Silvio Berlusconi: The Man, The Legend.
I thought long and hard about how I would answer this question. In a way it was business: I was being paid to be here, of course; to perform this dark task. But I knew in my heart that it would also be a great pleasure.
"Silvio Berlusconi," I said. The customs official smiled, as if by saying those two words I had entered into a secret society. If he had known my true meaning-
"Ah, yes, our great Prime Minister, the eighth wonder of the world. People say: I have come to see the leaning tower, or the coliseum. But I can see the truth in their eyes. Good luck," he said, passing back my passport. A great tension left my body: the tension of lying; knowing that if I was caught taking Berlusconi's name in vain, the consequences would not be worth thinking about.
I waited for over an hour for my luggage. I was worried as I waited: what if they had searched for weapons? But they had not. The reason sorting had taken so long was because the attendants were 'off with the Prime Minister', judging from their deeply satisfied smiles.
Their contented, bovine stares were too much to bear. I took my luggage as soon as I could and ran. Nobody tried to stop me, or ask me to slow down; there was no kind of security at the airport.
I looked up at a poster of his manly visage, and felt a surge of attraction - then I realized that I was being affected already. I looked at the floor and shook my head. Using the ancient meditation techniques I had learned over the years, I struggled to clear my mind.
... Breath in ... breath out ... breath in ... breath out ... breath in ... wow, a Silvio Berlusconi action figure with twenty points of articulation ...
It almost worked. But that was enough. Even if there was a nagging feeling in the back of my head, the mission would be completed.
The mission...
It had been six years ago that I had learned the dark truth behind the most influential, manliest man in the world. Evidence presented to the UN Eschatology Prevention Organisation (UNEPO) - of which I am a junior member - by a team of archaeologists, geologists and primordial physicists: evidence of an extremely old force working on human history, and on time-scales barely within our comprehension.
Each time this force acted on the Earth, it seemed to take a new form. An unusual dinosaur which left sponge-like fossils. A unique wavelength of light. A nine-foot tall, skeletal figure appearing in the artwork of many ancient cultures.
And Silvio Berlusconi.
Something was going to happen: something big, and bad. It seemed unlikely, impossible; but Berlusconi was at the centre of whatever was going to happen. In my bag I had a grounding rod, to pierce any metaphysical defences, and a handgun. The great man would be holding a press conference later that day; I had a press badge.
Two more hours of waiting, then I saw, and I ...
...
... and then I was running, a baying crowd chasing through the streets. Their leader was dead by my hand, but-
I rounded a corner, and there he was, standing in front of me with his cocksure half-smile, drink in hand, as he had been at the press conference. I stopped, turned around, but the street behind me had disappeared; it was replaced by a wall. I had dropped the gun in my panic, but I still had the grounding rod.
I took it and charged; but as it made contact I lost all feeling in my body: I couldn't move. Then he spoke, but it was a new voice, one as old as cold:
"That was an ... interesting experience. Did you honestly think that your petty, watered-down hedge-magic could kill me? I'm no stray demon, no lost elemental. You may speak, by the way."
And then I found I could speak, though the rest of my body was paralysed.
"What are you? What do you want with us?"
"I was here first. What do you lot want with me?"
"You- you are something. I don't know what. But you cause things. Change. Destruction. The Oxygen catastrophe, the K-T event, the fall of Atlantis; of Lemuria. And now, here ... why?"
"Oh, no reason at all. Sometimes I like to have a little fun."
"Fun? You're doing this ... because you are bored?"
"Yes. Sort of. Look, take a message back to your superiors, okay?"
"O- okay-"
"Tell them that I burned my feet on the hot surface of this ball of dirt when it was new. They cannot stop me. But I promise not to do too much damage. Now, off you go,"
He raised an eyebrow, and then I was stood outside the UN building in New York. I checked the news on the first chance I could: no mention on an attempt on Berlusconi's life. A brief mention on the Reuters web-site about a press conference that had experienced a brief technical failure, nothing more.
I reported everything to the heads of UNEPO. They seemed to believe me; it doesn't matter. The only hope we have for the survival of civilization is the word ... of Silvio Berlusconi.
