LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 4:54 AM Freezing cold pre-dawn twilight, acrid smog hanging in the air. The senior detective took a deep drag on his cigarette as he surveyed the crime scene. This was not the way to start your Christmas Eve. "Close it up," he said at last. "We're not gonna find any more here." This had once been an ordinary, run-down studio lot in a seamy waterside area of Los Angeles. But sometime last night, something had Happened to it. The flimsy warehouse structures had been completely demolished. Bodies were scattered everywhere -- to a man (or woman), each dressed in a stylishly long black robe with a tiny embossed gold pyramid on the left sleeve. Most of them were armed with what looked like maces, but they clearly had never gotten a chance to use them. "Just like the other place?" asked the junior policeman. "Yup. Same deal. Secret headquarters gutted, all the Cultists of Armageddon taken out by a high-powered cabbage gun." The detective gestured with his cigarette at the tire burnouts all over the lot, the garage whose door was burst outwards. "Unless I miss my guess, the assailants assembled a makeshift tank, probably out of a station wagon or a tractor, in that building there and used it to carry out the job with complete surprise. These poor feebs never had a chance," sighed the detective. "Wow. Whoever did this must've been hella tough." "Got that right. Y'know, kid... I've been studying these, whatchamacallem, secret history controlling cults, like the Illuminati." "That sounds pretty unlikely," said the other skeptically. "Just go with it, okay, kid? It's not like we're gonna get any more lines in this story. Anyway, the Illuminati and the Cult of Armageddon have each tried to control world history for millenia, manipulating kings, governments, corporations, you name it. They each thought they were working for their own advantage. But they actually acted as balancing agents against each other, allowing civilization to survive. Now some third force has wiped them both out. Without them, history is gonna go out of balance pretty damn soon." "...What does that mean?" the kid asked. "Same thing that happens when your clothes dryer goes out of balance. Armageddon, kid. Final Trump. End Times, comin' right up after these commercial messages." "Shit," said the young policeman, wide-eyed. "Got that right," sighed the senior detective as he gazed up at the mottled twilight sky and lit another cigarette from the remains of his first one. "And me only three days from retirement." CONTROVERSIAL JACK AND THE FALL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION Part 8: I Palindrome Jack Controversial Jack created by Yves Belanger This Chapter by Mark Sachs OVAL OFFICE, THE WHITE HOUSE 3:40 PM "There's a problem, Jack." The President paused in the middle of carefully filing his nails and flicked his eyes lazily over towards the Oval Office door. "What is it, Anne? Want to borrow some money?" Anne shook her head. "I found something out. You're not going to like it. It's about Kenneth Starr." "That loser?" Jack hooted. "I uh, 'heard' about his unfortunate accident. Too bad for him. I'll have to be sure to send a nice Christmas card to the guy I hired to take him out, oh what a giveaway." "The thing is, he'd already sent ten boxes of evidence about your relationship with Miss Jane to the House Judiciary Committee. They're meeting tonight to pass articles of impeachment against you. Jack, this is very very serious, you have to --" "I don't have to do anything I don't want to," Jack said dismissively. "In situations like these, I take my cue from Mr. Duck. Look how calm and collected he is." Indeed, Mr. Duck gazed at them impassively, not uttering a word. Anne reached a decision. She gathered her thoughts carefully. She was probably only going to get one chance at this. "Listen, Jack. You realize that this is all a big mistake, don't you? You being President, I mean." "Mistake?!" yelped Jack. "They know?" He looked around guiltily then, at length, recovered his usual cocky expression. "I mean... Hardly! I won by an overwhelming majority." "You won because the Illuminati fixed the election." "And now they're gone too!" he said grandly. "Along with those Cult of Armageddon numb-nuts. But I'm still here, and the people love me." "You have an approval rating of eight percent. And that's in your own cabinet!" "Proving exactly what I'm telling you!" Jack leaned very far back in his leather chair and tumbled over with a crash. "I've done a million wonderful things for this country. What about replacing that boring old Vietnam War memorial with the Mr. T monument?" His Christmas present to the nation. "What about my Adopt-a-Pedophile program? And hey, what about that war with France? That was great! Two and a half weeks, easy!" he cackled as he extracted himself from the remains of his chair. "I think that's a world record! Move over, Adolf! Damn, my hair's stuck in the carpet." "Jack..." "And!" he added, trying to pull himself free to make a dramatic gesture. "My new regulation that all women have to wear dominatrix outfits on Tuesdays! Is that empowerment of the weaker sex, or what!" "Jack," Anne grated, "this thing rides up like you wouldn't believe." "But it's so adorable on you!" simpered Miss Jane, who'd slipped into the office with typical unnerving stealth. Miss Jane handed a crowbar to Jack; he accepted it with as much dignity as was possible in his position and started prying himself free. "Black leather is you, Anne. It really is." "Look," Anne tried another tack, "if you don't care about yourself -- " "Who gave you that idea!" Jack demanded. "That's