Library of Congress: American Ninja

A wry parody about American sanity and fake-crime staging designed to draw out a 'Headless Horseman' ghost inside the 'dish' Library!

A parody about actual/serious antiterrorism work invoking imaginations about Homeland Security and cultural folk-tales, inspired loosely by The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving). 

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The Library of Congress (DC) is a place of great symbolic value in US history and civilization itself. Many important books are found there, and even in this new era of cyber-engaged access to information/records/knowledge, this proud institutional construction remains a beacon for traffic intelligence and knowledge and securities.

On a given working weekday, you might find a number of people visiting the iconic/symbolic Library of Congress (DC), perhaps to find representative books/works on Native-American history, capitalism theory-books, police records, world folk-tales, and municipal revolution(s). There might be a beautiful American history teacher from Georgetown looking for an Adam Smith work or The Education of Henry Adams.

"The interior of the awesome/amazing Library of Congress (DC) truly reminds any visitor why a library is perfect" (Visitor).

The catalog and shelves-stacks area of all the valuable books and prints and manuscripts in this incredible Library of Congress (DC) re-present a US civilization view/lens on the histories of national/cultural development(s), and that's why it's so important to keep it clean/safe from the developed modern threat of terrorism/vandalism!

My name's Amlan Satan (code-name: Storm-Shadow), and I'm an Algerian-American 'homegrown terrorist' who's going to make some homemade HCL acid on DC grass and load it into my toy water-gun inserted with a protective thin glass tube and plan to walk into the symbolic/iconic Library of Congress (DC) with an 'agenda' for madness.

LIBRARY OFFICIAL: This 'fellow' Satan walked in wearing a heavy Coronavirus-protection gear/hat and had a toy gun, claiming he was from a local theater-company doing a street-show about costumed pedestrianism in the nation's capital and only wanted 'iPhone snapshots' of the book-stacks!

I consider myself an 'American ninja' in the truest sense of the term since I'm not a defender-samurai of American soccer/glory but rather an infiltrating 'homegrown lone-terrorist' inspired by the works of the Unabomber. I walk into the Library of Congress (DC) disguised/geared as an 'eccentric theater' man, and I only want to use my 'acid-gun' to burn some books in the stacks-shelves of controversial American history/culture, such as the destruction of Native-American clans.

Once inside, I dart-mouth to the Native-American stacks and find the books I wish to simply 'corrode' with my toy 'acid-gun' I've got in my pocket, and I proceed to take those fake-PR 'theater-street' photos of the books/shelves with my handy-dandy smartphone-camera. This is deep infiltrations-work, and it's post-9/11 era American turbulence.

I find the right Native-American works/books, containing controversial/incendiary works about the developing intrigue and 'troubles' linked to the erosion of Indian clans/peoples since colonial times. I decided to burn/corrode only a handful of these books with my toy acid-gun but for now only take these books out for private study through the Library.

I run into a beautiful Georgetown professor of linguistics who identifies me as a co-teacher at the valued American school. The library attendant wonders what she's so giddy about when she says, "Why's Dr. Satan dressed like a clown/terrorist?" and I have to whisper in her ear, "I'm doing a funny media antiterrorism 'stunt' for my new DC Library fiction-novel, so I'd appreciate you not expose me before I make my theatrical fake-fiasco!"

It's too late --- the library attendant has informed the DC police there may be 'funny monkey-business' going on at the Library, and they arrive and take me to the roof of a neighboring building and demand to know my full intentionality, and I explain I was trying to 'fake' a terrorism-message with the help of a library attendant to expose a modern crime-operation involving the burning/vandalism of Library of Congress books. They believe me.

LIBRARY ATTENDANT: You mean, you're not a 'terrorist' or prankster as you seemed to be to everyone?
SATAN (Me!): No, sir, that's right; I was 'staging' a theater-fiasco inside the library with no intention to burn books.

LIBRARY ATTENDANT: So, you just wanted to 'seem' like you were 'perhaps' a vandal/terrorist before making your act?

SATAN (Me!): That's right; you see, I'm working on a Library fiction-novel about a shelves-books area ghost haunting.

LIBRARY ATTENDANT: Why go to all the trouble with your 'acid-gun' to make yourself 'seem' like a criminal, Satan?
SATAN (Me!): That's to 'catch' the attention of the real/actual ghost haunting the Library of Congress, good sir.

LIBRARY ATTENDANT: What, you mean there's a 'real' ghost/specter haunting the Library in DC?

SATAN (Me!): Follow me; let's see if we can both spot her by the shelves-books area.

LIBRARY ATTENDANT: Alright!

The mission is completed and my theater-stunt with careful precision has managed to draw out the 'presence' of the haunting ghost/specter inside the Library of Congress (DC). She's an old eerie woman and asks me, "Is this library safe, good man?" to which I amusingly reply, "Only such an American building such as this one would be secure from the evils of crime, old ghost!" This has been a truly 'American' ghost-story about antiterrorism...and detective-work.

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)