Dome War
Eyes of a mime

‘Only one generation- the one that was there when the project started was cloned, because the clones were making the exact same offspring as humans were from there except for gender sometimes, an intolerable miscalculation for a perfectionistic realm. These automatically become outlaws that we treat like all the other babies here- raised in a giant nursery grooming them for their future as mimics and compulsory servitude to Hollow- E until they are old enough for Eon headsets. They usually come out of the system broken hence their arbitrary, unjustified hatred for our work. Yesterday when we turned off the cameras the opportunity to get back at us presented itself and we had to gun them down in the server room they were trying to wipe clean. Apart from them trying to warn us about with the malarkey that Eon is compromised and our downfall will be by the hand of an outlaw that’s all’, the deputy explained the sinister situation to Chuck and ordered the person standing next to him to make some tête-à-tête shipment, one that would bring ruin to the surface. Chuck put the headset on and saw Lenny’s eye view of what appeared to be a dumpster, one whose counterpart on Hollow-E was behind the Dome tower. Suddenly, Lenny mimed taking something from it and took the headset off and to Chuck’s relieve and doubtfulness he obliged. The director yelled at him to put them back on but he retorted reminding them what they would do to him if he broke sequence. The director insisted and even hired the standby engineering interns to disable the headset’s armed system which took a minute to figure out. When he put it back on he saw Lenny’s hands continue miming; taking the teddy bear and pulling an imaginary (to him but real to Chuck) string on its back. To Chuck it was actually there and instead of it being a string, it was a grenade pin! Chuck then threw Grant’s doll at a barrel behind him as per mimicking Lenny and set off a chain explosion. This sent literally everyone present head over heels to maintain a visual on him alas, Chuck who was taking the credit for Lenny’s acrobatic manoeuvres was trying to keep up with mimicking Lenny’s agility the best he could. On Lenny’s part, he had put his own headset on when Chuck took his off and had gotten a picture of everyone that was present so he needed to act quickly before his perception of what was really going on in Hollow-E became too different to the real situation. Surprisingly he knew about Grant’s armed plush toy, where it had been lying around, where to throw it and how to escape Dome’s line of fire all of which would look like some very energetic charades if anyone was to be spying on him but in Hollow-E, his capoeira was at full effect through Chuck’s mimicking. He mimed kicking a guard in the face, stealing his gun and shooting the bindings of the observation ledge above him making it fall and with it, the backup that had just arrived. His final mime was shooting everyone and every explosive barrel left in quick succession with another gun he had picked up before shooting the side of the headset, making the whole thing fall off and Chuck successfully copied. Chuck then took the headset off, witnessed the capabilities of Lenny’s perfect accuracy and couldn’t help savouring the carnage. He snapped out of it and ran into the tower to get to the hangar to intercept the impending delivery but realised he wasn’t out of the woods yet. He would have to storm the building, considering there wasn’t a chance that he/Lenny had taken them all out. He stalked the halls with both hands on his shooting iron, pulling the trigger at the slightest sight of literally anyone. He was completely out of his comfort zone at this point but it fitted him like a glove. He made it up three storeys perfectly infiltrating the building except for being held back by one better trained marine that had given him a little more trouble than the others and had left his calling card on Chuck’s shoulder, a deep switchblade stab wound before Chuck returned him the favour on the side of his head. He had made it to the hangar floor but the UFO had already taken off, being pulled away by the earlier mysterious magnetism. He followed suit in a lighter craft and even caught up to it right before the saucers automatically turned off and pulled up out of the Hollow Earth. Soon after they flew out of the narrow opening their crafts got pulled to its banks and crashed. The saucer was robust enough to ensure Chuck’s survival although it was barely intact. He rolled out and wallowed in his pain before heading to the ruins of the other saucer and picking up the shipment in some briefcase. ‘On time is late, Carl. I thought I told you’, said the voice of the one intended to receive the package behind him. He put on the mask the initial deliverer had on, picked up the briefcase and turned around to see his assistant Susan.

He needed to break the silence, make sure she wasn’t on to him. ‘You’re looking nice’, he said with a fake voice. ‘Minimum wage tends to do that. Now let us get this biological Armageddon to DC before the protests end.’ She’s planning to release a virus in public, he thought, and I do not care anymore if she really knows it is me. I have to play along if I am ever going to get a chance to sabotage her. There they were riding her magnetically levitating (to counter and use the Bermuda Triangle’s own pull) and definitely more sophisticated saucer, making the most awkward of interactions here and there until he decided to extend an olive branch and appeal to her better nature by asking why she was doing it. She replied, ‘How long did you think I was going to be your coffee intern? Don’t get me wrong they employed me way before you did and while being patronised by your boss for him to feel his misogynistic and tweaked out definition of power was hilarious I had to switch it up for the promotion. I practically started a branch of Dome Industries under your company’s nose. My only competition was that opportunistic guinea pig, Willard, who started a race war far bigger than Breonna Taylor, Tony Mcdade and Ahmond Arbery’s deaths combined. If you show up you might even end racism, considering how this international bickering is about your untimely death so if you just prance up to the podium before the president declares state of emergency you might just spare District of Columbia of incurable airborne diarrhoea with a guaranteed two hour fatality countdown. If it goes down to that we will consider the project a failure in the racism section- might even start again. The death toll of these demonstrations is nearing fifty and if that doesn’t compel you to show your face and get arrested for a heavily deducted sentence, the fact that we have your canary, Grant should. Pick wrong and it is Groundhog Day for America.’ Lenny watched a kidnapped Grant squirm in his rope bondage on a tablet Susan was holding up. His decision was made for him and just in time too for touchdown on the roof of Harrison Enterprises. A strike team was there, whose leader stepped forward to shake Susan’s hand and escort her into the building while someone behind Chuck suddenly pulled a bag over his head. The next time he would see the light would be at the Washington monument with looters running past him with TVs and full grocery bags. He needed a way to get attention and the top of the Washington monument seemed to fit the bill, so he ran to the top of the stairs and shot out the window. With a dozen armed guards on his six he quickly stepped out, stood on the sill and began waving both his arms. It took less than two minutes for spectators to start rolling and a fire department to be on the way. Sure enough by the end of the day the looting and arson had come to a standstill and a court date had been set to rule the miscreant the government had to replace an explanation on his rumoured death for. Much to the irritation of the fuzz that had locked him up, Chuck smirked for he knew he had a trick up his sleeve. The next day he would meet his twin brother lawyer Lenny, who was infuriated at his unannounced surrender and he would switch places with him in accordance to phase one of his plan by using a signal disturber and a footage loop. Lenny only complied because of the success reassuring third phase of the plan, one which Chuck had built upon entering an outlaw detention room back at Dome Tower and had made an unlikely ally before heading to the hangar. Chuck then left in search of the second act of his plan, rescuing Grant- a detail he had kept thoroughly under wraps from Lenny and one that was going to be a breeze because he was breaking into his own company right? He discovered later that a coup had taken place on the grounds of his poor attendance, the coffee shop incident and the elephant in the room- his unconventional death. A new CEO was to be appointed the next day and so was Lenny’s trial but the real blockbuster was that the cam feed of kidnapped Grant was all just ropes now- he was gone.