The Undead of India

Well, that is definitely the first time that a major tragedy has made me laugh.

This morning, just outside of Calcutta, two trains collided, killing at least 38 people and injuring 55 others.

Ha, ha, ha!

(No wait, that’s not the funny part.)

I placed the news story right near the top of the international news section of the Daily Report, and sent it off to Quique, the director of Incidencia Democrática, for final editing.

As I am such a responsible worker (ahem, ahem), even after finishing my section I continue to review the international news websites up until the very moment that we hit the “send” button and email the report to thousands of our subscribers.

Usually any last-minute, “stop the presses”-type changes are of a depressing nature. “Quique, Charley has just been upgraded to a class 4 hurricane”, or “Quique, the estimated dead in the supermarket fire is now up to 400 people”, and so forth.

This morning, however, I burst out laughing!

“Quique, has the report gone out yet? No? Thank goodness! Erase the India story!”

Quique gave me that look that he always gives me when he thinks I’ve lost my mind (it’s a look I know well.)

“It was a simulation!”

While reviewing the breaking news, I saw that the India Railroad Company was frantically announcing that they had been testing a new disaster preparation program, when a fake news bulletin was reported by a Railroad spokesperson (who evidently had missed a meeting) as being true!

So, no train crash. No deaths. And no injuries… well, except maybe for a certain spokesperson’s bruised ego.