Early September
Apr. 5th, 2011 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsol I was going to save this for 9/11, but it was occupying my brain so I decided to spit it out. There is also the issue of questionable taste, something that has never bothered me before, but there has to be a first time for everything.
Greetings, O highest masters. Greetings from your slaves, who grovel in abject misery at your feet. Decades ago you conquered us. Decades ago you melted our ice, flooded our cities, destroyed our armies, slaughtered our people. You came to our planet, crushed our ability to resist, and set us to work providing for you and your saurian kind. We welcome you, the saurian leadership, back to New York City. You call it by another name now, but although you have destroyed it and rebuilt it by your own specifications, this is still our city, and we call it by our names. Whether you agree or not, you are our guests. We wish to be proper hosts.
It is a beautiful April day, masters. It is a mere ninety-eight degrees outside – chilly for you, but bearable for us. But I tell you now, masters, it is not truly April. In our minds it is September. It is September the Eleventh, saurians, a special date for New Yorkers. On this date we think back to times long ago, long before your kind came, when our city came under attack. On this date nearly a hundred years ago we suffered as one. Though we have suffered a thousand times worse at your hands, masters, we still remember September the Eleventh. It brings us together.
It is September the Eleventh, masters, because today is a day of change. On September the Eleventh long ago, New Yorkers changed the way they thought about their place in the world. You are our guests, masters, and we share what is ours. Today we share September the Eleventh with you.
Your leaders are coming to New York City. Slaves died to tell us that the Fangmaster and his hunt-mates will fly in via winged transport at 2105 local hours. We shall prepare an appropriate reception, 9/11 style.
We're going to fly a building into your airplane.
Ironically, it is your own destruction of New York City that has made our attack possible. When you inundated all coastal population centers, downtown Manhattan was drowned under seventy meters of water. Those skyscrapers that were not undermined by tidal and wave and storm action were destroyed by your superior saurian air power. New York City sank below the waves.
But you are a conquering people. It is important for you to not simply subjugate those you defeat; you must also remind them daily that they have been beaten. So, you made us rebuild our city, and named it something else in your tongue, a name that is hateful to us so I shall not repeat it. But the land upon which New York city was built was under water, so you had us build a city that floated on air.
New York City is now built out of two hundred and fifty-odd towers, each ranging from fifty to three hundred stories, with a repulsor plate on its base and a number of smaller plates canted at angles for stability. The towers hover a hundred feet above the sea. These structures are tethered to each other with tensile cables and communications and power wiring, but otherwise float freely. The water immediately under the city is actually depressed owing to the tremendous weight it supports, and this footprint is surrounded by a wall of buoys, but outside that are the enormous fleets that human slaves man to support the fishing and kelp-farming industries. Ramps from the floating docks lead to the outermost spires.
We have chosen the Narch'h'Tok Tower. At least, that is your name for it. We call it the Empire State Building. It's only a bit like that ancient edifice in shape, but you took our great old buildings from us, so we're going to take them back for sentimental reasons. The new Empire State Building is one of the tallest towers; it's two hundred and eighty levels of saurian dwelling space, offices for industrial managers, some office space for human drivers, and a lovely central mast for docking aircraft. It's located at the center of New York City's cluster of spires, and from the observation deck saurians can look down on the city they crushed and rebuilt.
I have the name that you have given me, masters, but I have chosen a new name for myself. I am Ed Koch, leader of the resistance, trained from birth to carry out this attack against you. I have two lieutenants who have been inserted into positions of importance within the Empire State Building. There is Fiorello LaGuardia, who is the human maintenance chief, and Rudy Giuliani, who oversees the human refueling service for aircraft operations. We have also infiltrated the ranks of the common slaves who work in the building, inserting those who are loyal to this most secret of efforts. All of us will willingly give our lives to see this attack succeed.
In the months before the attack, Fiorello LaGuardia engages in a project to replace the repulsor plates on the bottom of the Empire State Building. These plates do wear out over time, but these are relatively new; Fiorello LaGuardia and his loyalists are obliged to produce fake evidence suggesting that the plates have been scored by recent hurricanes and may fail catastrophically soon. Fortunately their saurian masters are trusting, and they approve a plan to replace the plates.
Fiorello LaGuardia works out a scheme where the second set of plates will be procured and installed offset from the first set. Naturally the power to the plates must be fully redundant, he explains to his masters, because we cannot bring down one set before powering up the next. The project is performed according to specifications. It is timed such that two separate sets of repulsors are ready to go on September the Eleventh.
