The President walked on stage under a torrent of applause.

Respect was evident from each in this crowd. Emilio was used to it. The short man smiled and took the time to make eye contact with much of the audience. Students were barely able to hold back their true emotions. Invisible over the room and to the assembly was a generous flow of Rho waves generated by a pre-teenager millions of miles away. As the waves pulsed away from mars, they grew in power. At the moment Sophie's mood was good, she was awaiting her father's connection to the system curious by the game. She would see him walk, talk and interact as if he were whole.

The importance of the current events could not curb the room's enthusiasm. The slightly portly man was humanity's best hope. "Heavy" did not begin to describe the President's task of dismantling the multiple doomsday plots which converged on November 21st.

He held both arms high in the sky like any good politician absorbing the moment. He was a born showman. He waved and smiled. There was nothing short of four minutes and seven seconds of applause before the cheer level began to lower. Everyone needed to show their emotion in this simple way. In billions of homes around the world, people were unable to stay still. Many stood and applauded. Parents even woke their children to make sure they remembered this moment. The Internet was on fire. Those sitting in the broadcasting booths noticed background music fade in. Marilyn remained firmly on the steering wheel. The blind opera singer Andrea Bocelli sang in duet with Celine Dion. As the song ended, so did the endless flow of applauds as if she had picked the song timed perfectly to calm the cheers.

Emilio was wearing a grey suit, a tie, and a buttoned-up vest. His red silk tie was the only touch of color on the stage. Emilio walked to Francois and shook his hand. He hugged him and invited the crowd to sit. Slowly, they did. Clicker and microphone in hand, Emilio was ready to begin his presentation. The Mexican walked to the right of the stage where Marilyn's Rho chamber stood powered off. The technology felt out of place in this renaissance building. The anachronism was hypnotic, second only to the President's sheer presence. With the tip of his fingers, he gently caressed the glass. It felt cold. He flipped a red switch on its side, and the computers and the screen began to power up. In his mind, he had seen which button to touch to warm up this device. To everyone else, Emilio simply was gifted and always did the right thing.

The strange looking man was humanity's champion; even his harshest critics were now silent. The politics were finally gone. It was undeniable -- humankind was vulnerable and on the edge of extinction. As he spoke, the world listened the same way children are taught about life-changing decisions by their parents.

"All of the key protagonists of this story agree on one thing: the general population, that means you here and at home, are important enough to get a front row seat to every part of what is going on. Sophie's instincts tell us to be open and transparent. She shares with us humiliating or painful parts of her past with purpose. The girl is an open book and insists on transparency and frankly, who am I to disagree." He walked around and again sought the eyes of the crowd.

"Sophie traveled a couple of days ago to a place called the Underworlds. If we are to believe any part of the story unfolding before us, our American darling connected on a deeper level with the Multiverse itself. The images returned are simply too much for any of us to understand. Sophie, on the other hand, appears to be undisturbed by what is going on. She seems to understand what needs to be done. That's very reassuring in more than one way.

He was talking to himself, gazing high above the crowd, "She decided to enter this place, beyond time, flanked with Liam and Marilyn. She did not bring her father. Somehow Sophie is insulating Laurent from this madness. Second, as if animated by the same desire of transparency, Sophie asked Marilyn to broadcast images of the encounter with the Multiverse as coherently to us as she could. The initiative was noteworthy. Personally, I know most of it can't be understood. The scenes where Sophie cries, her mother and even Marilyn's fear is simply not something we would expect on prime-time television, yet there it was.”

"There has to be a reason why we all must be part of the Sixth Attraction. Somehow both Sophie and Marilyn agree, the human species must be given a front seat to these events. I have a guess as to why that must be, but for the moment I will keep my intuition to myself. It does have to do with these waves. What is clear is that I must also be transparent and involve you all in whatever I do next."

There was a long silence in the room. Emilio grabbed the scotch tumbler on the table next to Francois, smelled it and placed it back. "Now you understand why I don't drink and calm myself smelling a strong drink. For years I had to live with thinking everyone saw me as an alcoholic. To me, it's like wearing earplugs at a Grand Prix of Formula One. Once this task is over, and I hand this job to Sophie's dad, I plan to be black-out drunk for a full year.

No one dared laugh.

