Yes folks, here’s another jumbled collection of wasted words entered for this year’s NYC Midnight Short Story Competition.

The requirement was for political satire, a heat wave, and a rollerblader.

This one (speaking of heatwaves) hasn’t a snowballs chance in hell. But still, there were only about 30,000 other competitors and they may have all come down with some terrible disease that day.

*****

The Clattering Wheels of Power

The meeting of world leaders had been scheduled for 10AM, but it was well after 11AM when the fleet of limousines pulled up in the stifling heat outside the United Nations building, and visiting dignitaries were ushered through security into waiting elevators. As the formally dressed menagerie of mostly elderly men was ascending, American President Theodore Diamond, already waiting on the 43^rd floor, practiced his opening speech in front of the mirror of the private bathroom. He was particularly enamoured with the expression ‘so-called global tsunami’ with which he would compare the current local heatwave as a ‘warm seasonal ripple’ and rehearsed the ambiguous raising of one eyebrow that would accompany the words themselves.

When the elevator doors opened, he greeted each head of state individually with a firm handshake, before directing them towards plush seating behind a massive semicircular table bearing the names of each participating country. More than half the seats remained vacant.

“I welcome you all,” he began via the automatic interpreter service, when everybody had fitted their headphones, “but sadly inform you that many members remain absent due to unforeseen and unavoidable circumstances….”

“Such as?” came a booming voice from his right.

“Such as,” continued Diamond, “riots, plagues, bombings, insurrections….”

The Australian Prime Minister, Bruce Buchanan, leant forward and interrupted again, “As unavoidable as such circumstances may be, they were hardly unforeseen. The world goes on.”

“Thank you, Bruce. The world indeed goes on,” continued Diamond, “and your observation segues conveniently into the first and only item on today’s agenda – that of apparent global climate change.”

“Didn’t we cover that last year?” the question came from Heinz Schnieder, the wiry bespectacled politician from Berlin.

Diamond raised his practised eyebrow, “Indeed we did. And the year before that, too. So, I would like to begin with some impromptu, but nonetheless passionate, words of my own…..”

Stephen Vatubua, the rotund Fijian Prime Minister, was meanwhile studying the printout in front of him. “If I may make a point of order,” he interjected, “the agenda appears to be very specific in regard to timing.”

“Meaning?”

“It’s lunchtime.”

The president examined his watch, “yes, indeed,” he sighed, “things do seem to be slipping away, and I’ll get to that. But may I say firstly….”

“Menu looks impressive,” Vatubua persisted.

“Ah, yes. Well, unfortunately necessity has precipitated some last-minute changes….”

“Do tell.”

“The Golden Imperial Osetra Russian Caviar is unavailable.”

“Why?”

“Current trade sanctions have rendered it essentially a prohibited substance.”

A collective groan spread amongst the delegation.

“And the accompanying Russo-Baltique Vodka?” asked Schnieder hopefully.

“A similar issue.”

Vatubua  read directly from the menu, “what about the ‘Sashimi Bluefin Tuna presented by famed Japanese chef, Masa Takayama’?”

“Japanese vessels have been effectively banned from waters that contain any actual tuna. Something to do with whales, apparently. Some bad feeling there. Tinned Sicilian anchovies was the best we could manage at short notice.”

There was a hush of disappointment across the room.

“And so,” continued the president nervously, “I have taken it upon myself to organise alternative nourishment. But regarding this ‘so-called global tsunami’…”

“What have you done, Theo?” demanded Buchanan.

“About what? Oh…I’ve ordered pizza.”

“From Italy?”.

“Little Italy. About ten blocks away.”

“For God’s sake. And dessert?”

“Warm seasonal ripple,” Diamond mumbled, before adding, “but nobody is going to starve.”

The later words, the president immediately recognised, were ill chosen to be casually let loose into the room, and Olafur Einarsson, the annoyingly humourless Icelandic leader, was quick to swoop like a gyrfalcon upon them. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” he snarled, “starvation of pandemic proportions is a looming symptom of the issue we are here to address.”

An awkward silence filled the room until fortuitously penetrated by the chill ringing of a telephone.

Diamond picked up the receiver. “Yes? What is it?”

“It’s Sinclair here, Sir, from security. We have a scruffy-looking youth who’s arrived on rollerblades carrying an enormous load of pizza boxes. Claims to have an appointment.”

“What’s his name?”

“Tony Bonetti.”

“That’s our man. Send him straight up.”

“Highly irregular, Sir. We will need to thoroughly search him and the boxes he’s carrying. The rollerblades themselves may be a form of concealed weapon.”

“Frisk him all you like, and confiscate the blades, but keep your filthy hands off our food.”

“It will take a while, Sir, as he insists on using the stairs.”

“What? We have stairs? Whatever. Just send him up.”

