FINISH THEM!! Part Three
FINISH THEM!! Part Three
Nikhi's neocon nightmare
This is the conclusion of the “FINISH THEM!!” series. Catch up on prior episodes here:
Part One, Nihki’s nest
Part Two, Nikhi’s nemesis
Prequel, Human Shields Defense League asks not to be blamed for ousted leader’s rogue statement
Nikhi’s twin reached the end of her long secret tunnel to the cavern she called home. Ever since her toddler escape, she had spent most of her days hidden down here, first in a granite hole off the unfinished basement, befriended and nursed by a family of rats, and as she grew stronger, she had chipped this cavern bit by bit into the rock.
Now it was a subterranean lair and laboratory next to the basement, hidden by a small, carefully disguised door that she kept nearly always locked.
But at this moment, that was not the case. The refitted latch must have unclasped again and left the door ajar, because right in front of it, standing over the twin’s squawking police scanner, was Nikhi herself!
The twin scolded herself inside. She was never this careless, but such was her haste to humiliate Nikhi in this precious opportunity at the local college, that this time it seemed she had not only let the door slip but had also left the police scanner on. Often the scanner ran quietly and would not attract much attention, but right now it whined and whistled with scratchy interference and voices talking in hot, harsh bursts.
The twin peered with one eye around the tunnel’s edge, her face against the cold rock, watching Nikhi back away from the scanner while looking around the room. Nikhi moved like someone retreating from a wild tiger, or a possible unseen wild tiger. She must have noticed the Spiderman outfit hanging on the valet, the bubbling test tubes and flashing screens, and the vacuum-sealed case holding her twin’s life’s work: the Ultimate Weapon! Although Nikhi would not know what it was and might not recognize its classic earmarks, she would know it was evil.
She would know it the same way she knew—somehow, five decades ago—that her twin was evil. Lying in the crib together, crawling over hardwood slats, gurgling puréed greens, the two of them had had an uncanny parallel awakening, the twin feeling a shadow creep into her heart day by day before she had words or reference for it, and Nikhi sensing its cold grip from the outside, always a half step ahead of her twin, looking at her with deepening revulsion even in her toddler eyes.
But was it even the twin’s shadow? What if Nikhi had brought the shadow, scared herself, and scapegoated the twin, who only took it into her heart when Nikhi tried to finish her? Or, perhaps they each had their own shadow, but Nikhi had struck first, always a step ahead. There was no way to know, no way to tell the two shadows apart.
Nikhi’s back reached the door, and she slipped through to the other side. Pivoting to close it, her eye peered alongside the doorjamb through the vanishing gap. As the twin’s eye watched, there was a shocking moment of eyes interlocked and a pulse of recognition that was quickly masked. Afraid to move, both eyes remained for a heart-stopping second before darting away.
***
Commander Khant L. Themaparte’s SWAT helicopter lifted off from the college theater pavilion, searchlights licking every shadow and radios buzzing with reports and commands.
Nikhi Lahey and her twin had escaped from the theater after the stampede. Clearly the twin was the real criminal after all. Otherwise, why would an unknown innocent twin draw attention to herself with Nikhi already taking the blame?
So then, why had they both run off? They must have fled the back exit of the theater, into a lightly wooded area with lots of cover and many ways out, leading to various clusters of buildings and then many roads and paths, some reaching into the town. Soon the team would have no idea where they might be, apart from drawing a radius based on their speed on foot.
And still, they might get into vehicles at any time, possibly heading in different directions. Perhaps Nikhi feared that the authorities would assume the worst if she approached them, and rightfully so. Perhaps she was out there tracking her twin, hoping to turn her in and clear her name so she could resume running for president.
Commander Themaparte’s sergeant had created a map showing the ever-expanding radius in red on his tablet. Reports of possible sightings were squawking over the radio, but most were quickly ruled out. They did not yet have a solid lead.
“The shopping mall,” announced one of the men. “Several sightings, classy pragmatic lady with tall front teeth and straight black hair, in five-inch heels.” No one was sure whether Nikhi had been wearing her heels today at the theater, but it was part of her standard description.
