it to you; in in the process you become acolytes of the same! Think of it as - to borrow a phrase from the great H.L. Mencken - all the democracy you so rightly deserve! "On the other hand, if a person can find it within their own character to become self-governing, the need and desire for external authorities is removed. When we as individuals - yourself, me, everyone - decide to be temperate and civilized, then the slaughter ends. The rule of law should be but free association! Coercion and force will lead us to a place, nowhere near real civilization! The proof is in the pudding. "When we look across; each of us and every one one of us; at one another as political, social, and moral equals then the temple of the Devil is finished. Yet, if we continue to see ourselves as better than one but worse than the other; or better than all; or worse than everyone else, then the temple of the Devil will continue its thriving business. "The first task in working toward any semblance of earthly liberty is to disallow oneself from being persuaded by fine words; empty promises; religious tomfoolery and unsound money; to eschew legal codexes and instead live simply and with transparency; at least in a social and moral context. If we want complications, we should without exception look to arts and sciences; not external, state-manifested governance. We need to choose self-governance in order to escape this trap we've fallen into; the one which was set for you but the one you ultimately accepted; and in so doing, once again became like us. Do you understand!? Do you understand?!" There were tears in his eyes as the president fought to regain his composure. He finished the speech with: "The only way out of this mess is to think for yourself; to abolish the banks and the legal bar, the labor unions with their closed shops, and the doctors' association. Everything needs to be vastly unregulated! If you want to be a lawyer, you don't need a certificate. The same goes for being a doctor, or a cab driver. Drugs should freely flow. When are you people going to wake up!? Something wicked approaches. As the illusion of a discrete nation, we're spent. Each of us needs now to become a nation of one! If you ever had faith in anything, make it a faith in yourself and a faith in the divine; in whatever order you choose. In either event, I can assure you that earthly institutions are hardly divine! We've all been taken for a ride! At some point, we all hopped aboard that short bus and off we went; no offense intended toward those with Down's Syndrome who in truth have hearts closest to the divine. "There shouldn't be a welfare state! What you have a right to is a chance in life, not to be babysat! This goes for corporate America as well; no more government preferences for you and your cronies. No more banking monopolies! A person should be able to take whatever they want in the way of drugs, and there should be no laws against that; no laws accept those of consequences for actions. The old, 'devil made me do it' should no longer be an excuse! Do any of you hear me!? We've been made docile with flouride in your water, and prozac and sporting events, and electromagnetic waves. The promise that everyone would be taken care of by the state has gone on for some time, but look where it has led us; for it is a pale substitute for your taking care of yourself! Yes, I know; at every step along the way, the opportunity for you to take care of yourself was whittled away; all that is left now is the state. Yet the state is dead! You were practically forced you into our own brand of 'care,' yet you stupidly went along with it, and became as we! When are you going to stop listening to the priests and politicians, all of the so-called experts with their hifalutin pieces of paper?! Piled Higher and Deeper!? Do you hear me?! PHD! Piled Higher and Deeper! Did you know that the microwave cell phone towers are deadly? Each of us needs to find the will to resist what has been done; what has always been followed. Now is the time to find your center, to cast off the state. Either way, it is falling now. This is the only hope. Lead yourselves. If you continue to follow and to allow us to lead, I can only promise more hell, more death, more destruction, more rules, more prisons, more cluster bombs, more radiation poisoning, more, more, more of the same lowbrow garbage. Seize the moment! Free yourselves! It might already be too late." By then he was shaking, and gesticulating wildly as he began to close out his speech. "Now, this is going to cost me..." and the picture went dead. One of the pilots had caught wind of what was happening, and under contingency orders had exited the cockpit and dispatched the president. Some of the staff began awakening from their drug-induced slumber and the vice president - Rachel Spectre - was present amongst them. She was instantly promoted to President and asked to continue the speech. There had always been plans for this sort of turn of events. She unbuttoned her satin blouse, revealing a sheer bra beneath as ample cleavage spilled forth, and took the temporary podium. She looked the perfect Lilith as the broadcast was resumed: "Americans, I'm afraid that the president has suffered from a sort of sudden madness; he is dead. Everything is going to be ok." She continued, "No one can know why former President Haggee just said what he said, there before he died from his instant onset of insanity. Doctors here aboard Air Force One are saying it was an unfortunate and quick-hitting case of Prion disease, so perhaps all of his crazy talk was just that; a result of the Prions. God rest his soul. I can assure you that everything is being done to stabilize all aspects of our great democracy; that we have always been the greatest country on earth, and that going forward things just have to get better. We're going to land Air Force One now in Washington DC, and I'm going to join congress in an overnight session where we're going to hammer out some economic relief legislation. We're going to shore up this ship of state and sail into a brightened future, hand in hand, with the full force of truth and justice to guide us across these uncharted waters. God be with you, and pray for congress and I as we enact this awesome new set of life-giving legislation." As the aircraft turned and headed for the city of Washington, President Rachel was lost in thought. The members of the staff shook of their groginess and sought to brief her, but she was in a world of her own. As their soundbytes sought to weave a web of complacency about her, she was ruminating internally as to the vision she'd had in her sleeping stupor as the former president had spoken. Something had visited her, shown her the mistakes of her life. She knew that whatever Chad Haggee had said, she'd secretly agreed. She plotted as to how to get her hands on a copy of the broadcast. She had an idea of exactly the person she needed to seek out and get the transcript from; none other than the former president's friend at the major network. From a secret room somewhere in New Orleans, the tired black man - Illustrious Trufant - had seen the entire speech. Haggee had been the first politician who Trufant had ever seen or heard to speak with any honesty whatsoever, reflecting the inner thoughts of Illustrious. Illustrious had long since privately forsaken the pontifications of the race dividers, poverty privateers, legalistic purveyors of mindless mumbo jumbo and all of their lackeys across the land. Illustrious took a sip of fine cognac and played chess with his beautiful wife of some 30 years. They sat in silence as each in turn pondered their next move. Both of them knew that something huge was about to unfold, yet neither of them knew how to broach the topic to the other. They played late into the night, ate some Chinese leftovers along the way, settled down to a smoke whilst listening to some Coltraine, then fell into a deep, yet dream-racked sleep whilst each nestled within the gentle embrace of the other. The next day they would leave the city, and head for the West Coast. Across the world and in the high mountains of Pakistan, Sriram Nissar toked on a hash pipe as he worked out the final details of the dimensional door. He was attempting to release an army of Djinn upon the earth at large, that they might first attack and destroy the invading Americans, and from there enforce the will of Allah upon the rest of the planet. From the heights of her Hollywood condo, Melody Li sensed something in the air. The gunfire; sometimes in the distance and sometimes so nearby, had become routine; along with intermittent sirens of the nearly defunct police force and public ambulance services, mixed with the seemingly constant drone of helicopters above. She was beautiful in her complexion, winner of Academy awards for her film work, and Grammy awards for her recordings. Yet she'd never fulfilled the dream of making a celluloid rendition of some Chinese folk tale; never recorded an album of traditional Chinese songs. The kind of typical fare she'd actually participated in had left her with a sense of cold emptiness. She was torn between her loyalties to the land of her birth and upbringing, and the land of her ancestors; China. She decided then and there to drop her career and go to China. Instantly she was on the phone and making travel arrangements. After a few phone calls, and an itinerary set for the following morning, she opened a letter from an anonymous fan, sealed as it were in a lavender envelope, and written on the matching stationary. The letter read: Melody Li, a broken man and a broken dream It must have been a change of heart Your life was cruel they called it art Melody Li, you need a nuke to set you free You know you can't cheat tomorrow If you hide any sorrow Melody Li, you gotta find your secret enemy You're on the run with nowhere to go If you die someone to know Forget your heart, you need not stay A second longer than today Melody Li, a broken man and a broken dream It must have been a change of heart Your life was cruel they called it art She knew then that she'd made the right decision to leave. Contract disputes would have to be settled later. She was on her way to Chengdu from L.A. The same night, Tex Longhorn stood at his National Guard outpost along the USA border with Mexico. Something was up. Tex always knew; whenever anything was just over the horizon. He put the soldiers of his Company on alert. Of late, there had been a much greater frequency of paramilitary incursions from the other side of the border. Intelligence hadn't indicated the exact origin of the patrols. Longhorn had his own ideas. Whoever they were, these bandits - if one could call them that - were heavily armed and well-organized. The incursions had reflected organized military probes, rather than the scattered meanderings of an armed drug cartel. Over the previous ten days, Tex's Company had already lost a couple of soldiers in sporadic firefights. The command chain was FUBAR. Their orders to units such as Tex's were often conflicted and most often overly constricting. Participating in firefights was something he and his troops were already in hot water over. There were rumors of Section 8s being prepared all around. Tex couldn't fathom what was happening, unless of course his native land had been utterly sold out from above, and the biggest traitors were from within. As for the steady flow of refugees who confused matters even further, Tex didn't really have a beef with anyone trying to escape such dire conditions. Yet through it all something was surely amiss. II At that moment some signal flares went up. He and his troops could hear vehicles in the distance. It sounded like wheeled vehicles, combined with heavier, tracked vehicles. He was thinking, "What the...?" when the first shots rang out. An aircraft roared overhead and not two clicks away tremendous explosions lit up the night; explosions the likes of which Tex hadn't witnessed since his stint during the fighting in Iraq. He sounded the combat alert. A couple of hundred troopers lumbered forth from their bivouac and manned their fortified stations. An AC-130 appeared above the area. Suddenly it began belching out all manner of fire, again at targets not 2 clicks away. The sound of vehicles on the ground grew louder, overcoming the din of the fire from "Puff the Magic Dragon." Now he could see them; a mass of troops, and they weren't USA. There were armored cars and tracked vehicles; even heavy armor. From what he could tell, they were of the venerable T-54 variety. Then it dawned on him; the Chinese! Tex and his soldiers obviously had no antitank weaponry. Their duty had been refugee interdiction. There had been no perceived need for heavy weapons. All they had were a couple of .50 cals. Tex screamed at the top of his voice for the .50 cal gunners to go after the light armor. The .50 cals didn't need to be told as they opened up, and began lighting up the thinly protected armored cars and tracked transports or BMPs. Return fire began to pour into their positions. The explosions from the tank guns were the worst. The AC-130 continued firing from the air. The formation of Threat troops began to fall into disarray, and not a moment too soon. Half of Tex's Company were either dead or wounded. The enemy retreated into the night with whatever he had left. As the din died down, the otherwise empty landscape was haunted by the echoes of the crying of the wounded of both sides. Burning wrecks added to the eerie landscape. Tex had never faced a firefight like that; one where the other side had arrived with such firepower. In Iraq, his Company had worked at counter-insurgency. Front-line combat was something they had not previously encountered. The AC-130 seemed to follow the retreating throng, and the desert was eventually littered with a trail of burning wrecks, stretching for literally miles. Tex had some quick questions. Where had the fighter jet come from, and then the AC-130? How had they operated without interdiction or AA fire from the ground? Certainly their foe had been unprepared. Who in the chain of command had known of the impending attack, and where had they mustered up an AC-130? Weren't all of those already in action in the Near East? Tex could only thank his lucky stars that the gunship had arrived when it did. Otherwise, his Company would have been entirely destroyed. The Companies on either side of Tex's position had also lost about half of their men. Tex was on the radio with the other field officers, and with HQ some clicks away. He and the other officers in the