Post by Dominator / Mortimer on Sept 25, 2017 17:51:56 GMT -5
Monday 25th September 2017 - 11.59am
Location: Function Room, The Stones Hotel, Amesbury, England
Chairs are set out in elevated rows like those found in a cinema, ascending backwards as far as the eye can see. Men and women dressed in smart attire fill the seats just as much as they fill the air with conversations. Ahead of the seats is a stage with a plinth set up in its centre, a microphone is propped up in a stand. The lights dim. As they do so, the conversations amongst those in attendance die out. It is as though someone is controlling a slider that is able to change both the lighting and sound simultaneously in perfect unison. All that remains is one solitary spotlight that beams sharply down towards stage right. A deep and husky male voice with a distinctive British accent disturbs the silence.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, will you please welcome onto the stage the man known in the wrestling world as ‘Dominator,’ current PCW star and former XWF World Champion. Please put your hands together for… Dominic James Atkinson.”
The arena fills into rapturous applause. Horacio lowers the microphone and stares at Dominic, who looks a little pensive. In spite of performing regularly in front of thousands of people, he is a firm believer that his actions speak louder than his works. Public speaking was never really his forte. And now, he was being forced into speaking out for perhaps only the second time since Horacio had pitched 'The Chronological Order' to him. He still ached. The swellings and bruises that littered his flesh had barely faded from his skin. He would be wise not to underestimate the barbarianism of the rules of the underground in the future, particularly if High Tide's calling cards had anything to say about it. Alexa Black, despite her gender and smaller frame, would be sure to utilise every opportunity, perhaps emulate High Tide's tactics.
"Snap out of it!"
Dominic winces slightly, then glares venomously towards Horacio. The slap seemed to cause more injury to Mortimer than the intended target, gauging from the vigorous way he shook his hand.
"Listen here," Mortimer hisses, still in pain, "you need to put everything behind you right now. Amy, Dawn, Alexa, and another thoughts you are having that does not need repeating within these four walls. We need members, Dominic. The Chronological Order cannot grow without a little PR." Dominic looks ready to retaliate, but Mortimer ushers him away with a wave of the hand. Still perturbed, Dominic shakes his head and draws a deep breath. After a couple of brief moments, the unmistakably gargantuan figure of Dominic steps away from Mortimer and into the view of the crowd, waving one hand as if he were running a presidential senate. He smiles with teeth exposed, taking slow but large strides towards the pedestal set up for him. The spotlight carefully follows his every move, not letting him out of its sight. Dominic takes his position in front of the microphone and allows the crowd to settle down before addressing them.
“Greetings friends,” Dominic beams, speaking in a calm, polite tone. He eyes the crowd as if trying to make eye contact with every single person in attendance for a nanosecond before continuing. “I would firstly like to congratulate all of you on making the best decision of your life by attending this… this ‘conference’ of sorts. I’d also like to thank each and every one of you for lending me your valuable time and accepting my invitation and, I must say, it is so humbling to see that practically all of my invitations have been acknowledged by your presence here today. But enough of the sentimental obligations. Let us get down to why you are here. You might be wondering precisely WHY you are here. What makes you, as an individual, be one of the few elite chosen to attend? I have purposefully invited people from all walks of life. We have in our audience today a rabbi, a solicitor, a beauty therapist, a truck driver, a district attorney, a pizza shop owner, people from all walks of life travelling in different directions, yet all of you are here today. Despite the differences in your genders, jobs, religions, races, sexualities and attitudes, I have immediately shown that there is unity between us. There is respect. For if there weren’t, you wouldn’t be here. Makes sense?”
Dominic gestures to the crowd who murmur in a sea of confusion.
“With that in mind,“ Dominic continues regardless of the perplexed reaction. “I would like to pose a question to you all. Now, there are two constants in our existence, along with everything else that exists, that has ever existed and that will ever exist. Those two constants are life and death. Would you agree with that statement?” There is a moment of awkward silence before there are a few affirmatively hums and nods from the audience. This prompts a smirk from The Tyrant. “What if I told you there was a third?” Waves of puzzled looks are exchanged amongst the crowd, their murmurs now mirror the confusion etched at the beginning of this seminar. “Would anybody care to hazard a guess at what it might be?”
