Even Milly, CNN's daring mars reporter in the Center, knew better than to take time away from the game. Marilyn was a goddess at her craft. When the game resumed, each viewer could see the solar system as a whole, one blue ship flew. "One of these ships crashed in a the most inhospitable location. A hundred primitive stranded creatures await hidden by a wall of energy." She illustrated a vision of the blue crystal ship launched from Mars traveling and crashing on Mercury in a small crater next to the North Pole.

Marilyn needed each player to possess identical knowledge. Her system was so powerful, she instantly digested forty years of history regarding the Jester. From it, she created useful information to help players slip into the role of the madman. Christian was likely to use, along with information about his past actions and personality. The thirty two players were disciplined and absorbed the massive amount of information as Marilyn finished the introduction.

Two minutes later, the darkness of space returned to every screen. In bold letter floated the roadmap for the rest of the game:

Electoral 2072

The Sixth Attraction

Round 28 - 32 players

Round 29 - 16 players (November 3)

Round 30 - 8 players - Quarter finales (November 7)

Round 31 - 4 players - Semi finales (November 15)

Round 32 - 2 players - The Sixth Attraction (November 21)

This was exciting on a number of different levels. The election of a President felt secondary to the doomsday scenario forecasted to occur. On Sophie's birthday, in three weeks, the young caregiver would witness her father play against the President in what would be, to everyone but her, a cinematic experience with no equal.

The game began.

***

Mars floated alone in the darkness of space of the Digital World.

On each screen, the point of view rotated dramatically from the red planet to the center of our little world we call the Solar System. It moved and followed a long detour around the sun only to wrap around the star until the camera settled in orbit of Mercury. The perfectly rounded rock had no natural or manmade satellite. It looked like a darker moon covered by ashes. Here there was no atmosphere. This planet, like Earth’s Moon, was in theory dead. The battlefield craters gave evidence meteoroids pummeled the surface, mostly from Genesis.

"Mercury," narrated Marilyn, "flooded each day by hot solar energy. A relentless flow of electromagnetic charge drowns this place in pure magnetic and electromagnetic fields. Invisible plasma cooks this desolate world. This hell is so close to the Sun, this place is like living inside a working microwave oven.”

The goddess took the time to play with long solar flares exploding high in the heliosphere of the Sun, their dark shadows and then the downpour of deadly electrons over the planet. Waves of energy hit the ground from all angles, not unlike nuclear tests in the Nevada desert. "This bombardment of energy considerably limits my capacity to see what lives on this planet's surface and so did the martians - we both had no idea creatures were hidden here.”

"Ninety-one million years ago, a colony of martians crashed here." Marilyn illustrated a small blue ship shining in space, behind it in the distance the Genesis. As it came closer to the ground, it was hit by hundreds of electric arcs. “This planet is supercharged with energy, some jumps up to welcome the low energy craft to the dismay of these creatures.” The shit was zapped a thousand times in a second. It landed, powerless. The cornucopia of energy paired with the solar wind created pulse after pulse of energy within the ship. As it approached, there were explosions and fumes. It finally landed on the dirty ground and cracked open like a walnut.

The camera angle switched to a ground view of the fuming ship.

From behind the alien ship walked out Marilyn. Every round, she loved to make a dramatic entrance. Round 28 would be no exception. She was wearing a large white spacesuit from Alpha base played in Round 24. She smiled under the rounded helmet and badges from her old show. In the bulky suit, her make-up and hair remained impeccable. She bounced on the charred ground, took several paces and looked closer at the shrinking vessel. Then, little puffs of sand ventured out of the belly of the ship like a man's last dying breath. "The radiation burned every piece of equipment of this ship.” It cracked further open. “These visitors barely escaped with their lives. I know a handful of sand creatures live today in this unique place on Mercury.” The sand flew out in little puffs. “They slowly crawled to there," she pointed to her left at a small mountain. At her feet, she illustrated the hard migration. "Behind this two hundred meter ridge, on the edge of this crater, named the Fuller Crater."

