...As Fake Edge idled up to the rail, he was shortly joined by Allison (his cohort in arms, ah the stories he could tell about Allison, librarian by day, hellcat assassin by night) on his left hand side. She knew what her job was to be that night, and Fake Edge was doing anything he could to stop drooling at the prospect of what would come next.
As the GA space filled up all three guys and all three girls looked at each other, amazed that they all got into the ellipse. Headache was the most amazed, but Uzbek seemed like he did not have a care in the world. Headache asked him, “Hey man – why are you so casual about this, do you realize how hard it is to get into the ellipse?” Uzbek (after catching Allison out of the corner of his eye) simply said, “ahhh man I guess you are right – we are extremely lucky.” When back in the depth of his drug-riddled brain he knew that luck had nothing to do with it, but an electromagnetic transmitter, a home-made bar-code reader, some opium, some Vaseline, a girl named Allison and some late late nights in the basement of his flat in London did.
The lights went down as expected and The Secret Machines came out to do their opening set. Some girl standing behind Jed was passing around a joint during Pharaoh’s Daughter, and asked if any of them wanted it. They all said sure, but Uzbek decided it was time to come down if the plan he, Allison, and Fake Edge crafted late one night was to be pulled off. Uzbek turned to Headache and asked, “Hey mate – you were number 69 in line, right?” Headache replied, “Yeah, why?”
Then the plan started to roll into action.
Uzbek asked Headache what his favorite U2 songs were and he started to reply, “Well, Man and a Woman, Wild Honey, Silver and Gold, Hallelujah Here She Comes and Shadows and Tall Trees have to be up there…” and Uzbek replied, “Awww – c’mon man – seriously?” “Wouldn’t you think it would be cool to see Zoo Station, Miami, The Fly, Discotheque, and Bullet the Blue Sky played live?” Headache said, “Yeah” and Uzbek said, “And dude, don’t you think it would be cool to see those songs played live in that order?” Headache said, “Uh, yeah – I guess so.” Uzbek then replied, “Headache, I have a serious question for you – if someone tonight were to ask you what five songs you wanted to hear live, and in what order – could you state those five, and in that order?” Headache – starting to get annoyed at Uzbek said, “Alright dude, whatever you say – sure.” Uzbek said, “Do I have your word?” and Headache (thinking himself a loyal man, and wanting to get this lunatic away from him said, “ Sure Uzbek – you have my word.”
The Secret machines ended their set with The Road Leads Where its Led and got off the stage.
The crew did their thing, Wake Up came on, and U2 hit the stage.
All Allison, Fake Edge, and Uzbek could do was watch and wait – their moment to shine was upcoming and their whole plan relied on some stranger Uzbek met taking a pee on the sidewalk outside the arena.
The band finished Elevation, and Bono shot Edge a “You better not do what I think you are about to do look” and Edge simply winked at him, walked up to his mic and said, “Bruce, can we get some lights on the crowd please???”
Bruce Ramus hit the audience with his molefays and the Edge started to walk down the ramp with a cordless mic. He said, “Alright you Bomb Shelter fuckers – who here had number 69???” Larry gave Adam an uneasy look, Bono had lost all the feeling in his legs and decided to sit on the edge of the bass drum, and the Edge simply smiled. Evil Edge.
From the immediate center of the ellipse, Headache almost passed out. He started to jump up and down and finally ran to the rail closest to Edge. Security helped him up onto the stage and he started to scream. The Edge said, “Calm down mate – I have one question for you and I want you to answer this as seriously as you can – no answer is wrong.” Headache – not knowing what the hell was going on simply nodded and the Edge said, “OK – here we go – I am tired of playing the same songs night in and night out. I wanted to make tonight special – I want you to quickly tell me five songs you want to hear, and in the order in which you want to hear them – and we are going to play your songs, no matter what they are.” Headache – with a dumbfounded look on his face could not believe what he was hearing. Also, he could not think of a single song, he was going crazy seeing the entire crowd around him screaming up requests. Then his eyes met Uzbek’s and Uzbek simply nodded at him.
Headache found his voice inside, had remembered giving his word to Uzbek and stated, “Edge – I am U2’s biggest fan – I am addicted to blue crack and I want to hear Zoo Station, Miami, The Fly, Discotheque, and Bullet the Blue Sky.”
The Edge smiled – shot a quick glance to Dallas Schoo who was already on the stage with Edge’s Zoo Station-tuned guitar, and proceeded to run up the ramp to Dallas. When he got to his position he hit his effect pedal, looked at the rest of the band and said into his mic, “You heard him boys, here we go.”
Unbeknownst to the Edge, and not 15 feet in front of him two other souls were scheming something a bit different. While Uzbek had pulled off his end of the deal, it was time for Allison and Fake Edge to spring into action. While Dallas plugged the Edge into his rig, Allison pulled out her Radio transmitter and plugged it into the laptop Fake Edge had snuck into the arena….
As the band was preparing to launch Zoo Station, Willie Williams tried to quickly program the show to the ‘new’ setlist, but had no idea what he was going to do for Miami, or Discotheque. What he did not know was that he did not have to do anything at all as someone else was going to be taking care of it.
