Electoral 2072

Round 28 of 32

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 as many audience members as possible. 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 locked in her cocoon millions of miles away. As the waves pulsed away from Mars, they grew in power. At the moment Sophie's mood was good it seemed so everyone also shared this optimism.

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.

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 one of Marilyn's Rho chambers stood there, powered off and ready for the next game. 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 switch and the screen of the tube powered 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 if any of the strange events had to be believed. 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. She is now in some type of protective bubble, Laurent tells us she is fine. She is reading her favorite book, one written exactly 200 years ago.”

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. Is she evil? Did this game somehow break the universe?”

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?"

“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." This was childish yet great television.

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 except for his doctor. 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. Don’t get confused by issues. 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.”

From the stage, Emilio played into the event, "Can you flex a sexy muscle and show them what this can do?"

"Really?!" 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.

"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. 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."

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, "A gift. Run to your electronic microscopes and start understanding what I did." No one touched the cubes.

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? 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.

Emilio pushed a button, the screen lit up, and the presentation began.

The President was a born public speaker.

He pointed at the image of the Sun on the white board behind him. "Let's begin with the really old stuff. Fusion is the release of energy when hydrogen collides and fuse forming a heavier but lighter helium nucleus. This occurs deep within our Sun as a result of gravity compressing the gas. Gamow, a fat scientist” he grabbed his own gut, “who worked with Richard Feynman the father of Quantum theory refused to stop the notion of fusion and compression with helium formation. Gamow found that secondary fusion chains occurred in the heart of the Sun. Squeezed hard enough, heavier and heavier elements through the entire spectrum of the atomic chart, like, for example, the carbon, oxygen and the nitrogen in our atmosphere will form.

"We now know that with time, these heavier elements in very small concentration are drawn into lumps and streaks that agglomerate in the Sun. These elements somehow form highways in the shape of filaments. Marilyn as part of her introductory video to... which round?" he asked Francois. The man sitting on stage was pointing at him instead of suggesting a number. The President needed no more, his brain, as usual, understood the cue. "Part of the Presidential Challenge showed this Heliocorium. Formation and agglomeration of this new stage in matter is the life work of Russian physicist David Lipvitch's. We spoke with David about these structures, and he confirmed our most significant fears. At any given time, our Sun is believed to contain enough heavy elements to form one or two new proto-planets. Unique conditions are needed for this matter to accumulate, and much rarer conditions are required for such a large mass to be expelled with sufficient velocity to form a new planet.

"A ball is coming our way, and our solar system will soon have a new orbiting planet unless, as we fear, this magma impacts Earth directly. Normally that would be a wonderful thing. A race in a world called the Purple has the resources to alter the Sun's inner dynamic to force the heliocorium into a ball. Marilyn confirmed that story, which was the basis of Round 27 of Electoral. Marilyn made this threat as clear as possible. But we have physical evidence which backs this story. Recently, neutrinos, which originate deep within the Sun have begun to shift in energy. To non-physicists, neutrinos are massless particles produced deep in the Sun and pass through matter almost undisturbed. Their change is evidence that the fabric of the Sun itself has been altered. I now am sure this ball will be issued and converge on us as one of the events Marilyn and Liam call the Sixth Attraction. To Liam, if we are to believe his theory, somehow the Multiverse desires our destruction."

Emilio was articulate. He spoke like any good university professor. He appeared to have a profound personal knowledge of these matters. "Experts believe part of the Kuiper belt, the line of asteroids beyond Neptune, are the consequence of such a proto-planet crushing event. We appear to be next in line. To me, this smacks of the first event. I feel powerless to prevent it; I can't influence the workings of the Multiverse. But I believe Sophie can, but we must behold the entire canvas, glean what knowledge we can, and share it freely. Sophie does not seem to care about the planet's imminent arrival, and who are we to disagree with her?

"Next, we need to talk about the door." Images from Mars appeared on the wall behind Emilio. There was an audible gasp in the room. "This," he pointed at the perfectly formed black opening on a rock facade of natural stone, "is located at the base of one of the walls of the deep chasm on Mars called Valles Marineris. We believe it was carved more than a million years ago by alien life. It's younger than Mars but not by much. We saw it in Round 24 of this year’s competition.

"We still have little to no data about this door and what lies beyond it. This summer, after decades of failed unmanned missions, we sent a handful of brave souls who entered at risk of their lives.” Images of the plume stack played. "I am sure you have all have seen it. Back then, I could not confirm alien inference." Behind the President were CNN images of the plume of white smoke rising from the Valles and the headline:

-- Rare deep gas release on Mars. --

"We believe Mars has its own inhabitants; they are located below the surface past this door. The Martians appear to us as hand-sized sand formations. They float in the air as little clouds of fine dust, or at least that's the basis of some of their technology." He clicked, and the image changed. “If you recall, in the Cosmos 1999 episode, Marilyn showed these globes. We received this summer a hundred of these globes." There was an image of the sand globes aligned on a table in the lab of the Berlin tower. Some were still in their boxes, others partially unwrapped. In each, a little figurine of Marilyn danced.

"Marilyn promised to discuss this situation and these aliens tonight during Round 28."

The audience in the room was no longer taking notes. Everyone was fixated on the images, their jaws hanging wide open. The President had just shown mankind evidence aliens existed, that at least part of the story was not fictional and more importantly that the problem had already landed on the shores of Earth.

Marilyn appeared on the screen, “Get ready Prez, the Martians as a new race will be described during Round 30, don’t spoil anything yet.” The schedule scrolled on the screen.

Electoral 2072 - The Sixth Attraction

Round 28 - 32 players - The Fuller Crater (Now)

Round 29 - 16 players - Mars Invaders (In 3 days)

Round 30 - Quarter finales (In 7 days)

Round 31 - 4 players - Semi finales (In 14 days)

Round 32 - 2 players - Final (In 21 days)

Two men walked out on the stage, helped Emilio get in the tube as the countdown moved to single digits.