"In about an hour, I will step into this capsule, hook-up my brain and play Round 28 along with the thirty-one remaining players. Sophie's father is at the Center, and the other players are making their way to the Electoral Center. I am told CNN is broadcasting the second catapult landing just about now." Emilio touched the glass of the tube; he was unable to detect any imperfection. "This surface is smooth and transparent, how can it be made of little robots? Electoral's nanotechnology is scary even to me. We now cohabit our solar system with a creature of godly power capable of destroying our race with a click of a button -- yet here we stand. She is helping us forward."

The glass tube was shining under the stage lights. The metal also appeared to glimmer like a diamond in odd places. No debate existed on the matter; it was alien and superior technology. Emilio walked closer to the Rho chamber, looked at the screen on the left of the device and spoke, "Marilyn, darling?"

There was no need to wait; her face appeared as if she had been waiting behind that flat glass for hours. "Emilioux!" replied the blond. She also was on the large white screen above the stage. Marilyn's hair was tied back like any good scientist and wore dark, thick glasses with tape holding the bridge. She looked at the mathematician, "Francois do you love my scientist look?" She bit her dark red lips sensually, and silently mouthed "Call me." She then turned her head and looked at Emilio, "No need to seduce you. You don't like women, anymore." The joke fell flat.

"I do love computers."

"Call it frustration," Marilyn was the most seductive creature in the world. Francois looked away; he refused to step into this firing line of discussion. On the screen were images of the actress in her lab coat. She walked between thirty pods on mars, making final adjustments to the tubes. In the room behind her, the first players were getting prepared.

The images gave the impression Marilyn was alive, a human and present physically in that room of the Electoral Center. She was interacting with the guests. In the center was Laurent's body, lying unattended. "I love your initiative of going live with this science joke of yours, happy to see you join the team. I can assure you, as you guessed, the broadcast to these people does serve a purpose. Any real revelations will have to wait, though. Some of this has to be secret."

"Where is Sophie, I can't see her on the screen. Is she in her room?" asked Emilio.

"Yes. She's right here," she said pointing a finger in the air to a location next to Laurent's body. "She never leaves her father's side. In my broadcasts, I will never show her image. Turn to CNN if you want to see her. Unlike humanity, I understand the order of things. I am a toy next to her, and I prefer not to touch even her image. We all know it's safe to sit on a box containing a nuclear device, few would."

Before anyone could think about this new development, Emilio pointed to the Chamber, "I guess this tube is alien technology, right?"

"For a man so gifted at choosing words, poor choice darling. The definition of alien expanded recently. This pod is nothing humanity can't achieve by itself in a generation if you bipeds survive all of this. I strongly agree with Francois' patronizing speech about science, albeit with one wrinkle. As we saw, the Multiverse has many dimensions, and emotion plays a powerful component to how it operates at a higher level. Playing with a ball, while entertaining to some, does not enrich your collective in term of the sciences, though it does enhance the aggregate level of mental energy. If you like Rho waves, the football World Cup final will do it for you." Marilyn looked at the screen directly at everyone watching and spoke to them directly.

"Let me make a rare personal statement. A bit less than a billion people watching are between the ages of ten and twenty. To all you children out there, your parents have been reckless and careless. Today their world, your world, may vanish simply because of their incapacity to understand the fragility of their circumstances. Humanity is a species, nothing more. On November 22, if our word survives the Sixth Attraction, things must change. Adults can't change. Even if they get scared, perhaps especially when scared, they will return to their old ways. You need to take control. Sophie emancipated herself. You now have the right to vote. You must vote often. Vote in all elections. Vote for the youngest candidates. If you have the choice between a 30-year-old and a 17-year-old, take the younger, it’s that simple."

Emilio's mind was racing. He understood what she was doing. "I love how you plan ahead. Optimism is your greatest quality," he said.

"Thank you, darling. As for the tube, it is constructed my small devices which are MEMS, that's a 1986 term from DARPA which means micro-electro-mechanical systems. I agree with that sexy mathematician of yours, let's raise the collective discourse. Why not start right now?"

"Can you flex a sexy muscle and show them what this can do?"

"Really?!" said the digital goddess, surprised by the question, "You want me to do what? Funny how we now can talk openly in violation of my rules. I guess some adaptation is in order." As she said these last words, a light breeze rose in the room. Doors shivered in their frames on all sides as air pressure rose behind them. The most tender eardrums popped as the magic began. Electoral loved the old amphitheater. Invisible to everyone, humidity in the room increased by six percent as magnetized water molecules used their van der Waals bridges to transport small flags. The room was Electoral's on a molecular level. If she wanted, she could prevent air from entering every lung. "Your heavy gravity is not helping. Give me a second." On the screen, she removed a brooch and let her hair fall. The software used like illusionists such tricks to stall. The delay was longer than expected. Then it began in truth.

