Draft89

President Gerald  Ford was  a  lame duck and Henry M.  'Scoop'  Jackson wasn't sworn in yet, so for the of- ficial transition photo  it  seemed fitting to  have  the  two  leaders seated facing  each  other  at   an oblique  angle as  symbolic  equals. The massive desk built from the tim- bers of the HMS Resolute, gifted to President Hayes from Queen  Victoria in 1880 was left unoccupied on  the far side of the Oval Office, framed in the camera shot  precisely  cen- tered between the two men.

After the official White House pho- tographer had  finished  his  work, after he had taken his  leave,  and the door to the Oval Office had been firmly closed, an uncomfortable si- lence settled on the famous chamber, for the campaign had been  bitterly contested. The President-elect broke the partisan ice with a little joke. 'I suppose this is the  part  where you break out a mysterious blue book and show me  incontrovertible  evi- dence that  Earth really  has  been contacted by aliens.'

Ford grimaced, stood up, and invited Jackson to pull up a chair in front of the big desk. A book was pulled out of a side drawer and laid care- fully on  the desktop, and  it  was indeed blue, causing the President- elect's grin to quickly fade  away. 'It seems there's a grain of  truth behind every urban myth,' the Presi- dent said. 'Here's your blue book.'

Jackson paused for a bit,  and  met the President's eyes with a search- ing glance, but the President merely returned the  gaze  with  a  slight shake of  the head. No joke  then. 'Let me have the bad  news  first,' the incoming head of state said when the initial shock faded.

Ford said,  'You will  most  likely find it impossible to sit  on  this information like  my   predecessors have, going back all the way to, oh, Truman.' He  tapped the  book. 'It might be  up to you to  manage  the rollout of  this  stuff. Obviously there's been a deep and broad cover- up for years. Ever since Watergate, as you  know, a cover-up  has  been considered to be a far worse offense than the original. . . thing. But this cover-up, at least, wasn't mis- managed.'

Jackson asked, 'And why was there a coverup  in the first place? Was it the usual claim that society is just not ready to know?'

The President said, 'There were an- thropological considerations to take into account,  at first. From the long, sad history of the  collision of colonizing European cultures with the more primitive aboriginal  cul- tures in the lands they invaded, one could easily imagine Earth  itself, in the aftermath of the arrival  of an advanced alien civilization,  be- coming a sort of galactic human res- ervation' utterly dependent on hand- outs. A cover-up could buy time to prepare the world for the inevitable shock to the collective ego and per- haps prevent a post-contact malaise from taking hold. That would be  a legitimate  reason for a  cover-up,' the incoming  chief   acknowledged. 'Assuming you  actually  have  been preparing the world to learn of it.'

With a shake of the head the Presi- dent indicated that no such prepara- tions had taken place. 'It was not the main reason. It had to do with how the. . . evidence. . .  was introduced on Earth. If it had sim- ply fallen straight into our  hands we would have made  it  classified, locked it away, and done. No coverup necessary. But the  evidence  came here a long time ago and  has  been continuously under the  control  of private  American citizens and  out- side of government control.'

'What do you mean outside of govern- ment control?'

'This country is still a  republic, you know. We're not a dictatorship quite yet. Ever since the 1940s when we found out about everything, this group has resisted coming in  under our umbrella. You might even  say there's been a  quiet  insurrection going on all this time, and the only real point of agreement we have with these folks is that we all need  to keep  it quiet. We've been far more concerned about  covering  up  this insurrection than whatever they were sitting on.'

Jackson asked, 'So is there any up- side to all this?'

The outgoing replied, 'Well,  first of all, the aliens that  this  evi- dence points to are not unfathomably more advanced than we are. Maybe one or two hundred years down the  time line from  us, no  big  deal. They might not even be around anymore and we're really just dealing with  the machines they left behind when their civilization failed. At any rate, we aren't taking  about  an   invasion fleet or something like that. They don't have warp drive like  in  the television shows and the  distances between stars are just  too  great. The technologies they do bring have been filtering into the marketplace through this group I spoke  of,  to the  general betterment of  society, and   in    particular,    American society.'

'Do you have any examples?'

'Does stealth ring a bell? Fusion? The Swarm? And a lot more stuff this group won't release. But that just makes it  all the  more  urgent  we bring them in. Imagine what the ene- mies of this country could do to us if  they had first crack at the  new stuff.'

