France

As the horsemen of the Apocalypse slowly rode across the millions of miles between the sun and the fragile ecosystem of the blue gem, the elongated tube of Heliocorium expelled nuclear fusion blasts. Inside of it, below its hard-cooling surface, pouches of hydrogen gas compressed. Density increased in magma chambers in the rock tube to levels where some mild fusion could occur as the fabric of the Multiverse altered to push the chaos along. The Multiverse wanted the earth destroyed and it’s entire population there to witness it.

Every hour, parts of the long structure exploded outwardly, sending debris deeper into space in every direction. Some were sent forward toward earth ahead of the main destructive structure. The chunks of heavy rock would rain down on that fragile ecosystem first creating a rain of fire.

Car-sized droplets from the principal lava body rushing forward earth left long streaks of gas in a trail like planes leaving contrails as they traveled. As these stones approached humanity’s home's upper orbit, the gravity field created by earth snapped the most massive rocks into smaller shards. This would not be a simple juggernaut hitting a spot in the Pacific Ocean. Earth, said mildly was roadkill.

The fastest red rocks arrived first. These last days in the upper atmosphere, thousands of shooting-stars began to rain during the night, but were but now even visible during the day. These were droplets of what was about to come. As they fell, they left streaks of gas like lines behind a plane. Their continuous barrage accelerated until the sky could not conceal the streaks. The Multiverse wanted these lines to remain like scars on a veteran’s face. The ozone burnt slowly and this, in turn, began changing the color of the sky, rendering them pinkish and darker yellow around the sun.

Invisible, in space LO and his crew were flying to mars and were a fraction of the way there. In his backpack, a closed cell phone held some solutions and needed delivery as he would sing. To their left, 95 balls from mercury we’re flying in silence. LO was late, he would never arrive on time but Marilyn was working on a plan, it involved acceleration and use of the Light Drive.

The noon sun on earth was now partly hidden behind a pale white ghost, and with this interference, colder climates slowly rolled onto every part of earth. Heat warming this globe from the sun once over a thousand or so watts per square meters, were now down to eighty percent of that power. To each and all, winter was coming. To geologists, the ice sheet was growing at two thousand feet per day. Had mankind been given more time, the Ice Age would be returning. But such minor preoccupations would have to wait as the end of the world was visible on the horizon. Thanks to global warming, the cooling had humans were back to healthy temperatures.

At night, the spectacle was even more intense. Stars were long gone, and so was the true darkness of the night. Horizontal streaks of light moved up in the sky over a whiteish background. Around the world, the unburnt parts of these baseball-sized meteoroids hit the ground in gigantic explosions. Thanks to the Sixth Attraction and the Great Curvature, each time a rock hit, there was strangely no one to hurt. Who ever were left to hurt, the God Virus saved them.

Freakish events kept humans at bay. For example, the media reported how one mall opened in Pasadena for its pre-Thanksgiving holiday only to be smashed to pieces by falling debris. Coincidentally, the fire alarm was pulled exactly nine minutes before the rock hit. The mall was evacuated under fears of gas and before any of the firefighters could arrive, the structure was destroyed.

To make the event stranger, even with the alarm, the mall was unable to be completely evacuated, and three people only remained inside the structure. For half an hour they were unaccounted-for. Journalists shot news over a background of a fuming crater. The news reporters reported the possible demises.

One by one, the survivors walked out, in plain sight with injury done only to their clothes. The first’s skin was now bright red. The man kept touching his thick, fire-resistant face. Before the audience could understand the strange mutation, the second walked out with half his of his face covered in coagulated blood but otherwise unchanged. To the victim’s surprise, he was unable to speak but also no longer needed to breathe. The doctors found large patches under his arms that seemed to allow filtered air to reach his lungs instead of through his mouth or nose. For the first, the God Virus protected his skin from the heat, the second would have choked on the multitude of released gasses.

The last person’s God Virus mutation was even simpler. She appeared perfectly intact, but once in a safer zone, she fell to her knees, holding her head tightly. She seemed to be fighting a massive headache and was rolled out in a stretcher the next moment, under the observing eyes of the news. The Virus had protected her from the blastwave by increasing her internal cranial pressure. Since that same increased internal pressure was now quickly killing her, it began to drop rapidly as the Virus tirelessly went back to work. Something was happening to mankind at a genetic level, but viewers would never know.

