Silence returned as the endless advertisement wounded down.

Everyone braced for Round 24, to introduce her new home, the game would take place on mars. Everyone wanted to see her latest constructions but the computer goddess had better plans. The true magic of Electoral was knowing the actor of a movie was a live player immersed in the scenario. The addiction was a triple cocktail of reality television, cinema and politics.

In 2072, mars was barely colonized and looked like a sad red version of the South Pole. A handful of half-busted research structures survived fifty million miles from earth under the cold of this inhospitable planet. Thanks to Marilyn, a spanking new hotel and her spectacular secret tower awaited the last 127 players. Marilyn added color to the boring dry landscape. Adding to the excitement, she published teasers, posters and short previews of the wonders she had up her sleeve. She promised ‘Entertainment at the end of our World about the end of the World!’

Then, it began.

Old techno-pop music played over an old grainy footage from the 1970’s. The images were perfect recreations from an old science-fiction show. The Italian show was called Cosmos 1999 now renamed Cosmos 2072 now would be staged on the red planet instead of the moon. A large X struck out the old title as ships flew in the background. There was a romantic sweetness to the plastic models bouncing on invisible strings and little pyrotechnics unable to ignore gravity. The hand-painted model sets were beautiful. On this set, stories were predictable and dialog even simpler.

Each week in this romantic place, Marsbase Alpha colony was shocked by random events from aliens. The base had no computers or screens, only walls covered by blinking buttons. There was, budget obliged so much redundancy. Balls of rocks flying in from Mercury squeezed in between the actor’s introduction.

As was the custom in the introduction of that show, the dramatic profile of every character paraded over cheap techno music. Some images were exact duplicates from the old show, others the new story. Old actor were resurrected in Marilyn’s world. The entire cast was there with two important exceptions. The Base Commander once played by Martin Landau was replaced by the player of Round 24. Most saw the square jaw of Emilio Sanchez in the white space suit looking up as wind blew his hair. Marilyn Monroe later slid herself as the role of the shapeshifting alien Maya. She had brown hair and a little scale on the bridge of her nose.

Once the presentation ended, the entire team was sitting in the command room. Maya, played by Marilyn turned on her padded chair. “John,” the seductive alien touched a piece of metal inserted in her ear. She crossed eyes with Chief Medical Officer Helena Russel.

“Yes Maya,” answered the President playing to perfection the old character. He smiled and moved his thick eyebrows. He walked closer to the large window with rounded corners and looked up in the dark sky.

“Objects from deep space are approaching Mars.”

The players never had the benefit of portions of stories in which they were not involved. Only the viewers knew what were these objects. “They come from outer space?”

She played with buttons. “The trajectory appears to be from the center of the system, the sun,” she confirmed. The player had not seen the prelude.

“Do we have velocity?”

“Yes.”

“Can you look at the inner planets to see if they have crossed an orbit. That would give us launch point.”

“Brilliant commander.” She pushed several buttons and added. “Sir, your are correct. These objects were launched from Mercury.” The screen cut to a cheesy sonar type display in the shape of a baseball diamond. On it, blinking lights were approaching. “We count twelve.”

“Missiles? That is impossible, there is no life on Mercury.” In the sky, balls of fire were entering the atmosphere leaving streaks of white smoke behind them. The cinematographic gender did not care in the faint atmosphere of mars there should be no fire. The objects caught fire as they entered creating a dramatic effect unlike earth entry. Shockwaves and sound began hitting the base sending every actor to the floor. The cameras moved to emphasize the shaking movement. None of it made scientific sense and that was fine.

“Put the base on red alert,” yelled the Commander. Sounds began to ring out. Random actors were shown running in similar corridors in every direction. The balls fell slowly as actors shared the screen. Finally, as everyone braced for impact, the dozen passed ground level to the left and entered the miles-deep canyon unique to mars. Everyone knew about the giant scar called the Valles, it smiled to visitors.

There was another long advertisement. Each clip was customized to the game. CEO’s wished the players luck.