Jackson said, 'There are folks among your own constituency, as you  well know, Mr.  President, who  seek  to steer  America's schools  away  from teaching evolution  and  old  earth geology and towards a curriculum of a  special creation of the Earth  by God  just  six thousand  years  ago. Your Blue Book raises questions that their   closed,     self-contained, strictly biblical  theology   could never answer.'

'It is interesting that you brought up religion,' President Ford put in. 'When I got this same talk from Nix- on it made me wonder what a coinci- dence all of this was. The aliens stumbled on to us precisely when we were  ready to understand what  they had to say and had the capability to put it  into action? What are  the odds? Could it be that the burning bush Moses saw was just an  earlier contact? Or that  the  Greeks  and Egyptians had  contacts  that  were mistaken for  gods? The Blue  Book hints as  much. But we know a  bit more about the current contact  se- quence. So it's a good thing we are doing this presidential  transition early. This is going to take quite a bit of time, and the alien thing is only  part  of what I need  to  pass down to you.'

'As long as we're finished by  noon on January 20 I'm all ears,'  Scoop Jackson said.

The President pushed the book across the desk. 'Here's your homework.'

'You're going to let me walk out of here with this?'

'Why not? The Blue Book is nothing more or less than the sacred scrip- tures of  this  group  I'm  talking about, which now calls  itself  the Church of  End Dome. It's sort  of like  their  Holy Bible or  Book  of Mormon, except with plenty of  third party support. In a few days it will be entirely  up to you what  to  do with  the  book and what to  do  the people who  follow it,  although  I suspect  you will only just  get  to manage  the fallout when  they  come out and spill everything. Welcome to the top job.'

The University of Maryland, College Park, was only eight miles northeast of Washington DC,  but  considering security logistics at the Presiden- tial level it was more practical to get there aboard the Marine One hel- icopter. On the morning of the day following the Oval Office photo  op the  President  and  the  President- elect were taken directly from  the White House lawn to McKeldin Mall in the heart  of the  campus. On the flight, the President  asked,  'How far did you get in the Blue Book?'

Scoop Jackson said, 'I read a cowboy story dressed up like a book of the Bible with  chapters,  verses,  and footnotes. That's not evidence, you know. Anyone can spin a tale.'

'I absolutely agree,' the President replied. 'But right now I'm taking you to  meet Dr. Antonio  Mossi  at UMD. I've asked him to try to debunk a piece of real evidence  and  he's been giving that his best shot,  but without much luck, it seems.'

The helicopter landed just west  of the  reflecting pool, on a piece  of grass  that looked like it had  seen many such landings  recently. From there it was a scant quarter mile on foot to the library, escorted by  a dozen  Secret Service agents,  where they were greeted by Dr. Mossi  and taken into a large workspace in the basement of the library.

On a  long blue table  that  nearly filled the space from end to end, a white  scroll  lay  completely   un- rolled. Dr. Mossi  turned  to  the President-elect and said, 'We  call this the Scroll of Lael,  based  on the name of the author who claims to have started to pen it. Please give me your first impression.'

Jackson said,  'It looks  fake. It doesn't look like any  scroll  I've ever  seen. It's white as a wedding dress for one thing, and the thing's shiny, like a sheet of plastic.'

Dr. Mossi said, 'Yet it is not plas- tic, it  is biological  in  origin. Under the microscope we  see  plant cells, but we have  not  identified them. And we have cut off a corner of it about the size of  a  postage stamp for carbon-14 dating and three different labs tell us  it's  2,600 years old,  plus  or  minus   fifty years. Please take a  closer  look here.'

The professor steered them to a sec- tion of the unrolled scroll in  the middle of the long table. He said, 'Most of the scroll is  written  in Paleo-Hebrew, from before the  Baby- lonian Captivity, when it was just a variant of the Phoenician  alphabet without contamination from Aramaic. And yet there is a smooth evolution of the characters consistent with a natural progression across many cen- turies. We cannot even detect Samar- itan influences. If it is a forgery, it us one of exquisite subtlety.'

The President  said,  'Dr.   Mossi, please direct the President-elect to the section that is titled Radix.''

