Scrambling downstairs. Five floors down, stumbling over a crawling man.
He is gaunt and mumbling in Hangul.1
I keep going, floating down two and three and four stairs at a time. By fifteen floors there is a trickle; by thirty, a throng. I am surprised no-one suspects that I killed Kim Jong-Il, but everyone seems too possessed (starving?) to care. At 60 floors down there is a Haymarket in the stairwell; at 101, the Majority Whip of a makeshift Duma is carving a 9th commandment into the wall to a mob's approval.
One of the stouter men steps out to greet me.
"What's the password?"
I don't say anything and attempt to side-step him.
"Nobody gets by without the password," he stops me. "It should have been granted to you by your systems administrator. To reset your pass…"
I wave him off, averting my head so my ensuing brute force attack will take him by surprise.
"Feel free to try to get by," he pre-empts. "Just so you know, I'm rather ripped."
I think about bribing him with the imperial mangosteen, but decide against it.
"If there is no sysadmin, everything is permitted."
"Hold out your right wrist," he says. I oblige, and gives me a stamp: EVICTED.
"Thank you," I say, and move on, though not before pointing out how crucial a multi-polar framework of checks and balances is for domestic security.
***
Eventually, I escape outside a delivery bay at the bottom of the palace.
"Halt!"
A North Korean soldier is pointing a gun at me. I run.
"Bodhi!"
The solider shoots and misses; I duck behind an anti-aircraft battery and then escape unharmed into a crowd. A full-scale riot has broken out in Pyongyang. Citizens have taken to the streets and are looting local businesses. Several mansions are ablaze. As I negotiate the multitude, pushing this way and that, an old woman holding a phalarope by the neck approaches. She walks with a cane, but speaks with a force that defies her frailty.
"I know who you are!"
"Do you, now?"
"Why did you do it?"
"Father dies, son dies, grandson dies."
There is an explosion in the distance. The mausoleum of Kim Il-Sung (founder of North Korea and father of Kim Jong-Il) is under siege. I turn left and collide with a man, who reaches for me; I turn right and bump into a woman who lunges likewise. I stutter-step and find a crease.
"Long live dear Buddha!" the old lady yells.
As I run away, she throws her phalarope at me. It catches flight before contact and soars into the distance.
I owe her a bird.
Note:
1 Hangul : Italian :: Hanja : Latin. The phrases translate to "Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il, Kim Stephen-Jong."