The show quickly resumed. Marilyn showed the last thirty seconds from before the pause as it was the custom when this show originally aired. This was a ploy of producers to expend the show and save costs.

Marsbase Alpha was saved but seconds later the balls hit the bottom of the canyon and a shockwave of epic proportions sending everyone back on the floor. Emilio, as the player took the lead and quickly coordinated efforts to visit the crash site. Before long, the group was suited up and launched a pair of ships from the two pads. Both ships were ready to inspect the bottom of the canyon. The Electoral 2072 system reused footage from the old show.

As part of these games Emilio knew there was always a segment designed to test the moral fiber of the person playing. As they flew to the large crevasse in the ground, the character driving the first Eagle asked: “Sir, what’s down there?”

The view was spectacular as the ships lifted, flew over the edge and they entered what was called the Valles Marieneris. Marilyn’s systems had built in lie detectors. Emilio knew answers to score point needed to be genuine.

The Commander pushed a button talking to both teams. “Team,” began Emilio, “we will land next to the impact points there. Get us to a safe distance, over there in the light. Hopefully these are only rocks from some type of strange natural phenomenon on Mercury. No one lives there, so we know humans did not send these. We should not always assume the worse but we should be ready for it.”

He turned to Maya, “Can you confirm nothing else is incoming?”

She pushed buttons and replied, “Confirmed Sir.”

“One final precaution, any activity below the ground?” As usual, the players did not benefit from watching the prelude reserved to the viewers. Emilio was kept in the dark on purpose but the man always acted as if he had seen the first portion. That was part of the challenge. Most had no clue these were lava creatures awaiting for them.

She pushed buttons, there was suspense. “Yes, I hear some noise, deep below the ground. It sounds like scratching, to the left over there.” She pointed to a direction in the shadow of a high crack. The natural fracture in the ground was in a beautiful giant version of the Grand Canyon. Walls were mile high and vertical in most places. The two ships landed on a flat area between the large scarring marks where the rocks dropped from the sky and the dark area in the shade.

“No other activity John.”

“We need weapons,” the landing crew was getting prepared. They put on the suits and locked the visors before walking out. The team went to inspect the landing points. At the base of each of the landing sites was a hole opening to darkness.

“Should we go down, should be possible in the low gravity?” asked a crew member.

“No. Alan you go back, guard the ships, be ready to take off in case of emergency. Just keep a camera on this. Something is dangerous.” Emilio with his unique power pointed at the shadow. “We are going to see the source of the tremors, there. Maya, Helena, with me.”

The team walked into the darkness and night vision kicked in. The looked around and Maya kept an eye on her portable scanner. “That way.”

Before long they arrived at a strange sight. Ahead, there was a perfectly shaped door. It was carved naturally in the rock. This was the secret door thought which Ronaldo Corvas’ team had walked in and been vaporized. The existence of this door was top secret and Marilyn and Emilio were some of the few of knew of its existence. She had just revealed it as part of this fanciful rendition of an old television show. Down on earth important people were furious. Not Emilio, he felt there was a message here somewhere.

The President smiled internally at the audacity of the computer intelligence. He turned to look at Marilyn now playing Maya. The Doctor Russell put her gloved hand on his shoulder. “Don’t go in, it’s dangerous.”

“Anyone knows anything about this? Is it new?”

Maya approached, removed her glove and touched the edge of the door. “This is from an ancient culture John,” she touched the edge and her alien sixth sense kicked in. “Something that predates humans on this planet. I would advise against entering, but why do I feel like I am wasting my time.” There it was. Emilio knew she had warned Ronaldo and he had ignored her warnings. The message was subtle, the door was important and she confirmed the road to an ancient culture.

But this was a game Emilio knew better. He would be the first to try and step step boldly past the door. As he put one foot past the frame, he heard laser shots from the back where the ships waited. Alan Carter the pilot spoke “Commander, we are under attack.”

What happened next was out of every great sci-fi television show. Men dressed in low quality rubber suits began attacking the crew and the ship in a rather farcical way. The team hid behind large false rocks made of hand-painted styrofoam. They began shooting at the creatures and something very strange and off script happened. Each time one of the nearly one hundred lobster creature was fatally wounded by a blast of laser, it disappeared and where it stood, a handful of red sparking grains of sand fell to the ground.

