Random (but not really)

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Deus Ex Machina Excerpt

The following is an excerpt from the story I’m writing, as requested by Vince, who provided me the name of the news station.

I was just going to give the news excerpt, but decided to publish the entire chapter instead. Maybe this will get me motivated to finish things up. (I just checked, I’m at 52k words right now-103 pages in Word.)

Strangely, the news bit came to me almost fully formed, and was a lot of fun to write.

Chapter 12: The News

They all met in the lobby of Ben’s gym at what Sean considered to be an ungodly early hour. Everyone else seemed to be awake, however. Ben was already doing laps by the time Sophia, and Anna got out of the locker room. He also finished swimming early, so he could go run on the treadmill for a bit. Despite all his protesting, Sean decided that the swimming wasn’t nearly as bad as he thought it would be. Not that he enjoyed it or anything, but maybe—if it really did make his grandmother happy—he’d try and do this on a regular basis. Maybe tomorrow he’d look into getting a membership. He hoped that Ben wouldn’t gloat too much.

They were sitting in the lobby waiting for Sophia to finish changing when Ben and Sean’s cell phones rang.

“What the…?” said Sean as they grabbed their phones.

They both had the same message. Oberon’s voice saying, “Something’s coming. Turn off your computers.” Ben and Sean looked at each other, and at the same time said, “Work!”

Ben turned to Anna, “We’ve got to run to work to shut off the servers there. Can you give Grandma a ride home?”

“No problem,” she paused. “Would it be acceptable for me to call and warn people I know?”

“I don’t see why not,” said Ben, “though I’d rather you not tell them where the information came from.”

“And when you get to my house,” said Sean, “please turn off my computers. I left everything running.”
And with that Ben and Sean were out the door.

“You get the servers, and I’ll let people know what’s going on,” Sean yelled to Ben as they ran towards their cars.

“No way!” said Ben. “YOU turn off the servers, I’LL talk to people. If you try and explain I’ll be there all day straightening things out.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

And with that they were in their cars and tearing out of the parking lot.

Al Sedq or The Truth started as a women’s channel, where the newscasters and staff were all women. It was initially created as a way to allow devout Muslim women to hold jobs where they would not have to interact with men in the workplace. When it began, it was assumed it would be little more than the Arabic version of the Oprah channel, covering women’s issues, which would primarily be cooking and housekeeping and child rearing. However, the channel exploded after an interview with the Indian prime minister, in which she confessed she was infertile as a result of abuse by her older brother when she was a child—an older brother who until that point had been a successful business man and politician.

That segment was picked up by stations all over the world, and almost immediately politicians and celebrities—both male and female—were clamoring to be interviewed. This sudden notoriety allowed the channel to expand rapidly and soon it was not only the largest woman only company in the world, its news broadcasts came to rival al Jazera in popularity. And many felt that their quality of reporting far surpassed that of other broadcasters all around the world.

They eventually expanded throughout the Muslim world, and it was only when they began to broadcast in Afghanistan that an irate Afghani told them about Pravda and Russian propaganda. But by that time it was too late to change the name.

All the reporters were women, and all the broadcast engineering and executive positions were also filled by women. Once the station started to grow, they started to receive threats, especially in more conservative areas. After that, all reporters were given the option to conduct their broadcasts in full hijab, and more than half the reports (primarily those with children) chose to keep their identities secret. When al Sedq expanded they decided to keep the location of the broadcast center and offices secret. They maintained their old offices for conducting interviews, but all other business was conducted in their new facility. Only employees and ex-employees knew the true location, which was in a major shopping complex, with a main entrance through the back of a Victoria’s Secret. Al Sedq arranged staggered shifts, so only a few women entered and exited at a time. Additionally, their titular employer was Victoria’s Secret, which meant that almost no one was listed in the tax records as working for Al Sedq. The running joke in house was that not only were they the best reporters in the world, they also had the best underwear, as they all received the Victoria’s Secret employee discount.

Rajni and Padma were sitting in front of their computers, but staring up at a bank of televisions screens, displaying news from all over the world.

Like many others, they’d gone to school in the United States, but when they returned home to India, the best jobs they could find were call center jobs, which was how they ended up working for al Sedq. They were part of the computer security group for al Sedq. For obvious reasons, the front office was security conscious, and went out of their way to hire the best female computer engineers available and—unusual for any business—actually take the advice given them by those engineers.

Rajni had her feet up on her desk and was staring at the bank of screens when the majority of them suddenly blacked out, and then came right back up to a cream colored backdrop. She sat straight up and slammed her feet to the floor, reaching for the remote—flipping through the major networks she saw that most were showing the same thing. Al Sedq was the only exception—they were still broadcasting an interview with the Iranian Minister of Agriculture.

Rajni looked at Padma. “Do you know what this means?” she asked.

“It means that we’re getting bonuses!” said Padma, as she picked up the phone to call the news department. They’d want to break this immediately. Rajni turned back to the screens to watch what happened.

An impossible woman suddenly appeared in front of the backdrop. Beautiful, she was built like a cross between Lara Croft and Barbie, with proportions that should have been biologically impossible. Her clothing left nothing almost to the imagination: A red bikini top that barely covered her enormous breasts, a pair of Daisy Duke shorts that almost covered her round bottom, and a pair of red stilettos on her feet. Her hair was blonde, with no trace of roots, and her lipstick was a fire engine red that matched her bikini top and shoes precisely.

A moment later a man appeared beside her. Just like the woman, he was almost a parody of a human with giant, bulging muscles visible over his entire body. He was shirtless except for a olive drab fishing vest, the pockets bulging. His pants were a pair of combat fatigues, all the pockets full there as well, and on this feet were a pair a desert boots. He would have seemed like a bad joke except that the leather holsters around his waist and crossing his chest held very large guns, and peeking out of the vest and pants were endless clips of ammo. There were also several knifes strapped to various places. He looked as if he had been pulled from a not particularly realistic action movie.

The woman spoke. Her voice was American and sultry, but lacking a regional accent. “We hope that with the events of the past several weeks we have captured your attention.”

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