“Happiness?” calls a female voice from the masses, not sounding at all confident with her answer.
“Would you say happiness is a constant?” the speaker enquires. The voice who had initially called out does not reply, choosing to maintain anonymity. “We may experience that one moment of euphoria sometime in our lives, but would you say that this happiness continues, or would it dissipate in one way or another?” There are some murmurs from those in attendance, but again, there is no definitive assertion from anyone other than himself. “I’ll take that as the latter,” he announces, unchallenged. “Anyone else?”
“Love?” comes another response, this one comes much more suddenly than the last.
“Again, does everything experience love throughout their entire lives?” the speaker asks. “We humans may develop feelings such as love, but what about other forms of live? Does a worm experience love? An amoeba? A tree? It appears that you are looking only at living things. But what about the inanimate objects that are not comprised of flesh and bone. A rock, for example, does not live. Yet it still exists. Everything around you exists, but not everything necessarily lives.”
“What about God?” comes a male voice.
The bells immediately start ringing in Dominic’s head. The million dollar question had been posed and the expression of delight on the face of The Tyrant only confirms that this is what he had been working for this entire time, at least partially. He looks to his left. Horacio Mortimer stands in the wings, staring at his watch. He nods at Dominic, full of faith.
“Ah!” he exclaims gleefully. “It was only a matter of time before someone brought this up.” He takes a step back from the lectern and removes the microphone from the stand, walking with it to the front of the stage ensuring his legs do not get entangled within the coils of cord. “First of all, when you say ‘God’ do you mean the god of the Christian faith or another sort of deity?” he begins with a confident tone of voice. “Secondly, unlike everything else that has been suggested today, is there any real proof of God’s existence?” Stunned gasps escape from some members of the crowd, there are even some boos from the more religious sect. “This is just an opinion,” the speaker disclaims quickly, possibly in an attempt to appease the unsettled members of the group. “And as this is an open discussion, I ask that you respect my opinions just as much as I respect each and every one of yours.”
“But you’ve said that all of our opinions have been wrong so far!” the man in the checkered shirt retaliates.
“I haven’t said that they are wrong,” Dominic explains with a grin, “I simply have not yet heard an answer that matches my own.” With that, the man in the checkered shirt elevates himself from his seat, adopting an aggressive and defiant stance.
“Well, I think that you, by saying that God is not a constant, are wrong,” he decrees, which warrants a smattering of applause from those who agree with him. Dominic is undeterred by this outburst.
“I respect your decision,” the raconteur bows his head before slowly lifting it again with a much more fierce and provocative expression on his face, wearing it like war paint, “but if you so wish for me to go into greater depth, I could pick apart the whole basis of your religion, or of religion as a whole!”
“I don’t know what has happened to you that makes you feel this way,” the religious man replies, “but Jesus Christ died for our sins. He loves each and every one of us and he can show you the way if only you believe in him.” The lecturer has fallen silent, almost out of disgust. He maintains his composure and smiles softly yet indignantly towards the churchgoer. His grin turns a lot more genuine as a thought enters his head.
“Very well,” the lecturer concedes. “Why don’t you join me up here and you can try to convince me why God is Good?” There are some ‘oohs’ from the audience, exciting to see the result of this confrontation. In agreement, the man makes his way through the crowd towards the stage on which the speaker is stood. People make way for him, some whooping and egging him on in his quest to reinstall Dominic‘s faith. There is a certain commotion amongst the spectators, looking on in anticipation as to where this conversation may head. As the religious man makes it to the stage, he is offered a helping hand by Dominic, who assists him up the steep wooden steps leading up to the podium. “Before we get into this though,” Dominic pauses the parishioner, staring at a pendant shaped as a crucifix that hangs loosely around his neck over the top of his shirt. “I have one request. I’d like you to make one final guess as to what constant outside of life and death I may be thinking about.” Once again, he is met with a stony, perplexed silence. “Nothing, huh?” he chuckles to himself. “Then let me put it to you like this. Everyone in this room has graced me today by giving me something, something that I have thanked them for at the very beginning of this discussion. Do you want me to tell you?”