The professor indicated a  part  of the  scroll  a little  more  than  a quarter of the way from the left end and gestured for Jackson to look. It was that  cowboy story  with  Chief Malekwa and Mark Lange, written  in English in a neat hand. 'Mystery of mysteries,' Dr. Mossi said. 'Embed- ded within this document, which may be the most important find  in  ar- chaeological history, is a piece of what can only be called western pulp fiction. Unless it's true.'

The President-elect was incredulous. 'The Golden Gift? That reads  more like science-fiction  than  a  Zane Gray yarn. Or maybe it's a mash-up, like The Haunted Mesa by Louis L'A- mour.'

'The Golden Gift appears throughout this scroll,' the  professor  coun- tered. 'One might almost  say  the Golden Gift is the true protagonist of this very long story.'

'Okay, but  who  ever  heard  of  a scroll  that  was  more  white  than printer paper? What kind of  plant looks like that?'

'If you were a shrub on a  dog-eat- dog planet  that was  all  ice  and snow,' President Ford said, 'and you didn't want to be dinner, what color would you be?'

On Air Force One enroute  to  Ells- worth Air Force Base, South Dakota, President Ford  briefed  President- elect Henry 'Scoop' Jackson on  the military action that had  been  put into motion overnight in the Carib- bean. With Inauguration Day rapidly closing in it was important to keep the incoming commander-in-chief ful- ly appraised to ensure  that  chaos would not result during the ongoing operations. 'There is a certain ele- ment of surprise that results  from doing this during the  transition,' the President said. 'So it redounds to our benefit, but it  requires  a careful hand-off.'

This invasion of Barbuda,  like  so many other things initiated by Jerry Ford during his truncated  term  of office (which was simply the  second half of Nixon's second term)  seemed very uncharacteristic for a man  so many  people from both  parties  had once characterized as open and hon- est. But the simple truth was  that he was  a nice man who  was  easily manipulated by other men  who  were not open and honest by any  stretch of the imagination. That character- istic which made Ford such an obvi- ously 'safe' choice for Vice-Presi- dent by Richard Nixon also made him fall inexorably under the thumb  of Vice-President Earl Roland.

From the air base a motorcade  took the two leaders to Mount Rushmore in a little less than an  hour. After admiring the  monument,  which  was always far more impressive in person than in any  photograph,  President Ford invited Jackson to stand at  a podium  under the granite  faces  of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln,  and Roosevelt and participate in a press conference.

President Ford: As some of your or- ganizations have already  reported, the armed  forces  of  the   United States are taking action on the is- land of Barbuda in operation Carib- bean Rage,' which  I  green-lighted shortly before midnight last night. The rogue island state of Barbuda is a haven for organized  crime  which broke off from Antigua but this se- cession has never been recognized by the United  States or most  of  the civilized world, including  Antigua itself. Barbuda is the sole source of the contraband technology  known as the micro which enables users to steal films and music and  threatens the large segment of  the  American economy that relies on the  protec- tion of  intellectual  property. I also hold Barbuda  responsible  for the ongoing low-level conflict waged by the Church of End  Dome  against the United States since the  1940s, and I hold President Vargas person- ally responsible. That is, briefly, where things stand now. At this time I would  like to take a  moment  of silence  as I ask all  Americans  of good  will in this great  nation  of ours to pray for the troops who  are in harm's way tonight, and also for their families.

The President bowed his head for  a decent  interval, then  looked  back up.

Ford: Now I'm ready to answer a few questions. If you wish  to  direct some questions  at  the  President- elect as well, feel free to do so.

There was a cacophony of  reporters shouting names simultaneously as the President scanned the crowd for the least hostile journalist, the  ones who could  be counted on  to  throw 'softballs.' If they had a  reputa- tion for asking embarrassing  ques- tions the President tended to  pass them over,  so part of the  job  of being a White House reporter was  in crafting  questions that  were  soft enough to be palatable to the Presi- dent while  being meaty  enough  to elicit information of substance.

Reporter #1: Mr. President,  Opera- tion Caribbean Rage seems to be very similar to what we did when we went into Vietnam a decade ago. How can you assure the American people that we're not  getting into  a  similar quagmire in Barbuda?

