Come with me

[SteveDallas]

It's getting to be time for dinner, a dinner which I seem to be attending with several colleagues. As I come back from washing my hands, the door to my office (which I have to go through to get to the meal) is cracked open. I see a woman, who seems to be a colleague but not a close friend, leafing through a typewritten document. This is in fact the document which is my personal record of all the heinous atrocities I have committed. I have always known that these things would come to light, and that when they eventually did, I would be immediately hunted down by the police and possibly the military.

I back away from the door as quietly as possible and go, just go anywhere, leaving the city. I avoid likely travel methods and any use of my credit card and end up on the bus.

It is clear that the reaction is pretty much as I had expected. Within a couple hours one can't look at a TV without seeing news stories about the shocking revelations. Details of what I have done trickle out mercilessly over the airwaves, and my closest friends and confidants express their disbelief, shock, and revulsion. They are unanimous in their hopes for my fast capture by the police.

I end up in another city, after diverting through two or three others, and I head for the quarters of my bitterest arch-rival. Why I do this is unclear. I know this is tantamount to giving myself up, and yet it seems like the most reasonable thing to do. Again my journey is accompanied by horrified expositions of my transgressions.

I arrive at my rival's place and am immediately confronted by a platoon of soldiers. They express great relief at seeing me. They are in fact not interested in capturing me, because they know that all the horrible things I did, which I did with malice aforethought and documented in disgusting detail, were complete fabrications put in place by the alien civilization currently mounting a siege of Earth--fabrications which deceived even me.

These hostile aliens feared only one thing, and that was having to deal with me. (Perhaps they were scared I'd poke them with a knitting needle, or play Bach so loudly it would damage their sensory organs.) The whole scandal was just a smoke screen to divert attention from my real location while distracting aliens from beginning their attack while my status was (officially and publicly at least) in limbo. Things are getting ugly as this siege has (perhaps not coincidentally) happened at a time of great political infighting, and it is now time for those of us who have remained loyal to the President to marshal our forces.