(ICTP2) Incident At The Centre Of The Universe - Part 3

Trying his best not to stutter as he read from the floating teleprompter above his head.
President Pork E. Pig, 89th President of the United American Empire, famous cartoon character and ex-Governor of California adressed his people, stabbing the air emphatically with his right trotter,a look of serious indignation wrinkling his powder-pink porcine features.

“I feel that, as your President, I must address a recent terrible tragedy that has shocked many of you as it has I. The senseless, brutal and cowardly act of terrorism witnessed by many earlier today. I refer of course to the attack upon the Teargas street temple where many fine, noble and patriotic American citizens were horribly incinerated. Rest assured that our intelligence and law-enforcement services are working hard to unmask the heinous perpetrators of this terrible attrocity and that the Wrath of the American people shall be brought down upon them. Make no mistake”.

He shook his head and his stuttering became more noticable as his passion increased, “ ’aint n-n-no one m-m-messes with God’s P-p-people and gits away with it. Y’hear!’, his voice sank low and he spoke slowly as if reciting a prayer,his hand jabbing downwards in time to the strident marching anthem which now rose in accompaniment to his words, “For out of defeat we shall bring
victory! Out of despair we shall bring hope and out of pain we shall bring
J-j-justice! So help me God!”.

The pre-recorded sound of applause came from out of a battery of loud speakers and drifted across the Whitehouse lawn and through Alchemi’s television screen into his apartment.

Alchemi lived on the hundred-thousandth floor of a billion storey star-scraper. One of the tallest in San Fairy Ann.At its peak it penetrated the stratosphere and was sometimes a danger to low-flying interstellar traffic. Its basement was sunk several leagues beneath the Earth’s crust from which it drew geo-thermal energy for heating and hot-water. It wasn’t such a bad place to live when the elevator was working although the view from his balcony was totally obscured by white clouds. Every apartment was equipped with two sets of parachutes incase there was a fire or a terrorist attack although often Alchemi would see suicides rocket downwards past his window without one, screaming to God and wishing they hadn’t jumped. Usually he’d reach out and try to save them but at this moment in time Alchemi was beginning to think that perhaps the Lemming option might not be so bad after all.

Suspended half-way between ceiling and floor the still unconscious Fassion lay limply draped across his Japanese floating Zero-ji© mattress (purchased on Doctors orders to compensate for his chronic backache caused by years of slouching). A white continental quilt was poured over her and hanging down on either side so that she looked rather like a big white cumulous cloud or a fat ghost and quite often as he stared at her asleep she would mumble and moan unhappily in the midst of some terrible nightmare which only added to her ghostliness.

Somewhere in his room, thought Alchemi as he drank his umpteenth ovalteen,was some lightly stained invisi-flage fabric which he had bought from a survivalist shop in Stungun street in order to cover up his rooms excess of grime and clutter. In the plan that he was now desperately formulating it played an integral part. Unfortunately he couldn’t seem to find it and he had, for the past few hours, just been sitting in a daze imagining his own death or some other greater catastrophe.