Crossover Earth '98
1997 in Review
The Council of Twelve.
To some, the name evokes images of a shadowy organization bent on world domination. To others, the name is synonymous with the absurd, the comical. To yet others, the name means nothing.
Twelve people sat around an oblong table in a dimly lit room. Most of the twelve would have preferred normal lighting, but the chairman-by-rotation for 1997 had preferred dimly lit rooms. The chairman sat at the head of the table, and tapped lightly on the table top with a wooden hammer. The chairman had always wanted to be a judge.
"As chairman for 1997, I welcome you all to our yearly review. Let's move straight to the reports, starting with our man--"
Someone along the table cleared their throat. The chairman rolled his eyes slightly.
"Yes, yes, I'm sorry. Our person in Hollywood."
A man next to the chairman smiled and nodded at the rest of the twelve.
"As you know, our primary jobs this year were to maintain the image of the Council of Twelve, and produce more and more movies that do not encourage people to think for themselves. In the image department, we've placed so many conflicting rumors that I dare say even we don't know what we're here for anymore."
No one at the table laughed.
"Yes, well...on the movie end, I think we've finally perfected the art of making a movie that seems as if it's about something thought provoking, but really just sucks the viewer into a cinematic experience that causes them to turn off their brain. The research into emotional cues through sound and movement was a great investment."
The chairman nodded, and gestured toward the next person in line. "The gentleman from the government..."
"Our people in Quartz didn't recover anything from Cronos' lab, but we're making finding him a top priority. If he can't be made to come to our way of thinking, then we'll feed his whereabouts to the Shop. We also successfully 'lost' the alien spacecraft that came down in Texas, and rerouted it to Omega Corp. We have an alert out for the pilot of the ship as well."
"Good, good...which brings us to Omega Corp."
The next man shook his head.
"The spacecraft was badly damaged. As best as we can tell, the use of whatever it has as an FTL drive is highly dangerous to the equipment. Either that, or the owner just didn't give a damn about the ship. We've gleaned some new ideas from it that we can feed to various Omega Corp departments, but we're still trying to puzzle out the damaged portions."
The woman next in line leaned forward.
"I still say that spacecraft should have gone to NASA."
The chairman just looked at her.
"You know full well that NASA serves only to retard space development until we have a lock on the technology. Why on Earth would we want to encourage the people at NASA? Speaking of which, how have you been doing with that?"
"Well, we've kept pushing the shuttle as a viable reusable ground to orbit craft, and managed to squelch the useful alternatives so far. If some of the independent scientists get financial backing we could be in trouble, though."
"As the representative from the financial sector," another man spoke up, "I think I can assure you that no investor in his right mind will touch space research. We've made it sound as unattractive as possible."
The chairman nodded approval. "And how is the DOW going to be?"
"We're planning on another major dip in mid-1998. We'll put out the usual rumors and predictions, and then when the time comes we'll get the fund managers to lead the selling. We should be able to fund our activities for 1998 with the profits."
"Good, good." The chairman looked around the table. "I think that covers major activity in the past year. Now we have the most important business, that of passing the mantle of chairman. I believe the next in rotation is our, er, person from Omega Corp." The chairman stood and traded places with the representative from Omega Corp.
The new chairman looked up and down the table and smiled.
"Before we get to the new items on the 1998 agenda, can somebody turn up those damn lights!"