“Well,” announced Diamond triumphantly, “that’s one problem solved with the judicious application of power. Shall we get back to the matter at hand while we wait for the food? What about you, Bruce? What are your thoughts on the subject?”

“It certainly seems to be getting warmer. The weather for last year’s meeting was quite chilly as I recall.”

“Last year’s meeting was in Reykjavik,” interjected Einarsson.

“So?” replied Buchanan.

“The North Pole hasn’t completely melted yet.”

“Lucky you.”

The American President attempted to regain control. “Getting back on track, Bruce, my understanding is that Australia has committed unilaterally to a ninety-five percent reduction of coal exports. What’s the time frame on that?”

“Thank you for your interest, Theo, but the agreement is thoroughly detailed in a comprehensive report submitted to your office. I do not propose to read it all aloud here and now.”

“It’s a seven-hundred-page document, Bruce, and I don’t propose to read one word of it. Can you just give us a summary?”

“Time frames remain fluid in nature determined by overriding economic regional circumstances and the broader variations in global demand, but we shall ensure that next year’s report will indicate a significant overall reduction.”

“In coal exports?”

“That’s certainly what the report will indicate.”

Olafur Einarsson tapped his pencil ostentatiously on the desk. “What you are really saying though, is that as long as people want to buy coal you will keep digging it up and selling it to them. We need to ban it right now.”

“It’s not as simple as that, Ollie,” the Australian responded with exaggerated patience, “and prohibition has historically proven to be a blunt instrument when it comes to cutting things. Coal is a bit like cocaine – the less you try to sell to people the more they want to buy.”

President Rojas of Bolivia, a man whose personal wealth defied reasonable explanation, leaned towards his microphone to respond to a subject with which he was familiar. “In my country we have zero tolerance for cocaine. We confiscate it by the ton from the heartless scum who would use it for their personal gain and incarcerate them. After that we set it on fire.”

Buchanan smiled back at him. “That is essentially our approach to coal. Omitting steps one and two. We encourage the heartless scum to set it on fire themselves. The good news is that, unlike cocaine, you can’t manufacture the stuff. It’s a finite resource. Eventually the problem will take care of itself.”

“And just how long will that be?” asked Einarsson.

“150 years should see it out. Give or take.”

 

Another uncomfortable silence was fortuitously terminated by a knocking at the door and President Diamond himself, self-proclaimed leader of the free world, struggled to his feet to receive a pizza delivery. Before him stood a dishevelled, profusely sweating, but undeniably healthy-looking boy of about seventeen. “43 floors!’ the boy panted, “have you guys ever thought about downsizing?”

“You could have taken the elevator.”

“Yeah, and I could have taken an airconditioned limo with police escort in already grid-locked traffic while sipping imported water from a throwaway plastic bottle. But I didn’t. I skated. The result is that I arrived hot but healthy, and so did your food, and my carbon footprint remains almost undetectable.”

Bruce Ballard, unaccustomed to being talked down to, rose to his feet. “A gratuitous lecture from some semi-employed, tree-hugging, high-school dropout is not what we ordered. Just leave the pizzas and bugger off before we have you defenestrated.”

“Whatever you want, Mr Bigshot. But there remains the matter of payment.”

“Send us an account.”

“We don’t do accounts. It’s cash only.”

“Cash? Are you kidding me? Who uses cash? Cash is no longer anything but a shelter for criminals and beggars.”

“I’m no beggar,” grinned the boy.

The president elected to intervene, “Somebody will pay you downstairs, Tony. But you need to go. We have vital matters to discuss in privacy.”

“I am not to leave the room without full payment.”

“Says who?”

“My father.”

Diamond considered this revelation carefully before picking up the phone again. “Sinclair?” he whispered, “we have a situation. We need cash. Send some up here straightaway.”

“We don’t carry cash, Sir, as you know. Government policy.”

“Then,” responded Diamond more forcibly, “get to the bank. Pronto.”

“How much?”

Einarsson was infuriated. “What is going on here? The entire future of the planet is being held to ransom by the pizza delivery boy’s dad?”

Diamond held a hand over the mouthpiece, “The fact of the matter is that this young gentleman’s family have certain, ah …connections, through which we may or may not have accepted, ah…certain favours to resolve, ah…certain issues that may or may not have officially occurred.” He turned to the boy again and asked, “How much?”

“$657.35.”

Diamond repeated the number into the phone and hung up. Ballard was apoplectic. “657 bucks? For pizza? This is extortion!”

The pizza-boy grinned. “Extortion? I know a bit about extortion, Sir, and so should you. Nobody likes payback time, do they?”

A mixture of awkward laughter and indignation echoed through the space until Einarsson intervened again, “can we just get on with it, dammit?”

“In front of him?”

“Why not? It’s not as if we are all concealing secrets concerning the future of humankind, is it?”