Ford: I  don't want to get  in  the position in Barbuda that my  prede- cessors were with respect to  Viet- nam, where the Pentagon came to them with a very honest estimate of when they thought we could  finish. And they turned out to be  wrong  about that. They were not able to stabi- lize the  situation as  quickly  as they  thought they could. But this business with the Church of End Dome in our own country is  not  helping matters any. So I can just tell you that I think that we have tried  to limit our involvement in Barbuda. We have tried to limit our mission, and we will conclude it as quickly as we can. I think  that  in  all  these cases, you  have to  ask  yourself, what will be the cost and the dura- tion of involvement and the  conse- quences if  we do not move? And I have  asked myself that question  as well. I'm very concerned that  the politicians in the other party  who want to chip away at the idea of  a re-unified Antiqua and Barbuda  will be able to do it principally because we're not able to show the benefits of unification to ordinary American citizens.

Jackson: If I may add, speaking as a politician in the other  party'  it seems to me that the most  important thing we can do once  we  stabilize the situation in the  aftermath  of the operation to liberate Barbuda is to  try to get beyond  the  military operation so that we can go on with the business of rebuilding the com- mon institutions of the island  and possibly get more economic opportu- nity there.

Another thing that had evolved over the last few decades was the tradi- tion of a reporter asking two ques- tions simultaneously,  which  some- times, if the President's answer to the  first one went to some  length, required that the  reporter  repeat his second question. How few times a President asked for the second ques- tion to be repeated was an informal indication of  how sharp  his  mind was. President Ford always needed to be reminded. By the middle of  his first term reporters had all learned to ask no more than one question at a  time. Ford had been selected  by Nixon to replace Agnew as  'impeach- ment insurance' knowing  that  Con- gress could never stomach  Ford  in the top job, but all that was before the 'smoking gun' tape surfaced.

Reporter #2:  Mr.  President,   are American ground troops being used in operation Caribbean  Rage,  and  if they are, how many?

Ford: No. The ground troops are from the Antiguan  Reunification  Force, who have been training here in  the United States for over a year. The only American troops touching  down on Barbuda are the Marine helicopter pilots who are ferrying the Antiguan forces in from sea, and even then it is only  briefly as they  drop  off seven of them at a time and go back to pick up more. Now these helicop- ters and their carriers are support- ed by the USS Richard Nixon  super- carrier task force off the coast of Barbuda  and  Antigua. Already the airport has been liberated, and  we expect to learn shortly of the  cap- ture of President Vargas.

Jackson: I might add  that  Barbuda has quite a reputation as  a  haven for underworld  drug  money,  money laundering, and  as  Round  Robyn's favorite off-shore banking locale. I hope the  new Organization  of  the Nations of Earth, despite the United States not being a member  of  ONE, will come to see the necessity of it and ratify what the  President  has done. I certainly support the Presi- dent in this action.

Reporter #3: Mr. President, if  the invasion of Barbuda succeeds,  what will happen to their money and their facilities for producing micros?

Ford: Operation Caribbean Rage  in- cludes the seizure of all of Church of End Dome assets in Barbuda. The liberation of Barbuda will be  paid by Barbuda, it will not be a burden on the American taxpayer in any way. Second, we are using the  liberated cash to  set up a special  fund  to support the families of the  victims of the safe house seizure operations here in the United State. While no monetary  amount can replace a  hus- band, I feel that a generous finan- cial  compensation  is  in   order. Third, $2.5  billion  dollars  have been earmarked for  rebuilding  the affected neighborhoods. The remain- der goes to Antigua to settle claims that arose when  Barbuda  illegally struck out on its own.

Reporter #4: Mr. President, why does your Administration continue to try to seize Church of End Dome taberna- cles in cities all  across  America despite violent resistance which is turning  entire  neighborhoods  into war zones?

Ford: Round Robyn has stated  there are seven hundred of these C of  ED so-called tabernacles' globally, and we have reason to believe that this is accurate, and that at least half are in  the United States,  but  we have  only uncovered about fifty  of them. Those fifty have come  under siege because for all  intents  and purposes the country is in a  state of war with the Church of End Dome. That they seem to be defended  with truly fanatical  resistance  merely shows how  dangerous  a  cult   the Church of End Dome really is. That still leaves three hundred or so in this  country  that  we  don't  know about. That's still quite a network.

