by Haidji
American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower at 8:46. Moma heard the boom. They hadn’t told him the signal would be an attack on the Twin Towers. Only that the signal would be an attack somewhere in the northwestern part of the financial district. And there would be a second signal, which would either confirm the first signal, or be a backup, in case there was a failure with the first signal. In the same area. So, he had picked a café in the southeastern part.
His mind raced through the alternate routes he had planned earlier; game theory now being put into action. He looked at his watch. It was now 8:49.
Moma had less than 12 minutes to reach and disarm the first bomb.
He needed to get to 225 Liberty Street. Quickly. Headquarters of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. Virtually across the street from the Twin Towers.
First responders would probably soon be swarming the World Financial Center, maybe even setting up a perimeter or something. He kick-started his black motorcycle and sped off. He reached the underground parking, pulled the ticket from the entry control, and found the large white van. To disarm the bomb he needed one of the four cell phones, he needed to find out which one to use; it was the third one. It was now 9:00am. He tore up the exit ramps. The exit gate was open.
Everyone was standing outside, looking up at the skyline, a skyline that was now on fire. He had disarmed the first bomb.
His next stop was the New York Stock Exchange. Second bomb. He pointed his motorcycle south on West Street and gunned it. He heard what sounded like the roar of an airplane, but it was hard to tell with the noise of his motorcycle and helmet.
But there was no doubt about the sound, when United Airlines Flight 175 flew into the South Tower at 9:03. That was signal number two; he knew it. He had about 10 minutes to disarm the bomb at the NYSE. He made it, using phone number two.
Now he had to get to the Federal Reserve, at Liberty Place. Bomb number three. After that, he had to go uptown, much longer distances. He had to make up some time. Instead of taking the usual route taken by taxis from the NYSE to Liberty Place, he just rode down the pedestrian walkway on Nassau Street, reaching the Federal Reserve in less than two minutes. Nobody even turned an eye to him.
Everyone was watching the Twin Towers on fire.
He wasn’t sure if Bomb number three was tied to phone number one or number four, because the signal types were similar; he needed more time to figure it out.
Working calmly and efficiently, he was relieved, as his conclusion was correct; it was phone number four, and bomb three was disarmed.
Now he had to get to the Stern School of Business at New York University, near Washington Square South. He calculated this would take about 10 or 12 minutes under normal conditions, in a car. If traffic wasn’t already becoming gridlocked, or blocked by first responders, he figured he could do better than that on his bike. Police wouldn’t be worried about stopping a motorcyclist who was speeding a little bit, especially one going in the opposite direction to their attention. They would all be looking up, downtown at the financial district skyline, not at him going uptown on Sixth Avenue.
He made it in 8 minutes. Found the fourth bomb. Disarmed it. Plenty of time to spare, using phone number one.
From NYU, he had to get to Grand Central Station. Again, about 10 minutes under normal conditions. Sixth Avenue would do the trick; closer to West 42nd Avenue he could always hop over to Madison, Park or Lexington, depending on conditions. He made good time. He disarmed the fifth bomb with phone number three. He was especially pleased about his success at Grand Central Station.
Now he had some extra time in the bank.
The last bombs were in posh sections of midtown Manhattan, so he was glad to have the extra time, just in case. You never knew how midtown Manhattanites would react when they saw the Twin Towers on fire.
Next stop. Trump Tower. Fifth Avenue. Between 57th and 56th. About 15 blocks give or take. 5 minutes for that one, then onto the next; things were going well, it would be easy.
Not so easy.
Having disarmed bomb number six with phone number four, he made his way out of Trump Tower. He preferred handmade and special jewelry with soul to mass-produced superficial fashion-hip products. Exiting Trump Tower through the retail level, he thought for a brief moment that if the world would be perfect, then Tiffany’s and the Trump Organization should find a way to recognize his good deeds by selling real, special things in their stores, instead of boxes of emptiness and marketing illusions.
One more stop. Bomb number seven.
He thought about how to best reach it. The bomb was located on the ground floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the Nolen Library. The bomb was placed in the collection of books on digital art.
He could get to the Library very quickly from the Museum’s underground parking lot; alternatively, he could use the Plaza entrance at 81st Street.
Either route got him in on the ground floor.
It would take him eight or ten minutes in regular traffic, depending on whether he took Madison or Park Avenue; but maybe longer now, given the pandemonium he was starting to see on the streets. Police, ambulances, all sorts of emergency traffic heading south; taxis and cars heading north or east.
What about another route?
Through or around Central Park? It would be maybe 15 minutes if he took Central Park West and then doubled back to the Museum via the West 85th Street Transverse. But if he went that way, he could dip into the Park if necessary and ride the Park roads, maybe less risk of traffic snarls, and he could even ride his motorcycle on the grass if necessary. Surely by now anyone in Central Park would be thinking of nothing other than their SMS texts and email messages, or figuring out how to help people, or searching for friends and survivors, or trying to understand why New York was on fire. He opted for Central Park West, and would pick his route through or around the Park, on the fly.