"This crater is close to the planet’s North Pole. It surrounds the magnetic pole and that is important to a magnetically-based life-form." In a blink, she illustrated the complex vortex of energy floating above the planet and the energy pairing with the magnetic pole. There were red hues everywhere, and like the eye of a storm, the north part of the crater was an island of tranquillity to the creatures. This place was a lighthouse on a rock between two merging oceans.

When the image returned to Marilyn, she was no longer next to the alien ship but climbing down the rim, bouncing ten feet at a time. "Underneath this plate," she said as she settled on a dark slate of ice, she pointed at what looked like a giant black ice rink "are caverns where I think the stranded creatures live."

"This is where our players come in. Look up," she pointed in the dark sky. "A spaceship was launched and is coming here from Earth. Given our proximity to November 21, the trip could only take days, not weeks. The astrophysics at work here are simple; the ship cannot slow down. The Io Lab has one pilot and a prisoner; we will soon meet them. But before getting into these boring details, we must discuss two important matters. The game is simple: you will play the pilot, Emilio’s Jester. You have been given one hundred globes capable of housing the creatures. You must follow protocol, reach this location where you must find a way to communicate with this sand and get the creatures into the globes. Then shoot with a massive cannon you have assembled these creatures back to Earth. Once mankind has these creatures hostage, the war on Mars will stop.”

“At the fastest, their trip back to Earth will take two weeks. Once back on Earth, with these creatures in hand, Emilio may be able to negotiate a peace with the Martians.”

In the blink of an eye, on each screen Marilyn was back on Mars, outside. She was wearing a simple cocktail dress and high heels. The movie star was walking, in the airless atmosphere on the rocky terrain. "This is my home. I do not mind sharing it but I will not be expatriated again. It's a principle. When I arrived, I could not imagine I would be sharing it with a hostile species. These inhabitants came to me. They slipped into Georges' body, took over his mind and without permission began to snap orders. They wanted me to rebuild their world. I was at that moment somewhat vulnerable. Our home was under construction, and my power was a fraction of what it is today.

Marilyn did something strange, she bent and placed a hand over the sand. Below it, vegetation began to grow. "My computing power told me the real intent of this race was to colonize Earth, to sterilize it. My probes confirm the lifeless ship sent to Earth millions of years ago crashed in the Himalayan ice. I lied and told them it was still filled with creatures. Ironically, that was the case on Mercury, not Earth. I had them agree to send a hundred balls to Earth as vessels to rescue their own moments before they plan to destroy Earth. A rescue from Mercury will do as well.”

"So let me repeat the mission because I know this may be complex. Each will play the Jester. You land must on Mercury. Walk to the Fuller Crater, convince the creatures to enter these balls in the ship, assemble a set of rockets and send them back to Earth. Simple? It is not.”

She grabbed a handful of sand at her feet. It began to form a creature floating above her hand. “Let Round 28 begin!”

“Oh, I almost forgot, the scoring. The power of this game will now seem obvious when you learn how the 32 players will play today’s simulations. Each person, the thirty two will play sequentially from the lowest score to Emilio. Each, like an extra life in a video game will be watching as the others play. The lowest ranking player will begin and try to run the simulation as far in the timeline as possible and die trying. Once that person runs into a problem and the mission fails, the next player gets to jump in back at the start. Hopefully players should get wiser, faster, farther down toward the goal and save earth. By the time this is done, the real pilot watching from the Io Lab will benefit from a total of thirty-two scenarios.

“This is like playing a video game, only the 33th run will be for real. The score must be determined differently, almost arbitrary. Both men on the Lab share one trait: their uncontrollable and very dark sense of humor. They can't help themselves, so I will score this game based on how humorous you can be during this game. It's not the best, but without humor, there is no way Emilio's Jester will watch more than five minutes of this game. He and Sophie are rather similar in this way."

The camera showed Marilyn's place an open hand over the dry sand, a flower blooming on the martian soil. She snapped it off, smelled it and slid it in her hair. "Good luck, you are not playing a game. You are helping improve the odds to save mankind from destruction. I hope it works and unlike Sophie, the pilot will use my help. Oh, in case you wonder how any human can survive once in the planet, we gave him a very powerful virus able to protect his body. We will talk more about it later.”