“The mall is too far away,” said the sergeant, eyeing his red radius. “What would we even do… surround a mall? We’d need more men…”
Themaparte cleared his throat. “We’d have to look at the number of shoppers inside, estimate the collateral damage, make some hard choices… We can’t let this animal play us for suckers with a bunch of human shields and get away again.”
The sergeant looked at his commander with doubt. “Are you saying-”
“I’m saying,” said Themaparte, “If that animal was in a shopping mall, we would scramble a svelte bomber, and then… if I could just get a declaration of ROAR from the higher-ups… and by God if we find tunnels under that shopping mall, or weapons… there’ll be hell to pay!”1
The sergeant looked at Themaparte with more doubt.
“I’ve got a read on a bakery,” announced the man. “Classy and pragmatic woman, not sure of the teeth yet.”
“A bakery,” said Themaparte. “Don’t restaurants have special plumbing for grease disposal? I wonder if there are tunnels involved.”
“Sewer tunnels run under all the streets, right?” said another man helpfully.
“That’s right!” Themaparte exclaimed. “If that animal gets into any one of those sewer tunnels, why, she could scurry along like a little rat and pop up anywhere in the city for a surprise attack!”
“We’d never live down hitting a bakery,” said the sergeant. “I mean, one like this in our own country.”
“It might be a French bakery,” pointed out Themaparte. “The casualties would be foreigners. No one likes the French. That increases the Acceptable Casualty Multiplier and the Press Approval Coefficient.”
The sergeant blinked at him.
“I learned about it in Commander School,” explained Themaparte.
“Daycare center has a sighting,” announced the man.
“Everyone uses daycare,” Themaparte observed. “Soldiers, felons, slaughterhouse workers, not so innocent. Just think if we had mandatory military service, like other countries. Then none of them would be civilians. It would be so easy. We could FINISH THIS right now.”
They flew over a church.
“Aha!” Themaparte cried. “What if she was holed up in there with armed religious extremists? We could burn the whole place down, and the TV audience would thank us.”2
The men in the chopper were silent.
“That animal has committed over a hundred disgusting, bloody crimes,” continued Themaparte. “And she’ll do more!” he yelled. “We cannot back down from our duty. We must weigh the collateral damage, objectively, using numbers!!” he shouted. “We cannot go soft or take the easy path. History will thank us for our courage and sacrifice!!!”3
This drained the last of Commander Themaparte’s energy. In this round-the-clock chase, his was the only role that hadn’t rotated off duty. “I’m taking some shut-eye,” he grunted. “Wake me if anything happens.”
The commander strapped himself in, tucked his chin, and closed his eyes. As his brain drifted into its lowest frequencies, it began to pick up the peculiar signals for which it was specially designed. The signals found him, were received, and were decoded. All beneath his awareness, they were translated and stored inside his synthetic brain, programmed and reprogrammed, booted and rebooted.
For, he was no ordinary man, not the do-gooder simpleton turned vengeful commander that he appeared, but a cyborg from the future sent back in time to stop the likes of Nikhi Lahey from starting World War Three and crippling civilization. An odd choice, perhaps, but among the few things his handlers had inherited from us was our knack for fighting fire with fire.
All the while, he thought he was just taking a nap like anyone else.
***
Nikhi climbed her basement stairs as fast as she could manage without making noise, terror nipping at her heels. The strange sounds from her basement, the cavern, the mad-science laboratory—and the eye! She wasn’t sure if she had really seen the eye, so faint in the dark alongside the jagged rock, but somehow she already knew what it meant and was still struggling to believe it.
She had followed her twin home from the theater, flying over the trees in her svelte jetpack, across the roads and along the paths, watching her twin move into buildings and out again. People occasionally looked up, but due to the svelte technology, could only catch an impression of a cloud wisp or a flapping bird, just a little stray something that always seemed to blend in organically with the sky, as long as they did not look at it askance—which no one had any reason to do.
The twin had reached a stone wall, opened a hidden door, and appeared to climb down into the ground. Nikhi had hovered for a few minutes and then proceeded home, where she now understood that her twin’s secret tunnel ultimately led.
All this time! To think, her disgusting doppelgänger had lurked and sheltered and brooded right under her nose while massacring hundreds of innocent victims—the ones from this recent spree plus who knows how many others over the past five decades. But Nikhi did not blame herself. She was proud to have fought terror her whole life, even as a toddler.