Turning onto Central Park West, an ambulance heading south, driving in the middle of the road, crossed his path in the middle of the intersection.
Hitting the brakes hard, his rear wheel locked up and he fell underneath his bike as it skidded across the road, giving him an instant case of painful road rash and, he thought for a moment, maybe a broken elbow. Worse, all his phones had spilled across the street and a car had run over one of them, but he had not yet noticed this.
Covered in his own blood, he picked up the phones and jumped back on his bike, racing off to arrive in time at the last bomb.
This was supposed to be an easier one, the last bomb. But he was now behind, by 3 minutes at least. He arrived at the last bomb less than 5 minutes before its stipulated explosion time, full of pain, and covered with blood.
It was then he noticed that a phone was missing…and it was exactly the one he needed to disarm this bomb.
Without the phone, he needed to go back to old methods. He made his disarming work by hand, feeling as American as MacGyver or apple pie. He did it…even without having any chewing gum.
So, in less than 120 minutes, Moma had done his work; quietly, in his silent way, he had saved the city from another unbelievable and possibly even bigger catastrophe.
He had made sure that all seven bombs were disarmed.
Now, years later, a new attack was planned for a Stadium, where a game would be, a game with a huge public attendance. With over 100,000 people inside. And probably the same amount, or even more, outside.
And Moma was the one chosen by the terrorist group, because he was a specialist; he was the one that would press the command button to explode all seven bombs inside the Stadium. And he was also the one that should create the bombs. Maybe the group had started to find it strange that so many bombs were not working well, all these years, so they decided to have their own specialist, himself, taking care of it.
The attack should occur on one of the last game days.
And Moma, to be able to do his work, needed to be in the middle of the Stadium, so there would be no interference with the sig
nals to the bombs. This was a suggestion made by Moma himself; to ensure that he would not fail in this attack, he should be a candidate and take part in the Game.
A large amount of money would transfer to a Council member, the Yellow one, so that Moma could enter the game.
With the guarantee that Moma would survive until the last game day, the terrorist group made a plan to also have some of their members inside the Stadium, watching the game from day one, as part of the crowd, until the final day.
Yellow did not ask the reason for Moma’s entry into the game and the requested guarantee; for him it was just one candidate more between zero and 8000, who probably wouldn’t win anyway. And sure as sure was, Yellow was also very sure that he could keep Moma alive until the last game day.
One candidate more in the game—and some digits changing in his secret bank account. Yellow was ok with that.
The terrorist group also asked for a personal trainer for Moma, for some extra lessons, to help with the neuro-linguistic programing (NLP) seminars. Of course, the trainer would also receive an extra reward, to make some special exercises with him before the last game day.
Moma’s assignment: ‘Seven bombs for seven Brothers’.
He knew the attack was to be inside the Stadium. He was told the date; it was to be the in one of the last days of the Game, when the Stadium was packed full and the whole world would be watching live and on TV and on every portable or fixed electronic device.
He was told the planned outcome: the complete obliteration of the Stadium and everything around it, preferably up to a one-block radius. They left the choice of the explosive technology, and the placement of the seven terrorists inside the Stadium. All up to him. He was the Specialist.
That one variable—the technology plan, left to him—gave him the opening he needed.
Nobody would or could check his handiwork; there were no ‘quality control’ men in white lab coats.
His idea was simple. Inspired by a chameleon. A chameleon that changed its guts on the inside, not its colors on the outside.
The bomb vests would need to be compact and made of materials that would not trigger any of the security devices at the Stadium. What was needed was more like a super-thin Kevlar body armor vest, not the clunky vest style preferred in the Middle East, which could be easily hidden under loose robes. There was no way the seven terrorist bomb carriers would attempt to open the vests to look at their guts or otherwise tamper with them.
They knew the protocol: tamper with a suicide bomb in a vest, in any way, and it detonates immediately.
What the NLP trainer, Yellow, the other Council members and the terrorist group did not know was that some things were already engraved with the fire of admiration deep inside of Moma’s mind. So deeply, that not even a seminar with the best NLP guru could erase or replace them.
Moma was a terrorist. He created the seven bombs for seven brothers. But he was a good terrorist; for him, ‘…peoples of any race or color—Arabs, Romans or Persians—are equal under the banner of God’. That was his programming.
He created a vest for himself, too.
Chapter 3
Step 1 – Day 2
Cassandra woke up feeling…different.
She fell asleep with the window open, and the smell of flowers had invaded the room, taking part in her dreams.
She lived in a modern building, in the new part of town, and had never realized that there was a park on the other side of the street, because she was always late to go out to work; almost always before sunrise, and she would normally return after sundown.
