Round 28 - 32 Players Left

The Fuller Crater

21 Days to the Sixth Attraction

Anyone alive and able to connect to the Electoral system had already done so. Once by pure desire for excitement, now as a matter of survival. Marilyn’s digital reality filled billions of screens around the solar system, encompassing even the nearly nine-hundred non-Earthborns residents of the Moon. Watching also were the two-hundred ex-players on Mars and the nearly hundred hotel staff. Most importantly, the two madmen piloting the Io Explorer a light minute away were also watching their own live feed.

The colors, the resolution had no equal, this digital world was on steroids and Marilyn now delivered pure reality undistinguished from the real world. As the Rho wave-powered introduction swept over her audience, even the dullest and most skeptical watchers realized that Electoral's computing power now was boundless. Those using glasses, known colloquially as "Orbisons," would be watching the round in full 3D from multiple angles. No mere movie producer could rival this technology, even though the glasses themselves were relatively old technology. Most used contact lens for a fully immersive experience.

***

The introduction of Round 28 began with electronic thunder. Heavy metal music played as images from the solar system blinked from ordinary celestial images to hand-drawn comic reality. Marilyn had drawn on a very old method of seeking to combine the fluidity and realism of a live camera shot with the dreamlike lucidity of adjustable realism of special effects animation. Electoral was now spectacularly employing its latest descendant, and she was doing it on-the-fly while simultaneously broadcasting it to the entire solar system. This was beautiful.

The first two minutes of the introduction were shown from the vantage point of a space probe traveling within the solar system. Marilyn showed the Milky Way in a sea of galaxies and then took a step back to introduced hundreds of worlds of the Multiverse. These images, inspired by Sophie's interaction with the supreme intelligence, consisted of light, music and a grandiose spectacle of science.

Marilyn swung the camera's viewpoint as it traveled back through the solar system, passing Mars and Earth as it moved toward the Sun. The white orb grew until it occupied the whole sky. Mercury, barely visible at first was a dot in the distance. Then, the panoramic view captured the Io Explorer as it beat all speed records toward the destination.

The Mercury Landing

-- Electoral 2072 / Round 28 --

(500 hours to the Sixth Attraction)

Waves of all types were created and flooded in her system. The shared experience was common to all minds; they each responded to the stimuli and like music, the waves meshed and resonated. The music Marilyn designed and played into the system helped reinforced the harmonics. The brain waves created by each viewer, much like the movement of dancers of a rave party, began to pulse. From an invisible observer, deep in space the blue gem of Earth sparkled, but digitally.

The energy began to flood the solar system. This was a rare self-amplified process: the happier were the viewers, the greater the flow of Rho waves, which in turn made the person happier. The process was the serpent eating its own tail. Marilyn Monroe was the conductor of this dangerous symphony of mass euphoria. With each round, her filtration algorithms were getting stronger and sharper. As they did, the game became more addictive to watch and play and she could back power she would need.

Round 28 began with thirty players connected in the aligned tubes of the amphitheater room at the Electoral Center on Mars. Only the two scoreboard leaders were missing. Laurent was in the room below the tubes. Invisible to all but George’s from his consoles, the Electoral system was trying to compensate and even out the odds by funneling waves to the other players.

The second absent player was Emilio, who remained on Earth. The President slipped into the chamber in front of friends and guests. He placed the ring of sensors around his head and closed his eyes. Immediately he began to sweat, and the tube’s ventilation kicked in to the point where his hair moved.

The chambers powered-up, then the Electoral system and finally was created an invisible bridge between Earth and Mars. The music swooped up and down the musical scale. It played during the entire introduction. Electoral 2072 took almost ten minutes to recap the events leading up to the Sixth Attraction. The viewers saw a montage of the solar system, the Multiverse, the Purple, and flying vignettes of the main protagonists of the Sixth Attraction. Marilyn showed the moment when she'd used Sophie's power to steal the Dot. The video carefully supplemented Emilio's summary. The story was getting too complicated to describe yet too important to ignore or forget. Laurent wasn't described as a cripple; he was a multi-faceted man, a superhero with a secret game identity. There was no pity in Marilyn's depiction of Laurent. Laurent was a creature half-way between the real world and the digital world. Marilyn knew how to dramatize events. The last segment was about the doomsday events cascading around Sophie's birthday. Somehow, Marilyn edited the Attractor our of the story.

Once the credits stopped, the viewers saw Mars floating alone in space. The music also settled.

