The man in the black suit's head and upper torso were centered on the small screen. There was a nice aesthetic balance as to how the frame was composed, with just the right room and tilt to accentuate the shifts in the man's body as he spoke and enough of the podium in view to add contrasting color and subtle mis en scéne. Though there was no sound, his gestures and expressions adequately reflected his overzealous style of oratory.
                    The readout across the top of the screen read:
                    DISTANCE: 127.67 YARDS -- TEMPERTURE: 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit
                    A Cartesian graph appeared over the scene. Lines formed and traced out the shape of the man.
                    DISTANCE: 127.7 YARDS -- TEMPERTURE: 99.9 degrees Fahrenheit
                    The colors on the screen began to change to impressionistic swathes of reds, oranges, blues and yellows.
                    DISTANCE: 127.71 YARDS -- TEMPERTURE: 106.5 degrees Fahrenheit
                    The normal color returned, but the man's coloring was redder than before. He stopped speaking.
                    DISTANCE: 127.80 YARDS -- TEMPERTURE: 122.5 degrees Fahrenheit
                    The man in the dark suit's eyes bulged. Smoke seemed to be coming from his ears.
                    DISTANCE: 127.85 YARDS -- TEMPERTURE: 423 degrees Fahrenheit
                    The figure's head exploded in a fiery burst; orange and blue flame flashed as his face unnaturally expanded and popped, revealing metal and plastic, melting circuitry. His flesh melted in rubbery dribbles, exposing layers of blackened wiring and insulation in the shape of a human head.
                    Lenore snapped the computer screen shut and jumped to her feet. Before grabbing the thermo-gun, she had to adjust her pants, which were riding up her backside. They were uncomfortable, tight black synthetics, but they looked very good, she thought, very appropriate. Lenore was rarely so self-conscious or touchy about her appearance, and took the pants as an affront to her normal sensibilities, but she knew that if she were arrested, she needed to control how she appeared, to make sure the public moment had iconic resonance. She wanted to wear her favorite pair of black jeans, but when she tried them on that morning, Lenore thought they made her butt stick out.
                    As she ran past the piles of books and out the door, she wondered if she were rationalizing her own narcissism through her theories on the semiotic importance of her costuming. She had spent a great deal of time trying to decide whether emphasizing or deemphasizing her small breasts would be more empowering to women viewers—deciding in the end to take a middle route with a tight jacket that she deemed feminine, yet not fetishisticly drawing attention to her chest.
                    Her hair color, she thought as she jumped into her car and started off towards the highway, was another thing. Black hair really did fit better with the statement, she was sure. But she rationalized herself out of dying her hair, because, even though she didn't want to consciously admit it, she was quite proud of its auburn coloring. The reddish highlights looked particularly well in natural lighting, and she had envisioned a perfect photograph of herself led, handcuffed, into custody, noting the symbolic and psycho-sexual implications of the cuffs, as well.
                    Accelerating, Lenore told the television in her car to troll through news programming, but all it found was an endless stream of commercials. She merged onto the highway and headed toward the suburbs. She wanted to get an idea of the public reaction, to get her finger on the pulse of the people. As much as she disliked the idea, Lenore decided to stop by her parents' home.
                    As she walked through the lawn towards her parent's house, the perfect box that looked like every perfect box in the subdivision, Lenore noticed that plastic grass had split ends from Dad insisting on Ralph mowing the lawn every week.
                    Mom answered the door. “Elly!”
                    “Hi, mom.”
                    Lenore's mother gave her a hug, almost crushing the passive daughter.
                    “These old joints,” Mom said. Her joints were, in fact, plastic, as were all her visible parts. Her body was an inflexible plastic.
                    “Your sister just called, looking for you,” said Mom.
                    “Oh?”
                    “She was quite agitated. You know how she gets. I couldn't really figure out what she was on about.”
                    Lenore looked into the den, and there was Ralph, splayed out in front of the humongous television. Ralph with his freckled cheeks, his blond hair, his oversized glasses, perpetually a prepubescent boy. He hadn't changed for as long as Lenore could remember, at least not since the accident.
                    On the TV were flashing fast montage sequences with various split screen video effects. Car crashes, nude women, explosions, football tackles, guitars, tanks. The soundtrack was furious distorted guitar over heavy electronic drumbeats, heavy and manic. The figures onscreen increased their paces, the film cuts became closer together, and the screen began to subdivide into smaller screens, each with its own unique action. Details were lost in the gestalt impression of kinetic frenzy.