The house was empty, probably cleared in the aftermath of the SWAT incident. The lack of personnel inside meant they were probably watching the house for her return, probably a few gumshoes parked on adjacent streets instructed to “keep watching the sky askance.” She chuckled to herself grimly. Try looking askance for more than a few seconds, cop. Yeah, that’s what I thought. Shut up and eat a doughnut.
She had changed out of her jumpsuit and into one of the many understated but classy, sensible outfits hanging in her wardrobe while her mind raced. What would she do, how would she find her twin and finally FINISH HER? Wandering the house, strategizing to herself, it was then that she had heard the squawking radio from the basement and had gone to investigate.
Now, she felt time ticking away. That eye, had it seen her? Had it been real or imagined? Did it think she had seen it? Did it know that she was wondering whether it thought that she had seen it? And if so, was it accelerating its plans even now? Should she call for help? Call 911 while safely aloft in the jetpack? She would tell them about the tunnel and the basement door. They would “breach the compound” (eye roll) and find only the twin, no confusion, no standoffs, simple.
***
Nikhi’s twin closed and locked her cavern door as fast as she could manage without making noise, terror nipping at her heart in parallel structure (she was, after all, a twin).
She had to assume the worst: Nikhi had recognized the weapon’s evil and was already making plans to destroy it. With all her military friends, that would not be hard. As usual, Nikhi was a step ahead. For every ten victims the twin had murdered, Nikhi and her neocon friends had slaughtered thousands with their unhinged policies and outright war crimes. For every hundred of the twin’s victims, they had snuffed millions. And so many had been children. The twin never harmed children. She couldn’t get past their little pudgy knees.
But this time she would win. No one could outdo the Ultimate Weapon. History would celebrate her achievement in spite of itself, and the schoolchildren of tomorrow would learn her nameless name, and no one would remember Nikhi, who would be left to drink rat’s milk in the basement of history.
“Now they’ll see who’s FINISHED and who’s not!” the twin told herself, throwing the heavy switch that armed the weapon. Then she unlatched the door and sprang up the stairs.
She caught Nikhi on the upper floor picking up her phone and broadsided her with a shoulder to the rib. The phone went flying, and the two Nikhis scuffled. They tangled and they tussled, they fought and they feuded. Through the house, from room to room, they rolled and wrestled. Faces were slapped, necks scratched and eyes poked, legs locked and arms twisted. The brutal brawl spilled out of the house and into the lawn, where it bashed up the garden, knocked down the gnomes, and tangled the hoses.
Finally, the gumshoes saw. They used their radios and called the teams. Men ran to rooftops with rifles. Commander Khant L. Themaparte was awakened, and his upgraded firmware commenced correlating and calculating.
The Nikhis had tumbled back into the house for a few minutes that left the teams watching and wondering, and now a Nikhi was popping out of the shattered skylight onto the roof, kicking at the emerging face of the other. A deft leg grab and a hoist put them face to face again, but out of breath, bloodied and bruised, torn and tattered.
Then there was a kind of unspoken mutual pause. It almost looked as if one of them would take a seat, just for a moment. It almost looked as if the other would oblige, just for a moment.
That is when the laser dots came. They came in a swarm, from the rooftop rifles in all directions, taking their angles through their sights. The Nikhis grabbed each other, each afraid to be a sole target, each posturing as the other’s hostage yet not letting go. The teams held steady and mumbled into radios, ready for a command.
Finally the command chopper appeared. It rose dramatically into view and pitched forward for emphasis.
“Let go of your twin and put your hands up,” bellowed Commander Themaparte’s bullhorn to both Nikhis.
Each Nikhi put one hand up without letting go of the other.
“Let go of your twin and put your hands up,” repeated the commander.
“Can’t you tell us apart NOW??” yelled Nikhi. “She’s still in her same outfit from the theater!”
The men conferred. No one could remember anything about either outfit. But then Themaparte remembered—“Get that guy on the horn, from the first raid, uh, nikhifan69.” The sergeants found him quickly and put him onto the right radio channel.
“Sir, what is it, sir?” asked nikhifan69.
