Warnings & Gameshows

The cabinet meeting continued through the agenda as planned with little to no outburst from anybody, including the president. The more salient points were discussed first, followed by issues requiring slight debate and finally the planning team gridlocked on the pressing current military strategy problems. This particular meeting at the president’s favorite round table (it reminded him of Camelot, a name the media never associated with his administration) presented a new problem that had been getting exponentially worse over the last month. The group of advisors had discussed and rehashed plans considered outside of the box with their new conundrum. Theories fluttered around the table until the general’s aide stepped in the room to hand him a file folder. “I repeat, sir, this is not a case of one or two missing items.” Defense Secretary and former four-star general Bartholomew Wiggins was losing patience because they wouldn’t understand something that he couldn’t logically explain. “Folks, as I’ve said, we have some very strange reports coming in from the Middle East this week. Things that so far have not been confirmed nor have they been understood by any of the technicians or pencilneck analysts we sent over there.” He browsed the file while everyone conversed. His eyes went wide.

Everyone at the table had read the report except the president who had various members of the cabinet summarize it for him over the course of the morning. His advantage to this, he believed, was that he received the information in layers as well as gaining new insight on his employees.

“What kind of reports?” the president asked.

“Missing items and people, sir. And according to this…” he motioned to the papers in front of him with a sort of helpless pleading. What he was reading did not complicate things any less.

The president waited for more and extended his hands to indicate as much.

“We’ll, sir, we currently lost 32nd Armor Division and 108th Airborne, including their training vehicles.” The table stirred because that newest statistic was not in the morning’s report and was a significant leap from the missing firearms or occasional rocket launcher reported a mere few minutes before.

“When did that happen?” It was Press Secretary Feverly who spoke. The president shot him a glance.

“1030 hours today.” Wiggins scanned the report looking for some explanation or theory. “The strangest part is the GPS in each vehicle arrested at the same moment, all vehicle cams, radios and weapons systems vanished together.” Barry leaned over his file and grabbed the remote for the overhead projector. “Here’s the last comprehensive image of our divisions in an arid and flat stretch of desert.” A satellite image of Southern Afghanistan revealed thousands of blotches from vehicles and men running maneuvers to the West of their current base locations. The feed indicated that the time of the image was 1021 hours.

Barry sighed against the barrage of questions he was about to get from the president’s think tank. He hit the slide advance button. “This is what we had four minutes later.” The desert was bare - no men, no vehicles, no carnage. The sand was white, hot and empty. The table erupted.

“It’s like the sand swallowed them up!”

“They were nuked!” General Gerard “Tugs” Toober desperately wanted a reason to play with his codes and shiny red buttons that launched monstrosities into the air.

Wiggins responded to Toober first. “No signature of any weapon based on first reports.”

“Well, where did they go?”  The president looked around the table for someone to explain.

General Wiggins coughed into his hand. “We don’t know, sir.”

“Well, I need some answers and I need them now.” The president searched for points to argue but he was never a strong one for debate. “There’s hundreds of Americans missing, millions of dollars of equipment, and weapons! We need to account for them weapons.” This was not how he wanted the meeting to end. A meeting that ended in turmoil usually cut into his time budgeted for fun. He saw eighteen holes dwindle into nine. “Barry, you’d better get some answers, now.”

No one spoke for a long minute because they were waiting for it to happen. The average citizen imagines that working in the White House mirrors the television portrayals depicting stately meetings, long monologues laced with facts and festooned with statistics,  and people working tirelessly in three day long, well-choreographed stretches. A little known fact about governmental meetings on this sort of scale: they generally last fifteen minutes where usually one person, regardless of gender, race or age, ends up in their office crying. Sometimes one person would emerge from the meeting a hero while others prayed they weren’t the last one standing when the president’s cheery music stopped playing in his head.

But shortly after Defense Secretary Wiggins picked up the phone to make three calls, the president’s mood had bled out from nine holes in Virginia to playing Playstation 2 golf in his office. It was then that Feverly asked his two questions.

“Barry, has any one claimed responsibility and has any other country had similar reports lately?”

Before the man could answer, a small flame appeared in the center of the table and burst into a bright image of a man, a man in a bright dazzling toga holding a hammer and chisel in his hands and a sack of scrolls over his shoulder. The women screamed and most of the men shifted nervously in their seats.

“Security!”

Before the room could erupt in chaos or security teams could get the doors opened, the image spoke. “Leaders of the United States, I offer you an olive branch to deliver you a message.”

