Sarasmile asks:
Is it disturbing to you when an author jumps into the flow of history and radically departs in order to drive an important lesson home to the reader?
Can you write an example?
Here an excerpt from the chapter titled THE FAT LADY SINGS
The setting is the top floor of the tallest building on Mars in the New World Society headquarters.
Three of the Society's top leaders are present: Nathan Knorr, Joseph Rutherford and Fred Franz.
This is a confrontation between the Directors and Louise Boyd and Jack Clayton.
THE FAT LADY SINGS
The hammer fell, transferring energy to the firing pin which struck the primer, igniting repellant inside the cartridge of Joe Rutherford’s pistol. Hot gases expanded, building pressure behind the lead bullet, pushing it down the gun barrel and out the opening in the muzzle, dropping pressure in the barrel itself. The grooves in the gun barrel added torque to the lead which spun fast enough to keep the deadly slug headed straight and true.
The Judge had intended to scare the young lady shitless and cripple her Cro-Magnon boyfriend if he charged across the room after him. He had reckoned the man Clayton was big enough to do him damage—but, too big to move fast enough to outrun a bullet. He never got the opportunity to prove himself right. The shattering window had been a game change.
The momentum of a quarter ton of muscle could not be stopped by the weapon in his hand unless he was lucky enough to strike the slavering beast exactly in its raging heart before it fell upon him and removed his head from his body. The Judge had reckoned one way or the other he was in for a heap of hurt.
The Tower Directors on his flanks had let out a couple of sissy yelps the instant of the breaking glass, but old Joe swiveled the muzzle and kept his head, pulling an instinctive shot just like shooting rats on his Dad’s farm.
The gun muzzle flashed with a thundering BANG!
In seconds it was over. But, it hadn’t turned out the way the Judge had expected it to go. His Mom had always said this funny little phrase when friends or family had chided her, saying Joe had lost a case in court. She’d just make a face like sour lemons and tell them, “It ain’t over till the Fat Lady Sings.”
Suspended in mid-air for one half second, the “Fat Lady” in the form of a Silverback Gorilla had collided with Joe’s bullet.
The muzzle velocity of the .44 caliber slug was 1,500 feet per second and it passed clean through the meat just under the ape’s clavicle and out the other side. In accordance with Sir Isaac Newton’s observation that—an object in motion continues in motion unless acted upon by an outside force—the gorilla met a counter-force which changed the trajectory of its forward motion just enough.
Before the Judge could pull off another shot he was forced to launch himself backward from the heavy oak table away from the outreach of the beast’s awesome paws. This left Nathan Knorr in the direct path of a cyclone of rampaging energy, in no mood to kiss and make up.
Across the room Jack Clayton and Louise Boyd riveted their respective stares on what transpired next. The gorilla landed half across the table and slid like a runner coming in to home base for a triple off a home run.
The instant Knorr was inside the ape’s embrace the man disappeared. A horrible cacophony of crunching and screaming and blood spurting left a small pool of soggy clothing and several body parts for sorting. Knorr’s head and face were gnawed into a candy apple of red mush.
At the same moment, Rutherford upended and toppled his chair backward to the floor—pistol still in hand. Freddy Franz seemed to be choking on his own fear as he crawled away toward the exit like a two year old that hadn’t learned to walk. His gibbering and the stain in his britches seemed most appropriate to that analogy.
The Judge knew he might only own another second and a half of opportunity to set things straight and prevent the Fat Lady from breaking into song. He rolled over on his side and proceeded to pump five deafening blasts of lead into the bloody monster before it could do him in.
The bullets tore through the ribcage, heart, lungs and liver of the Silverback Gorilla. It fell dead as Tuesday’s laundry not six inches from the old man’s smoking pistol hole.
The Judge smirked and sat upright, readying himself for a full-throated gloat—except for the shadow which had fallen across him from another kind of beast towering over him at that moment: Jack Clayton.