Rudy Giuliani's job is more dangerous and complicated. He must ensure that the fuel tanks in the top levels of the Empire State Building are topped off at the moment of the attack. This is difficult to manage, because Rudy Giuliani's masters are not as trusting as Fiorello LaGuardia's. They oversee every detail of the aircraft operations, and for him to fill the fuel tanks above nominal levels would make them suspicious.
"Ed Koch," Rudy Giuliani tells me, "I cannot guarantee fuel levels will be at their peak. You may ask me to commit suicide if you like, but this thing that you ask cannot be done."
I smile. "Do not fear, Rudy Giuliani," I tell my underling. "We will find another way."
I find a volunteer. His task guarantees that he will be executed. This cannot be helped, and he understands this. I give him the name Seth Low so that he will be remembered and honored. Seth Low has a minor overseer job performing housekeeping duties. One night in the month before September the Eleventh, Seth Low's work crew 'accidentally' causes a large amount of aircraft fuel to spill out of the tanks. The fuel spills down through cracks in the floor structure and creates a huge mess in the saurian executive residences immediately below. Several floors are affected. No saurians are killed, but many important families are forced to move out. Seth Low is identified as the responsible party and is summarily eaten.
Fiorello LaGuardia smooths things over with the saurians in charge of the building. Masters, he says, I will have these executive residences rebuilt for you in a month's time. You had better, they say, and Fiorello LaGuardia gets to work. Of course he is not actually rebuilding the residences, although he does just enough of such work to pass a spot inspection by the important saurians who were displaced. What he is really doing is building large bladder vessels in those spaces – vessels that can accommodate additional fuel. Seth Low's sacrifice was not in vain.
The plan comes down to weeks, then days, before September the Eleventh. At this point Vincent Impellitteri calls for a secret meeting. I know this can only be trouble. Vincent Impellitteri is our contact within the Fangmaster's secretarial staff, and meeting with him is incredibly risky. We gather at a floating fishery in the dark of night.
"We have a serious problem," Vincent Impellitteri tells us. He produces a document that he claims to be the flight plan for the Fangmaster's winged transport. Rudy Giuliani snatches it and scans his eyes over it.
"Too high," he sobs. "The cursed Fangmaster's craft will approach the city a full five hundred meters higher than we had anticipated." Fiorello LaGuardia snatches the paper, reads it, pushes beads around on his abacus.
"Then we shall have to adapt the plan," I reply evenly.
"Don't you understand, Ed Koch?" demands Fiorello LaGuardia. "We don't have the lift on the repulsor plates. We won't have anything to push off of to reach that height."
I put my hands on Fiorello LaGuardia's shoulders. "You are named after the Little Flower," I tell him sternly. "The Little Flower was famous for making things work, one way or another. Show me that spirit that justifies your name." Thus chastised, Fiorello LaGuardia goes back to the drawing board.
On the next day Fiorello LaGuardia takes a great risk. He returns to his saurian masters, cap in hand, and prostrates himself before them.
"O most benevolent and sharp-toothed masters," he grovels, "I regret that this humble and edible servant has made a terrible mistake, deserving of punishment, yet of the honest and correctable sort that may yet avoid the reflection of shame upon your august saurian persons."
He goes on to tell his masters that it is not merely the main repulsor plates that are going out, but all of the stabilizer plates as well. He beats his breast about this and tells them that if he can but borrow six repulsor plates from a neighboring building, a building that is well guyed off by surrounding towers and hence is in no danger of falling over, that he can forestall disaster until such time that permanent replacements can be procured.
His saurian masters are understanding. They care for Fiorello LaGuardia in their own way, and value his services, for he is a man of extraordinary talents. They only bite off his left hand, and he is given leave to do as he requests. Pinching shut the blood vessels in his stump, Fiorello LaGuardia bows and scrapes as he departs. Later, once his arm has been cauterized, he and his team work around the clock to make new preparations. On the eve of September the Eleventh, they are ready. I do not give Fiorello LaGuardia praise, for he has only done what all of us have sworn to do: work the impossible to lay low the indomitable.
The morning of September the Eleventh dawns. I discover to my extreme irritation that an unscheduled aircraft has chosen to dock on the Empire State Building's mast. It will be most inconvenient to have an unwanted craft flapping around up there while we are trying to strike a blow for the resistance. A hasty plan is arranged; I sweat gallons as I wait for it to unfold. Finally around 1400 hours a repainting dirigible overflies the craft and accidentally spills hundred of gallons of red paint all over its glistening green canopy. Naturally the owner is furious and there are plenty of executions all around, but the craft is sent to a repainting facility and our mast is clear.