***

There was a long and lucrative commercial. Viewers did not know if the artificial intelligence wanted to keep a sense of normalcy to the game or if the entire Attraction story wasn't a ploy for higher ratings. When Round 28 of Electoral 2072 resumed, the same singer slowly transitioned from heavy metal to a deeply voiced love ballad only such singers could belt out. The voice ran heavy with emotion. He sang music everyone recognized on some level or another.

On the screen was a Martian backdrop.

"Intelligent life began on Mars a long, long time ago," narrated Marilyn. "Back then, Earth was in its Triassic era; this happened hundreds of million years ago. Large dinosaurs roamed primitive Earth instead of men." On the screen, time began to rewind. The Sun in the red sky of Mars halted a slowly reversed its course in the sky once, twice then accelerating to illustrate how time moved. To further illustrate her point, the Holliday Inn and all structures was disassembled, undone as time moved backwards.

"Mars wasn't always the fourth planet from the Sun. Instead, Mars was closer, it was here." The view showed the inner solar system and its small inner planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Mercury was shown as a black ball, Venus was yellow, Mars a red rock closed next to the shining blue Earth. On the screen, red planet began to move closer to the Sun, slide up in orbit , as it did from the outer region to its new location. It came closer and passed Earth and went to take an unstable orbit closer orbit between Venus and Earth. As the three planets moved, the entire system seemed unstable.

“Mars, Earth and Venus were close, neighbors but interfering with each other. The current gap between Earth and Venus is about 42 million kilometers. While that might feel like a long distance, remember that's only a hundred times the distance that separates us from our Moon. If you factor the elliptical orbits," the small bodies began to orbit at different tilts and bends, "this happens.”

The dance of the planets became unstable. Mars located between Earth and Venus destabilized the system. "I was able to calculate what happened in the past."

Like a brick thrown in a washing machine, each year, each orbit began to move wider and wider. Things swirled and orbited until there was contact between two planets, Venus and Mars. Marilyn stopped the animation at the contact. “One day, which I call Genesis, Mars almost hit Venus and one moon hit the crust of Mars," the images were incredible, "millions of pounds crashed. Cooling planets lose all volcanic activity and gas from inside accumulates like a grenade. The shock was sufficient to crack open the thick and rigid mantle of Mars. Electrostatic discharges filled the skies as the moon fell.”

The inner pressure sent a massive quantity of toxic gas up to Venus. An enormous plume of gas shot up exchanging atmospheres between the two planets. Venus' moon also exploded in hundreds of pieces as it flew away filling the solar systems with millions of rocks.

Everyone watching was in awe. "Thus was born the deadly gas Venus. The impact on Mars created the Mons we now see, the scar testament to this sad day." Marilyn continued to broadcast the events she was describing in shockingly high definition. “Deimos, now the second irregular moon of Mars, joined its orbit.”

"The rest is history. For seven days and seven nights there was darkness," said Marilyn, again invoking the Book of Genesis. "The skies fell, then a rain of sulfur, all life was destroyed." As the rocks hit the Earth, volcanoes exploded and dinosaurs vanished. It took seven thousand years for the Sun to return on Earth." There were no words to be placed in the mouth of the viewers. Everyone watching was in shock. The images were very realistic. In minutes they had witnessed events so realistic that everyone wondered why scientists had never suggested them. Was any of this even possible?

***

"Martians, once living as biological creatures knew Genesis was coming." The movement of the planets stopped, and Marilyn returned the planets in a configuration just before the destruction. She zoomed on a Mars with some plant life. Flew out about twenty blue crystals ships. "To avoid extinction, the Martians changed forms and became non-biological. They transferred their souls into puffs of sand, likely to survive. A handful of ships set out to the four corners of the system in came Mars itself was demolished."

The view settled on the red planet. The images showed specs of sand, forming as structures in a dirty, murky water flowing in the canyon. “The inhabitants of Mars were desperate. Each flew to a different planet and moon of the system. All of these missions proved to be a disaster. Venus, Earth and the moons were not stable enough to host these fragile creatures. Gas and rocks flew. No one survived or ever returned, and today the creatures on Mars remain angry, upset and frustrated for their incapacity to anticipate or protect themselves. They barely exist on a dead planet." There was an image of one of the blue ships crashing into Earth’s lunar ash only to be hit by one of the falling meteoroids.

The view switched to the present. It showed the Electoral Center seen from about a hundred miles away. To the left was the giant crater, the natural canyon called the Valles Marineris. A sandstorm was rising over the Valles as if an army of creatures were attacking. In the distance could be seen the spike of her Center. “One ship fell on Mercury, one group of creatures are landlocked awaiting salvation. You, my friends will get to observe in real time.”

There was another long commercial pause.