"This is as good a time as any other to introduce the Rho chambers on a level a bit more fundamental than what has already been revealed." Before she even finished her words, the entire structure next to the President collapsed in a mountain of black powder. He was ankle high in it. "I built two types of these small bots, the first which you saw in the tunnel between the catapult and at my Center, which in contrast, has edges and strength. The technology is designed to shield me from nuclear missiles sent from earth. Your generals will do it in 2078 unless we drastically change the course of this society. These generals will all die on that day I promise you about that, we all have lost patience for these insecure boys who keep telling others what to do. These structural bots are rigid and much more substantial. I even designed them with shock absorption technology.

"The second type of bots you see here are much smaller and magnetic in nature. When I cut the current, they lose coherence, and they revert to powder. Their lower weight and smaller size allow me to pick them up using humid air molecules. If I move the air, I can move the dust floating in the air. Then micro-currents do the rest. Take a look," she said as the ballet began.

From the ceiling fell more powder, sorting itself into streams like the spell of a wizard. Marilyn was a born showoff; she sent the powder around the large room merely to enhance the experience. "What are Rho waves? We know two things about them: they are a faint background noise in human brain activity, and that Sophie generates more of these waves than the combined population of Europe. One day I discovered these waves as I tried to understand humanity. Unlike lower form waves, these had strange unexplainable properties. I managed to harness and process them to a limited extent. To this end, I enhance the brain activity of players of my game with them.

"These chambers are not designed to draw waves out of a player's mind; they are instead a magnifying lens which pours the waves back into the players. Since the energy and effect of these waves are amplified with distance, it was fortuitous I was forced far away from the human population. While it made sense for Emilio to remain on earth for obvious security reasons, allowing him to play from earth forces me to fuel his tube with weaker waves from the source, and that drains Rho power. Roughly half of the watcher's waves. I know you guys don't care, but I do."

Emilio offered, "Why not use Sophie's waves here to... " Marilyn's face was answer enough. Every muscle in her face stiffened. Emilio backed off; no answer was needed. Sophie was off limits.

Slowly most of the powder on the stage reconfigured itself back into the identical Rho chamber, but this time the front panel was open. On the screen was a countdown, the giant number 54:24. They were less than an hour away from Round 28. Lines of black powder flew in the air and around every person in the room. The rest of the powder twirled and formed on the corner of each table in the shape of a cute little black cube larger than a die. On one side was sculpted -- Electoral 2072 -- and on the reverse side -- Round 28: The Fuller Crater. -- The dark puzzle looked like it was made of shiny leather, but pulsing with light. Everyone in the room was looking at the gift inches away as if it was a deadly virus.

Marilyn explained, "I know scientists are the hardest to domesticate. A gift. Run to your electronic microscopes and start understanding what I did." No one touched the cubes. "Do you need me to explain the robotic technology or just the Rho connections? I know that this group is dying to get a lecture on both."

"They do want to know," Emilio said jokingly pointing at the number counting down, "but we still have a lot of work to do, and the clock is ticking." He blew a kiss in her direction. She knew how to take a cue. As she vanished from the screen, she blew a kiss Francois' way.

Emilio smiled, she was such a diva. "Lovely, isn't she? She makes it impossible to hate her. Hard to think she is a foe or even a problem to the Multiverse itself." The group in the room was already too impressed to form opinions. A few of the more courageous souls present finally dared to touch their cubes. "I asked my team, the SAC, to prepare a presentation in the form of a timeline. I warn you, compared to Miss Monroe's editing genius, this will feel quite humble. Your tax dollars at good use." He stepped forward, turned his head looking back and pointed the laser pointer at the white screen.

"Normally these people from my beloved Scientific Advisory Committee, or simply the SAC grab the floor, and I watch, silent as my mind wanders in all directions. Today, things will be different; I will disseminate information to this crowd. I asked them for a recap of the events whirling around us. Most of this is Top Secret," he grabbed one of the cubes from a desk, "but as the President, I at this moment declassify everything and pardon anyone who helped me. We have a month, so who cares anyway? Let's go, we need to do this." Emilio pushed a button, the screen lit up, and the presentation began.