At 2015 hours we begin our operations. This is where I, Ed Koch, can finally prove my worth, for while my lieutenants are among the finest of technicians, I have been training in the arts of war. Humans are not permitted to own weapons, but a few of them have been hidden away, and I have a small cadre of fighters who know how to use them. They are smuggled into the building and the entrances are sealed. My lieutenants and I pray together briefly for our mutual success, and for a pleasurable rendezvous in the next life.
The building communications are cut; a recording is produced claiming a malfunction has occurred and is being repaired. Data lines are also severed, as are power cables; we shunt over to the Empire State Building's generator. We will need all of its power to do what needs to be done. Wireless transmitters are destroyed and the usual signals are jammed. The saurians must have no warning.
Canisters of liquid nitrogen are dumped into the environmental systems serving the saurians. This makes them sluggish. I then move from floor to floor with my warriors, armed with flechette rifles and large-bore pistols. The saurians are very large compared to humans, but they still bleed red. We kill any we find outside of their residences, and seal the rest inside where they can do no harm. By 2045 hours we have secured the building; the only ones able to move around the Empire State Building are humans loyal to our cause.
I place a spotter on the observation tower. She has a very good optical scope, and she knows which direction to look. At 2100 hours she spots the identification lights of the Fangmaster's winged transport and signals to the rest of the building. It is time to launch.
A series of small explosions part the guy cables that bind the Empire State Building to its surrounding buildings. The power cables also part, and we are free, wobbling slightly. I toggle my hand transmitter.
"Fiorello LaGuardia," I say, "please provide full power to all repulsor plates."
The building generator surges, and suddenly I am in an elevator. We are all in an elevator, standing flat on the floor of an almost three hundred story building, our stomachs sinking into our feet and our ears popping as we reach for the sky.
I have thoughtfully killed the lights on the building's exterior. We must be completely invisible to the approaching craft, rising silently from the center of the cityscape. I am hoping that while our launch must be noticed by others in New York City, its occurrence must be too outlandish to be recognized as an attack; its very nature too staggering to permit a rational, orderly response. The success of the entire mission depends on it.
The building rises, the force of its passage rocking the neighboring towers. In a marvelously unanticipated coincidence, the destabilization of the other buildings causes the spire that Fiorello LaGuardia robbed of its stabilizer plates to fall over and repulse itself into another tower, causing untold damage and loss of life. I grin as I watch fires break out below us.
But the repulsor plates are straining now, incapable of forcing the building much higher. They push off the tops of the other buildings, flattening radio beacons and crumbling roofs, but the climb of the Empire State Building stalls. The winged transport of the Fangmaster soars yet high above us, mocking our labors. I trigger the hand transmitter once again.
"Rudy Giuliani," I command, "First stage separation: go."
Explosives detonate in orderly patterns around the two hundred and sixty third floor. A great fissure opens in the skin of the Empire State Building all around its perimeter, and a dull red glow is revealed. It is the six stabilization repulsor plates that Fiorello LaGuardia procured at the cost of his left hand. Now energized, they push against the lower stories of the building. Everything from floor two hundred and sixty two and lower begins to fall; everybody in those floors will fall to their deaths, and hopefully crush other buildings as they do so. Everything above that line keeps going; we rocket still higher.
The pilot of the winged transport now knows he is under attack. He attempts to veer his craft to one side, but it is large and slow to respond to the helm. "Oh no you don't!" shouts Fiorello LaGuardia, and he blows another set of explosives. One of the stabilizer plates on a side of the building shears away, and the Empire State Building's head curves its path as its thrust becomes asymmetric.
I stand on the observation deck and watch the top of the docking mast pierce the thin skin of the transport's underbelly. That goring horn rises up and through the craft, and the plane's bottom drops to meet me. Impossibly the skin of the airship parts, and I actually rise unscathed into the midst of the craft as the building claws its way through the transport of our nemesis leader. Saurians are snapping and clawing at each other; others howl as they fall to their deaths. I howl as well, but in victory, not in terror.
The fuel stores hoarded by Rudy Giuliani go up, and I feel myself buoyed by an expanding flower of destructive flames. I do not get to see the final victory – I am not allowed the luxury of seeing the embers of the Fangmaster rain destruction down on the cruel empty shade of New York City – but with my dying thoughts I know that happy beginning is upon us.
