FINISH THEM!! Part Two
Nikhi's nemesis
Nikhi Lahey tucked her chin between her shoulders and pulled her hood closer around her face. “We have sent a security code to your phone,” said the computer screen in front of her. “Enter it into this box to proceed to your email.”
She was at a local college library, where her svelte jetpack had allowed her to make an inconspicuous landing. Svelte technology was on the cutting edge, evading detection by exuding such graceful urbanity that you felt like it belonged in the scene even more than you, so that if you noticed anything unusual, then you were probably the weird one, and you had better just drop it. Initial prototypes of the svelte bomber and svelte fighter had heads spinning and jaws dropping. The only reliable way to see a svelte device clearly was to look at it askance, which Nikhi had rendered all but impossible by affixing a trendy hashtag sticker to her jetpack before landing on the college campus.
Nikhi mentally pounded her fist on the library table and sighed in frustration. How could she get the security code without turning on her phone? She just wanted to check her email real quick, anonymously from this public computer, while staying indoors out of sight of surveillance and whomever might be pursuing her. And she needed a chance to think.
Why had a SWAT team surrounded her house? Why had they called it a “compound” and accused her of committing atrocities?
Her eyes were drawn to the screen of the student next to her and the text scrolling across it. “Nikhi Lahey, classy former governor turned mass murdering terrorist…” The words crawled across the bottom of a news feed as her photo filled half the screen alongside a montage of bloody crime scenes. It was her presidential campaign photo, the really good one where the lighting was perfect, her smile confident but not boastful, upbeat but not too Pollyanna, and her hair was having a great day. She touched the top of her hood to renew her feeling of concealment and reminded herself that the svelte, hashtagged pack hanging from her shoulders made it impossible to tell her apart from any backpack-wearing student, even if none of them were in a hooded jumpsuit or five-inch heels.1
Speaking of which, maybe she didn’t need her email after all. She opened another private window and logged in to her favorite retail web site, Fierce Footwear. Today’s achingly expensive delivery of “Homicidal Heels, blood red” was running late and so had not been disrupted by the SWAT incident.
That was all she needed to know to rid her mind of distractions and refocus on the task at hand: finding the real terrorist and clearing her name.
***
Commander Khant L. Themaparte paced the room like a hungry tiger waiting for intel on its next meal. They called the room a “command center,” but it was tight, musty, and low budget. The three screens were each too big for a desk but too small to avoid looking lonely on their section of wall. A chair had been scooted all the way to the right and pulled up near the one screen that showed anything, a colorful readout of mission status and surveillance. The center screen was disconnected and flickering, because its remote was missing, and it was mounted flush to the wall so that no one could reach the off-switch. The left screen had stopped working some time ago.
A red indicator began to flash on the surveillance readout. Signals intelligence had received a hit on one of Lahey’s social media accounts. The commander tapped the “TALK” button for an update.
“Sir, the suspect just viewed a retail ad from a public computer in the local college library not far from her house.”
Commander Themaparte grunted skeptically. “Seems a little careless, don’t you think?” he replied. “She of all people would know to stay off social media.”2
“Yes sir, she wasn’t exactly on social media. The ad was served to a small boutique site where she only viewed a delivery page and logged off. She probably didn’t know the site displays ads from a social media network. Most people don’t know about those tracking pixels following them all over the web.”
“Save the pixel talk for your nerd friends Saturday night,” barked Themaparte. The flashing red light framed his haggard face opposite the white flicker of the disconnected screen, like a pair of lightning strikes in a square dance. “But good work,” he added belatedly, downloading the library’s coordinates. Full of renewed purpose, he strode out of the command center to prep his team.
Soon he and his top SWAT personnel were airborne in a black and green chopper heading for the college. The rest were on the road not far behind.
“Sir, we have no reports of anyone spotting her on the campus,” said a sergeant. “Don’t you think that’s strange? Her face is all over social media as a terrorist.”
“No, sergeant,” replied Commander Themaparte knowingly. “Not strange at all, with that svelte jetpack.” He shook his head and added, “I knew it had all the classic earmarks.”
“You mean…” mused the sergeant. “She blends right in… The kids can’t tell her apart…”
“By God!” thundered the commander. “You’re a genius!”