“I can’t tell those twins apart,” declared the commander. “Look them up and down and tell me which is which… the beefy shoulders, and whatever else you said last time.”
“Oh, sure, sir. T-t-twins.” He sighed into the radio. “Well, I don’t see the wavy hair. Maybe she straightened it.”
“Which one?” barked Themaparte.
“I mean, I don’t know. Because she straightened it. Or maybe when they were running around, getting all sweaty…” Nikhifan69 cleared his throat. “Eh, the hair maybe straightened out. Maybe she does it wavy in the mornings and then it goes flat by the afternoon.”
“Damn it!” cursed the commander. “What about the beefy shoulders?”
Nikhifan69 peered at the twins some more. They writhed together in a sort of stand-up wrestling match and jockeyed for position in their high heels while keeping one hand each in the air and the other on each other. One hand slid roughly across the other’s face, while the other’s hand caught inside the neck of her blouse. Laser dots roamed the two bodies like eyeballs at a peep show.
“Well??” prompted Themaparte.
“Uh,” said nikhifan69, clearing his throat again. “I can’t tell now. She’s wearing a V-neck, which has a slimming effect on the shoulders, and the other one’s collar is… ripped open… so it’s the same kind of thing. The beefy shoulders from that spandex Spidey suit, that was a totally different look.”4
“Useless!” roared Themaparte.
“Sir,” called out Themaparte’s sergeant. “Intelligence experts have analyzed our aerial photos of the compound.”
“Did they find any classic earmarks?” asked Themaparte.5
“Yes, sir. They did, sir. All the classic earmarks of weapons in the basement.”
“I knew it!” said Commander Themaparte. “Weapons in the basement!”
“And tunnels, sir. Underground. All from these aerial photos, which are hard evidence.”
The commander looked as if it were his birthday. “Weapons in the basement and tunnels underground!” It almost rhymed. “Scramble the svelte bomber!!”
ROAR had been declared, and the bomber was ready to go. Technicians had already loaded the bombs and signed off on each warning label: “Combatant casualties only.” This label had been affixed by the manufacturer to state a clear policy of killing only the right people who really deserved it. If someone else were to get ahold of these bombs and use them on civilians, well that was not something the manufacturer could control. Personnel who loaded the bombs onto trucks, and drove them across the country to the bomber group had also carefully read and signed off on these labels, as had the air group personnel who received them and loaded them onto the planes. The pilot had repeated this process during flight check and finished with a double pinky swear to think only the purest thoughts while pressing the button that would open the bomb bay doors over the target. Whatever might happen after that, well, it was something that no one could control. Everyone had done all they could to minimize collateral damage.
Back on the rooftop, the laser dots were getting restless. The action had slowed while the men were discussing outfits and earmarks, and Nikhi wondered what was happening. But she knew. She could do the math. This animal they had been chasing, savage killer of so many innocents, they could not let it get away. Not again. What were they supposed to do? They could not let it make a fool of them hiding amongst human shields, especially when the number of human shields had shrunk to only one. She cried a tear, the single lonely tear of a neocon who had really tried to make a difference, to press her glowing iron into the soft flesh of history.
“Sir,” called Themaparte’s sergeant. “Casualty math has been received.”
“Go on,” replied Themaparte.
“One point oh combatants divided by one point oh collaterals equals one hundred percent.”
“One hundred percent?” cried one of the men. “Why, that’s a perfect score!”
“Numbers don’t lie!” trumpeted Themaparte. But his new subconscious firmware reclassified Nikhi as a combatant, due to all the mayhem she would cause as president of World War Three. It recalculated—two point oh combatants divided by zero collaterals—and he began to contemplate infinity. His eyes rolled back into his head, his chin quivered, and his beard filled with drool.
“Sir, are you alright?” someone said, as others rushed to his aid. They struggled to sit him down, but suddenly their helicopter lurched under a downward gust. Another craft was passing overhead.
It was shiny and clean, gleaming and uncorrupted, a second helicopter slimmer than theirs, more nimble and plucky. It flew over the Nikhis and hovered above the rooftop while extending… a shiny ramp of some sort.
“Is that a… shiny… ?” asked one of the men.
“Escalator!” said another, looking through binoculars.