September the Eleventh is a day where all things change in New York City. Now a new September the Eleventh has dawned – an early September for saurian-kind, an unseasonal autumn, heralding a coming winter of extinction.
Greetings, O highest masters. Greetings from your slaves, who grovel in abject misery at your feet. Decades ago you conquered us. Decades ago you melted our ice, flooded our cities, destroyed our armies, slaughtered our people. You came to our planet, crushed our ability to resist, and set us to work providing for you and your saurian kind. We welcome you, the saurian leadership, back to New York City. You call it by another name now, but although you have destroyed it and rebuilt it by your own specifications, this is still our city, and we call it by our names. Whether you agree or not, you are our guests. We wish to be proper hosts.
It is a beautiful April day, masters. It is a mere ninety-eight degrees outside – chilly for you, but bearable for us. But I tell you now, masters, it is not truly April. In our minds it is September. It is September the Eleventh, saurians, a special date for New Yorkers. On this date we think back to times long ago, long before your kind came, when our city came under attack. On this date nearly a hundred years ago we suffered as one. Though we have suffered a thousand times worse at your hands, masters, we still remember September the Eleventh. It brings us together.
It is September the Eleventh, masters, because today is a day of change. On September the Eleventh long ago, New Yorkers changed the way they thought about their place in the world. You are our guests, masters, and we share what is ours. Today we share September the Eleventh with you.
Your leaders are coming to New York City. Slaves died to tell us that the Fangmaster and his hunt-mates will fly in via winged transport at 2105 local hours. We shall prepare an appropriate reception, 9/11 style.
We're going to fly a building into your airplane.
Ironically, it is your own destruction of New York City that has made our attack possible. When you inundated all coastal population centers, downtown Manhattan was drowned under seventy meters of water. Those skyscrapers that were not undermined by tidal and wave and storm action were destroyed by your superior saurian air power. New York City sank below the waves.
But you are a conquering people. It is important for you to not simply subjugate those you defeat; you must also remind them daily that they have been beaten. So, you made us rebuild our city, and named it something else in your tongue, a name that is hateful to us so I shall not repeat it. But the land upon which New York city was built was under water, so you had us build a city that floated on air.
New York City is now built out of two hundred and fifty-odd towers, each ranging from fifty to three hundred stories, with a repulsor plate on its base and a number of smaller plates canted at angles for stability. The towers hover a hundred feet above the sea. These structures are tethered to each other with tensile cables and communications and power wiring, but otherwise float freely. The water immediately under the city is actually depressed owing to the tremendous weight it supports, and this footprint is surrounded by a wall of buoys, but outside that are the enormous fleets that human slaves man to support the fishing and kelp-farming industries. Ramps from the floating docks lead to the outermost spires.
We have chosen the Narch'h'Tok Tower. At least, that is your name for it. We call it the Empire State Building. It's only a bit like that ancient edifice in shape, but you took our great old buildings from us, so we're going to take them back for sentimental reasons. The new Empire State Building is one of the tallest towers; it's two hundred and eighty levels of saurian dwelling space, offices for industrial managers, some office space for human drivers, and a lovely central mast for docking aircraft. It's located at the center of New York City's cluster of spires, and from the observation deck saurians can look down on the city they crushed and rebuilt.
I have the name that you have given me, masters, but I have chosen a new name for myself. I am Ed Koch, leader of the resistance, trained from birth to carry out this attack against you. I have two lieutenants who have been inserted into positions of importance within the Empire State Building. There is Fiorello LaGuardia, who is the human maintenance chief, and Rudy Giuliani, who oversees the human refueling service for aircraft operations. We have also infiltrated the ranks of the common slaves who work in the building, inserting those who are loyal to this most secret of efforts. All of us will willingly give our lives to see this attack succeed.
In the months before the attack, Fiorello LaGuardia engages in a project to replace the repulsor plates on the bottom of the Empire State Building. These plates do wear out over time, but these are relatively new; Fiorello LaGuardia and his loyalists are obliged to produce fake evidence suggesting that the plates have been scored by recent hurricanes and may fail catastrophically soon. Fortunately their saurian masters are trusting, and they approve a plan to replace the plates.
Fiorello LaGuardia works out a scheme where the second set of plates will be procured and installed offset from the first set. Naturally the power to the plates must be fully redundant, he explains to his masters, because we cannot bring down one set before powering up the next. The project is performed according to specifications. It is timed such that two separate sets of repulsors are ready to go on September the Eleventh.
