The Dickson Report

A buoy on the distant horizon marking the edge of human sanity.

The Colonel spit out his morning coffee as the words came over the telephone. His heart sank. Utter disbelief. Here he was at the height of his career, and had failed. A deep pit formed in the cavity of his chest and his heart began skipping. He started to descend into a panic attack. His eyes widened and then his legs buckled underneath him. The voice on the other end of the line continued to call out as the Colonel’s heart seized up.

The Dickson Report would later note that the Major on the other end stayed on the line for the entire 22 minute 8 second duration that it took from the Colonel picking up to the EMT hanging up. The Report would also note that the Colonel died upon hearing the news.

…

Nobody could really believe the Dickson Report when they first read it. It took a moment to sink in. Like a Bolognese on the stove for Sunday supper, some things need to ruminate to come to fruition.

First when the generals, the warmongers, the spies, the witches, and the shills all read it they couldn’t believe what they were reading. It seemed so simple and obvious, yet so unbelievable. After all, in over 80 years through some of the worst political tension and technological holocaustic wars, this sort of thing had never happened.

When the people first heard the news they went hysterical. The streets were flooded. The bars and establishments ripe with booze. The gentiles were in a panic, uncertain as to what was to come. The internet was a hum, sucking up the world's power diverting away from schools in developing countries and towards the meme broadband.

Then the Dickson Report came out. Some people read it, most didn’t. The people who did read it were confused. That’s all it took? There were coffee shop conversations and internet forum witch hunts.

And then it went silent.

The next thing happened. And the next. And people forgot and went on with their lives. The incident, and the Dickson Report became a faint memory, a buoy on the distant horizon marking the edge of human sanity.

…

Some would challenge that Mr. Zeldinsk was well within the bounds of sanity when he woke up that cool June day. In fact, some even say he was justified.

The common view of the time tends to agree that regardless of ideology, to go out and build the contraption from scratch was a bit looney. When most people are mad at the government they post about it online or bitch into the void. To go that far was a bit extreme.

The Report tries to sweep the whole ideology under the rug. Unfortunately, Mr. Zeldinsk had a manifesto and manifested that it would be read. So prior to that cool June day, Mr. Zeldinsk took his Magnum Opus and sent it to all the papers. Not that nobody really read them anymore but they sure gave the people a reason to buy them again. This was not good for the government. Really they would’ve preferred if Mr. Zeldinsk was a hermit, somebody who nobody knew. They like it when things are like that. Easier to hide when nothing there is.

Therefore, The Report keeps things matter of fact. Very to the point. They like to do things that way. This happened here at this time on this date. So-and-so did this and then this happened to who-and-who.

Unfortunately, reality did not work out to be this way this time. Everybody knew Mr. Zeldinsk and everybody seemed to have something different to say. An Alexander, a Diogenes, a Hephaestion, and an Archimedes all in one. A countless array of other personalities and characters seemed to bubble up out of Mr. Zeldinsk.

…

At approximately 8:49 AM EST according to the report, Air Force One went down. Specially designed to ferry the President across the nation and globe, America’s Helios became Icarus.

The families and youths who had started off to the beach earnestly in the morning now watched as wreckage slowly washed ashore. One boy ran off with a piece of wreckage printed with the presidential seal (later recovered by the FBI). On the beach destruction reigned.

One little boy, Tommy, had been watching the stream of planes come in. That’s why he loved this beach. He always begged his mom to take him here, but instead of playing in the surf or the sand he sat back and watched the planes fly in. The worst days were the ones when the wind forced the planes to land on a runway facing perpendicular.

Tommy had been begging his mom to come to this beach extra hard today. Not only was he begging to go see the planes, he wanted to make sure to get there early. He was buzzing. All last week in the class his teacher had told him about the President flying into the city. How exciting! Tommy wanted to go early to try and catch a glimpse.

Earlier in the morning plane after plane had flown by but to no avail. Each one was in some way like the last. Unremarkable. While his main focus was on the plane at the time directly overhead, he did occasionally toss a glimpse out at the line of planes dotting the sky to see who was on deck. They stretched out for miles with the very last plane appearing almost as a fly darting across the television screen.

One of these flies finally seemed different from the others. It just felt different.

…

In the Dickson Report, Tommy's former love for planes was never mentioned nor elaborated on. In keeping things straightforward, Tommy’s government name was Male Child #13.

In fact, most people in the Dickson Report are named similarly. No real names. Just titles and numbers. One of the few named individuals is Mr. Zeldinsk himself. However, he is often referred to Anti-Government Terroristic Partisan #1. While the countless papers, books, movies, and documentaries later covering his life would endlessly debate the true nature of his philosophy, Anti-Government Terroristic Partisan #1 seemed slightly unincompassing.

The truth of the matter is, Mr. Zeldinsk was all of those things. And he wasn’t.

Mr. Zeldinsk was an anachronistic man thrown into the fold, intertwined by the fates into the fabric of history. A stark reminder that despite the forces of history seeming immovable, one man can diverge the great stream with a single log.

…

The events of that morning were set into motion years ago. A butterfly flapped its wings and then Air Force One fell into the bay. What ultimately transpired that day, documented in detail by the Dickson Report, was the Mr. Zeldinsk constructed an anti-aircraft cannon in his backyard and used it to shoot down Air Force One.

All the countermeasures and jamming, anti-nuclear deterrents and disaster contingency plans, were all brought to their knees by a homemade Flak 88.

Mr. Zeldinsk built the cannon over the course of a year. Using instructions from the internet, parts from local providers, and his welder, he built a device to bring the City on the Hill to its knees.

He had no way of knowing if it would work or not. There’s not anti-aircraft shooting ranges so he only had one shot. He had known its target from pre-inception, so now all he had to do was wait and hope.

Once the President’s plans had been made, the flight path set, Mr. Zeldinsk sat in wait. He threw off the tarp over his old machine, sat in the gunner’s chair, and waited for the plane. Just as Tommy saw the plane in the horizon, Mr. Zeldinsk got the plane in his optical sights.

He waited as the plane rolled in and kept the sights on target. Air Force One was finally lured in and its fuselage was ripped apart by steel and shock waves.

…

There were no survivors. Bodies were pulled from the beach along with the wreckage. The President’s body was never found.

Although he didn’t do much to hide his AA gun, the local police were overwhelmed with the chaos and carnage of the beach. The FBI arrived at Mr. Zeldinsk’s house an hour later. The breaching team, clad in black Kevlar and breaking the door off its hinges, found Mr. Zeldinsk sitting on a simple chair in his living room.

The Dickson Report ends with a simple line, a quote from Mr. Zeldinsk.

“It simply had to be done.”