Jackson: Remember too that they run many unlicensed health care facili- ties under the aegis  of  Cryoscan' which we  believe  pose  a  serious threat to  public  safety. So the fifty raids  to date are  only  the beginning, I'm afraid to  say. Un- questionably, there are risks in law enforcement action. American first responders will be in  harm's  way. The Church  of End Dome  has  taken strong measures to defend their ter- rorist sanctuaries. But we   must weigh those risks against the risks of inaction. If we don't act,  the war will spread. If it spreads, we will not be able to contain it with- out far greater risk and cost.

Reporter #5: Mr.  President,  could you tell the American people,  what is your own take on who or what the Church of End Dome really is?

Ford: I think they are a  dangerous religious sex  cult. We know  they date back to about 1870, and we know they stole atomic secrets from  the Hanford Nuclear Reservation  during World War  Two. We have reason  to believe  the  Church  of  End  Dome, headed by  a woman named  Robyn  at that  time,  was a  communist  front organization. The FBI  raided  her temple' in 1944 but the  terrorists set fire to their own structure  to hide the evidence.

Jackson: We also know that a differ- ent woman has come forward claiming to be that self-same Robyn, perhaps reincarnated like the Dali Lama. So the public came to know her as Round Robyn,' but this person was more of an  ongoing  franchise than  a  real woman. We aren't very clear on how this mind-control cult  brainwashes rich men and women into turning over all their  worldly  goods,  but  it can't  be denied that the Church  of End Dome is very, very good at  con- vincing them to do so.

Reporter #6: Mr. President, in  the past, the United States  government has placed export  restrictions  on certain forms of technology such  as encryption which it deemed vital  to ensure  national security, but  this Administration's ban on  micros  is the first time the US has banned the import of technology. What was your overriding concern when you  signed the order for that ban?

Ford: I banned the import of micros because they have become primarily a means by which to steal movies  and music and other forms of intellectu- al property. We don't entirely un- derstand how they do it, but  if  a member  of the upper  management  of Astrodyne  simply watches a film  or listens  to  a record or  attends  a concert, without any visible cameras or tape  recorders  carried   about their body, that record or film  or concert  will  appear on  the  Swarm immediately, free  for  anyone   to watch or listen to without buying  a ticket.

Jackson: Also it was shown in a re- cent court case that even the soft- ware used to run micros  is  copied wholesale from a legitimate company from the Seattle area  called  Win- spire. In my Administration I will treat this sort of theft as serious- ly as President Ford does now.

Reporter #7:  My  question  is  for President-elect Jackson. Currently about twenty five percent of  elec- tricity, globally, is generated  by what  Astrodyne  calls  macros. For over twenty years, this  technology has proven to be entirely safe, and remarkably affordable yet the United States, alone among  the  developed nations of  the world,  refuses  to license macros to operate in a  full scale power plant. Will this contin- ue to be the policy of the incoming Administration?

Jackson: In my transition briefing I have learned that the United States does indeed have macro power, on  a modest   scale,   as   demonstration projects  in  each  of  the   fifty states. But I object to your charac- terization of the macro power plants as entirely safe. Certainly they do not  produce waste as it  is  tradi- tionally known in the form of radia- tion or  dirty  water  or   harmful smoke, I'll grant you that, but af- ter the steam from the macros is run through the turbines it  is  dumped into the environment and so there is the inevitable production of  waste heat. We have heard testimony to the effect that this warm  water  waste will cause the oceans to rise  pre- cipitously over the course  of  the next few centuries. Unless this con- cern can be adequately addressed by Astrodyne, and I do not see how, the Department of Energy will  not  au- thorize them to scale up their oper- ations in  this  country  over  the course of my presidency.

Reporter #8: Mr. President, I'd like to focus on  President-elect  Jack- son's comment that the oceans  will rise as a result of the macros being used throughout the world. There are reports that global sea-levels have, in fact, been perceptibly declining over the  last few years  and  this might be linked to a strange whirl- pool that  satellite  imagery  from China and the Soviet Union indicates has formed between New Zealand  and Tasmania.