“Go on then,” the man replies with an unimpressed look on his face, folding his arms. Dominic’s smirk widens before standing face to face with the man and utters but one word.
“Time.”
It is at that moment that there are gasps of realisation. Dominic glances out of the corners of his eyes towards the crowd. He has cast his net and his audience are captivated like a school of fish, ensnared by Dominic’s argument.
“Time precedes everything that has ever existed and will exceed everything that ever will exist,” he explains. “Born even before the first universal molecule was produced or even conceived, there was time. It continues to pass us by, all of us, everybody and everything, always. And it will continue long after you and I pass away, after the largest rock is ground down by erosion into a speck of dust, after the last piece of plastic degrades itself into nothingness. That makes it a constant, does it not?” The debate is now highly in favour of Dominic. The religious man who had initially challenged him is left speechless.
“And I think we can all agree that time is valuable to all of us?” Again, he nods to the crowd as if to entice them to mimic his actions to involuntarily agree. He then looks back to the face with the face agog on the stage. “Tell me your name, friend,” he says firmly, not enquiring for the purpose of building rapport.
“It’s… David.”
“How apt. Well then, David,” he smirks. “I want you to tell everyone here how God made the Earth?” Dumbfounded by this request, David raises an eyebrow out of concern. Surely there is more to this question than meets the eye.
“God created the earth in seven days,” David replies. “On the first…”
“Seven days, ladies and gentlemen,” the speaker calls out, cutting off David before he can go into any greater detail. “Now tell me, how can anything be classed as perfect after such a short length of time? It takes years to ferment the ‘perfect’ wine. It takes centuries to form the finest diamonds. So how, in seven days, can ‘God’ create a perfect world?” David reverts back to his state of stunned silence. “Your ‘God’ gave up on the world and let humanity fend for themselves, then had the audacity to allow his only son to die at humanity’s hand as a way to patronise us, saying that he died ‘for our sins,’ sins that had occurred long before you and I were even twinkles in our father’s eyes.”
“And so ‘time’ has created a perfect world, has it?” David finally retorts, seething with anger.
“I’m not saying it has,” Dominic answers. “But at least it is constantly developing on ideas and perfecting its designs.”
“How!?” David booms in disgust at such a statement, to which Dominic simply lets out a cool and confident smile, raising his arm gesturing as if for him to look around.
“We call it ‘evolution,’ my friend,” he replies smugly. “I am not telling you to denounce your faith in the manner of which you are attempting to debunk my own thoughts on the matter. I am simply asking you to challenge what you believe.” Dominic call sense the unmistakable scepticism within David, who seems to be struggling with the concept of Dominic’s stubbornness but also the actual validity of these claims. The Tyrant himself appears to sense this. “Can you honestly tell me there is not even a shred of sense in what I am saying?” His oppressor stands rigid, red-faced out of ambivalent confusion, anger, sadness and, perhaps most importantly, defeat. His facial expressions would be a giveaway to even the most incompetent of mind readers. The lowering of his head seals it. Puddles form affront his pupils, his shoulders begin to tremble uncontrollably as he buries his face into the palms of his hands. Unexpectedly, the man whose views had made him so distraught grabbed him in a swift movement, pulling him into his own torso and wrapping his arms around his back. The embrace does not feel comforting. It almost feels patronising. Yet, so overcome with emotion is he that this only elevates his despair. Instinctively, he returns the embrace and sobs uncontrollably into the man’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” the man utters softly, yet a smug tone of victory is hidden beneath his consoling statement. “Just relax. I appreciate how difficult it can be when the realisation that everything you’ve ever believed suddenly comes crashing down around you.”
“What am I supposed to do?” David weeps. “Everything I know, everything I’ve been taught to believe… what am I meant to do with this?”
“Please take your seat and I shall tell you exactly how,” he smiles. Wiping a tear from his eye, David descends from the stage and returns into the midst of surprised and confused members of the crowd. “And here is where I bestow unto you our vision,” The Zenith picks up a remote control from behind the pedestal and aims it towards the wall at the back of the stage. With his arm outstretched and that same psychotic look on his face as if he were about to press the ‘fire’ button on a death ray, “May I present…”
CLICK
The spotlight that has cascaded its celestial beam over Dominic dims into non-existence. Three words appear on the back wall in thick, bold, white letters.
