1978

There is no movement. There is no cause. There is nothing.

A hundred and fifty feet below me I can see magnified all manner of details that are going to be frozen into a thousand photographs over hundreds of magazines who will write a million words about today.

• Girl guides standing in a line behind the metal barriers, craning their necks out for a better view
• Hundreds and hundreds of red white and blue flags waving in the air, held aloft by the lucky few who managed to get here through the traffic and police and road closures
• Old soldiers gathered behind the fence in front of the church
• The blind man and his dog patiently waiting under the spot where the now-disabled traffic lights stand
• The little boy in his patriotic vest held on his father’s shoulders so one day later that he was there
• The cordon of police officers standing behind the white vans, nervously eyeing the group of ant-war protesters that they thought they had dealt with at an earlier stage
• The elegance of the metallic blue limousine
• The heavy grey upholstery
• The red hat and coat
• The medals on the bright uniforms
• The birds on the wire
• The obtuse sunlight

I see it all magnified below me through the distorting lens of my own cold and uncomfortable reality.

I’ve been here for weeks. I’ve mapped out every possibility and all angles. I’ve marked, walked-through, checked, double-checked, calibrated, practiced, re-walked-through, checked again, double-checked again…nothing is left to any form of chance.

All these meaningless details below me are soon to become moments of history.

I lift the weapon to my shoulder and stare through the eyepiece and focus on her in the back seat of the vehicle. In the next five seconds we’re all going to be propelled into history…and we’re all going to be fucked getting there.

I wait for the biggest scream you’ll ever hear.