He immediately rang his superiors. “I can FINISH THIS right now,” he announced grimly into his radio. “All I need is a declaration of ROAR.”
“Out of the question,” came the answer.
The laws of ROAR allow a large group of victims to declare that they are Rightfully Obliterating Aggressive Repugnance (ROAR) and retaliate against people whom they cannot tell apart from their perceived attackers. Expanding on an older idea called “war,” which only allowed such retaliation between different countries, ROAR now provides all groups of any nature equal access to rightful retaliation.
“Respectfully, sir,” replied Themaparte. “The entire city has been terrorized for weeks with many victims dead and horribly disfigured. Surely that is a large enough group to declare ROAR. And now the terrorist cannot be told apart… from these human shields…”
The other side went silent.
“Sir?” called Themaparte. “We can’t let this animal get away again. What are we supposed to do?”
“We’ll think about it,” came the answer. “Bombing a college library is not a good look. Let us know if you discover weapons in the basement.”
Themaparte’s mind raced. No one likes seeing young, attractive college kids from their home country bombed on TV. If only the kids had all voted for this terrorist in some way, that could justify it, but they had not. He had heard of another commander chasing his quarry across a national border and then demolishing those foreign city blocks with an airstrike. That was brilliant, but he was not near a border. Perhaps the same could work with a state border, calling in his own state’s national guard… that might work if he chased Lahey from a blue state into a red state, but his state and the next were both blue. Maybe if enough of these kids had said horrible things on social media…
“Commander, we have breaking information,” said the pilot. “Suspect has taken hostages at the campus movie theater.”
Photos, video clips, stories, and loops were already popping up all over social media from the phones of the students inside. It was Nikhi alright, bossing everyone around from the stage in front of the movie screen, where she had interrupted a showing of “Race and Sex, What Will Be Next?” She said there was a bomb in the basement, and she was brandishing the detonator, and no one had better leave.
“A bomb is a weapon,” thought Themaparte. “And it’s in the basement…”
But his thoughts were interrupted as the chopper landed outside the theater. The well-trained team quickly took their positions, and the commander took up his bullhorn.
“Nikhi Lahey!” he bellowed into the bullhorn. “Come out with your hands up! We have the place surrounded.”
“Never!” she yelled back shrilly. He heard her voice quite well, over the live videos streaming from every nearby phone. “I am really the real Nikhi Lahey, and I hereby did all… of the crimes.”
The commander cocked his head. Something was off.
“NO!” Yelled another voice, drawing the cameras toward it. “I am the real Nikhi Lahey, and this is—can only be—my evil twin from so long ago. She was terrible! I thought I FINISHED HER when we were toddlers, but she must have escaped by crawling away on her little pudgy knees. I’m innocent. I’ve been fighting terrorism my entire life!”
A hush fell over the video streams, while everyone wondered what to do.
“Dude,” said another voice finally, low and thick. “There’s no basement in this building. I’m, like, the projectionist sometimes, and like, there’s no basement.”
A fierce contest ensued. The basement deniers decided there was no bomb and moved toward the doors to escape, while the majority blocked their exit, screaming “misinformation!” and “you’re going to get us all killed!” All the while, the Nikhis sized each other up, both ready to spring, playing mental chess in layers of feinted body language.
Then a free speech absolutist yelled “FIRE” in that crowded theater, and it emptied like the stampeding herd it always was.
Themaparte’s men moved in swiftly, but the Nikhis were gone.
“Did that asshole just yell FIRE in a crowded theater?” demanded Commander Themaparte. “You can’t do that!”
“He just did, sir,” replied the sergeant. “He just did.”
… TO BE CONTINUED …
Watch Nikki Haley smile proudly while explaining that she runs in her five-inch heels, which are for ammunition.
See 1:40.
Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley trade barbs over ‘Dick Cheney in three-inch heels’ comments
Nikki Haley pushes required identification of all social media users. Because misinformation. Last century’s brutal dictators stir in their graves, imagining what might have been and hoping it still might come to pass.
The Implosion of Nikki Haley’s Social Media Crusade
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/16/nikki-haley-social-media-anonymity-00127612
“Her call to ban anonymous posting is foolish, impractical and downright unpatriotic.”
I wonder if she’ll team up with Condo Lesta Trice.