Bottom line was, even the Apocalypse was unable to touch or hurt mankind on the eve of the planetary destruction thanks to Takeda’s strange gift. Humans would watch and participate in the game, even if, they wanted otherwise. The God Bias was clear, men were not dragged along.

***

Emilio sat comfortably in the back seat of the stretch limousine, reading papers as time ran to the Sixth Attraction. At most, if time was not toyed with a third time, a dozen days remained. The documents were only a distraction from the shower of stones arriving from the sun. They were about failed plots to destroy men, one remained — it was unavoidable. The rocks flashed high in the sky as blinking shooting stars. Hours into his little travel , Emilio wrestled to stay awake. He, more than anyone alive, knew the world was changing in more profound and important ways. Aside from the apocalyptic night sky, everything felt the same to ordinary people, but the President knew and could see things were radically different.

“When do we arrive downtown Paris?” Emilio asked the driver, keeping his eyes focused on his reading.

“We are ahead of schedule,” replied the assistant next to the driver. “The traffic is very light, people are not taking vacations it seems."

"You haven’t closed an eye,” added the bodyguard next to the driver with some hesitation."

Emilio knew Kaï was behind the reminder, and that warmed his heart. He ignored it as he looked at his watch. The driver knew he hadn’t answered, so he added, “Traffic willing, we will beat the morning rush hour and should be downtown Paris there around eight. Any precise destination?”

“Yes. The Hermès flagship; its rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore.” The President’s French accent was impeccable. The men programmed the GPS. They wrestled locking the system to the Internet as the falling rocks disturbed the communication between earth and the satellites. But with a dose of God Bias, the Multiverse let the system guide Emilio.

Around seven in the morning, as the car zoomed in silence down the highway, the sun rose in the distance casting a shade over the French countryside. To even an optimist, the sight was chilling. Instead of the sky painting bright yellows or the deeper reds of a more beautiful rise, there was a sick orange with a hue of gray. The sun, while in direct sight, seemed like it was behind the fumes of a burning city. The center of the yellow disk was dark. It looked like what one would see while wearing glasses to watch a solar eclipse. To the right of the sun was a smoky cloud that housed what looked like a deep red light covered by a vortex of smoke. There were red flashes, like lightning in a natural hurricane. It reminded Emilio nothing so much as a cancer growing in the sky.

To make matters worse, there were deep purples in the area between the incoming ram of Heliocorium and the sun. The plainest analogy that came to mind to the President was that of the purple hues around the eyes of a defeated boxer the day after a fight. This sight was clear, the Multiverse was unamused by the turn of events. Only the Communion linked with Sophie’s power kept sanity on earth but now that she was gone, tempers were slowly being tested. People had become different, become better at the way they treated themselves and others, and it began to make sense why Sophie insisted on dragging the population around.

“Sir?” asked the driver nervously. “Apologies for the question, but are we going to be okay?” Emilio knew the driver was, like most, secretly petrified. Luckily, the Communion linked with her positive pinch had given a lasting maturity to all living creatures. Emilio pointed at the camera. This meant their conversation had to be shared with the world. Recent laws provided that the life of most elected officials had to be shared when matters of state were concerned. Emilio knew he would instantly be broadcasted live across the planet.

“Your name is Boris, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You want the truth?”

“Please.”

The President looked at the camera. “He wants to know if we will be alright, he's a little scared about what's going on in the skies above our heads,” he addressed the camera before resuming the conversation. “We are still playing the game. It’s an important game, no doubt about that. You can and should be worried. But let me show you something that has been invisible to you and everyone at home. Something that should give you a little peace.” Emilio stretched his open hand.

“Yes?”

“Your gun, please. Make sure it’s loaded.” The man was surprised by the request, but after years of working for this exceptional man, he knew better than to hold back. He checked and loaded the gun and handed it to the President. “Right here,” he pointed the gun downwards to the right. “is a wheel of this limo, it’s not bulletproof. If I shoot it open, at best the tire will blow, and we will miss the place I need to be in two hours in Paris. The Universe now is in so much pain, as explained by Francois Copland, that it decides how things happen without say-so from us. Free will and choice are long gone. If my meeting must happen, I can’t derail it this way.”