“THE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER”
Location: Function Room, The Stones Hotel, Amesbury, England
Chairs are set out in elevated rows like those found in a cinema, ascending backwards as far as the eye can see. Men and women dressed in smart attire fill the seats just as much as they fill the air with conversations. Ahead of the seats is a stage with a plinth set up in its centre, a microphone is propped up in a stand. The lights dim. As they do so, the conversations amongst those in attendance die out. It is as though someone is controlling a slider that is able to change both the lighting and sound simultaneously in perfect unison. All that remains is one solitary spotlight that beams sharply down towards stage right. A deep and husky male voice with a distinctive British accent disturbs the silence.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, will you please welcome onto the stage the man known in the wrestling world as ‘Dominator,’ current PCW star and former XWF World Champion. Please put your hands together for… Dominic James Atkinson.”
The arena fills into rapturous applause. Horacio lowers the microphone and stares at Dominic, who looks a little pensive. In spite of performing regularly in front of thousands of people, he is a firm believer that his actions speak louder than his works. Public speaking was never really his forte. And now, he was being forced into speaking out for perhaps only the second time since Horacio had pitched 'The Chronological Order' to him. He still ached. The swellings and bruises that littered his flesh had barely faded from his skin. He would be wise not to underestimate the barbarianism of the rules of the underground in the future, particularly if High Tide's calling cards had anything to say about it. Alexa Black, despite her gender and smaller frame, would be sure to utilise every opportunity, perhaps emulate High Tide's tactics.
"Snap out of it!"
Dominic winces slightly, then glares venomously towards Horacio. The slap seemed to cause more injury to Mortimer than the intended target, gauging from the vigorous way he shook his hand.
"Listen here," Mortimer hisses, still in pain, "you need to put everything behind you right now. Amy, Dawn, Alexa, and another thoughts you are having that does not need repeating within these four walls. We need members, Dominic. The Chronological Order cannot grow without a little PR." Dominic looks ready to retaliate, but Mortimer ushers him away with a wave of the hand. Still perturbed, Dominic shakes his head and draws a deep breath. After a couple of brief moments, the unmistakably gargantuan figure of Dominic steps away from Mortimer and into the view of the crowd, waving one hand as if he were running a presidential senate. He smiles with teeth exposed, taking slow but large strides towards the pedestal set up for him. The spotlight carefully follows his every move, not letting him out of its sight. Dominic takes his position in front of the microphone and allows the crowd to settle down before addressing them.
“Greetings friends,” Dominic beams, speaking in a calm, polite tone. He eyes the crowd as if trying to make eye contact with every single person in attendance for a nanosecond before continuing. “I would firstly like to congratulate all of you on making the best decision of your life by attending this… this ‘conference’ of sorts. I’d also like to thank each and every one of you for lending me your valuable time and accepting my invitation and, I must say, it is so humbling to see that practically all of my invitations have been acknowledged by your presence here today. But enough of the sentimental obligations. Let us get down to why you are here. You might be wondering precisely WHY you are here. What makes you, as an individual, be one of the few elite chosen to attend? I have purposefully invited people from all walks of life. We have in our audience today a rabbi, a solicitor, a beauty therapist, a truck driver, a district attorney, a pizza shop owner, people from all walks of life travelling in different directions, yet all of you are here today. Despite the differences in your genders, jobs, religions, races, sexualities and attitudes, I have immediately shown that there is unity between us. There is respect. For if there weren’t, you wouldn’t be here. Makes sense?”
Dominic gestures to the crowd who murmur in a sea of confusion.
“With that in mind,“ Dominic continues regardless of the perplexed reaction. “I would like to pose a question to you all. Now, there are two constants in our existence, along with everything else that exists, that has ever existed and that will ever exist. Those two constants are life and death. Would you agree with that statement?” There is a moment of awkward silence before there are a few affirmatively hums and nods from the audience. This prompts a smirk from The Tyrant. “What if I told you there was a third?” Waves of puzzled looks are exchanged amongst the crowd, their murmurs now mirror the confusion etched at the beginning of this seminar. “Would anybody care to hazard a guess at what it might be?”