immediate area coordinated their defenses in preparation for any follow-up assault, and ordered the evacuation of the wounded, and the collection and quick burial of the dead. Perhaps they could be exhumed shortly and given a proper burial, but for now they would have to rest in a hastily dug mass grave. Tex and the others around him had no idea what they were up against. Finally, Tex told HQ in no uncertain terms that anti-armor assets would need to be brought to the fore, or all would be lost should the Threat forces attempt another attack. As it was they were hard pressed. HQ promised a couple of surplus M-60 tanks, and some TOW and Dragon missiles. Reports back from HQ indicated that such assaults were taking place all along the border, and confirmed that it was the Chinese and Mexicans combined. Some actual breakthroughs had occurred in California and elsewhere. The line along the Texas border had held, yet Threat forces were forging ahead where local success had been achieved. Some Air National Guard Squadrons were being scrambled to try and interdict the breakthrough points. The Chinese were attempting a sort of classic blitzkrieg; find the soft spots and pour through; exploit the rear. This did not bode well. Tex had a sense that it was the beginning of the end of his country; the USA. He had wondered about a lot things in the previous 5 or 10 years, but now he was fairly certain. He was determined in any event to go out on his feet, and not on his knees. He believed in human liberty. Beyond that he knew nothing, except to prepare for the next battle, should it arrive. He frantically began studying maps, and looking for some terrain advantage. Maybe he and his neighboring Companies could set up in a more advantageous milieu. It was already 0500 hours CST, 22 Jun 2011. Melody Li slept in a heightened state. Strange visions of dragons flying through the air punctuated her dreams. They seemed oddly familiar, like old friends. She tossed and turned in anticipation of the great trip to the land of her ancestry which was to begin in the morning. The actual sounds of far-off air raid sirens didn't awaken her into full consciousness. Rather they became a part of her dreams. The dragons were invading everywhere. Sirens were wailing from every direction. Yet she remained calm through it all. When she woke up, her cell phone was dead. There were yet sirens off in the distance. When she looked down Laurel Canyon Blvd, there were tracked vehicles from the Army about the streets. The cell phone being dead wasn't much out of the ordinary, but troops in the streets certainly were. There was a frantic knocking on her door. She opened it to find one of the famous leading men from her movies. He was pale; paler than usual. His usual, lightened countenance was white as a sheet. He barged in and slammed the door behind them. "We're being invaded!... invaded by China and Mexico. They've crossed the border, and they're taking over port facilities up and down the coast. Information is spotty, but it seems like they had a bunch of freighters loaded with troops, and unloaded them in several ports at once. Our military is having a tough time stopping the cross border attacks, but the port action was totally unprepared for. They've entered into the inner cities up and down the coast. The news... well before it went off the air... was speculating on nukes. Reports of biological and chemical attacks are filtering in from all over the country!" Then his yell fell to a whisper and he asked her if she loved him. He had that look in his eyes. He was the secret admirer! How had she never noticed him? "Well... I don't know, Bruce. Why didn't you ever say anything?" She looked at him quizically, but with some playfulness. "You see? I'm shy." She laughed. "No really, I'm shy. What I do on the camera, it's not the way I am off the camera. Didn't you ever notice, how the camera makes me light up?" "Well, now that you mention it, yes. You're the secret admirer? You love me? How do you know what love is? How does anyone know what love is?" She turned her head sideways and stared into his eyes, waiting for an answer. "Melody, maybe it's different for a man and a woman. You know... love that is. I think that I love you. I don't dream of anyone but you. Really. I don't dream of anyone but you, Melody Li." "I'm actually impressed. I mean that. You only think of me? How can it be, that you could have virtually any woman you desire, but you dream only of me? Is that why they say you're gay, because you're never with anyone?" "Yes, Yes: That's why they think I'm gay. It's because I'm alone, pining for you... wishing for you... dreaming of you. I can't help it. I know you have boyfriends but.. well it breaks my heart into little pieces but you're the only one I think of." "I want to believe you. How can you prove it though?" "I'm going to get you out of here." Bruce Chan took out a small ring and told her to put it on. "This isn't an engagement ring. It's a ring of invisibility. There's a yacht at Marina Del Rey. We're going to make our way there, and then try to cross the Pacific. Everything will be invisible... us.. our car... our boat. Let's go to China and start over!" "I'm with you." She took the ring and put it on. He put on a ring of his own, and they were both invisible. They snuck out past the troops and to his silent, invisible car, and they sped away toward Marina Del Rey. As Bruce drove, Melody ran her fingers through his hair. They could see one another. Neither one spoke for the longest time. They had quite a go of it, navigating amidst the mess that was unfolding in the streets; with refugees everywhere, sirens near and far, gunshots and explosions off in the distance. Thankfully, the smallish Marina Del Rey had not been yet encroached upon by the invasion forces. They made their way to the pier, and stepped aboard a small dinghy. It was the one thing which wasn't invisible. They rowed out to their ship, a few hundred yards off of the shore. Any potential onlookers were so busy with problems of their own that the 'ghost dinghy' received zero attention from the people milling about the place. Once they were aboard the yacht, they hugged in their invisibility as they cast the dinghy free. Bruce took the helm and throttled the engines, guiding the ship past the breakwaters and out to sea. The Pacific lay before them. Where they were it was placid; a perfect day. It was 6 am, PST. In Karachi it was nearing nightfall. Dusk was upon the locals. Sriram put the final touches upon his portal, and manipulated the sort of controls connected to the thing, taking intermittent puffs from a hash pipe as he went. Almost beyond belief, a stream of Djinn began issuing forth and materializing on our plane. They promised Sriram that they were under his command. Their leader unfurled a carpet, and Sriram sat upon it, being sure to bring along a large chunk of hashish and his pipe, and some lighters and cigarettes. Night was falling. They were headed to the battlefields near Afghanistan. The procession streamed forth and into the air from off of Sriram's balcony overlooking the streets of Karachi below. They flew with godspeed to the scene of the USA invasion into their country. The locally stationed American troops were stunned to see a giant squadron of Djinn flying through