Emilio carefully aimed gun down at where the wheel should be and squeezed the trigger. There was no noise, just a loud mechanical click. He then pointed at himself and shot again. There was another click. He even opened the slide ejection port to show that, yes, there was a chambered round in there, ready to go. Then he pointed at the window, he fired once more, and the bullet blew the glass in a thousand pieces.

“See, the glass is inconsequential, so the fun works there.”

The driver was shocked. “What does it mean?”

“The simple of it is that Multiverse is in charge. The game is not over and I must, we must,” he corrected himself, “keep playing. I will not miss my meeting. This gun will misfire at anything, and everything I try and fire it at that would prevent me from making my meeting. Everyone must stop thinking this story and our race is heading to a cliff. We are all now locked in a single path to the Sixth Attraction. One person only still has the gift of choice and decision: Sophie. Her power is not to change the world, her true power is how she stands outside of the Multiverse, our lives, and this game. She is no judge or jury, she is simply the one who can still decide behind which door stands our prize. Whatever is happening, this game is not over. To better see a red dot on a sheet of paper you make everything around it green. Sophie can still do something. But listen, admit it, if you had to let one person decide your faith, isn’t this girl the right choice?”

The President made sense. The men felt reassured. Normally they would never ask another question, but fear obliged, “Why are you going to Paris?”

The answer to that question would come only as sculpted words on the tombstone of the person Emilio was about to go visit. “Simply to thank someone for saving us. I want to make sure the millions saved know who to thank if we survive the Sixth Attraction. He also is the only human aside myself Marilyn cares about.”

“Who?”

Emilio’s hair was moving in the fresh air flowing in the open window. It was what he needed to wake himself. He raised a finger to his lips to indicate silence. “Soon, stay tuned.” He made a sign, and the cameras closed the transmission. “Back in an hour or two.”

***

The general manager of the Hermès store had been awaken, warned and was nervously was awaiting to welcome the most important man alive to his store. Like every human, Bernard Gauckler had watched Emilio’s failed "suicide" attempt minutes earlier. The Multiverse now brought the story to his store. This simplified things for him. If the man asked him to burn the place down, he would not hesitate.

Bernard waited, chilled on the doorstep of his store’s private back entrance. They were hours before the official opening. At the President’s insistence, the regular customers patiently lined up, as they did every day early in the cold of the front of the main entrance, would not be dismissed. They would be let in minutes after his arrival. Each day, the factory sent a handful of rare pieces and only the bravest and most tenacious clients, often traveling from abroad, might hope to secure one if they stood in this line first. The Universe was ready to end, and somehow the line had become even longer these last weeks.

The limousine parked and Emilio walked out. Losing no time, he was quickly saluted and led the way inside. The boutique was the pinnacle of luxury. Everything was meticulously kept, and only the ceilings were marble-free. “Sir, this quite an honor in these,” he paused, “delicate times.”

“Indeed,” agreed the large Mexican man.

“Can we help you with anything?”

“Open your doors, let your guests in. I must meet someone who is now freezing outside in his skirt.”

With a nod of the head, the doors were opened as Emilio roamed. Security searched bags. What happened next was amusing. One by one, the clients walked in, surprised by their good fortune of the store opening early, and additionally seeing this rare man walking about. But determined, they each walked to the back of the store to give their names on a waiting list for the rare bags. With a single exception, one by one, the clients pointed Emilio’s way and giggled. A tall young transvestite clicked over the slippery marble in four-inch heels and was the only to ignore Emilio.

The President was intuitive. Emilio saw in his mind what he needed to do to get Takeda’s attention. He walked and stood in front of a case. He then asked Bernard, “You have what’s called a Birkin?”

The general manager tried but failed to convince the President to walk up to the private collection area where a handful of pieces were reserved for the rarest of clients with his level of prestige. Resolved at the commotion this would create as the normal patrons were being told there was no such bag available, yet one was being brought for Emilio, the staff did not hold secrets today and brought four different large orange boxes in a n hypnotic walk down the staircase. The team unwrapped products like it was part of a religious ceremony as patrons looked from a distance with envy.

