CHARLIE Chapter Three

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CHARLIE Chapter Three

Straightening his collar, the Presidential aide takes a huge lungful of air. He looks at the stack of paper in his hand for the umpteenth time. Why do I always have to be the bearer of such bad news, he thinks to himself, as he enters the oval office. “Mr President,” he begins, “I think you should see these reports.” He hands the pile of paper to the President.
“What are they?” asks the President.
“Well Sir, they’re from our space center on the west coast, some of the scientists out there claim to be receiving strong radio signals from outer space.”
“Outer space!” exclaims the President “Get outta here! There’s nothing out there, no intelligent life, it’s just fantasy, that’s what it is.”
“Well sir, I think you should read this one” replies the aide, as he starts walking, slowly, backwards towards the exit.
“Very well, leave it with me..”

The President sits in his oversized swivel chair and starts to speed read the pile of papers in front of him, he hates the thought of having to work on such a sunny day. I should be out on the green now, he thinks. I might not have time for a full round of golf but I could be potting a few balls on the lawn. Suddenly, he drops the stack of paper to the floor and jumps up out his chair. “Johnson! Johnson! Where are you?” He shouts across the large room and his voice carries into the corridor.

The Presidents aide comes hurrying back into the room, pulling the door firmly closed behind him. “Yes sir?” He enquires, breathlessly.
“Johnson, I want you to call a meeting of our security people, as soon as possible,” the President starts, “and Johnson, this could be an emergency!”
“Yes sir, straight away sir.”
Johnson backs out of the Oval office door for the second time this morning and breaks into a run as he reaches the hallway. He carries on down the carpeted corridor till he reaches his own little office. Once inside, he locks and bars the door and pulls down the shade over the window. He picks up the telephone and asks the internal operator for an outside line. Heavily, he punches all the sevens onto the telephone keypad and the message on his screen reader says: ENTER YOUR SECURITY CODE. He presses in his personal number which the system accepts and he’s now clear to contact the coast.
Read on..

Zblog #7

Zblog #7
HAPPENINGS
Something strange happened to my posting last week. I'm not sure exactly what but the bottom line is, that after spending ages writing the piece I was going to post, I lost it. Where it went I do not know but I can tell you that the rewritten version is safely stored on another machine somewhere.
CHARLIE
The last posting, post eight of Bravo Chapter Two, actually brings us nicely to the end of that chapter and we can now go on and have a look at some different characters on/from the other side of the world and the political spectrum ideologically. The next set of players are The Freedomlanders and they are very different from The Party People, who we have just spent the last chapter with.
ALIENS
In a lot of ways I'm itching to get back to the Aliens, don't you just want to know what's happenning with Arrow, Cresent and Dart? I do, but we're going to have to wait a little while yet because The Freedomlanders have a lot of plans of their own that we need to find out about. Oh yeah, and then we need to go back to The Party People and see if they've cooked up anything new before we get to go back into The Dome. Oh well...

BRAVO Chapter Two - (post eight)

BRAVO Chapter Two - (post eight)
“Good” says Ratz, “It is good that everybody is in agreement. Now, however, I will tell you both, exactly what we are going to do!”

The General paces up and down in front of the fireplace, he doesn’t want to get his speech wrong and he knows by experience that life is one big compromise and that revolutions, even meticulously planned revolutions take time and cooperation. He leans against the table and looks down.

The Major and Karloff are sitting on the sofa nearest to the table and their necks are straining as they force themselves to make eye contact with Ratz.

“Okay, this is what we do!” Ratz begins. “The evacuation of the dome will still go ahead, the men will leave in the carrier vessels with the invader craft onboard as planned.” The General studies the faces of The Major and Karloff, looking for any sign of dissent. People are weak, he thinks to himself, but so far it looks like they agree with me.. “We will send them close enough to the enemy to be seen, but I won’t give the order to invade. How’s that?” He asks.

Karloff jumps to his feet, he is wringing his hands in a wild motion and his facial expression becomes a gurn. He is happy and he’s having trouble restraining himself. “Excellent General!” he shouts, as he jumps for joy. “Excellent, excellent!” he repeats, then adds “the perfect threat, all we need do now is convince the enemy that these aliens are in charge."

Before Karloff can say anything else, The Major stands up and adjusting his tunic he addresses Ratz. “I will work on that General, myself!” He volunteers.

For a full minute, the General stares at him. Eventually he speaks. “Very good Major.” He says, “See you do a thorough job!”
Go to next chapter..