the sky and toward them. They were heard exclaiming the likes of, "What the?" before the otherworldly scimitars found their mark. Sriram was content to watch from his floating platform whilst puffing away on cigarettes and hashish. The weapons of the Americans had no effect. The natural fighting the supernatural was a losing game. Soon, a battalion-occupied local installation had been destroyed by the avenging Djinn. Some Americans had fled the scene in their Humvees. Most of them had died. Bizarre calls had definitely gone out over the radio, and a few clicks away the nearest stations were being told the frantic, impossible tales of the survivors as they reached the neighboring outposts. The Djinn Captain asked Sriram where to go next. It was dark in Pakistan; somewhere around 10 pm in Karachi. Rachel Spectre was receiving odd reports from all around the world. It had been a hectic night and morning. She hadn't slept in 2 days. She drank more coffee. A doctor gave her a pill. She kept going. She couldn't take her mind off of getting ahold of Haggee's last speech transcript, but events had intervened and prevented her from doing that. Despite her failure to make contact with the woman from the news network, Rachel grew in the conviction of what she would have to do. With the reports of the Chinese invasion arriving from early that morning, the talks with Congress had been suspended. In any event, it didn't appear as though legislation would be particuarly effective in any fashion at that point. Rachel took a gun into her hand, and threatened to kill anyone who didn't obey her orders. A couple of her staff fell in behind her, as did the Secret Service and Marine details assigned to her. For then at least, no one could touch her. Those around her witnessed a sudden fire in her eyes, the likes of none they'd ever seen in anyone before. Suddenly Rachel Spectre was a kind of latter-day Joan of Arc; a woman with a vision and the will to carry it out. She went on the air and for whatever reason the networks all carried it. She ordered the opening of all sporting good stores, gun shops, and National Guard and Army Reserve armories. She called all able-bodied citizens to arm themselves and head for the Mexican border and the Mountain passes leading to the West Coast. Transportation was arranged wherever possible. Finally, she called for a release of the Federal fuel reserves. In the streets of the cities, there was unimitigated pandemonium. Chemical and biological agents were taking their toll on the overall populace. The people in the outlying areas were unaffected and warned over the EBS not to pass through the cities unless headed there to fight the insurgents. There were yet a good 50 or 100 million Americans with the means and the will to fight. Somehow they all knew that they might never return to their earthly homes. This really was the end. Every face was marked though with a sudden, grim determination to go down fighting. President Rachel found herself at the forefront of an ad hoc formation. They were armed to the teeth and headed West. She sent a contigent of troops to commandeer the Montauk facilities. At Montauk there was a firefight for the underground base. The federal contingent took over the shattered remnants of what had been some kind of bizarre black book project. Witnesses to the aftermath there stood in stunned disbelief amidst the apparent remains of any manner of - shall we say - inhuman creatures. One of the onlookers was heard to whisper, "What in God's green earth went on in this place?" Unbeknownst to he and his fellow soldiers, alien elements had only moments prior to their attack escaped through unseen dimensional doors, back to the worlds from which the interlopers themselves had originally hailed. The earthly scientists left behind to fend for themselves had done everything they could to destroy any and all of the evidence; and in that they had succeeded, and paid for it with their lives. Montauk was dead. It would be of no use to anyone regardless of point of origin, for a long, long, time. The soldiers occupying the ruins would be left with their speculations. The scientists were all dead. It was 1500 hrs EST, 22 Jun 2011. Max Silverstein - the banker - emerged from the basement of the mansion. He hadn't left since the night before. The news had not been good. The president had gone crazy, the nation was under attack. Gunfire ebbed and flowed in the distance, even there on Long Island. It was coming from the direction of that Montauk 'park.' His place was on generators - backup power. The land lines were down. The cell phone was dead. What on earth was going on? He checked the porch and there was no newspaper. The maids had not shown up. He was left alone there, that cloudy evening in a drafty old house. A car appeared in the driveway. It was his friend, who had previously been given gate access. Fear seethed through Max. Something wicked seized him. How could he have expected anything else in light of his sordid private activities as a part of the Insiders' Club? His friend calmly climbed the steps, a sort of feigned smile on his face, but with murder in his eyes. He yelled at Max through the door, "You know what your problem is? You have a small conscience. I on the other hand... I've got none at all! You were right in your suspicions. I was your lifelong handler. You've gone off the rails, Max! Now I'm your cleaner!" Max ran for the upstairs as he heard the front door breaking down behind him. It was akin to one of those dreams where your feet move, but you go nowhere. Max seemed to take an eternity in climbing the steps. His friend seemed to close upon him with superhuman speed. Max knew he would never reach the gun cabinet in the far bedroom. He pulled a small stiletto - a letter opener, really - from his coat and turned and took one lunge at his former friend, now turned assailant. Somehow Max got lucky and the thing went right through the man's eye socket. The wound sort of gurgled as Max twisted the object, and the former friend fell backwards with a gasp. Then everything was quiet. Max ran up the stairs, to the gun cabinet in the far bedroom. Soon he was outfitted like a sort of SWAT team member. He had a carbine, and 2 pistols. They all shared 9mm Parabellum; even the same removeable mags. He was carrying some ungodly amount of ammo; like 15 clips of 15 rounds apiece. He didn't even know why, except that he was sure that the attacks upon him would only increase in force and frequency until he; Max were quite dead. Indeed, he had a conscience then. The sounds of the torture victims from the secret meetings echoed through his otherwise empty head. The ethereal visages of the Devil danced upon his very soul, taut as it was as though the whole of it were but the strings of some infernal violin, plucked as they were by some proverbial infernal Piper, playing as it did a dismally overarching tune of hellfire and damnation. He needed to get back to the basement for another rig. He felt around anxiously for a cigarette pack in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out, hands shaking and spilled most of them on the floor, and broke the first one, then grabbed another and succeeded in lighting it. Then he headed straight to the basement. There was fuel in the car. How many miles