This is how the Foundation protects a man worth killing a hundred times over. (650 words, 4-min read)
by TopDownunder
4-min read
DeCIRO Catalogue Number
SC-015/060-015/130
Document Type
Step Compilation
Dates Received
2008-07-25 through 2008-12-14
Operation Status
Closed
Foreword
We have learned that God works as a rope line now. He stands behind a podium and a wall of flags, smiles at strangers who will not remember his face by supper, and lets a thousand phones photograph the back of his head. This is how the Foundation protects a man worth killing a hundred times over. A quiet death hands the world a martyr and hands us a war we will not survive. A death in front of a thousand phones, however, is not a death at all. Nobody trusts what they film.
Hereafter we of Delta Command document the steps of the Plan as transcribed by the Engineer of the Chaos Insurgency
1.STEP 15/060
Gamma-class operative "CORDWAINER" is to confirm, through the asset recovered from a Site-3 defection, that the President is who Delta Command suspects him to be. If confirmed, retrieve Item LX-77/119 from Deep Storage Base C. Wear gloves. Do not, under any circumstances, try it against yourself to see if it fits. Do you recall the incident in 1987? I am asking you to not be 1987.
Forward findings to the Engineer.
DeCIRO Catalogue Number: FR-15/060-001
Document Type: Summary Report
Date Received: 09-02-2008
Author: "CORDWAINER"
Summary Report: Confirmed. The President has held elected office for eight years under the name of a dead man. Cross-referencing travel logs, security rotations, and two independent sources, we are confident the Foundation moved him into this office themselves and has protected this arrangement since.
Item LX-77/119 retrieved without incident.
2.STEP 15/074
Insurgency R&D Cell "Last Call" is to determine whether item LX-77/119 can be made to serve our purposes. I remind the Cell that this object has resisted every attempt at use for the last fourty years. I do not want another forty spent proving it's still useless. Find the edge of its patience, or find that it has none.
DeCIRO Catalogue Number: IR-15/074-01
Document Type: Item Report
Date Received: 09-19-2008
Author: Dr. Sofia Anand
Item Report: LX-77/119 ("the Last") is a cobbler's shoe-last, hand-carved from italian wood and iron-shod at the heel. Its surface is covered in measurement markings in an unknown language.
Any shoe built upon the last, regardless of who builds it or what materials are used, will fit exactly one living person in the world. We do not know how it chooses. What we do know is that it has never chosen the same person twice, and has never chosen a member of our Insurgency.
After being worn by its chosen wearer, the shoe becomes an effective thrown weapon of remarkable lethality. Upon contact with any living person, it will invert the target, rendering their organs skin and their skin organs. The shoe will refuse to be worn by anyone else, and reacts violently when someone attempts to make it fit.
The Last cannot be persuaded, bribed, or ordered. It can only be left alone to decide.
3.STEP 15/089
Cell "Last Call" is to build twelve shoes upon the Last and fit them, one at a time, to every available operative rated Beta-class or above.
4.STEP 15/101
The President intends to appear at a press conference in the city of Baghdad. Cell "Last Call" will finish four more pairs and route each shoe, through our couriers, to shoe stores in the city before the President can arrive. A chosen wearer shall find them there.
5.STEP 15/119
Await the press conference.
6.STEP 15/130
Operation is closed. Recover all shoe pairs and burn them. Produce one final pair from Item LX-77/119, then toss the item into the flames. The finality will give this one power.
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