Ford: I have been asked this  ques- tion before, so allow me to reiter- ate that the imagery of a so-called whirlpool is being  misinterpreted. It is, in fact, probably the largest spill of toxic waste in history. I have sent naval forces to cordon off the area  because I consider  it  a crime scene, and I believe the  evi- dence will show this is the  secret dumping ground used by Astrodyne to hide  the waste generated  by  their macros. If this proves to  be  the case, then the world  will  clearly see that we are dealing with terror- ists. Barbuda oversight' of Church of End Dome operations is entirel a figment. It's all a scam. So now, by holding Barbuda responsible for the conflict with  the  United  States, this will have a definite deterrent effect on other pissant little  ba- nana republics providing a diplomat- ic umbrella to terrorists.

Reporter #9:  My  question  is  for President Ford. We have just heard President-elect Jackson state  that he will continue your  go-slow  ap- proach to macro power in the United States, so why is your  Administra- tion acting in such a way that there will be  no macro power  plants  in this country at all?

Ford: My question back to you, Miss Anonymous Reporter, is where did you hear that  I am shutting  down  the plants? I have made no such  deci- sion. There has been no  such  an- nouncement.

Reporter #9: Actually,  Mr.  Presi- dent, I am making the  decision  to shut  four of them them  down  right now, as I speak, in response to the simultaneous federal raids  on  the macro plants in West Virginia, Ken- tucky, Ohio, and Indiana  that  are ongoing at this very moment. So I guess  this press  conference  right here constitutes the announcement.

Ford: And who are you?

Reporter #9: Church of End Dome num- ber two gal. Call me Hunky. My fol- low up question is for the incoming President. If you are just going to carry on the policies of the current President, why'd you bother to run? Why not just let the current Presi- dent have a second full term?

The President made a hand sign to a Secret  Service  squad,  pointed  at Hunky,  and before the  cameras  and the eyes of the top reporters in the country, she was handcuffed and led away. In the awkward silence  that followed the President stormed away from the podium, ending  the  ques- tion-and-answer session  without  a further word and leaving the  Presi- dent-elect to scramble for a way to end  the session in  something  less than a farce.

Jackson: Ladies and Gentlemen of the press, please take another look  at the  granite faces of the great  men behind and  above  me. No one,  I think,  can hang a label of left  or right,  liberal or  conservative  on any of them. These men were members of their party, to be sure, but they were not partisan. President Ford is taking the extraordinary action  of making sure this transition of power will be as smooth as possible, while at the same time defending the  na- tional interests. I for one  will certainly do the same thing when my term  of office is over, and I  hope it becomes a new  tradition. Thank you, and God bless the United States of America.

asteroid

Diane Sawyer of CBS News had been a member  of  Richard  Nixon's   White House staff  and  had  also  served President Ford during the transition before accepting her current  posi- tion as a television news reporter. Ford thought very well of her,  and CBS had hired Sawyer precisely  for this warm  relationship  with   the President and her other contacts in the Administration. But flying down to tropical  Antigua with  a  small support team, Sawyer found that this island of a hundred thousand people just thirty miles south of  Barbuda was as close as any member  of  the media could get to the  combat,  no matter who they were or how  impres- sive their credentials might be.

Barbuda was well over  the  horizon except for an indistinct sliver  of green that was the top of the large- ly uninhabited and  wooded  central plateau but a great deal  of  black smoke rose  into the air  over  the island from many fires, and this the Ford administration could not hide. Through extreme  telephoto   lenses much footage had been shot of mili- tary helicopters and aircraft flying in front of those columns of smoke, firing rockets and streams of rounds with tracers.

Sawyer seemed resigned to accepting this state of affairs until a woman approached her and said, 'Miss Saw- yer, my name is Dory, and I am  the third-ranking member of the  Church of End Dome. What would you say if I offered to get you and any two other people of your choosing to the com- bat zone on Barbuda?'

'A round trip, I presume?'

Dory smiled. 'If all goes well. Nat- urally there are risks, this being a war and all, but you're a journalist so you already know the drill.'

'How do  you propose to  carry  out this offer, Miss Dory?'

'With a stealth-mode variant  of  a standard  Church  of End  Dome  air- craft, but I have to warn you right now that when you first see it  you will think this is a terrible prac- tical joke.'

'And let me guess: you expect to be paid for this little trip, right?'

'Money? Heavens no, Miss Sawyer. The only thing that I ask is  that  you keep the passengers down to  three, including yourself, and that you do not  use lights when you shoot  your footage. The, ah, aircraft has lots of windows and you will greatly im- prove our chances of making this  a round-trip  if you stick  to  night- vision photography.'