“Do you have a budget in mind?” asked the Manager.

Emilio was a very frugal man, he instantly asked, “How much are those?” The manager reached down and pulled microscopic price tags. Emilio almost spit out the espresso brought by a clerk. “You have to be kidding me, right?” They were not.

“Leather is now much more expensive now that animals can only be harvested at the end of their natural life.”

“But this is six months of my salary,” he said unconvincingly, a man who won trillions of credits as part of the Presidential Challenge.

The manager knew Emilio’s new boyfriend personally, an exquisite client known in the fashion circles of Paris, “Is it for you, or for a special someone? I know your assistant’s color choices. He owns a red and a blue.”

“No, for a . . . .” He hesitated as three people around him were smiling ear to ear.

Takeda, unphased by the President’s words, wondered in proximity, attracted like most by the array of rare bags. His security guards had been warned and told to let that man approach.

“The color is dreadful, no wonder it’s still here,” said Takeda. Emilio looked at the gender-fluid man, and before the large Mexican could speak, the virologist added, “I looked a tad older last time we met, Sir President.”

“Takeda,” he said.

The virologist smiled as he instructed an employee with a finger gesture to box the bag. “Was I helpful?”

Emilio ignored the question and pointing at the bags, “What would you suggest, it’s for my . . . .”

Takeda slapped the President’s shoulder with his pair of leather gloves. “Say it, you big queen.” Takeda bent over the glass case separating him from the sales agent. He hushed a couple of words in the person’s ear, and orders were immediately dispatched. “For you, they might have one.”

“What?”

Takeda ignored the question and was brought a cappuccino. The two knew their discussion had to wait. Takeda was excited by what would come. A new security guard walked down the stairs with a silver metal box chained to his wrist. In it was something surely very expensive. He placed the box flat on the glass, and before the manager could speak, Takeda applauded in the most effeminate way. He was excited. Emilio was somewhat taken aback by the reaction finding the man intriguing.

Takeda looked at him, “I have never seen one.” He did not wait for the staff to speak. He turned the case and opened it, “This is Hermes’ new and ultra-limited collection, the new model is called 'the Marilyn.' Fifteen are believed to have been made. You of all people must know why.” Clients let out a collective sound of wonder. The small bag had a gold handle encrusted with diamonds. To Emilio, it looked like any other expensive bag. In his world at the Central hub of the government, most people held a similar bag.

Takeda reached down to touch the bag, and as the guard reacted, the President made a sign of the hand to let it go. Takeda grabbed the bag as if it was a priceless piece from a museum. Touching it with kindness, he observed it like a mother holds her newborn. “Beauty, the construction is flawless. Do you know just how rare these are?” Before the President or the manager could answer, Takeda added, “The first was premiered in a game last year, the computer was holding one. Her copy was flown to mars several years ago.”

In his ear, he completed, “it is believed the leather is laced with Rhenium or some other rare metal.”

Takeda handed the price tag to the President knowing full well what would come next. Emilio almost choked again.

“I will take it,” snapped Takeda waiving a credit card in the air. “It’s the ghost’s card,” he told Emilio in mild secrecy.

“It still works?”

“In theory, the man is still alive.”

The sales agent embarrassed added, “Madam, Sir, I apologize, but these bags are not in general sale. It was shown only to the President as a courtesy,” the agent refused to grab the card as if it was covered in mud. “This series is reserved to a very few.” Obviously, Takeda wasn’t one of them.

Emilio added, “I can’t afford this anyway.”

“Well, I can,” snapped the virologist in annoyance.

Emilio looked once more at the price tag and made a sign to broadcast him to the world. “Tell you what, I have a last favor to ask of you, the world needs it. If you indulge us for about an hour, the bag is yours as payment.”

“For me?” He was smiling ear-to-ear as the President showed his thumb. The manager presented a glass pad and as he placed his thumb on it. “What about your boyfriend, he is watching for sure, he will be jealous.”

“I will take the crocodile bag for him,” he looked at the agent, “put it on my personal card.” He handed the salesperson a small card. “Takeda, unlike you, he did not save millions.”

Such a compliment would have made anyone blush, not the cross-dresser. He was focused on his new bag. He protected it in the cover bag and refused to let it go.