<A logo swirls across the screen
as the distinctive theme of the Net23 News division plays...
A NETWORK 23
SPECIAL REPORT
The opening logo fades to black...after amoment, a melancholy piece, orchestrated
for synths and string consort,begins to play...classical music buffs will
recognize Haim ben Kav's2012 composition, "Kaddish for My Daughter".
A window opens on thescreen, showing a young woman in her early twenties,
attractive and pleasant looking, with deep purple eyes that seem to take
in everything around her. Her dark hair is done up in a simple knot. She
is standing in the rain,coat collar turned up, as she speaks to the camera.
Behind her...a building in flames.>
Woman's voice: This is Linda Jey.
<The window shrinks into the
background, and another opens, showingthe same woman, fashionably gowned
and coiffed, addressing the camera from some gala event...another window
takes the foreground, adishevelled Linda, grimly reporting the aftermath
of some piece of urbanviolence as police move past her at the quickstep...and
another window, Linda turning from an interview subject to face the cameras...and
another shot, and another, as the same words from a dozen clips come from
the speakers...>
"This is Linda Jey..."
"This is Linda Jey..."
For Net23, this is Linda Jey..."
"Linda Jey..."
"...Linda Jey..."
<Scene and music fade, to a stocky man in his 60's,silver hair, granite jaw, speaking to the camera from the Net23 News set. The lights are off, only utility lighting and a single spot on the speaker illuminate his surroundings.>
Wells: "Good evening. My name is Charles Wells, and I'm the president of
Network 23. In less than an hour, this set will be alive with the people
who work to bring you the news...all the news, not just what others want
you to hear. It's a hard job...we don't always succeed. But I promise you,
we always try.
It takes someone special to do this job. It takes more than presence on
a trid camera, or style. It takes a special kind of courage...a courage
that doesn't falter in the face of danger."
<A shot of Linda Jey fades in
behind Wells as he continues to speak.>
Wells: "Saturday evening, a little before 1900 hours, Linda Jey, a reporter
for this network, was murdered. It was not the first time she had faced
weapons, but this time the coward who took her life had first abducted
her, and only when she was bound, and alone, a helpless prisoner, only
then did he find the nerve to put a gun to her head. And kill her.
We don't know why Linda Jey died; what the yellow-bellied criminal who
took her life wanted. We know how she died: fighting to the end against
the monstrous tyranny that thinks power comes from having a gun, and a
helpless victim to use it on. We know that her alleged killer, Marcus Gathwick,
who masqueraded as a Catholic Priest, mouthed the obscene rantings of a
racist as he pulled the trigger. Perhaps we will never know anything more
about him.
<Cut to an interior of a courtroom.
Father Marcus is being arraigned on the formal charges against him. All
of a sudden, the burly man in the priestly cassock breaks free of his guards
with a movement of inhuman speed. Shouting a mixture of prayerful calls
to God and hatred for metahumans, he charges the judge's bench...and there
is a powerful explosion. The priest's head dissolves into a gory ruin of
bone, blood, and tissues. The court steographer, an ork woman, is smashed
against the floor by the explosion. The anti-terrorist shields in the judge's
bench snap up, but too late to prevent the judge from being knocked from
his seat.>
Wells: "Perhaps we don't need to know any more than that about a murderous
fanatic who spent his last moments lashing out in hatred against those
around him."
<The camera returns to Wells,
as his rumbling bass continues to speak. The poignant strains of ben Kav's
piece fade in under his words.>
Wells: "Linda is dead, in body. In spirit, we hope she will be with us
always. That she will inspire, by her courage, by her pride in her profession,
all of us who are left to do this work. Work that is now a little harder,
since one of its leading voices is stilled.
"Charles Wells, for Network 23 News. Good night."
<The openings shots of Linda
Jey stream back across the trid display, and the haunting phrases of music
are again mixed with her voice.>
"This has been Net23 World News, and I'm Linda Jey..."
"I'm Linda Jey..."
"...Linda Jey."
"This is Linda Jey..."
<The screen fades to black.
The music lingers a moment longer, and then whispers away to silence. The
words: THIS HAS BEEN A NETWORK 23 SPECIAL REPORT appear, over a single,
still picture of Linda, eyes fixed on the viewer. The logo, and the picture,
slowly fade to black.>