“Of course not,” grinned Ballard, “heaven forbid. Why don’t we just sit him at the North Korean seat? There’s no chance of that lunatic showing up.”

“Please take this seriously, Ballard.”

“I’m taking it very seriously. Pass me a slice of the pepperoni. It’s going cold.”

 

But nothing else was going cold.

Unbeknown to the leaders of the world, conditions outside had deteriorated exponentially. The temperature continued to climb and services had been pushed beyond limits, plunging the city into chaos. The electricity grid was shutting down borough by borough and little could be heard above a howling wind, the sounds of emergency sirens, and the screams of overheated children. Firestorms were breaking out and water supplies were dwindling. Communication was erratic and confused. The national banking system had shut down. Looting had commenced.

Nevertheless, the atmosphere in the meeting room, however tense, remained reasonably cool. “State of the art aircon,” boasted Diamond, and discussion thus continued regardless of the weather or the visitor, but with no apparent path forward.

The debate was, as usual, essentially circular. Any measures of enforced austerity in a primarily democratic world were universally recognised as political suicide. When considering what should or shouldn’t be done, what could or couldn’t be done, and what would or wouldn’t be done, the nations of the world found themselves in basic unison with the reality that whilst a lot should be done, and a lot could be done, virtually nothing actually would be done, unless somebody else did it first.

The leaders were glancing at their watches and simultaneously wondering when it might all end when the temporary representative of North Korea spoke.

“Manpower.”

“What?”

He didn’t stand, but instead leant back in his seat with his feet on the desk. “Manpower,” he repeated, “I’ve listened to you all babbling on about power – wind-power, wave-power, solar-power, nuclear-power, geothermal-power …. yet the most powerful machine in existence acts only as a human sponge, sucking up everything but giving nothing back. That’s called debt, and debt accrues interest.”

“More leftie bullshit,” said Ballard.

“Hear him out,” insisted Einarsson.

“All you do is sit around talking. You never do anything. Wasted energy. It’s the same everywhere. People in air-conditioned offices talking, feeling important by shuffling papers, typing meaningless letters and numbers onto keyboards, sipping on extra-large double-decaf sugar-free long-macchiatos and secretly updating their online dating profiles before going home to heat a highly refined, pre-prepared bucket of slop in the microwave to eat in front of a wide-screen high-definition flashing box and watch some outrageous fiction called reality. At the end of the week nobody remembers anything they did because nobody has actually done anything. They have gone nowhere. Your reality is plastic and its starting to melt. But how do you think I delivered pizza? How do you think the pyramids were built?”

“You’re drawing a long bow there. Are you suggesting that we all become slave labourers?”

“You’re already slaves, and if you climbed off your fat asses and did some work instead of inventing new ways to avoid it, you might begin to understand the true nature of labour. There’s enough stored energy in this room alone to feed a small village for a week.”

Prime Minister Vatubua shuffled nervously in his chair and adjusted his belt.

“Oh, right,” drawled Ballard, “so now you’re suggesting that we start eating each other?”

“Pass me a knife and fork,” said Einarsson.

 

Any further discourse on the virtues of cannibalism, however, was cut short by a crackling through the speaker system, and the assembly heard a jumbled version of Sinclair’s voice ring through their ears.

“…full system shutdown…. fire in basement… use fire-escape…”

Smoke was visible floating past the windows.

“Is he insane? The fire-escape? It’s forty-something floors. We’ll never make it.”

Tony Bonetti was already on his feet. “We’ll all make it. Stop talking and start following me.”

“Now he thinks he’s Jesus-Bloody-Christ.” Ballard’s voice was ignored in the sudden rush for the exit.

 

The descent was long and arduous. Smoke, confusion, and fear filled the fire escape and numerous  heads of state tripped and fell, only to be trampled upon unceremoniously by others. If not inspired, they had certainly become motivated. Bruised, bloody, sweating and coughing, all eventually emerged onto the street and looked up at the burning building. Ballard and Diamond were the last out into the relative safety of the real world.

“Who the fuck was that guy, anyway?” puffed Ballard.

“The pizza-boy? I am acquainted with his family.”

“Do you think he was making any sense?”

“Absolute gibberish.”

“Agreed.”

“So, what do you think we should tell the press?”

“Just the usual stuff. Robust debate leading to general consensus. Heroic escape from inferno reflective of steely-eyed determination and teamwork displayed by world leaders. That sort of crap.”

“What about Einarsson? He’s no team player.”

“Nothing to see there. Fake news.”

 

The pair became separated in the expanding anarchy of the city, and President Theordore Diamond found himself trudging directionless and unimportant through the rabble and the sweltering heat of the smoke-filled streets of Manhattan. He heard the clattering of rollerblades behind him only seconds before feeling a tap on his shoulder.

“$657.35. And it’s payback time.”