“Happiness?” calls a female voice from the masses, not sounding at all confident with her answer.
“Would you say happiness is a constant?” the speaker enquires. The voice who had initially called out does not reply, choosing to maintain anonymity. “We may experience that one moment of euphoria sometime in our lives, but would you say that this happiness continues, or would it dissipate in one way or another?” There are some murmurs from those in attendance, but again, there is no definitive assertion from anyone other than himself. “I’ll take that as the latter,” he announces, unchallenged. “Anyone else?”
“Love?” comes another response, this one comes much more suddenly than the last.
“Again, does everything experience love throughout their entire lives?” the speaker asks. “We humans may develop feelings such as love, but what about other forms of live? Does a worm experience love? An amoeba? A tree? It appears that you are looking only at living things. But what about the inanimate objects that are not comprised of flesh and bone. A rock, for example, does not live. Yet it still exists. Everything around you exists, but not everything necessarily lives.”
“What about God?” comes a male voice.
The bells immediately start ringing in Dominic’s head. The million dollar question had been posed and the expression of delight on the face of The Tyrant only confirms that this is what he had been working for this entire time, at least partially. He looks to his left. Horacio Mortimer stands in the wings, staring at his watch. He nods at Dominic, full of faith.
“Ah!” he exclaims gleefully. “It was only a matter of time before someone brought this up.” He takes a step back from the lectern and removes the microphone from the stand, walking with it to the front of the stage ensuring his legs do not get entangled within the coils of cord. “First of all, when you say ‘God’ do you mean the god of the Christian faith or another sort of deity?” he begins with a confident tone of voice. “Secondly, unlike everything else that has been suggested today, is there any real proof of God’s existence?” Stunned gasps escape from some members of the crowd, there are even some boos from the more religious sect. “This is just an opinion,” the speaker disclaims quickly, possibly in an attempt to appease the unsettled members of the group. “And as this is an open discussion, I ask that you respect my opinions just as much as I respect each and every one of yours.”
“But you’ve said that all of our opinions have been wrong so far!” the man in the checkered shirt retaliates.
“I haven’t said that they are wrong,” Dominic explains with a grin, “I simply have not yet heard an answer that matches my own.” With that, the man in the checkered shirt elevates himself from his seat, adopting an aggressive and defiant stance.
“Well, I think that you, by saying that God is not a constant, are wrong,” he decrees, which warrants a smattering of applause from those who agree with him. Dominic is undeterred by this outburst.
“I respect your decision,” the raconteur bows his head before slowly lifting it again with a much more fierce and provocative expression on his face, wearing it like war paint, “but if you so wish for me to go into greater depth, I could pick apart the whole basis of your religion, or of religion as a whole!”
“I don’t know what has happened to you that makes you feel this way,” the religious man replies, “but Jesus Christ died for our sins. He loves each and every one of us and he can show you the way if only you believe in him.” The lecturer has fallen silent, almost out of disgust. He maintains his composure and smiles softly yet indignantly towards the churchgoer. His grin turns a lot more genuine as a thought enters his head.
“Very well,” the lecturer concedes. “Why don’t you join me up here and you can try to convince me why God is Good?” There are some ‘oohs’ from the audience, exciting to see the result of this confrontation. In agreement, the man makes his way through the crowd towards the stage on which the speaker is stood. People make way for him, some whooping and egging him on in his quest to reinstall Dominic‘s faith. There is a certain commotion amongst the spectators, looking on in anticipation as to where this conversation may head. As the religious man makes it to the stage, he is offered a helping hand by Dominic, who assists him up the steep wooden steps leading up to the podium. “Before we get into this though,” Dominic pauses the parishioner, staring at a pendant shaped as a crucifix that hangs loosely around his neck over the top of his shirt. “I have one request. I’d like you to make one final guess as to what constant outside of life and death I may be thinking about.” Once again, he is met with a stony, perplexed silence. “Nothing, huh?” he chuckles to himself. “Then let me put it to you like this. Everyone in this room has graced me today by giving me something, something that I have thanked them for at the very beginning of this discussion. Do you want me to tell you?”
“Go on then,” the man replies with an unimpressed look on his face, folding his arms. Dominic’s smirk widens before standing face to face with the man and utters but one word.
