The Last Shot (202 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by The Yellow Dart (View user info) at 2006-10-06 00:40:02 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
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The year could be this one, at a time unknown. The location will of course be classified, as will the reasoning, if any proper reasoning actually exists. There will be a team of high ranking men, but only one man. The lone man will use his thumb to press a button that will end humanity as we know it.
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The current conditions outside are overcast with a chance of thunderstorms later in the evening. I still get out of bed, get dressed, and head to work in spite of this. It doesn't matter if every intuition in me is telling me to just stay in bed and recuperate after last night's party: I've got a duty to perform.
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The man is sweating profusely. He is a man of percentages. He knows he's going to listen to the slightly larger percentage in his head that tells him to do his job and press the button. Being raised in the military gave him a strict state of mind, a desire to perform when called upon and an uncanny ability to follow orders. But the percentage this time is smaller than what he's normally used to.
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I climb into my car and start it up, but that's it. I have no urge to switch the gear from park to anything. Good god, I'm tired. The blast from the horn jolts me awake after my head slowly pressed into it. I nodded off to the thoughts of my father's farm of all things; he's a sheep herder; I was literally counting sheep.
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There's something in his head this time around that he's not familiar with; something most of us know as uncertainty. Naturally, he'd been instructed and trained to the greatest extent on how to perform this operation; however, naturally, no one had ever carried out such an operation of this magnitude before. Was that really what was bugging him though? Was it the size of the weapon or was it what the weapon could do?
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Eventually I hit the road feeling extremely hung-over. I've never felt so drained in my entire life; or that's at least what I, as a proper purveyor of alcohol, tell myself. The traffic is really busy today, more so than usual. I'm going to have to really push to make it in on time.
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It's almost time to execute the plan; almost too late for the man to back down, or at least sort things out in his head. He doesn't have the confidence he's used to; something could go terribly wrong. The thought lingers in his mind as his superior briefs him again about procedures for the sixth time. Something will go terribly wrong, whether he has anything to do with it or not.
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Cars are inching down the main street in town. This is just awful, I tell myself, as I switch through radio stations. Every one is worse than the last until I finally find one playing Rage Against The Machine's "Bulls on Parade", which I instinctively turn up and start bobbing my head to. A sudden rush of adrenaline hits me and I get the wise idea to turn onto a side street: I need to move.
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It's go time. The man takes one last look at his superiors, gives a slight nod, and presses the button. The nuclear warhead fires successfully at the intended target and the man soon finds a steady hand grasping his shoulder in congratulations. Everyone is smiling, as if they accomplished some feat; the man realises he is not joining in with them. His hand is still gripping the edge of the control panel and is shaking uncontrollably.
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I pull the wheel sharply to the right and slam on the accelerator to head down a small residential street. Looking back on the traffic I just evaded, I yell out to them: "so long, suckers!" At the same time a car had just backed out onto the street in front of me while I was looking away; it's too late to stop now, but I slam on the brake anyway.
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The bomb was one thousand times stronger than the one dropped on Hiroshima. The result of its impact was unimaginably large; visible from outer-space. The man watched it all unfold wide-eyed on the screen with the live video feed. The explosion could be described as everything from "magnificent" to "horrific". It was a first for humanity; possibly a last too.
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My front end ploughed into the driver-side door of the blue Honda Civic. I made eye contact with the young woman just before we collided; she looked terrified; I'm more than certain I did too. My airbag shot into my face and the hood of my car popped up into the air. I lost sight of her, but all I cared about at that moment was if she was okay.
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Thousands upon thousands would be dead already, and the wave hadn't even started to spread across the terrain yet. The man finally figured out what it was that was running through his head, but he couldn't make sense of it until after the fact: he would soon become the biggest murderer in the history of the world apart from God himself.
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I checked myself over and felt that I could move, which was exactly what I planned on doing regardless. Falling out of my car, I crawl over to hers. There's a remarkable pain in my left leg, but despite this I brace myself on her car and pull myself up enough to look in her window. She isn't moving.
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The man falls to his knees. He can't believe what he's just done. What's worse is the looming fear in his head that the worst is yet to come. This time the percentages in his head tell him, matter-of-factly, that he's fucked.
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I fall back down on the ground and start hyperventilating uncontrollably. I've killed her. I'm a fucking murderer.
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Almost in unison the man and I whisper to ourselves: "what have I done?"
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I shouldn't have had the last shot at the bar last night. It's entirely my fault.
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The man had just fired off the last shot for humanity, doing us in: we're all fucked now.
User Reviews
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-06-05 12:36:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2