“I love this show!” the President said, looking under the table. “Where’s Ashton Kutcher?”

The little avatar smiled. “As an admirer of the classics, could you at least honor Art Linkletter instead?” The man sighed as if dealing with the simple minded were his eternal curse. “I am here to deliver you a message that unheeded will lead to your destruction.”

“What… who are you? What is your business here?” General Chambers asked. The doors remained closed despite the secret service’s best attempts to open them. The two agents in the meeting resorted to hand signs because their radios failed in the moment. To discharge weapons at an apparition in the center of a round, well-attended table of VIPs was a bad idea.

“My name is inconsequential for this will be the only time we ever meet and I go by many monikers, but for you, the American people, I will be Horatio the Chronicler.” The crowd in the room settled.

The president leaned in close to his homeland security advisor and whispered, “This is the last place I’d think Kutcher would try to pull one of them punk’ds.” He looked around again. “They disguise the cameras so well I can’t tell where any of them are.”

“Sir,” whispered the woman, “I think this is real.”

The president laughed. “Okay, Janet, for you I’ll play along.”

“My job as Chronicler is relatively simple. I am the first and the last of our race whose job it is to record the story of our world on the great wall of history.” The image spun around to address everyone at the table. “The rules allow me to try to make an impression based on the patterns I see. I see your world in danger and wish to warn you as I did the Trojans, the Aztecs and the Roanokians.”

“Jesus Christ!” the Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture muttered. Unlike most of the people in the room, he didn’t want to be there. The Director of the Department of Agriculture liked to golf on Saturdays so he sent the deputy as his replacement.

“No, that’s not who you will be dealing with but you may think so after a while. No doubt by now you have found yourselves on the receiving end of some interesting things, like the dead rising, men bursting into flame for no reason, smaller, meeker birds devouring larger and more formidable birds of prey, and people drowning in their own blood.” Horatio had said it all in simply, commonplace terms for them, but they looked to each other wondering if Ashton Kutcher really was working with the secret service.

The president continued to scan the room for possible cameras and settled his gaze on the potted plant on the small table across from his seat. He smiled into it saying, “That certainly sounds great, but none of that has happened here?”

The avatar’s brow wrinkled, “No? Well let me look here?” Horatio placed both the hammer and chisel on to the floor, which in this case was the conference table, and started to rummage around in his sack throwing scrolls all over the place. One scroll rolled to the edge of the table near Feverly who reached for it cautiously. “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

Finger connected with scroll resulting in a large flash and Feverly screaming.

“That stung!”

Horatio wagged a scroll at Feverly. “I warned you.”

The president giggled into the clock behind him. “You guys are all in on this? First time you all worked together so well.” The president rocked on his heels. He turned to the FBI Director and nodded. “I love this stuff. Looks real, don’t it?”

“Ahhh, here it is.” Scroll unrolled, The Chronicler read from the center of his parchment. “How about attacked by giants, sea serpents devouring your navy or sudden inexplicable disappearances of your legions?”

“Yes!” General Wiggins declared. “We are missing a battalion, errr, legions.”

The little man looked relieved. “Thank goodness, I was starting to think I was in the wrong place.” Little fists jammed scrolls back into the sack. “In that case, I come to you with, as I said before, a dire warning. Listen closely.”

“The time of the great banishment is over and the old gods are returning. You, as a world superpower, will threaten them so they will come for you. The omens shall magnify and your people will witness some things they might not believe.”

“Old gods?” Feverly dared to ask for clarification. “Like lords of all creation?”

“Not exactly,” Horatio scratched the chisel thoughtfully on his skull. “Imagine a someone who feels the world revolves around them, that they should be honored and worshiped by all, and no rules should ever apply to them. That last one is the whole reason for the Great Banishment in the first place.”

“So like a celebrity?” asked Feverly.

“Yes, except the paparazzi tends to go blind if they sneak a peek. Cross Paris Hilton with Wonder Woman, that’s what’s coming for you. Beware mortals, these beings do not shake off the mortal coil easily. Don’t be like Troy, heed the warning.” With that, they little man twirled in a vortex of light that receded with a pop.

The group of advisors looked at each other in disbelief. Gods returning? Superbeings hell bent on ruling the world? A Paris Hilton that can melt mountains with her eyes? The unbelievable sounded depressing.

Then the president spoke up, “Damn, that was good. Where’s Kutcher?”