                    “Ralph,” said Lenore, “do you mind if we watched the news?”
                    “This is the news,” said Ralph peevishly, and as he said it, the logo of the Zorro News network popped onscreen. “Dad wanted to watch it.”
                    “Can't you say hello to your dear old dad?” said Dad.
                    Dad was sitting in his easy chair, as always. His body was little more than a prop for his large head, which was a mounted television screen. On the screen was his face, much as it had been in life, but distorted, stretched out to fill up all of the rectangular area of the screen. The shape of the larger screen could be seen lightly reflected on his face.
                    “Uh, hi,” said Lenore, who unlike the rest of her family, never accepted the ersatz father as much more than an appliance.
                    “Will you be staying for dinner, dear?” asked Mom. She was stirring something purple in a bowl.
                    “Uh, I don't think so. I just wanted to say 'Hi'.”
                    “Bless you, my child,” said the television in a female voice before switching to a deep, authoritative, masculine, yet soothing tone. “You only want the best for your child, and that's why you use Stimulate's Blestmilk.” On screen, a large breasted woman in a see-through nightgown was feeding a baby with a bottle. “Blestmilk replicates so many of the important nutrients found in nature while supplying your little one with genetically modified growth enhancers to put them ahead of the pack.”
                    Ralph stared hungrily, yet confusedly, at Mom's plastic chest.
                    “You shoulda seen it, sis,” said Ralph, as if snapping himself awake. “The Supreme Leader blew up on television.”
                    “Now, son,” said Dad. “We can't jump to conclusions like that. Remember last time, they said it was probably sunspots or a weather balloon.”
                    “But he was talking about something or another boring thing, and his head just start to change colors, like get a all red, and then 'BOOOM', his head is all shredded and stuff. And Dad said “Damn!”
                    “Ralph!” said Mom. “I won't have you speaking in such a manner.”
                    “Gee, Mom,” said Ralph. “I'm 28 years old.”
                    “And I would think that is old enough to know better than to talk in such an ugly way.”
                    “Oh, Mom,” said Dad, “let the boy be. Let's watch TV.”
                    “Sorry,” said a masculine, condescending voice from the television, “even wearing an Odyssey, she'd never confuse you for me. Heh heh.”
                    “Zorro News! We get the news right!”
                    “This just in, the Supreme Leader is about to speak live to a first grade class in Epoxy, Indiana.”
                    “But I thought…” said Ralph.
                    “Shhh,” said his parents.
                    “Fellow citizens. I'd like to thank each one of you for your support in our ongoing war against the foes of democracy. Thanks to your compliance, you, the citizens of this great land, need not fear malfeance gone array. We are ready for any unforseen event which may or may not happen, whether it be weapons of mass production or a so-called free press.”
                    “But we saw it on TV,” said Ralph. “It's got to be true.”
                    “Hmmm,” said Dad thoughtfully. “That's sound reasoning. But there he is, in all his resplendent glory.”
                    “You can't question reality,” said Mom, licking something purple off of her plastic finger.
                    Lenore stifled a scream.
                    “But I'm here to talk about the future,” continued the Supreme Leader, “and where you, the young, will fit in. What is life choices about? There is no second-rate children in our great land, and when one of us suffer, all of us suffers. You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test—that is the goal. I recognize there are hurdles, and we're going to achieve those hurdles. I know something about being a government, and your government controls your uninalienable rights. This nation needs actions, and I am an act-er."
                    As the Supreme Leader spoke, text scrolled across the bottom of the screen:
                    Leading experts concur that the Supreme Leader is his normal healthy, human self, and any contradictory belief is psychologically based or the effect of swamp gas.
                    “See?” said Dad.
                    “Shucks,” said Ralph gloomily.
                    "There's an old saying,” continued the Supreme Leader, “that says: Fool me once, shame on…”
                    The Supreme Leader stops, squints.
                    “…shame on you.”
                    The Supreme Leader chews his lower lip.
                    “Fool me…”
                    The Supreme Leader scratches his head, looks around, then smiles triumphantly.
                    “…you can't get fooled again."
                    “Oh, no,” said Mom, rushing from the room. I hope my apple pie isn't burning.
                    Lenore left.