would it get him? What about the bike in the garage? The 150cc? Could he pack a 5-gallon can of fuel with him? Maybe that made more sense. What would the roads be like? Could he even leave the island? Maybe it was cordoned off. Perhaps everyone on it had been declared a criminal. Maybe they would nuke it! His mind couldn't stop. Some small part of him was simply glad at being at least slightly human again. Suddenly, paper and spreadsheets and women and veal and Ferraris and chardonnay meant next to nothing to him; only a couple of days before they had been his entire world outside of the Insiders' Club. He was in a race with the Devil; and there was no Peter Fonda there to save him. It was at or around 6pm, EST as he set to leave the basement and head to the garage. Susanah revved the Malibu along the highway. It was twilight as she approached St. Louis. She'd driven for a couple of hours. She popped a peyote button to help keep her going. If ever there were a time for peyote, it was at that moment. She lit up another cigarette and smoked as she chewed on the bitter, rubbery button. There wasn't a lot of traffic. Something had happened. Her radio had gone dead. She was driving blind. Suddenly, she could not believe the fast approaching sight ahead, and slowing the traffic to a crawl. As she reduced her speed, she could see an undending land flotilla of vehicles of every stripe, clogging the highway, yet miraculously managing to move, all the same. From what Susanah could see, there were 18-wheel big rigs down to compact cars, old-style tracked M113 carriers, Humvees, classic Jeeps, SUVs, on and on they sprawled forward, seemingly neverending in a certain kind of spectacle. To add to that, they were packed with civilians and soldiers alike, all armed to the teeth. There were automatic rifles, submachineguns, shotguns, and LAW rockets, M60s and .50 cals, Dragons and TOWs. A couple of the 2 1/2 ton trucks were towing 105mm guns. From her witness point the makeshift convoy snaked ahead for miles. Speed had slowed to a mere 15 mph. Again, it was a miracle that the tangle moved at all. She needed to get off of the highway. Her only hope was thus, that the extra features built in to the car would actually work. The loss of her radios had been disheartening. The other features had to take; they just had to. She set aside some small moment to wonder where all of the citizen soldiers were headed, and what calamnity had called for such an event in the first place. It seemed unfathomable. The world had certainly; most definitely gone mad. Of course, when had it ever made sense in the face of human desire? They were on I-64. She sighed and veered off of the highway before the bridge as it lifted above the river. Submersible functions were flipped on, and she drove through the docks and straight into the river. Before she went in though, she could see that the city was on flames, and it wasn't with rock and roll. There were burnt out vehicles everywhere, and dead bodies littered the streets. Had it been a sonic attack? Could she think of anything more than herself? Certainly, the world was larger than she, even in all of her Kentuckianan glory. Was it really though? Was the world actually larger than she, Susanah, Queen Witch of the trailer parks; smoker of the blue grass? Maybe she was the only one, and everyone else were as but cardboard cutouts; interlopers into hers; the only true reality. She needed a joint to energize herself. Soon she was lighting up, as the car dove off the docks. The submersible functions worked! She was like a female Speed Racer, in her personal Mach 5, and traversing just above the murky bottom of the Mississippi River. She surfaced and kept up her pace; 20 knots. Ship traffic was virtually nil. That is to say there were a great deal of ships on the water, but none of them seeemed to be going anywhere. The greater deal of them were listing, or burning, or smoking profusely. The surface of the river was an oily mess. What had brought all of this on? The spied Interstate 55 as it cut in a S-SW direction through the ravaged city. Somehow it was clear, and the convoy moped along it. Where were they going? Her radio came back; at least the shortwave bands. Then she knew. The USA was under attack from China and Mexico. Cities had been hit with biological crap. There was open fighting in many municipalities, between the M13 Latino gang, Chinese and Russian Commandoes, and Islamic Militants who had risen up from their cells on the one hand; and police, militia, and military forces of the USA on the other. It was pure carnage. The radio advised the unarmed to stay away from the cities. It encouraged the armed to form up and go in to the cities and join the fight. As she went, she spied the head of the convoy, and they were dismounting and leaving the road. She could only imagine that the ad hoc force was fanning out through the city and trying to salvage what was left of it after the bio-attack and attendant anti-USA insurgency which had flowered with utter deadliness in its blackened wake. The sound of gunfire and explosions in the distance reached her mind for the first time. Susanah retreated mentally from the cacaphony of death. She continued down the river, and passed under the remains of the I-255 bridge. Below, the blackened water was full of debris so the car had to make its way gingerly. Night was fast falling. She continued down the river, and on toward New Orleans. It was time to activate the talisman as she went. The formerly non-descript bit of jewellry around her neck began to discretely undulate as she launched into an ancient Lakota chant, gaining resonance as the fabulous car went. It was roughly 8pm CST, 22 Jun 2011. Satcha Gonzales began to sing. It was a folk song, passed down by generations of the keepers of the old ways. The landscape began to change. The earth started to tremble. The tent dissolved and a beautiful landscape presented itself instead. Everything became level. There were untold groves of flowering plants, and happy buzzing bees, and laughter from elves punctuated the scene. The Feathered Serpent and Keeper of the Smoking Mirror showed themselves before her, at last. The two opposing brothers of old embraced in an odd fashion, and they seemed to meld into one. Their visage began to spiral, and after a moment they were - the two of them - but a single, large multi-colored wheel spinning in mid-air. Certainly the moment of reconcilliation had arrived. Satcha redoubled her ancient, now joyful singing. Across Latin America, all of the formerly little people basked in their newfound liberation. Their stars were suddenly shining forth for all to see, as though an entirely new universe of stars were being; not so much created but rather unleashed for the seemingly first time. Satcha herself glowed. Her countenance was much like that of Jackie Guerrido of Univision fame. Her own breasts stirred in a sort of metaphysical passion play. It was roughly 11pm in Satcha's time zone. Hours after the first alert, after which a night had passed in pregnant, eery silence; Izzy Gold gave the order to move out. They had nothing left to lose. America had ceased to exist as a cohesive entity. In the fields of the Middle and Near East the sword of the USA was irretrievably broken. Nonsensical firefights