While closing the window, she saw the park between the buildings and sighed, thinking about maybe going there someday for a walk. Since she moved into this neighborhood, her outgoings were summarized by quick purchases in a small supermarket around the corner, where, she noticed, worked a nice couple; or to watch movies in the local cinema, or spend some time in pubs with some of her friends or colleagues.
She closed the window, but the flowery perfume smell was already inside, filling the entire room; but she did not notice, she was already very late, and she needed to rush.
The game was going live again this morning and she couldn’t be late; her work was too important, and John, her colleague, would not like to do it all alone.
As she arrived, the crowd was already in front of the Stadium; many had spent the night there, sleeping in front of the Entrance, in sleeping bags, or tents, so as not to miss their preferred places on the second day. Given the strong interest in the Game, there were already some groups selling both fake and real tickets, online and on the streets close to the Stadium.
She went through the crowd and showed the electronic bracelet that allowed her to access the Stadium before the public was allowed to enter. She should use it, all the time, for the complete event: each person that belonged to the game staff wore one. She remembered hearing that each person in the public will also wear one, and each candidate also, with different programming.
John was already stressed, looking at the clock. The candidates were already being prepared and Cassandra had not yet arrived.
It was the second game day, and he was working on the second group of this day: 200 persons in each group, 5 makeup artists teams; so he and Cassandra had 40 candidates, meaning 20 candidates for each to take care of…and she was late.
John was already working on the candidates, hard and necessarily fast work; and they could spend only a few minutes with each person, so where could Cassandra be? She was professional, in all the projects they had worked together in the past, she never came late, she was more like someone who arrives 5 minutes before work starts and creates a good mood around her.
She came in running, her red hair like a flame flying around her head. John was relieved, he didn’t want to fall behind the other makeup artists, it was hard to get good work at this time in the economy, and a silent and invisible competition seemed to be there among the makeup artists; sometimes some work material was broken or disappeared suddenly, so as to delay things or cause him to be flustered…it wasn’t a good thing for his career.
Cassandra tied her hair together and was already wearing her work uniform, all black, which from a distance made it difficult for someone to distinguish the makeup artists from candidates; the only difference was that while the candidates’ clothes were shiny, the staff used a matte version of the same clothes, with no white makeup or game symbol on their forehead.
She was working quickly, already on the second group, now on a candidate’s face, as a red hair lock passed in front of her eyes.
Her hair wasn’t tied right, so she blinked her eyes, moved her head… and then she saw his blue eyes, while he moved his arm and head in an instantaneous reflex to take her hair away from his own face.
Their hands touched, because she had the same reflex.
It was just for a half second, and after that, he was again the same apathetic figure, like all other candidates, a kind of statue that didn’t have expressions and didn’t show feelings or intentions. But time had stopped, for this half second, and there was a feeling, and intention, without him showing it right away.
For this half second, he had woken up from his apathetic state and looked into her eyes.
He was candidate number 2252, there to be jumping in the second group, on this second game day.
Cassandra noticed that he had a scar on the left side of his face, and against all rules, instead of covering the mark, she accentuated it; she didn’t want him to be like all the others there, she wanted him to be special, different.
Cassandra thought she had found her candidate, the one she wanted to win the game, but the truth was that she had found something else, something she had and lost some times in her past, and never expected to find again.
Although she could not grasp the thought consciously, it felt as though she had found something elusive. Love, perhaps? Even though she could not think it, she could feel it.
And then she mo
ved to the next candidate, against her own will, because John was already complaining that she had spent too much time in preparing this guy, asking her, did she have had a bad night? She already came to work late, so, what did she want to achieve by delaying her work also? Still sleeping, still dreaming around?
‘Cassandra, we have work to do here, we can rest and dream at lunchtime, and try to find out why our work materials sometimes disappear…’
But, fortunately for Cassandra, John was busy grumbling and being cranky, looking for his makeup instruments, he couldn’t find all of them again…it was good that he always had some extra ones in his bag, and that he had not noticed the scar on the guy’s face, the mark.
The game started, and the live transmission continued, but on that day, Cassandra didn’t want to see it live; only at home, on the TV.
She accompanied the candidate with the mark and closed her eyes, as he disappeared into the group that was to jump next.
The group went down with the elevators and entered the game platform.
Standing on the edge of the platform, fifty meters over the Stadium ground, they looked like all the same. But Cassandra could see the scar in her chosen candidate face.
The Hostess announced the next jump, and after a few words, the countdown would start:
‘The first group of the day has celebrated already; now, we have the second group of the day. Two hundred candidates more, here, ready to jump for you! What an amazing day! I thank every one of you, here, at home; at work watching on your mobile devices, in front of the Stadium, walking on the street…wherever you are, you are here with me! Welcome to the second jump of this second day!
We are all together here in…
SUICIDE GAME!
The new game
The new mania
8000 candidates and