'Your offer  is  intriguing,   Miss Dory. I don't seem  to  have  much choice. But I will need an hour or two to arrange for the equipment.'

'Make it three hours, Miss  Sawyer. We shall need to go in under  cover of darkness.'

When Sawyer saw the  flying  saucer she grew  very  angry  and   almost called the whole thing off, thinking it to be an elaborate joke. Her out- burst kicked off the filmed portion of the reporting. Then she  remem- bered how Dory had warned her reac- tion would be precisely that.

Dory: I assure you, Miss Sawyer, we will be over Barbuda twenty  minutes after you  and  your  crew  get  on board.

Sawyer: Helicopter, huh? So why did you go with a saucer?

Dory: Sometimes we gotta fly in day- light. Somebody sees us, even take a picture, nobody's going to  believe it. They'll think they tossed a hub- cap in the air and snapped that. But for this war, no, we only come  out at night.

For a 'helicopter' Sawyer found the ride to  be remarkably  smooth  and quiet, and this pinged her  natural curiosity as a reporter.

Sawyer: What do you use for power?

Dory: It's  a bit  complicated  and technical, but  we  have  a   thing called a  macro that allows  us  to convert matter, such as the air over the roof  of the aircraft,  into  a form  that no longer interacts  with light, only with gravity. The mole- cules of air are turned  into  sub- atomic particles that slip away un- der the surface of the Earth. This creates a partial vacuum  over  the saucer, and  that in  turn  creates lift. You see the result.

Sawyer: Okay, but that doesn't real- ly answer my question. Where does this macro you speak of get its pow- er?

Dory: It's simple, really, it  gets it from what it eats. We can do  a selective conversion, just make  the electrons go away from some of  the air, leave the nuclei intact. That makes a charge  gradient,  positive and negative, right? Then you have a flow of electricity.

They were  flying over  the  waters around Barbuda now. Sawyer's camera- man captured a shot of one  of  the Navy's ten amphibious assault carri- ers assigned to Operation Caribbean Rage. This shot was in the monotone shades of green of a low-light cam- era setup. A helicopter could  be seen landing on the deck.

Sawyer: How  many of  these  flying saucers do you have?

Dory: A very, very large number  of them,  Mr. Sawyer, and most of  them are in the air over Barbuda tonight. In fact, if the Navy could see  how many of  us were aloft  right  now, they wouldn't dare to bring the Ei- senhower anywhere near the island.

Sawyer: What about the  Richard  M. Nixon?

Dory: The Eisenhower wouldn't  dare to come near the island because  of what already happened to the Nixon.

Sawyer: The President said the Nixon was being relieved by the Eisenhow- er.

Dory: I  suppose that's true  in  a manner  of speaking. The Nixon  has been sent to Davy Jones' Locker  so guess  they needed to bring  in  the Ike to take over.

Sawyer: You're saying the USS Rich- ard Nixon has been sunk? An American aircraft carrier is gone?

Dory: That's exactly what I'm  say- ing. Four nights ago. The President didn't think it was important enough to mention it to you in your inter- view, did he? But that's a billion dollars down  the toilet  and  five thousand American  sailors. Those five thousand folks with mothers and fathers, wives and  husbands,  boy- friends and girlfriends who will be waiting for their loved ones to come home and they're never coming home. That's something  President   can't cover  up forever. Now he wants  to bring in the Ike and make the butch- er's bill ten thousand sailors, and for what? For an island too rocky to plant anything bigger than a garden with two thousand people too poor to buy the clothes they sew  in  their little huts converted to sweatshops.

Dory did a pass over the beaches of Barbuda,   showing   the   collapsed trenches in the sand where  one  of three successive attempts by Marines to make an amphibious assault on the island had  failed  miserably. The town of  Codrington, with  about  a thousand  people,  had  no  building still standing larger than a hovel, the result of one of the  most  in- tense air campaigns in American his- tory.

Dory: The word on the street is that the Navy is about to make a  fourth attempt somewhere, maybe on the east side of the island. Exactly where the hammer will fall is  a  secret, but it  doesn't matter,  the  whole island is so rotten with passages it makes the tunnel rats of North Korea look like amateurs. Macros responsi- ble once again, I'm afraid. From the chatter we're hearing on the  radio the Marines  haven't pulled  out  a completely intact body yet. Lots of little pieces though. This is going to be like Iwo Jimab&squared.

