Six Minutes

Here's a short story based on an episode of Radio Lab that I listened to yesterday.

It was just after four in the morning. He hadn’t sleep last night. In fact, he hadn’t slept since Tuesday. But that didn’t matter much to him, he’d never put much stock in sleep. He often bragged about not needing to sleep. It was part of what set him apart from the rest of humanity. It was part of what made him so successful when others were struggling just to get by. Sleep might part of the rule book of being human, but he’d never been one to play by the rules. He chuckled lightly at the thought of that silly, impotent word. Rules, he mused. Rules didn’t apply to him.

It was just after four in the morning. The sun was still below the horizon. The air was cool and still. This was the time of the day that he most enjoyed. He reveled in being awake so early, while everyone else was unconscious and useless. It put him at an advantage. Life was a constant war, filled with countless battles. While his enemies were asleep, he was up and preparing a sneak attack. He would win the battle that was today. Winning was what he’d built his life around. Winning was what he did best.

Shifting in his silk robe, he thumbed through his phone, scrolling past the boring crap to find the juicy morsels. He jammed his other hand into a bucket of day-old KFC and pulled out a soggy drumstick to gnaw on while he read. When something good caught his eye, he immediately retweeted it without reading past the headline. The headline was the most important part. Nobody read the details. Details were for pinheads and pussies. Details were for little bitches that couldn’t make up their minds. Details were for losers. Headlines were for winners.

While he was tweeting, something on the news caught his ear. He liked to keep the news playing on the the television twenty-four hours a day. When he moved into this ugly little house, he had had a television installed in every room so that he would be able to stay connected to the world and what was going on at all times. Truth be told, he would have preferred to stay in his own place. But this house came with the job. And anyway, living here gave him a chance to get away from his nagging wife, who had decided to keep living in their old house. In his old house, he corrected himself. That house didn’t belong to her. Nothing belonged to her. Everything she had, she had because of him. Her fame, her jewelry, her house, her fake tits, her kid. Everything came from him. And if he felt so inclined, he could take it all back.

He fished around in the sheets for a minute until he found the television remote, and then cranked the volume up so that the sound filled the room. The girl on the news was a pretty blonde with plump red lips and striking blue eyes. “She could use some bigger tits,” he mumbled to himself as he shoved his hand under his bathrobe. He’d been pushing rope for years, but he still enjoyed fondling it while watching the news on Fox. He liked to imagine the blonde newsgirls on their knees, drooling all over him like dogs salivating on a prime cut of meat. He knew how they treated the girls over at Fox, and that made the fantasy all that much more real. These girls had gotten to where they were by being on their knees. They were well trained, and that was just how he liked his women to be.

While the newsgirl rattled off something about a conspiracy being perpetrated by the some liberal pansies, his stomach started to rumble uncomfortably. The rumbles started to build, moving from his belly down into his lower intestines. He pushed his cellphone into his robe pocket and then, with a sudden, agile burst of speed uncanny for a man of his obese girth and age, he leapt from the bed and sprinted across the room to the en suite. His ass made contact with the cool porcelain bowl just as he lost control of his sphincter, spraying the inside of the commode with a hot liquid stream of feces.

“Ahhhh,” he moaned in discomfort, “Jesus Christ.” He rocked forward, redistributing his weight over the toilet. “What the hell did I eat?” he asked the floor as the contents of his stomach emptied into the bowl. He’d been harboring suspicions since moving in that someone had been poisoning his water. Pursing his lips, he made a mental note to have someone look into the matter, but promptly forgot about the whole thing the moment his attention got sucked back to the news blaring from the two televisions in the bathroom.

“... and what do you think they’re saying?” a man on the television demanded. This guy was a recurrent guest on Fox and he always had something compelling to say. He looked at the man, suddenly under his spell.

“What did they say?” he mouthed the words like a silent prayer.

“They say,” the man bellowed, seemingly in response, “that the Russians, the North Koreans, the Iranians…” the man on the television paused for dramatic effect before suddenly exploding, “They’re all gonna nuke us! We can’t just sit by and let this happen! By God, we need to stand up. We’re a nation of Christians! Christian men and women, with Christian values, and Christian duties. We have to strike first. We can’t let them his us, we can’t let them get the upper hand! We have hit them before they hit us. Mark my words, these godless communists, these radical Islamic extremists, they’ll launch an attack on us by the end of this week. I can guarantee you this.”