“A golden escalator?” asked the first in disbelief.6
“Silver,” said the other. “It’s a silver escalator.”
Down the silver escalator rode a man known as Swamorama. His brown skin glistened in the sun, and he smiled a jovial and dangerous smile. He was Nikhi’s presidential rival.
“Everyone here is corrupt!” he declared. “I am placing you all under citizen’s arrest!” He deftly grabbed the Nikhis’ arms and twisted them into a firm, manly hold.7
But Commander Themaparte had rebooted and was back in service. “Fire at will!” he commanded. The laser dots peppered the Nikhis with little spurts of blood, plus one big spurt from one of their noses that exploded with a direct hit blowing out the front of her classy face. Swamorama had to drop the dead weight, and she fell to the roof, a gutter catching her foot and whipping her clockwise to spear the remnant of her head onto the tip of Nikhi’s flag pole. The American eagle went into one ear and out the other, as they say, its little die-cast talons clutching little die-cast arrows smeared with murderer’s brains and dripping with muderer’s blood. In other words, she was lucky, for she was spared the long torture endured by so many other victims of neocon attacks, who die under the press of rubble with limbs ripped away, little pudgy knees and all, hearts pumping out their own blood beat by beat, for nothing.
Swamorama’s chopper veered upward in the wake of the shots, but he was able to grab the escalator’s lower landing with one hand. The surviving Nikhi clutched her arms around his strong neck as more bullets flew and she bled from many places. He clasped his other arm around her waist and declared, “Whoever you are, I am bringing you to justice!”
As Swamorama’s chopper climbed and advanced, a bird flapped nearby. Or was it a wisp of cloud? Perhaps a child’s stray balloon? Themaparte looked at it askance and saw his birthday wish granted.
“INCOMING!!!” he roared. It was a roar of ROAR, for the svelte bomber had arrived, and its warning labels were already plummeting through the bomb bay doors, riding the bomb to which they were attached, down and down and down.
“Commander,” began Themaparte’s sergeant. “Do we know what kind of weapon we’re about to bomb? I mean, what if-”
“ROARRRRRR!!!” went a wave of hellfire at that moment and engulfed all of them in green and violet flames of evil. The Ultimate Weapon had been bombed, and it had no warning label. Collateral damage was not minimized. The SWAT members would never be found, nor would so much as a paperclip for a radius of several time zones. Many pudgy knees were harmed and never seen again.
***
Far away at Command Headquarters, analysts analyzed the mission:
Objective: neutralize 1.0 Nikhis,
Outcome: neutralized 1.0 Nikhis.
1.0 / 1.0 = 100%
A perfect score! Numbers don’t lie.
***
Swamorama’s helicopter hurtled toward the horizon, surfing the wave of fire. The Nikhi-ish person in his grasp flinched as one of her five-inch Homicidal Heels (blood red) ignited, and she shook it off, along with any doubt of her birthright. By the time the other shoe dropped, she finally felt at peace with her twin and knew that no one would ever again tell them apart.
Israeli Defense Forces release video showing evidence of Hamas weapons, tunnels linking to hospital basements
https://www.foxnews.com/world/israeli-defense-forces-release-video-showing-evidence-hamas-weapons-tunnels-linking-hospital-basements
Madeleine Albright, the first female US Secretary of State (woohoo!), on her neocon choices that killed half a million Iraqi children:
“I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.” (CBS’s Sixty Minutes, May 12, 1996)
Dressarte Paris explains how a V-neck minimizes beefy shoulders.
How to Minimize Broad Shoulders?
https://www.dressarteparis.com/how-to-minimize-broad-shoulders/
Spymasters get a tingly sensation when something “has all the classic earmarks.”
That has a better ring than “we have no evidence,” just as “nothing to add” has a better ring than “those guys are lying.”
FBI says it has ‘nothing to add’ to Ratcliffe’s claim on Russian disinformation
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/21/politics/fbi-russia-disinformation/index.html
Donald Trump’s “golden escalator ride” was how he famously announced his 2016 presidential candidacy.
Vivek Ramaswamy has called all the other GOP candidates corrupt, especially Nikki Haley.
2:14 “I’m the only one on this stage who isn’t bought and paid for”
1:00 “Nikki is corrupt” legal pad stunt