At some point during the fight, Maya used her transformation powers. Images showed her eye, an image of a monster and then once the camera zoomed out, she was replaced by a large alien bear who began ripping apart the creatures from Mercury. Emilio wondered what was going on. Finally, after a great fight scene, all of the creatures were defeated.

The final scene showed the face of Emilio looking the way of the Door. “Lets go see what’s over there.” The image froze.

— To Be Continued, Round 28—

There was another commercial, then the game returned.

After replaying the last seconds, one by one every element of the scene vanished. The ships, the rocks and every other element of the battle including the Eagles. Every character disappeared as light disco music began playin. It quickly got strong and pulsating. Marylin had the power to create the perfect dance music. It beat to everyone a precisely their heart rate. As their heart increased from the music’s energy, so did the music’s.

Maya was the last to disappear. Then a beautiful sunrise rose above the tall rocks to illuminate every wall in the bottom of the Valles. The only part in darkness remained past the secret door. Over the music began the perfect high pitch voice of the blond digital creature. It increased to a fun disco song. Marilyn walked out from behind the dark door microphone in hand. She was dancing professionally in high gold heels and only wearing a light summer dress with a name tag ‘Marsbase Alpha’. She did not care about where she was. The song was exciting and so vibrant. In it was power.

She gave a show. Only once the last note played did she stop dancing. She looked at everyone catching her breath and added, “One more time!” The same song began anew, “everyone!” Her voice was exciting and filled with power. People watching were desperately fighting the urge to stand up and dance throwing care to the wind. Marilyn pointed at the door and came out in sync and perfect coordination a group of twelve backup dancers each dressed in skimpy astronaut outfits. By the first half of the second rendition most of the human population was dancing.

She performed like only she could.

Watching this was filled with emotion but there was in fact some stronger, deeper power. She was working a sweat and moving on the dusty ground.

Finally the song ended and she caught her breath. She pulled out a small mirror and a stick of red lipstick. She put a coat with divine precision. To lighten the tone of her rouge, she landed a smack on the lips of the nearest dancer.

“Fun, no? One of my favorite series from earth.” In the background a lighter version of the music played. “News flash, that music included some of my new Rho waves, feel the difference? We will talk more about these waves once my players get on mars.” Marilyn simply was unable to stop moving her body. The marks in the sand left over from the battle remained. Some of the sand sparkled.

As a magician she flipped her wrist and a handful of grains on the ground began to float up until they formed a floating cloud a couple of inches above her hand. The cloud was moving slowly and the grains sparkled. Using the other hand, she snapped her fingers and a glass ball encased the sand. This was the shape of a handheld snow globe.

“Look at that,” she teased. She snapped her fingers a second time and a little iconic figurine of her wearing the white dress lifted by the wind of a sewer appeared in the globe. Like a bobble head doll the top torso and the dress began to moved under the energy of the moving cloud of sand. The camera closed in on one of the grains of sand showing it was like a multi-facet golf ball. Little sparks of energy appeared to dance between the facets. The view quickly zoomed out.

“A little gift. I will be sending a hundred or so of these to lucky viewers. Good luck. Since I don’t trust the mail,” she threw the ball in the air and it vanished as she resumed dancing as the song began a third time. This time, the twelve dancers were assembling something with pieces of white ceramic pulled from thin air.

They began to assemble what looked like a large telescope on a trifold. Marylin kept dancing and singing. Then before the song was over, the ball dropped by magic from the sky into her hand as she was standing next to the structure. She slammed the ball inside the tube and as the song ended, the canon launched the ball up in the sky.

“Here are the names of the last 256 players who qualified today and are invited to the launch pad next week. Pack light, ten pounds per person.” She kissed the screen as the list of names scrolled.

There was a closing credit and the song returned filled with those strange waves. By now everyone was dancing and was filled with positive energy. Then the broadcast ended, everyone returned to reality.