Strategic Developments
After simulating global destruction, students are shocked to discover that SIMULEX 2009 was real after all
MEDFORD – Stunned Fletcher Students exited Cabot Hall at
the close of this year’s SIMULEX crisis exercise to discover that what had
appeared to be a fictional simulation had actually escalated into a full-scale
war in the outside world. Participants were bombarded with news stories of a
Europe in flames, Iran in flames, America in flames, and a peaceful, legitimate
Hamas in the independent state of Palestine. However, the most shock came with
the untimely assassination of famous model Carla Bruni, the wife of the French
President.
Reaction was swift, condemning Bruni’s death. “It’s disgusting this much power
could be given to graduate students!” one participant explained. “And why
couldn’t they have killed someone less attractive? Angela Merkel, no offense,
not a looker—and as far as I know she’s still breathing.”
Students were not the only ones shocked by the knowledge that the antiquated
ICONS electronic simulation software used during the exercise possessed the
ability to alter reality outside Cabot. “It was weird,” Ayman al-Zawahiri
declared in his latest Al Qaeda video. “Never before would we have considered
working in conjunction with those Shia infidels in Lebanon,” he said of
Hizballah. “And Hamas is too small-time, failing to posses our entirely
realistic vision of multinational global jihad resulting in the resurrection of
an Islamic caliphate. However, as soon as those graduate students asked us to
get in a room with both of them and talk to Iran, it dawned on us that maybe we
could all work together! Then we cut some guy’s pinky off! I would have never
thought of that on my own, thanks Fletcher conflict-resolution students!”
The altered reality seems to have been a result of a wrinkle in the space-time
continuum that allowed ICONS complete control over world policy makers for the
period of the exercise, bringing mayhem to some regions, and a marked increase
in rationality in others. Syrians praised the clearheaded diplomacy of their
leadership at barbeques in the Golan Heights, which was returned to them by
simply asking Israeli nicely. “Those Israelis were so laid-back and open to
discussion,” Syrian President Bashar al-Asad said, sipping a Mai-Tai on the
shore of Lake Tiberias as Syrian troops cleaned their Iranian-made weapons
around him.
Hizballah parliamentarians decried their senseless elimination by the new
mysterious global power, known only as ‘Control,’ or the ICONS game
administrators. “It is clearly a plot by the Zionist occupiers to curtail our
actions at any costs,” said deposed Hizballah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah,
who went on to promise “retaliation” by his mysteriously evaporated militia.
Meanwhile, there has been widespread outcry over the destabilization of South
America, most succinctly put by President Hugo Chavez on his daily show Allo
Presidente!. “Who the fuck gave me nukes? Does anyone know how to use this
thing?” he screamed, repeatedly pressing a red button. “Someone call Mahmoud,
the friggin’ directions are in Farsi!”
The exercise’s effects have most likely laid the groundwork for renewed partisan
political conflict within the US – a point underscored by a flesh-wounded Glenn
Beck as he crawled out of the wreckage of what used to be FOX News Headquarters
in Rockefeller Center: “The unholy death panel of Acorn, fluoridated water,
liberal fissile materials, and B. HUSSEIN Obama will pay – they will pay! More
drastic action than tea-bagging these liberals must be taken.”
Disturbing rhetoric was also heard near the rubble of the Iranian Command
Complex in Tehran, where intelligence reports have confirmed an eerie scream of
“Pfaltzgraff!” echoing through the ruins.
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