The Second Take

“Is Assmachestan responsible for the recent activity in LusciousLocks and Styx and are you an Assmachestani agent?”

[…]

“Yes.”

All very ironic considering in just over a week the nilbmahian army would frame Foggistan as the culprit and two-thirds of the countries in the multinational force would declare war on apparently the wrong nation. But jacob didn’t know this. But the magistrate probably did.

“I trust that you, mr. martin, are bright enough to see through the phantom Assmachestan cast by the Foggistani propaganda in the myths of Planet Breckinridge. Unfortunately, most are not so perceptive. Anyways, you’ll be finding more about Assmachestan regardless of what I tell you so I’ll just leave that to you. And I trust I don’t need to detail your suffering if you let this slip. Good night mr. martin.”

It was a huge break through for jacob. He left the corrison hotel and returned home at 3:27 am to celebrate with a bottle of scotch. Sure, Assmachestan was an enigma but now, finally now, he knew what puzzle he was trying to unravel. Where was his friend winfry when he needed him?

_______________________________________________________

elizabeth wasn’t sure what to think anymore but that didn’t stop her from thinking. The news of the atrocity of Lokton shocked her just as much as the rest of the world. Foggistan really did seem to be caught red-handed this time but they denied responsibility so vehemently that it would be foolish if they really were behind the massacre. But maybe that was exactly the game they were playing. Foggistan screamed foul play, with hints of almost pleading unnatural for the superpower. They refused to acknowledge any of the declarations of war made against them and they argued that only a terrorist group would have the motivation for the recent events in LusciousLocks and the moon of Styx. And that’s what kept the jury out for elizabeth: why would Foggistan siege LusciousLocks? What was in it for them? And why LusciousLocks? Surely this wasn’t the smoothest way to increased power in Coralende. And the other nations of Coralende, even with their secret services working overtime, must have been just as confused as she was because no nation had shot more than words against Foggistan. It was a dramatic stand still between the block bully and handful of smaller kids. A few others, like nilbmah, watched from on top the fence.

Whatever was going on in LusciousLocks was certainly connected somehow to the recent events in nilbmah. elizabeth was almost sure of it. So it was good that the blood-shed restriction prevented nilbmah from declaring war until the restriction got repealed. At least, probably it was.

That was her problem. All this confusion had thrown her resistance movement into an existential crisis. Before, with the censorship and the curfew and everything, it seemed so obvious that the people of nilbmah were being had. But now, now with the news from Lockton and that accursed mr. martin and his wretched propaganda press, the whole nation seemed so united and fervent. It had been decades if not centuries since nilbmah had such drive. It was harder to see how resistance to this renewed enthusiasm would help her nation. And what if Foggistan really was making a grab for Coralende? Then, heave forbid, she would be on the wrong side! So in spite of herself, elizabeth got picked up by the current of nationalism. For two and a fourth days she did nothing related to the resistance, which for a type A-for-always-getting-things-done personality like elizabeth was a diagnosis for clinical depression. Then she found out about isabel englewood.

But elizabeth wasn’t thinking about all that at the moment. How could she? Just then she was fighting claustrophobia as she crawling through an airtight air vent in the nilbmah military base. And worst of all she was 1 minute and 42 seconds off schedule.

The information from the drives stolen from the palace of the politburo allowed the resistance, which had begun to condense around elizabeth, to pinpoint where to steal weapons. This was their first theft and the explosives from this job would help them acquire even greater supplies in the future. There was a lot riding on this unicycle, which made the 1 minute and 42 seconds all the more distressing.

After a week of monitoring the facility, the plan was as follows: Two members of the resistance, equipped with uniforms and forged basic access badges, would enter the building during the morning rush hour. They would then spend the morning walking to and from different bathrooms until 11:45 am. Then alexi marden would enter the office of jackalin gifner, a senior officer of programming who was scheduled to be on vacation. From ms. gifner’s computer, alexi would access the inventory records and add 2 more cases of self-launching thermo-detonators to last Tuesday’s training module. And then at 11:47 am when the 4th, 5th, and 6th regiments had completely transitioned to lunch and would have no business in the ward III armory, susan mart would remove 2 cases of self-launching thermo-detonators and slide them into the room’s northern air vent. Then later that night, at 8:30 pm, elizabeth would enter the facility with the night cleaning staff, go to the ladies’ room and enter the air vents, which were mapped out in the blueprints they found on the drives from the palace. She would have 30 minutes to get the detonators and climb through the vents to the roof. At 9:15 pm, when the base’s magno-illius reactor began to recycle, an illius disk that was “carelessly” left unlocked by one of the technicians, susan mart, would shut down all secondary power (including all lights). This would black out the entire facility for 1 minute while the emergency secondary power booted up. This minute of darkness would be enough time for elizabeth to jump off the 9 story roof with a recreation glider and sail over the fence into the nearby brush without being caught by the sentinel towers. But if she were just a minute late or even worse 1 minute and 42 seconds late, by the time she got on the roof the lights would be back on.

