Musk (Eye Test Edit)
CASSIUS CROON HEAVED HIMSELF OVER THE OBSTACLE WALL AND DROPPED DOWN THE HEMPY FACE. Panting heavily, he jogged to a row of monkey bars, leapt to the first rung and (maintaining his kinetic energy) swung himself to the end. He then plodded through a real minefield studded with actual Claymore mines, an M16 dangling from his shoulder, using only his intuition to avoid the stingers beneath. It was one of most astonishing skills - knowing exactly where to be, at every moment - precisely the right place at the right time. From an armor-plated observation tower Croon's superior Gerald McCumbie watched in awe. He was the GOAT - the greatest of all time, he pondered, but was he good enough?
I saw him dodge bullets once, dancing out of their path he remembered.
It was a superhuman feat, like a slowmotion ballet, or a matador
evading a charging bull. But how nimbly will he step when chasms open beneath his feet, the sun explodes, and even the stars and moon come crashing down from the firmament? Where will he shepherd us, when the Hour of Our Disappearance has come, and the universe itself implodes, collapsing into a primeval Great Crunch?
One hour later, back at the CIA's refurbished bunker at Langley, Viriginia, Cassius Croon (freshly changed into a Gucci suit and dowsed in a cloud of manly flowers) was buzzed through into McCumbie's office. He stood for a moment in that den of mahoganic majesty. Finally McCumbie removed his glasses, and on cue, one of the walls instantly got splattered with myriad gaudy Chinese pictograms.
<<Cas I don't know you about you but I'm not much of an Orientalist
>> McCumbie began.
<<I mean, I know you speak some of their languages, some Chink and some Jap and some Thai I do believe, but that does not necessarily mean that you like the place. Shit, this bunker is chock-full of Arabic experts who can't stand the revengeful cheating camel-fucking bastards, and wish we would just nuke the lot of them. But in regards to Asia - well, there is something creepy about the place, to my mind, and if you don't mind me saying so. I don't know what it is. Too many people. Wierd smells of fish sauce in the marketplace. That is not to denigrate the glory which is Chinese takeout and chicken
laksa, which I believe is a Malaysian dish. Plus, the women over there can be downright hot, there's no denying that. To be honest, I have to admit, I sometimes enjoy singing karaoke, if we're going to be fair about this...
>>
<<Sir, what is this all about?
>> Croon asked. He was somewhat irked by the "you know a little Jap, a little Thai" remark, and was in no mood for McCumbie's blithering.
<<I am fluent
>> he boasted, C3PO-like
<<in more than 100 forms of communication, including Bahasa Indonesia, Korean, Pirate Hakka, and Tokyo street slang. But what is this, an eye test? Or are you checking my memory of Chinese characters?
>>
<<Let's call it a reality check
>> McCumbie said.
<<Your reality, my reality, our shared reality - it's coming to an end. And we have no damned idea what is going to replace it.
>>
KIND OF STUNNED BY THESE STRANGE WORDS and the even stranger manner of their delivery, Croon lifted his eyes to peruse the Chinese characters being projected on the walls. They were flashing all over the place like the signs in Kowloon on a Friday night when you'd eaten bird-nest soup in a skyhigh tower and seduced an Emerald Princess in the process, and the only thing that mattered in the whole world was getting her - quickly! - to the nearest skyhigh love hotel.
Reality is itself is coming to an end - what was that all about? Some kind of practical joke - but McCumbie was not the jocular type, and in any case, April 1 was months away. Was it an initiation? If so, these characters could offer a clue.
He peered closer at the flashing ideograms, which welcomed him like old friends. There lurking near the flagpole was "cheung" (承), the character for "undertake". Underneath was the logogram which represented "heat, fever" and related concepts. Below that was the compound "jinpai" (金牌) gold medal, and then "dao" (島) for island, which in Japanese was pronounced "shima" (or "jima", or "tou", go figure!) Croon had studied Mandarin as a young man in the trade wars of the late 1990s, and picked it up in a matter of months. It was the way he picked up everything - lightning fast! It was a similar story with women. On top of that, Croon had also mastered Japanese during a two-month assignment in 2002
AD, when his mission was to infiltrate a dangerous new religious sect.
<<The beauty of Chinese letters
>> he told McCumbie
<<is that they're pictures, as well as words. They are comprised of elements, known as
radicals. One side tells you the meaning, the other the pronunciation.
>>
<<You can see them, then?
>> McCumbie probed, frankly getting a little scary.
<<Imagine if they all started disappearing, one by one?
>>
<<Why would they disappear?
>> Croon asked, exasperated.
<<That's for you to find out
>> McCumbie replied.
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