had broken out everywhere along the ancient, Islamic Crescent. EMPs and Tesla bombs had disabled much of the communication. It was but a strange twist of fate that the IDF were able to maintain any comms whatsoever. The Merkavas sallied forth through the thick morning air. Even in the early hour, an unnatural heat added to the sense of intensity. Jet fighters flew overhead. All along the Israeli border, the forces of the IDF lunged forth in their bid to conquer the entire Middle East. Soon Izzy's own formation would be in Riyadh. After the destruction of Damascus in the North, the IDF would move in as a police action. In retaliation to the unfolding plan, rockets rained upon Tel Aviv from their launch points in Lebanon. The launch sites were quickly overrun. The use of Tesla weapons had seen to that. Tehran had been fed a nuke. It was a warning to the rest of the world that the Israelis would not go out without a fight. It was not a happy precedent in any event. In the desert, fights broke out all along the line of advance. Breakthroughs were achieved. The free-ranging Merkavas and their accompanying infantry; along with the air support from overhead and effective fire from mobile artillery behind the lines; the combined forces would encircle and destroy their foes in pockets of diminished resistance. The Arab anti-tank assets - the Kornet missiles - had been mitigated by a new Israeli secret defensive system. Locally, it was at 1000 hrs on the 23rd of Jun, 2011 CE when Armageddon had arrived. Sanae Asoh launched into a last spasm of concentration, and across the world St. Louis erupted in the foreshocks of a looming, epochal earthquake. The earthquake machine in front of her sang a song of remote death. Suddenly, all went silent. Then they had tremblors of their own. Sirens were heard, off in the distance. The sky seemed to go dark. Was it, in her exhaustion only Sanae's imagination? She didn't dare look out the high window. Something held her there. Whatever may have been, she was content. Her indomitable spirit had perhaps inexplicably prevailed over the mundane machinations of day-to-day life on earth. Certainly, hers had always been a bright star. As tremblors massaged the landscape, it was roughly 4 pm Tokyo Time, 23 Jun 2011. Mr. Alien checked his preps. He was hunkered down in his bunker; the command center; construction of which had been undertaken with keen foresight. On the other hand, perhaps anyone with the budget of a small nation can see the forest through the trees, while those born with nothing in the way of material spend their entire lives simply fretting about their next meal or a place to sleep; their intellectual capital spent on the harsh altar of earthly reality. That is to say that an examination of the hierarchy of human needs as proposed by Maslow; the same may warrant more than a cursory chortle guffaw. In any event Mr. Alien checked his stockpiles. He tallied everything into a spreadsheet. He checked the seals on his self-contained command center as it resided there about the swamps, in the shadow of the Olympic Range. He had plenty of Cherry 2000s in his closet. There was the Jimi Hendrix DVD collection, and his own pastiche of various and sundry Stratocasters. The gun turrets above were fine. The electrical fence was charged. He needed but to sit out the apocalypse, and emerge into the world as it might begin anew in the aftermath. He had every manner of hi-tech gizmo at his disposal. Mr. Alien was a great human being. Certainly, he had worked for everything he had ever been given. Bamboozling a populace can be tricky stuff, even for a self-appointed king among men. As the tremblors began to flow through, and the water of the Ocean beyond his lagoon fortress began to stir, he settled down for a snack, slathered in patchouli as he was. The sun had long since arisen, even from behind the Olympics as it shone out on the coast in all its barely post-solstice splendour. It was 6am PST, 23rd of Jun 2011. Svetlana Zveroboy writhed in Holy ecstasy. The Spirit found her, and echoed forth to the Russian armies in the fields as they headed out. A large contigent of Russians crossed the mountains and into Syria. They soon met with forward units of the Israeli IDF. Aircraft screeched through the air, giving off a siren song of death as they fought one another for control of the skies amidst the intermittent attacks versus the opposing ground targets. To the West, the Polish frontier was breached, as were the Carpathians leading to Ploesti, Romania. Russian armies moved forward - outward in many directions. At some point perhaps the inevitable occurred. Someone, somewhere launched a fairly large tactical nuke; that is to say it was larger than the mini-nukes which had been developed and deployed by intelligence agencies in committing false flags the world over, as they'd been so wont to do around and about for the decade previous; WTC, Bali, Karachi, etc. The tactical nukes which came into play were the type capable of liquidating large groups of men and material, say 50,000 or 100,000 at a pop, depending upon troop density. Already, the cities of Western Europe were in chaos. Chem and Bio agents had been released by their enemies. As well, a great deal of insurgency had broken out on the part of the Moslems living there. As in the USA, Europeans found themselves fighting for their lives, but against the invading Russians from the East, and African and Asian (Pakistani and East Indian) immigrants from within. Someone had popped of an EMP. Communications were down across the continent. Fighting raged in every town and city. Looting, plunder, and death were the order of the day. Many went insane in the face of the maelstrom. The Russians continued to encroach from the East, and their commandoes in forward positions in the cities 'behind the lines' added to the chaos of the Islamic insurgency, first through the aforementioned Chem and Bio attacks, and then through front-line participation in the destruction of vital infrastructure such as bridges, power stations, and the like. The Holy Orthodox Spirit swept forth from the church in Moscow where Svetlana writhed and rolled in a sort of forlorn ecstasy. For better or worse, it affected the outcome of events everywhere the Russians were engaged. It was 8pm in Moscow, 24 of Jun 2011; almost 57 years to the day from the launching of Operation Bagration; at the time the proverbial Swan Song of Nazi Germany's Armies in the fields of the East. Suffice it to say that, at the time; Bagration made Normandy look like a drop in the bucket. Kassa and his crew had gently dislodged the artifact from its ancient prison, there in the dirt and rock. It was definitely the thing they had been looking for. It was made of pure gold, all one piece. It had 6 branches, 3 from each side. All six branches depicted an almond blossom, with bulb and flower. There were also 4 additional cups shaped like almond blossoms, and bulb under each pair of branches. There were 7 lamps attached to the thing, one on the end of each branch, and one on the top. It was remarkable how well preserved the artifact was. Kassa and his crews called for the Ark from the temple nearby. With the lampstand and the Ark, they might summon the Holy of Holies. The ritual began at dawn, and carried through past