Rudy Giuliani's job is more dangerous and complicated. He must ensure that the fuel tanks in the top levels of the Empire State Building are topped off at the moment of the attack. This is difficult to manage, because Rudy Giuliani's masters are not as trusting as Fiorello LaGuardia's. They oversee every detail of the aircraft operations, and for him to fill the fuel tanks above nominal levels would make them suspicious.
"Ed Koch," Rudy Giuliani tells me, "I cannot guarantee fuel levels will be at their peak. You may ask me to commit suicide if you like, but this thing that you ask cannot be done."
I smile. "Do not fear, Rudy Giuliani," I tell my underling. "We will find another way."
I find a volunteer. His task guarantees that he will be executed. This cannot be helped, and he understands this. I give him the name Seth Low so that he will be remembered and honored. Seth Low has a minor overseer job performing housekeeping duties. One night in the month before September the Eleventh, Seth Low's work crew 'accidentally' causes a large amount of aircraft fuel to spill out of the tanks. The fuel spills down through cracks in the floor structure and creates a huge mess in the saurian executive residences immediately below. Several floors are affected. No saurians are killed, but many important families are forced to move out. Seth Low is identified as the responsible party and is summarily eaten.
Fiorello LaGuardia smooths things over with the saurians in charge of the building. Masters, he says, I will have these executive residences rebuilt for you in a month's time. You had better, they say, and Fiorello LaGuardia gets to work. Of course he is not actually rebuilding the residences, although he does just enough of such work to pass a spot inspection by the important saurians who were displaced. What he is really doing is building large bladder vessels in those spaces – vessels that can accommodate additional fuel. Seth Low's sacrifice was not in vain.
The plan comes down to weeks, then days, before September the Eleventh. At this point Vincent Impellitteri calls for a secret meeting. I know this can only be trouble. Vincent Impellitteri is our contact within the Fangmaster's secretarial staff, and meeting with him is incredibly risky. We gather at a floating fishery in the dark of night.
"We have a serious problem," Vincent Impellitteri tells us. He produces a document that he claims to be the flight plan for the Fangmaster's winged transport. Rudy Giuliani snatches it and scans his eyes over it.
"Too high," he sobs. "The cursed Fangmaster's craft will approach the city a full five hundred meters higher than we had anticipated." Fiorello LaGuardia snatches the paper, reads it, pushes beads around on his abacus.
"Then we shall have to adapt the plan," I reply evenly.
"Don't you understand, Ed Koch?" demands Fiorello LaGuardia. "We don't have the lift on the repulsor plates. We won't have anything to push off of to reach that height."
I put my hands on Fiorello LaGuardia's shoulders. "You are named after the Little Flower," I tell him sternly. "The Little Flower was famous for making things work, one way or another. Show me that spirit that justifies your name." Thus chastised, Fiorello LaGuardia goes back to the drawing board.
On the next day Fiorello LaGuardia takes a great risk. He returns to his saurian masters, cap in hand, and prostrates himself before them.
"O most benevolent and sharp-toothed masters," he grovels, "I regret that this humble and edible servant has made a terrible mistake, deserving of punishment, yet of the honest and correctable sort that may yet avoid the reflection of shame upon your august saurian persons."
He goes on to tell his masters that it is not merely the main repulsor plates that are going out, but all of the stabilizer plates as well. He beats his breast about this and tells them that if he can but borrow six repulsor plates from a neighboring building, a building that is well guyed off by surrounding towers and hence is in no danger of falling over, that he can forestall disaster until such time that permanent replacements can be procured.
His saurian masters are understanding. They care for Fiorello LaGuardia in their own way, and value his services, for he is a man of extraordinary talents. They only bite off his left hand, and he is given leave to do as he requests. Pinching shut the blood vessels in his stump, Fiorello LaGuardia bows and scrapes as he departs. Later, once his arm has been cauterized, he and his team work around the clock to make new preparations. On the eve of September the Eleventh, they are ready. I do not give Fiorello LaGuardia praise, for he has only done what all of us have sworn to do: work the impossible to lay low the indomitable.
The morning of September the Eleventh dawns. I discover to my extreme irritation that an unscheduled aircraft has chosen to dock on the Empire State Building's mast. It will be most inconvenient to have an unwanted craft flapping around up there while we are trying to strike a blow for the resistance. A hasty plan is arranged; I sweat gallons as I wait for it to unfold. Finally around 1400 hours a repainting dirigible overflies the craft and accidentally spills hundred of gallons of red paint all over its glistening green canopy. Naturally the owner is furious and there are plenty of executions all around, but the craft is sent to a repainting facility and our mast is clear.