Willie tried to get his pre-programmed content up onto the screens, bit for a split – unnoticeable (except to him) second, the screens went blank. All of a sudden they went to static, and there was George Bush Sr.'s face up on the screen. Through the loudspeakers came “We will, We will Rock you – We will, We will rock you…” Willie thought, “Holy shit! – it is the segment from ZooTV – but how the hell???” He shot a glance at Smasher, and all Smasher did was hold up his hands like ‘I have no idea.’ Willie took off his headset, ran over to Bruce and Smasher and screamed, “We’ve been hacked!!! – the highest technology tour on the road, and someone hacked us!!!”
The Bush segment stopped, and the screens went to static. Edge saw this, was delighted and ripped into the first riff of Zoo Station. The band joined in with the video screens showing the static and images from the ZooTV tour. No one had any idea what was going on. No one, except Allison, Fake Edge, and Uzbek.
When Zoo Station ended, the Barco MiSpheres started to come down, and again Willie was just in awe – how could someone get into HIS system??? He just sat back and decided to ride this one out. “This should be fun” he thought. The band saw the curtains falling and started the intro to Miami. All of a sudden on the curtain screens came Roy Lichtenstein’s animation that the band commissioned him to do for the Popmart tour. “Un-freaking believable” you could see Larry’s lips mouth. As the band stumbled through the song the entire Popmart sequence played on the screen behind them. As the song came to a close Fake Edge simply thought – now we are just getting started…
Fake Edge typed a few commands into his keyboard and watched the little green LED blink on Allison’s transmitter. “Ah – everything is working perfectly…” The band was now on a roll – they began The Fly and on the curtain and all four screens above the stage the word sequence, in full from the ZooTV tour, was being shown. Every word – in its original sequence was playing to the song. Bono started to reminisce, and said into the mic – “Willie – you are a genius – thanks for saving this show” and Willie just looked at him from behind his board (with his headset off) and shook his head as if to say, “Not me dude…”
The Fly came to a close and Fake Edge looked at Allison. She gave him a look that she had given him many times before during many of her dangerous missions around the world that both had been on. There was an unspoken love between the two of them and neither knew if it was love for each other, or love for each other’s abilities. Fake Edge’s being hacking, programming, and basically being able to work any electronic system on the planet – Allison’s obviously being her use of explosives, her aim, and her ability to get almost anything imaginable done. Fake Edge looked directly up from where he was standing and saw what he expected to. A glimmering, shimmering piece of nostalgia.
The band started Discotheque and about halfway through the song a unanimous “Oh my God” came from the crowd. All the moveable lights quickly started to re-direct upward and from the rafters of the arena started to descend an object that 99% of the people in the building knew exactly what it was. The lights hit the object and small white lights started to scatter around the arena.
The Mirrorball Lemon was descending from the ceiling on a chain hoist and it was mounted upside down. All the lights hit the lemon at the same time and the band looked up and saw this display. Adam missed a note, and Bono simply clutched his Rosary saying audibly into the mic, “Dear mother of God…”
The Mirrorball Lemon spun and spun and the crowd thought the band had planned all of this. That could not have been further from the truth. The band strode into the part of the song where the Boom-Chas occur, and they sung them loud and proud. From beneath the stage and in front of the front rail came huge pyro explosions when the band hit the Boom-Chas and the audience gasped. Those that were stoned, could not believe what they were hearing or seeing, and those sober were amazed. Some people started dialing on their mobile phones to tell people what was going on, but in all everyone thought this was the best show to date.
The band finished the song and somewhat out of breath took a pause. Bono looked to the Edge and said, “What was the last song in this crazy-assed set?” But before the Edge could reply Larry simply started to hit his kit in the opening of Bullet.
Through the loudspeakers came the helicopter background noise from the ZooTV tour, and from the bottom of the ellipse came a dense fog from Willie’s machines. When the band came to the guitar solo all the lights went out and the stage was in a dense fog. All of a sudden a silhouette immerged holding a huge handheld spotlight. This person, wearing a black beanie strode across the stage and hit Adam, Larry, the Edge, and Bono with this light as the song came to a close.
When the smoke cleared, all the house lights went up, and Bono turned to Fake Edge who was not onstage in the middle of his glory and said, “Were you behind all of this?” Fake Edge said, “Yes” Bono said, “How did you pull it all off?” Fake Edge said, “It was easy.” Bono said, “This rest of this show is dedicated to you man!!!” And U2 played a completely random order of songs for the rest of the night using the inspiration that Fake Edge provided.
And how did they do it?
Not as easy as Fake Edge led on to. After paying off the cleaning lady at the hotel the band was staying at, Allison planted a mini-recorder in Edge’s hat. It was the only thing that he always has with him (even when he sleeps) so a bug was placed there. When they heard Edge’s plan to use the 69th fan into the ellipse to do something special Fake Edge and Allison sprung into action. The enlisted their old friend Uzbek whom they had not worked with since the Kazakhstan affair of ’03, and they whole plan went off without a hitch. Payoffs to the arena security, some questionable items bought on EBay, and a lot of patience, and the three amigos pulled off a stunt like no other.
But why is that guy still wearing that blue thong????