dusk. Throughout the day they sang in praise, exhultation, and lamentation. The women danced about in sheer harem pants with matching halter tops while the priests revelled in long-forgotten incantations. By the fall of night or somewhere just past, they witnessed the presence of IT; there as IT manifested in all of ITs glorious rage, in the center of the large, makeshift temple tent. The priests bowed down in awe. They were afraid; very afraid. The being glowered in darkness; darker than anyone or anything they had ever seen. The women wept in a sort of ecstatic terror. The ultimate interloper was resident. IT stood perhaps 7 feet tall, and resembled an extremely angry version of a member of Parliament Funkadelic, adorned as IT were in a sort of intergalactic garb. It was blackened beyond any human fathoming, to the point of shining forth an at once irresistably beautiful yet deathening white light. It was 10pm Addis Ababa Time, 24th of Jun 2011. Even in their cloistered underground environment, the scientists and security guards were aware of the overarching chaos which was quickly enveloping the earth. Over the previous hours, the collider had taken on a seeming life of its own. Yamamoto and his staff in all their panicky sweat had taken their overclothes off, and were then a mass of frantic button pushers and knob twirlers, there in their drenched lingerie. The guards looked on in disbelief, trigger fingers at the ready. Everyone present was at the point of exhaustion. Many had crossed the threshold into actual madness. The Captain chained smoked Gitanes from the guard room. Sleep menaced his mind. He had to stay awake. Then with some ghastly antediluvian wail, the machine seized up. Had the generators failed? Certainly the grid was down. The lights overhead blinked. The air was suddenly thick, as though the fabric of space and time had been torn asunder, revealing some hideously profound underlying truth. An energy seized them all and cascaded outward from within the mountain. On the surface, the installations burst into flame. In the skies above, a storm broke out. The ground was saturated in an instant deluge. Yamamoto and his underlings were cast into a sort of cosmic vortex. The guards as well were sent reeling to a place beyond the outer spheres. A gargantuan Sothoth swirled at the point between myriad realities, previously separated by a series of etheric veils, but then merged in a seething, rampant chaos. The nexus of art, religion, and science had been forged. Things might never be the same; yet perhaps they were only as they had always been; only now it was clear for all to witness. The time was noon in Geneva. It was the 24th of Jun, 2011. Using impulse power, Jack followed the cascading formation of dragons as they crossed through space and hurled themselves toward Earth. Back on Mars, and in the alien cave beneath the burnt out Illuminati base, city had itself had come alive again. Alien life forms teemed along the unfathomable lanes. Be that as it may, soon the skies of Earth would be blackened by the might of a veritable host or cornucopia of dragons. Jack had no real news of what had transpired on earth. He had no sense of his own function. As he meandered behind the throng of dragons, he contemplated the god Baal, and wondered if some rock star had once made a pact with the same. Then he thought about how Westerners seemed so wont to exploit women of the 3rd world, and wondered if these women would have ever given such men the time of day were it not for their own dire material need. Jack also wondered about the local males in these 3rd world locales, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, etc. Jack wondered how the native males felt at seeing their own women exploited as they were by foreigners. What was it about the Westerners that they couldn't handle their own women, and instead needed to travel halfway across the globe in order to enter a liason where they might instead be in - at least perceived - control. Had the women of the West so hardened themselves against their own men, to the point where these same men retreated into the brothels of the East? When Jack considered the possibilities, he could arrive at no real conclusion, let alone moral judgement on the matter. For whatever reason though, the entire business disturbed his own sense of propriety. Jack wondered about pain and pleasure; life and death; a panoply of opposites. He pondered the actual identity or meaning of the dragons before him. Had they always guided human events, even through their apparent, aeon-spanning hibernation in the Martian cavern? Whatever else they may or may not have been, the space auto was certainly much more capable than they from a speed standpoint. Jack was at a mere crawl compared to the warp drive capabilities his craft possessed. This is why his trip to Mars - alone - had taken but moments, whilst the return trip to Earth as a sort of unregarded escort of the dragon leagues was taking hours. Jack estimated that it might be several more hours before they would actually breach the Earth's atmosphere. He wondered what else to ponder, and listened to some Mingus, Coltraine, and Monk. After that he lit up a joint and listened to Jim Morrison and the L.A. Doors. Studies had been made about zero loss of motor control from the THC in the weed. Thus he had no concerns about flying while 'high.' A part of him wondered though if life might be better without the weed. Of course, which parts were actually he, and which parts were of some other; the jury was out. It was somewhere between Earth and Mars, 9pm EST. At the onset of hostilities elsewhere, Sambath and Vannak had been on a tour of Angkor Wat. They were accompanied by other members of their troupe; Molinda, Sokhom, Rathavy, Sok, Julie, Mory, Stephanie, Thavy, Sothear, Sandy, and last but not least, Samnang and Leakhena. Escorting them were a coterie of Buddhist monks. At word of the outbreak of war abroad, they had spent the past day and night in a great fast, and meditation about the ancient place. Then, as the sun watched mercifully overhead, something miraculous happened. More dancers materialized out of the sculptures. They were Apsara spirits made flesh; legend become reality. The group of them; the dancer troupe, the monks, the angels made flesh; all began to sing a sweet Khmer folk song, and the underpinnings of the male tones served as a sturdy platform for the intermingling notes from the women which would hang and drip from the air like droplets of honey. The sky opened and their collective love of life was reciprocated then. They were caressed, one and all by the feathers of metaphysical ecstasy. It was noon in Phnom Penh. In Bavaria, Kurt and Mitzi exhausted themselves in their glorified task of Vril manipulation. Suddenly the Supermen poured through the gates. They were everywhere, yet nowhere at all. They joined the fray about and around Europe. With their magical hammers and birds of war, they scattered the opposition as they went. Boundaries were erased. Friend and foe became unidentifiable. Kurt and Mitzi went mad in one another's arms, sobbing as the world sank beneath them. It was 9 am in Bavaria. Scant hours later in the bowels beneath the city of Chengdu, Yin Ling - the former racequeen, wrestler, and Asian supermodel worked with