the only thing I care about." "-- then think about your Secret Service agents. The poor things, constantly throwing themselves between you and all those assassins --" "It's not that bad, really, Ms. Lysias," interrupted Agent Rocksteady, leaning in the open door. He was balancing carefully on a pair of crutches, having lost his right foot in a Girl Scout car bombing earlier that week. "It's all part of the job. Excuse me, Mr. President..." "You know," Jack sighed happily as he stood up, "I never get tired of hearing that." "Imelda Marcos is still outside." Jack's face fell. "Oh God. Hasn't she gotten bored and gone home yet? She's been out there since last Tuesday," he aside'd to Anne. "Her head keeps revolving, sir. All the way around, like one of those, whaddayacallem. Things at an amusement park." "Jet planes?" Jack guessed. "Horses? Ducks? Contraceptives? Electric razors? Paste? Bees? Babies?" "Carousels?" Miss Jane put in. "That's it, ma'am. Carousels. And she keeps talking in brackets. It's frightening the office staff." "Forget it. I'm not seeing her. Have her beaten unmercifully, or something." "Of course, sir. Mr. President, Ms. Lysias... Miss Jane..." With elaborate formality, Agent Rocksteady ducked out and politely closed the door behind him. Anne sighed, and slumped down into the big chair in front of the Oval Office desk. "You see what I mean, Jack? That's going to just be more and more of your life, untill it consumes you. Now, come on, it's been fun, but sooner or later you have to face reality. Congress has you on the ropes. It's time to cash it in. Resign. Leave office with dignity and honor, and we can all go home for Christmas and forget a... about..." Everything was suddenly very quiet. Anne could hear her own breathing, unexpectedly loud and harsh. The light streaming in through the Oval Office windows was blinding; it looked like an atom bomb had gone off. Her brother sat entirely still in front of the light. She had to squint to make him out against the radiance. "Anne," said Jack, "do you really think I haven't known exactly what I was doing every step of the way?" Miss Jane giggled, then sprouted wings and a halo. Anne gasped, but the air pressure was much too high, she couldn't breathe; the pressure on her chest was suffocating (though to be fair that could have been the excessively tight outfit.) The Oval Office windows exploded outwards. The American flags on either side of Jack burst into flames, then became a pinwheel of color rising up through the disintegrating White House. Where they touched the sky it burst open and the stars and stripes rained back down, multiplying a thousand, a million, everywhere they touched blazing like the sun, land and sea and air splintering and dying. A trump echoed across the heavens, four horsemen galloped through the skies of the imploding Earth, and the Archangel Gabriel slipped up to whisper in her ear: "Boo." Anne lost consciousness. * * * "Ha! You should've seen yourself!" Jack chortled. "W... what?" Jack was grinning like a madman, or more appropriately grinning like Jack, as he reached down to help Anne up off the floor. She winced; her head was throbbing. She looked around wildly for a moment, but the world was still there. Anne shuddered from premonition. "I ransacked the CIA storeroom and found this cool chair left over from their LSD experiments. That thing's great! You should've been here when I got Margaret Thatcher to sit in it." "Jack --! That really is the ultimate --!" Anne opened her eyes slowly. "You know what? I'm tired of arguing with you." "Huh?" With the understanding, Anne suddenly realized, had come freedom. She laughed unexpectedly. "I've always had to be logical and calm and rational. With _you_ around! The most irritating person in the world! Well, I've had it up to here with calmness and rationality and I've had it with YOU, Jack! Now you're going to SUFFER!" "Eek!" Miss Jane cringed in the corner. Jack blinked, stepped back. "Heh, uh, Anne, let's not do anything hast -- uh, put the whip away, Anne -- let's be reasonab... oops..." "You want EMPOWERMENT, you little FREAK??" Anne snarled and raised the whip. "I'LL GIVE YOU EMPOWERMENT --" The door opened at that moment. "Excuse me. Mr. President?" Agent Rocksteady said in a remarkably calm and professional manner, considering. "Uh, yeah?" "It's Imelda Marcos." Jack blinked. "What, again? Did she go out and come back?" "She's vomiting pea soup this time. It's pretty disgusting, sir," Rocksteady confessed. "I'm a prisoner in the White House!" Jack groaned. "Hey, that's not a bad line. Note to myself," he said to the lamp on his desk, "'prisoner in the White House.' Use that line in my top-selling memoirs." He turned to Agent Rocksteady. "Fine. Let her rot in the waiting room. We're going out the top secret emergency exit." Jack picked up the remains of his chair and heaved them through the window. "Anne, Miss Jane, Mr. Duck," he declaimed, "let's go." "Wha...?" "To the impeachment hearings, silly," Jack harrumphed. "And don't you try to stop me." Bewildered, Anne was swept along in his wake. * * * Somewhere outside, Imelda Marcos laughed musically. "My part is finished. The lamb goes now to meet his [DESTINY]." She evaporated in a puff of smoke, leaving only a pair of absurdly expensive red patent leather pumps behind. * * * NOW CONTROVERSIAL JACK ADVANCES INTO THE VERY LION'S DEN! WILL HE BE IMPEACHED? WILL HE ACCIDENTALLY DESTROY THE WORLD -- OR WILL HE DO IT ON PURPOSE? TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR THE NEXT... EXCITING... CHAPTER OF CONTROVERSIAL JACK AND THE FALL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION!