by FREDERICA VON McTOAST-HYPHEN, Alternate Reality News Service People Writer
Ruby Yumi-Fajitas was taking a break year between high school and college to intern for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelligrinosi. She had been awarded the coveted position by writing an essay on the subject of "The Future is Us." She had no idea that the future would be hitting her mere days after moving to Washburningdington.
"Everything goes so much faster in the nation's capital," Ruby breathlessly commented.
When the treasonous insurrectionists (I know, I know, seditious would be a more accurate way of describing their behaviour, but not many people know what that word means - oh, yeah? Use it in a sentence, wise guy! - but, everybody knows what treason is, even if they're wrong, so...) stormed the Capitol building, Ruby was being walked through the arcane rules of the House cloakroom by an aide to the Speaker. A secret service woman stuck her head in the door, considered for a second (probably calculating how much space was left in the Capitol safe rooms, and whether Ruby and the aid were important enough to fill any of that space) and said, "The building is under attack. Secure yourselves." Then, she ran out.
"We were stunned," Ruby admitted. "For about two seconds. Then, we heard the shouting from down the hall. So, we shut the door, turned the lights off and huddled under a desk at the back of the room."
Ruby passed the time under the desk by playing Angry Crustaceans and MimeCraft, and checking her Twitherd feed for celebrity gossip (learning the arcane rules of the House cloakroom didn't seem all that important if there was a good chance you wouldn't live long enough to apply them). Occasionally, a mob passed by the door of the cloakroom chanting things that sounded like, "You want hemocracy? This is what democrabby looks like!" and "Bring me the bed of Michael Pendenatendance!"
"I may not have gotten that exactly right," Ruby allowed. "You'd be surprised how thick the doors of the Capitol building are!"
Was she scared? I would have been scared if I was her. Was Ruby scared by what was happening?
"Naaah!" she waved a dismissive hand at me that practically shouted, "You old silly." I did feel like an old silly, too. Ruby's dismissive hand can be very persuasive. "I've been doing active shooter drills in school since I was six years old. That's at least one thing I learned that will be useful to me throughout my life!"
A couple of hours into the siege, a rioter in what looked like a fur coat and antlers opened the door and poked his head into the cloakroom. "I thought we were being attacked by an angry mob of deer," Ruby stated. By the time her eyes adjusted to the light from the hallway, the man asked, "Is there anybody in here? Anybody?" Ruby and the aide were silent. So, believing he was alone in the room, the man entered and peed in a corner.
"I was furious!" Ruby remarked. Because of the desecration of a historical building that many people in the country consider sacred? "Because I had to stop playing so that I wouldn't give away our presence. And, Bruno, the alpha lobster, was about to take on the boss hogg! It took me hours to get to that point in the game!"
In all, Ruby and the aide stayed under the desk for seven hours. "It was a little cramped," she claimed. "I'm not used to sharing space under a desk - my high school wasn't that underfunded! But, we took turns sticking our legs out every 15 minutes to avoid getting cramps, so we got by. We got by..."
Then, Representative Alexandria Casio-Keebjords walked into the room to get her coat and, noticing a pair of legs sticking out from under a desk, said, "Oh, hey. You're still here? The riot ended an hour ago!"
"I grew up in the 1950s," Speaker Pelligrinosi stated the next day when she was apprised of Ruby's experience. "I remember duck and cover exercises - thanks nuclear bomb! So, I feel a...a...a kinship with young people today. Their music sucks, but other than that, we have a lot in common!"
Did the experience sour Ruby on public service? "Are you kidding?" she enthusiastically responded. "It was like Dye Hard with lawyers! So. Many. Lawyers! I am so stoked to be working in the office of the Speaker of the House! Is that going to happen every week?"
Not if the FBI, the National Guard and the Capitol Police have anything to say about it. So, definitely maybe.