At 2015 hours we begin our operations. This is where I, Ed Koch, can finally prove my worth, for while my lieutenants are among the finest of technicians, I have been training in the arts of war. Humans are not permitted to own weapons, but a few of them have been hidden away, and I have a small cadre of fighters who know how to use them. They are smuggled into the building and the entrances are sealed. My lieutenants and I pray together briefly for our mutual success, and for a pleasurable rendezvous in the next life.
The building communications are cut; a recording is produced claiming a malfunction has occurred and is being repaired. Data lines are also severed, as are power cables; we shunt over to the Empire State Building's generator. We will need all of its power to do what needs to be done. Wireless transmitters are destroyed and the usual signals are jammed. The saurians must have no warning.
Canisters of liquid nitrogen are dumped into the environmental systems serving the saurians. This makes them sluggish. I then move from floor to floor with my warriors, armed with flechette rifles and large-bore pistols. The saurians are very large compared to humans, but they still bleed red. We kill any we find outside of their residences, and seal the rest inside where they can do no harm. By 2045 hours we have secured the building; the only ones able to move around the Empire State Building are humans loyal to our cause.
I place a spotter on the observation tower. She has a very good optical scope, and she knows which direction to look. At 2100 hours she spots the identification lights of the Fangmaster's winged transport and signals to the rest of the building. It is time to launch.
A series of small explosions part the guy cables that bind the Empire State Building to its surrounding buildings. The power cables also part, and we are free, wobbling slightly. I toggle my hand transmitter.
"Fiorello LaGuardia," I say, "please provide full power to all repulsor plates."
The building generator surges, and suddenly I am in an elevator. We are all in an elevator, standing flat on the floor of an almost three hundred story building, our stomachs sinking into our feet and our ears popping as we reach for the sky.
I have thoughtfully killed the lights on the building's exterior. We must be completely invisible to the approaching craft, rising silently from the center of the cityscape. I am hoping that while our launch must be noticed by others in New York City, its occurrence must be too outlandish to be recognized as an attack; its very nature too staggering to permit a rational, orderly response. The success of the entire mission depends on it.
The building rises, the force of its passage rocking the neighboring towers. In a marvelously unanticipated coincidence, the destabilization of the other buildings causes the spire that Fiorello LaGuardia robbed of its stabilizer plates to fall over and repulse itself into another tower, causing untold damage and loss of life. I grin as I watch fires break out below us.
But the repulsor plates are straining now, incapable of forcing the building much higher. They push off the tops of the other buildings, flattening radio beacons and crumbling roofs, but the climb of the Empire State Building stalls. The winged transport of the Fangmaster soars yet high above us, mocking our labors. I trigger the hand transmitter once again.
"Rudy Giuliani," I command, "First stage separation: go."
Explosives detonate in orderly patterns around the two hundred and sixty third floor. A great fissure opens in the skin of the Empire State Building all around its perimeter, and a dull red glow is revealed. It is the six stabilization repulsor plates that Fiorello LaGuardia procured at the cost of his left hand. Now energized, they push against the lower stories of the building. Everything from floor two hundred and sixty two and lower begins to fall; everybody in those floors will fall to their deaths, and hopefully crush other buildings as they do so. Everything above that line keeps going; we rocket still higher.
The pilot of the winged transport now knows he is under attack. He attempts to veer his craft to one side, but it is large and slow to respond to the helm. "Oh no you don't!" shouts Fiorello LaGuardia, and he blows another set of explosives. One of the stabilizer plates on a side of the building shears away, and the Empire State Building's head curves its path as its thrust becomes asymmetric.
I stand on the observation deck and watch the top of the docking mast pierce the thin skin of the transport's underbelly. That goring horn rises up and through the craft, and the plane's bottom drops to meet me. Impossibly the skin of the airship parts, and I actually rise unscathed into the midst of the craft as the building claws its way through the transport of our nemesis leader. Saurians are snapping and clawing at each other; others howl as they fall to their deaths. I howl as well, but in victory, not in terror.
The fuel stores hoarded by Rudy Giuliani go up, and I feel myself buoyed by an expanding flower of destructive flames. I do not get to see the final victory – I am not allowed the luxury of seeing the embers of the Fangmaster rain destruction down on the cruel empty shade of New York City – but with my dying thoughts I know that happy beginning is upon us.
September the Eleventh is a day where all things change in New York City. Now a new September the Eleventh has dawned – an early September for saurian-kind, an unseasonal autumn, heralding a coming winter of extinction.