redoubled concentration. She had received word of the goings on, there and abroad. The opening hours of the campaign had been a mixed success. All satellites were down. The ports on the West Coast of the USA were in the process of being secured. The combined Chinese Navy was engaging the U.S. Navy in a series of actions across the Pacific. News of the battles was spotty. Suffice it to say that losses were great on both sides. A number of nukes had gone off. The Russians had first employed scalar weapons against targets about the Earth. Other nations with similar capabilities had quickly joined into the unseen fray; the USA, Germany, Japan, Brazil, Vietnam, India, the Koreas, and Israel. The commando operations against JORN and HAARP had ended in the capturing by the Chinese of both, but in each case the installation had been rendered inoperable. The land campaign out of Mexico against the American Southwest had seen more mixed results. There were breakthroughs, but no exploitation. The Americans, acting at the orders of their female president, had presented an ad hoc yet effective defense that no one had foreseen. NORAD had been compromised from within, but soon after the first shots had been fired, they'd been ignored by their supposedly suboordinate units. Across China and in the cities, the Bio and Chem attacks against the West had been met, tit for tat by operatives of the same. There was widespread panic amidst the death in the Chinese cities. A giant Chinese Army had been literally vaporized by a combination of scalar and nuclear effects as it had tried to force a mountain pass on the way to the Middle East. In the countryside, there was no panic. The peasant militias formed, and received their orders to range far and wide, into the Russian far East to the North, to India, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in directions South. Another massive formation had been sent headlong into the Middle East inferno. Yet these operations might take days or weeks to unfold. What could Yin Ling and her compatriots accomplish in the meantime from their fortified base? The floor trembled. Yin Ling knew that, with the chain of command broken and outside communications spotty at best; that the decision to unleash China's biggest E-bomb was in her hands. Did she dare unleash such a potentially destructive weapon? It was 5 pm in Beijing. Yin Ling pushed the big red button, and sat back and awaited the fate of the world. III The earth shook, even more than it had for years previous. Chengdu undulated above them as Yin Ling and her team braced themselves below. The shockwaves expanded outward, engulfing first the immediate countryside, and then the whole of China, and finally the entire Earth. It were as though the Earth were a giant bell, and it had been rung by some gargantuan monster wielding a spectral hammer. The effects were cascading. That ulimate of defining moments had been reached. The cascading effects were chained. The chinese E-bomb resonated with the Yakuza earthquake apparatus, which in turn linked into the machinations of the Supermen or Keepers of the Midnight Sun in their rampage across Europe. Snow fell everywhere North of Rome. These energies further colluded in their metaphysical wont with the wormhole of the supercollider at Geneva; and in turn the blackened God of Addis Ababa - a veritable Jehovah - fed off of this spiralling chaos. From there the Holy Spirit of the Eastern Orthodox church intermingled with the etheric manifestations along the chain. This mixture of sacred and profane fed off of the goings-on at the temple in Jerusalem; at the sacred rock in Mecca. From there the swirling dual entity which had been the Feathered Serpent and Keeper of the Smoking Mirror fed into the gnawing, fantastical fray. Susanah Haute's magical pendant resonated in heretofore unfathomable fashion with the rising din of sudden and irrevocable change. Max Silverstein found himself waking up on the floor of his basement. He had never made it out. No one had come to get him. He was in the midst of an epiphany. He was there, yet he wasn't. His star shone forth and mingled with the others. A new universe was being hatched. Rachel Spectre turned into golden vapor in the midst of a firefight, where she was leading irregulars against some interlopers in a city. All of the participants in all of the frays were similarly unconstituted. Mr. Alien found himself as a single grain of sand on the beach outside of his former fortress, which itself had been destroyed by electromagnetic effects; the origins of which are not entirely known. Sriram had overseen the fighting of a couple of more fights, but the Djinns had eventually bored of their task and abandoned him in the wilderness as they disappeared back through a portal to another dimension. Sriram didn't have the heart to follow then, and in the hours which had passed since, he had been content to smoke off of his brick of hashhish. The air was alive with magic. It was enough for him. Suddenly, religion and nations no longer mattered. He was certainly praising Allah in any event, for Allah is - if nothing else - merciful. Jack found himself spiralling into a vortex, and soon lost consciousness. His last vision was of dragons circling the Earth. Melody Li and Bruce Chan made love in the night before it all ended, there beneath the stars of the Pacific. Somehow they had avoided being anywhere near the major naval engagements. They were probably three hundred nautical miles off of the coast of the USA. They spent the rest of the night laughing and playing Xiang Qi as they brushed up on their conversational Mandarin. With the onset of the final, cascading chaos, they had found themselves been drawn into the energy of the totality of the thing. Tex Longhorn had turned to silver light, again in the midst of a firefight. He had placed his Company at a road junction which turned out to have been at the center of one of the greatest Chinese-Mexican thrusts, but obviously it wouldn't matter. The great thing was that Tex had lived a life as a lover of liberty, and in the end had done the best he could. Life often deals a person a poor poker hand, but the biggest stars among us rise up and grab the brass ring despite it all. It didn't matter in any event. The field was levelled then. The earth was formed anew. The Dragons had arrived to remake the world. They had taken all of the spiralling energy fluctuations which had linked in a metaphysical chain and awaited that final diamond which might complete the circle of rebirth; that the same would emerge unbroken. The completing energy was the love of the Apsara; the female angels, and women of Cambodia. Together, their love had literally saved, and been the ultimate catalyst which had paved the way for the remaking of the world. Now the dragons had stable material to work with. The worlds of the living and the dead became one. All who had ever lived on this plane were reunited with each of the rest. Whatever the reader can imagine as a perfect world; that is what happened next. Everyone lived happily ever after; and it could perchance be said, all because of the ultimate love of the Cambodian women. The End Credits: The original poem, "Melody Lee" ("Melody Li") was by the band, the Damned from their album Machine Gun Etiquette, circa 1976.