counter.
Behind the observation window, marked with several yellow-and-black international radioactivity symbols, a robot arm hovered over a stainless-steel table on which sat one of Akhmed’s matzo balls. Well, he presumed it was his, not imagining anyone else in the country having any. Seeing it made his tummy growl.
“We bombarded this food item”—the scientist couldn’t bring himself to utter a Jewish epicurean term—“with enough rads of enriched uranium to kill an entire harem of goats. When we pass the Geiger counter over it, it should click like a sky filled with locusts, and the needle should bend like the Strait of Hormuz.”
“Very literary,” the despot said, slurping. “But may I remind you, you’re paid to be a man of science, not Kahlil Gibran?”
“Watch.” Tahir nodded to his assistant, who flicked a switch and, with two fingertips, tickled a joystick. The console speaker whirred, and beyond the glass the robot arm swung to a countertop, grasped a Geiger counter, arced over the table, and floated the radiation detector within an inch of the Zionist food item.
The device clicked lethargically.
“Some uranium,” the president scoffed. Did he have stupid written on his forehead? Was this puny demonstration how they intended to save their incompetent hides?
“You don’t understand,Your Greatbigness. I assure you, that dough ball is radioactive enough to fell a camel at a thousand meters. But for some reason it’s clutching those rads like a collapsed star’s gravity field. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a scientific wonder. We haven’t the slightest notion why on an atomic level it’s behaving this way. It could be the texture of the dough—very moist and absorbent—possibly neutronically mutated by some fortuitous outside agent. Or its properties: a certain kind of chicken used in the production of fat, or a method of distilling its grease.”
“Outside agent?” Akhmed hissed, gazing accusatorially at Hazeem.
“Not a person agent,” clarified Tahir. “A circumstantial agent.”
“Speak Farsi, man.”
“Perhaps a serendipitous confluence of forces, each benign in itself, creating an effect greater than the sum of its parts. That microwave oven of yours, for instance: did it emit electromagnetic energy at an aberrant frequency? Or said chicken: what did it eat the day it was slaughtered to produce the fat in the doughy mixture? Or the cracker meal: was it somehow affected by an unusual blast of solar gamma rays—from intense sunspot activity, perhaps? Or…” He hesitated.
“What?” the president demanded.
Tahir cleared his throat. He lowered his voice. “Or possibly the hospital’s X-ray machine.”
“I knew it!”
“Not to say it’s defective, Momentous One,” he clarified. “Only to suggest a possible unexpected influence on the unstable Zionist product, which, as you are well aware, is made with the blood of Christian children.”
“Your point being?”
“We are taking a close look at the X-ray apparatus and also testing the microwave as we speak. Perhaps an examination of the food itself may reveal answers.”
“All mildly interesting, but what does it have to do with our atomic bomb, and”—he glared at Hazeem—“how is it an early birthday present? Are you telling me that this matzo ball will detonate a nuclear device?”
Tahir looked down. “Not precisely, Your Tremendousness.”
“Then I suggest you precisely tell me why you dragged me out of bed.”
The scientist poked the air. “Observe, please.”
As the assistant worked the joystick, the robot arm placed the Geiger counter next to the matzo ball and picked up a nearby hammer, with which it gave the ball a sound thump. The Jewish delicacy split open and scattered in mushy fragments. The radiation detector went wild, its languorous clicking erupting into a plague-like clamor.
“Allah be great!” the president gasped, leaping off his chair and launching his can of pop into the air, soda splattering on the window. Immediately sensing the significance of what had taken place before his very eyes, he exclaimed, “We’ve split our atom! And it’s Jew food!”
“Again,Your Fullness—not exactly. But we’ve done the next best thing. And I quite believe it’s not only as good as an actual nuclear bomb, but in practical respects, even better.”
Akhmed’s eyes narrowed. “Better than the bomb?”
“Please sit again, and I will explain. Would you care for another Tab? And possibly another pair of pants?”
Tahir did explain, and it was magnificent. While his highly competent scientists (Tahir’s words) were assiduously developing a controlled nuclear reaction—a true atomic bomb—the president had lurched into a substitute so stunningly insidious, so ingeniously nefarious, so understatedly efficacious, regarding His Eminence’s brilliance and killing Jews, that the chances of sneaking a nuclear-type explosive into the United States and wreaking havoc on its life and economic well-being had increased manyfold.
“What the devil do you mean ‘nuclear—type’?” the Iranian leader asked with healthy skepticism.
“No, no,” Tahir assured him. “It’s nuclear, certainly, but not in the normal”—he splayed his hands—“ka-boom! sense of the word…. More in the brilliantly creatively ingenious sense of the word.You see, developing a conventional atomic bomb is difficult enough, but miniaturizing it to be able to stand even half a chance of smuggling it into the U.S.—well, who knows how long that might take, despite our tireless, dedicated, patriotic, religious, and completely loyal work ethic? But sneaking in a suitcase full of spherical Zionist food items that won’t even appear on low-level airport or, better yet, seaport radiation X-ray scanners into a Jewish-dominated American urban center of depravity would be a slam-dunk, if I understand the expression correctly. The beauty of your discovery—that is to say, your invention—is that it will require only a small amount of conventional detonation to impose maximum death and destruction, not to mention commercial disruption and chaos.”
“I like where this is going,” admitted the president.
“As you yourself witnessed, for some mysterious chemo-molecular-subatomic reason, the radioactive dough balls appear completely inert—indeed are radioactively entropic—until violently agitated, at which time they release their stupendous stored energy like a tiger, devouring every coolie on the riverbank, so to speak.”
“Yes, I see,” Akhmed said, rubbing his hands in glee. “That Zionist-loving city won’t be fit for habitation for months. What a boon to civilization!”
“Months?” said Tahir, glancing twinkle-eyed at his assistant. “Try years.”
“Years!”
“Thousands will die painful, gruesome, agonizing deaths.”
“You’re right! A regular atomic bomb would be quick and painless—too good for the infidels! But this…slow and…gruesome,