She already had the detonators. And they were actually much lighter than she expected. She could make up the time. She just needed to stay calm. Breath, slowly.

She had lost time while tying the cases to her leg so that she could drag them along behind her as she crawled through the air vents. Tying knots around both cases with only three slivers of light and zero elbow room gulped up more time than she anticipated.

She was making up the time though. After 10 minutes of crawling, her body had figured out how to move in such cramped quarters without constantly jabbing itself and the walls. She was in the final stretch to the roof. All she had to do was climb two flights up through the air shaft. It was actually easier than it seemed because she just had to push her back into one side with her feet on the other and then vertical-walk herself up to the top. She had practice with similar shafts in the mobile 9 building and she was good. Even with the extra weight of the cases she was flying up the shaft. Finally her heart rate began to let up. She was almost at the top and she was back on schedule.

With only a half a floor left to climb, her shirt, which she used to slide her back up the metal walls, became un-tucked and her soft, lightly perspiring skin stuck her back to metal, jamming the brakes on her climb.

It was ok. Stay calm. Breath. All she had to do was slip her shirt back down and she was going to be fine. She still had time. She was going to be fine. She was just pulling her shirt back down. Easy. She was plummeting down the shaft!

Her gut jumped out of her mouth and she slammed her feet against the shaft braking her fall with the skin of her back. She had only fallen about 8 meters but her nerves were shaken.

She had lost her legs to a wobble. She could hear her heart kick-drum in her arteries. She was losing time. She was panicking.

After 32 seconds, She finally began to pull herself together and back up the shaft. But she slipped again. Only about 20 centimeters but enough to give her nerves another shake.

She took it slower this time. Her legs steadied out. Her drummer settled down. Her head knocked into the cap of the roof vent. She was there. She had made it!

She was 2 minutes and 19 seconds late. Shit! And elizabeth didn’t curse.

During the fall, elizabeth had forgotten about time but before she opened the cap and exposed herself to security, she check. What should she do? Plan B was to go back to the bathroom and sneak the cases out in a cleaning truck but that would require a lot of sweet talking to get past security. It could work but it was dangerous. Very dangerous. Even if it did work, she would be on the security tapes and her secret identity would be as good as gone. She decided to check out the roof. Maybe the emergency power was slower than they thought.

She opened the cap to darkness. The lights were still off! For then. She didn’t know how much time she had. The lights could flash on in any second. She quickly climbed out of the vent, pulled up the cases and sprung the glider out of its storage tube. All the while, she was ready to jump back into the shaft in case the lights came one. She was almost ready. She just had to fasten into the glider and strap the cases to her back. But once she got in the glider it would be much harder to hide if the lights came back on. Did she have time? Her drummer was back at allegro. She decided to jump.

Getting in the glider was easy. But strapping on the cases, while weaving through all the glider’s poles, was a challenge. She needed to go faster. The lights would be on any second. She had the first case attached. Faster!

She got the second case on. There was no time for fear of heights now. She 9 stories high but she had to turn her brain off. The tanks on the ground looked so small it was nauseating. Her head started to spin. Turn it off!

Running across the roof in the glider with two cases of detonators was terribly awkward. It was like, elizabeth imagined, running while 8 months pregnant. Oddly enough, that thought, in the middle off all that crazy, turned off her brain to the 100 meter drop and the lights that might turn on and she soared. She soared off the roof and over the fence and into the brush and the lights remained out.

She got lucky, too lucky.

After delivering the detonators to a hidden storage space, she returned home at 11:36 pm, made a shot of espresso, massaged lotion onto her metal-burned back and began working on the isabel englewood article. jacob martin wasn’t going to get away that easy.