“Time.”
It is at that moment that there are gasps of realisation. Dominic glances out of the corners of his eyes towards the crowd. He has cast his net and his audience are captivated like a school of fish, ensnared by Dominic’s argument.
“Time precedes everything that has ever existed and will exceed everything that ever will exist,” he explains. “Born even before the first universal molecule was produced or even conceived, there was time. It continues to pass us by, all of us, everybody and everything, always. And it will continue long after you and I pass away, after the largest rock is ground down by erosion into a speck of dust, after the last piece of plastic degrades itself into nothingness. That makes it a constant, does it not?” The debate is now highly in favour of Dominic. The religious man who had initially challenged him is left speechless.
“And I think we can all agree that time is valuable to all of us?” Again, he nods to the crowd as if to entice them to mimic his actions to involuntarily agree. He then looks back to the face with the face agog on the stage. “Tell me your name, friend,” he says firmly, not enquiring for the purpose of building rapport.
“It’s… David.”
“How apt. Well then, David,” he smirks. “I want you to tell everyone here how God made the Earth?” Dumbfounded by this request, David raises an eyebrow out of concern. Surely there is more to this question than meets the eye.
“God created the earth in seven days,” David replies. “On the first…”
“Seven days, ladies and gentlemen,” the speaker calls out, cutting off David before he can go into any greater detail. “Now tell me, how can anything be classed as perfect after such a short length of time? It takes years to ferment the ‘perfect’ wine. It takes centuries to form the finest diamonds. So how, in seven days, can ‘God’ create a perfect world?” David reverts back to his state of stunned silence. “Your ‘God’ gave up on the world and let humanity fend for themselves, then had the audacity to allow his only son to die at humanity’s hand as a way to patronise us, saying that he died ‘for our sins,’ sins that had occurred long before you and I were even twinkles in our father’s eyes.”
“And so ‘time’ has created a perfect world, has it?” David finally retorts, seething with anger.
“I’m not saying it has,” Dominic answers. “But at least it is constantly developing on ideas and perfecting its designs.”
“How!?” David booms in disgust at such a statement, to which Dominic simply lets out a cool and confident smile, raising his arm gesturing as if for him to look around.
“We call it ‘evolution,’ my friend,” he replies smugly. “I am not telling you to denounce your faith in the manner of which you are attempting to debunk my own thoughts on the matter. I am simply asking you to challenge what you believe.” Dominic call sense the unmistakable scepticism within David, who seems to be struggling with the concept of Dominic’s stubbornness but also the actual validity of these claims. The Tyrant himself appears to sense this. “Can you honestly tell me there is not even a shred of sense in what I am saying?” His oppressor stands rigid, red-faced out of ambivalent confusion, anger, sadness and, perhaps most importantly, defeat. His facial expressions would be a giveaway to even the most incompetent of mind readers. The lowering of his head seals it. Puddles form affront his pupils, his shoulders begin to tremble uncontrollably as he buries his face into the palms of his hands. Unexpectedly, the man whose views had made him so distraught grabbed him in a swift movement, pulling him into his own torso and wrapping his arms around his back. The embrace does not feel comforting. It almost feels patronising. Yet, so overcome with emotion is he that this only elevates his despair. Instinctively, he returns the embrace and sobs uncontrollably into the man’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” the man utters softly, yet a smug tone of victory is hidden beneath his consoling statement. “Just relax. I appreciate how difficult it can be when the realisation that everything you’ve ever believed suddenly comes crashing down around you.”
“What am I supposed to do?” David weeps. “Everything I know, everything I’ve been taught to believe… what am I meant to do with this?”
“Please take your seat and I shall tell you exactly how,” he smiles. Wiping a tear from his eye, David descends from the stage and returns into the midst of surprised and confused members of the crowd. “And here is where I bestow unto you our vision,” The Zenith picks up a remote control from behind the pedestal and aims it towards the wall at the back of the stage. With his arm outstretched and that same psychotic look on his face as if he were about to press the ‘fire’ button on a death ray, “May I present…”
CLICK
The spotlight that has cascaded its celestial beam over Dominic dims into non-existence. Three words appear on the back wall in thick, bold, white letters.
“THE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER”
