PDA

View Full Version : Conspiracy



engineer1984
11-27-2014, 12:43 AM
The rotating desk fan. Always that rotating desk fan. Has to be metal, has to be loud, and it has to be there. The room has to be hot and the walls have to decorated with old peeling wallpaper.

The room should be square with a square table with white men and one of them should wear glasses, dark rim ones. That's preferable.

If the room could be muggy, we'd really be in for a treat. Maybe a full blown assassination attempt. Because the men would be sweating. Sweating buckets, in fact. Their white collared shirts would be pit stained and the lousy plain ties would be loosened around the neck. From fear or from the heat we shall never know, but we can only guess both.

Young white men, probably Harvard types. The one that is standing swings a fist, pinky side down, onto the table. Thud! What a solid table they found in such a **** hole. But never mind that, this one is angry. The one in the glasses is quiet. He's found that God's will to make him blind somehow matches up very well with his desire to act quietly and thoughtfully. We couldn't have written a better script.

The angry one is glaring now, but completely silent. He's waiting for a response. It's good he was born with 20 / 20 vision because glasses look bad on a leader. The others look down into their laps, one of them runs his dominant hand through his thick black hair and sighs. A few others are fidgeting and giving each other glances.

There seems to be no agreement here except that it's hot. And even in that respect the alpha would probably say no if he could get his body to agree with his mind.

One of them finally speaks up, a fidgety one, and says something useless in a sort of useless way. It's the kind of thing you'd expect to hear from someone that was dragged here, not one that chose to be here. With that lame whiny voice that is almost asking a damn question. The actual room feels like it is staring at him, even the fan points at the young man and stops. More silence.

Another yell from the leader and now both his hands are on the table palms down with fingers splayed. He's giving it to them now, the pussies. Giving 'em hell.

Glasses is quiet, has been the whole time and continues to be. At one point there must have been greetings, but maybe he was quiet then too. Must be a real hoot to talk to on the phone.

The leader gives an ultimatum and clearly no one is comfortable. You get the feeling that the air isn't as uncomfortable as the energy even though that room looks really ****ing uncomfortable. But you're starting to forget that the air is hot. You're starting to forget that the sweat could just be due to the cranked up humidity.

Finally, and right on cue, the silence is broken by Glasses. Yeah, the good looking square jawed Glasses guy with the thick brown hair.

He says something that everyone likes. Well, maybe like is the wrong word. They all feel relieved to hear whatever he says. They were feeling uncomfortable and this guy, well he made their ****ing day. The group gives that collective sigh while sitting back into their chairs. At ease, Harvard, at ease.

The lead man is wide eyed, unbelieving. 'What the ****..?' he's probably thinking '...is this guy and where does he get off?'

But the damned thing about it is that the plan sucked anyway and the script was all wrong. Glasses wasn't there and neither was ol' Harvard Dean's List 20/20 vision. The truth of the matter was that everyone was entirely too hungry for someone else's blood.

The truth was that on June 28th 1914 Princip walked out of his favorite deli just in time to see Franz sitting there in a stalled convertible. Princip wanted blood and never seemed too bothered by the fact that it wasn't his own.

108 fountains
12-04-2014, 01:17 PM
Interesting concept. I generally like fiction that blends in with historical facts. But in this case, I think I am missing something. I read through it three times, but I really have missed the point altogether. I get the last paragraph. What I don't get is the entire rest of the thing. Who are these people? They can't be the actual historical conspirators because they would not have been "Young white men, probably Harvard types" in "white collared shirts." And as I read the story, the plan under discussion is dismissed by the man wearing glasses, much to the relief of the other men in the room, but to the chagrin of the leader - so again, they can't be the historical conspirators.

Then there are things in here that I think must have some symbolic meaning, but I can't figure out what the symbolism is. There is the conflict between the man with poor vision and the man with 20/20 vision - must be symbolism there, but what is it? There is the repeated referenced to Harvard - I don't get that either. There's the sentence "Must be a real hoot to talk to on the phone" that seems to come out of nowhere. Then there is the concluding sentence that "The truth of the matter was that everyone was entirely too hungry for someone else's blood" coming after what I interpreted as the group's decision not to carry out an/the assassination. And then this is followed by the final paragraph referencing the historical assassination.

I generally enjoy your stories, engineer1984, but you've lost me on this one. Any clues to help me understand wouold be appreciated.

engineer1984
12-05-2014, 03:54 AM
Thanks for the response! I'll try to answer it the best I can.

First off, I'm not a great a writer and I think that is partially attributed to the fact that many times I write short stubby things that just pop out and I don't spend time revising them. I'm absolutely positive that a good writer revises before hitting the 'send' button. What is it? "Write drunk, edit sober"? I barely edit. (I don't really drink though either so who knows?)

Anyway, at the time I wrote it I was thinking about how movies make us believe that there are always doubts among the people that do the worst in history. For example, Orwell was a Trosty-ite as I understand it. The reasoning being that if only Trotsky was the leader then things would have been much better. The unfortunate truth is that Trotsky wasn't a nice guy and the Soviet Union would have very likely been just as badly off. But we all like to see morals in a group of people even if there isn't any evidence.

So I'm trying to play with the idea that Hollywood sets up these guys, the Black Hand Secret Society, in a room and has them discussing the assassination. And I picture it being something like: no one REALLY wants to do it, but they feel pressured. Only a few really want the assassination to go down.

Also, I think Hollywood likes the idea that all these men would be well educated (the Black Hand Society was mostly students apparently) so that's the Harvard reference.

As for Glasses vs 20/20, I was using that because again I thought that Hollywood would have to have some sort of pro / anti argument.

As for real life, I'm suspecting that everyone was a solid go for assassinating the Austrian duke and that there wasn't much debate of 'should we do this or not'. I suspect the movie version would show the assassination as a renegade part of the group making the kill. So maybe everyone feels relieved to have a non-violent plan, but this one crazy guy in the group goes off and does the assassination anyway.

In the end, I just typed what came to my head. So even the above is more of a justification probably than reality. I would say that I was without a doubt trying to pit movie vs real life. I think real life can be much more harsh than we like to credit it with.

Thanks again. That's really awesome that you took the time to read and respond.

Cheers,

Andy

engineer1984
12-05-2014, 03:57 AM
And you're right about the end of the 'movie part' where they seem to have made a decision to not commit a murder (or whatever). This is not consistent with the very end. I think any defense I have is purely rationalization.

And when it says: 'maybe a full blown assassination attempt' that's goofy. Because it is an assassination attempt.


Hmmm... I'll try to think of a way to revise it.