From his throne, he stared at the television screen, transfixed. Today was Thursday. The end of the week was tomorrow. “Christ,” he mumbled to himself, “it’s a good thing I was watching the news. If I hadn’t seen this report, I wouldn’t have known this was going to happen.”

This was precisely the reason he kept Fox news running twenty-four hours a day on every television in the house. Fox was the only reliable source of information he had. And for a man in his position, he needed a trusted and true resource. His decisions were very important… no, they were the most important. And he was surrounded by disinformation and fake news! Everyone around him was constantly bombarding him with false reports and fake statistics. The lies were so thick in this city, it was almost enough to overcome even him. But fortunately for him, and fortunately for the world, he had good sources like Fox.

He grabbed at the phone hanging from the wall beside the bath towels and barked into the receiver: “Get me Peter.”

Seconds later, Peter came stepped into the bathroom. Peter was tall and thin, with a serious face floating above a tailored uniform that exacerbated the narrowness of his body.

“Mr. President,” Peter said solemnly as he entered the room.

“Give me the biscuit,” the President ordered.

Without hesitation, Peter reached into the case and handed the President a small plastic card with an authentication code printed on it.

“Get me the Joint Chiefs,” the President commanded into the phone he was still holding. There was a moment of static and then a weary voice on the other end answered.

“Mr. President,” the voice said.

“Yes. That’s me,” the President said. “I am the President. We need to launch an attack. A nuclear attack.”

There was a momentary pause at the other end of the line, as if the voice thought this might be a joke. “Yes, sir,” the voice said at last.

The President recited the code on the biscuit and then listed the targets. “Do North Korea first. Then do Iran. Do Russia last. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” the voice responded. “But we’ll need more specific targets.”

“I gave you specific targets,” the President whined. “North Korea, Iran, and Russia. All three of them.”

“Would you… be able to give us a city, at least, sir?” the voice asked carefully.

“The capital cities,” the President responded. “We need to do this now. Before they have a chance to nuke us first.” The President reviewed what he had heard on the news broadcast in his head. “It’s Thursday!” he blurted suddenly. The end of the week is Friday!”

“Yes, sir,” the voice said flatly.

“Mr. President!” another voice broke in abruptly over the phone. “This is the Secretary of Defense! I was just told that you’ve ordered a nuclear attack. Is this… wise, sir?”

“Mr. Secretary,” the President said, “I’m glad you’re on the line. Yes, this is wise. I have it on good authority, on the best authority, that North Korea, Iran, and Russia are planning to launch nuclear attacks on the US by the end of this week.”

“But Mr. President,” the Secretary said slowly, “North Korea doesn’t have the ability to strike the US. Their most successful missile tests barely make it into the Sea of Japan.” The Secretary paused for a moment to clear his throat. “And the Iranians,” he continued, “they don’t even possess a nuclear arsenal.”

“Don’t you feed me that fake news liberal pussy bullshit,” the President spat. “I have highly credible sources. I know things that you don’t know. I know a lot of things. I am the President. I’m ordering this attack.”

“Yes, sir,” the Secretary said after a long and awkward silence. “But sir, I want to be on record saying that I advise against this. The Russians will retaliate against us, likely within seconds of our launch. Their missiles will hit us and our missiles will hit them almost simultaneously. It will be a nuclear holocaust.”

“Not if we nuke them first,” the President said triumphantly. “Launch the nukes.”

“Yes, sir,” said the first voice. “The targets will be annihilated in six minutes.”

“Excellent,” the President said, slamming the phone back on the wall with a self-satisfied grunt. He sat on the toilet for a moment, basking in the glory of his latest military victory. The Liberal Media wasn’t going to fuck this one up for him. He’d just saved every man woman and child in the greatest country on Earth.

“You’ve done it again,” he said to himself. “You’re amazing.” The President suddenly noticed that Peter was still standing in the bathroom with him. “Get the hell out of here,” the President yelled. “Can’t a man wipe his ass in private?”

Once Peter was gone, the President pulled his phone from his robe pocket and tweeted “Just nuked North Korea, Iran, Russia. #MAGA”.

He put his phone back in his robe and then took his time cleaning up. He washed his face and brushed his teeth. He cut his fingernails and vainly attempted to straighten out his unruly hair. Then, pulling his bathrobe tight around his body, he strutted back into his bedroom. Today was one for the history books, that was sure. He looked over his shoulder at the television, checking the time. It had been about six minutes since he gave his order. By now, those bastards would be dead. He walked over to his bedroom window and pulled back the curtains. As he did so, there was a brilliant white flash that filled the room with a blinding light.