Sawyer: Perhaps the President  will bring in an army airborne  division and bypass the beach.

Dory: Well, as you already know, Mr. Sawyer the President found  another job for those fellas  guarding  the White House. We hear some SEALs are sneaking around somewhere on Barbu- da, though, and a few  Marines  are here and there dropped by helicopter but we're  keeping them  busy  too. Unfortunately for the US side Hunky is here  as well. So we  hear  the phrase Charlie Foxtrot passed around on the radio a lot.

The flying saucer landed in the jun- gle of the Barbuda plateau near the outskirts of Codrington. Dory asked Sawyer, her cameraman, and her pro- ducer to help her cover the aircraft with large banana leaves, then  she led them through the jungle to  the nearest house. From an upstairs bal- cony Sawyer  and his  crew  set  up their camera to overlook the carnage going on in the town below. This was more coverage than anyone had  man- aged to achieve over the entire op- eration. Sawyer's producer set up a satellite dish to upload what he had already recorded on the flight over and to  establish a live  feed  for Sawyer to do a special report.

Downstairs Hunky  arrived  at   the house and embraced Dory passionate- ly, for they hadn't  been  together since  the  extraction  at   Indian Creek. 'The second carrier is almost here but we're on it.'

'There doesn't seem to be any limit to the amount of pain Ford is will- ing to take, does there?'

'You got Sawyer upstairs?'

'Yep, and she's going out live. More pain for President Jerry.'

'I expect they'll be able to zero in on this house from the  images  she broadcasts. We'll have to be ready to move at a moment's notice.'

'Check, I'll wait for the first com- mercial break and let Sawyer know.'

'Love ya, babe.'

'Too.'

The response came in about an  hour and it  was just  Marines,  nothing serious like Rangers or SEALs. Saw- yer went  with Dory  then,  walking down a  narrow  underground  macro- carved tunnel with her cameraman and producer, and they set up operations in the  empty house next  door  and aimed their  cameras at  the  first house through a window. The Marines didn't bother with this second house because they already cleared it.

Soon a Marine knocked on the  front door of the first house and it  was answered by  Hunky, who  threw  out something in  Spanish. The Marine told her to gather what she  needed and evacuate the house immediately. 'No choice. This is mandatory.'

In reply Hunky slammed the door shut and threw the matrix  of  deadbolts with a single snick.

Six defenders of the house, through gun slits on the top floor, dropped two Marines in the yard. Automatic gunfire was returned, pocking every side of  the house  and  shattering glass. Tear gas  canisters  merely bounced back out the windows, having hit plate steel behind  deceptively lit Venetian blinds.

Covered by  a hail  of  suppressing fire, more  Marines in  body  armor made their  way to the  front  door with a battering ram and began try- ing to bash their way in through  a thick metal door deceptively painted like oak and reinforced with carbon steel jambs. They worked until they were exhausted and put nary a  dent in the door.

The Marine lieutenant in charge  of this  platoon pulled his boys  back. Hunky didn't give the  Marines  any time to  get set up  with  whatever heavy response they were contemplat- ing next. She led a surprise attack out of  the house right  away. And since the members of the Church  of End Dome could never truly die, they were the most fierce  warriors  who ever lived. Additionally, it  was attractive young  women  who   were pouring out of the house, which made the men of the Marine  platoon  in- stinctively hesitate to fight them.

The primary weapons of the  Marines were a nasty piece of business  the size and shape of any normal rifle, but they were railguns, a  portable mass-driver powered by  a  gigantic charge circulating in a room-temper- ature superconductor loop. It fired needles at a muzzle velocity of four thousand feet per second. These nee- dles expanded when they hit and be- came ugly  tearing  pieces  of  hot shrapnel. One electrically-ejected needle didn't usually kill,  but  a single magazine held two thousand of them.

Aurelia bought it right away  in  a thirty-shot burst from Corporal Cas- tle. Then Private Johnson picked off Jo, a  nineteen year-old  still  in training. By this time, a volley of knives  went up from the  Church  of End Dome side.

These were not ordinary knives. They had an arming  switch. Immediately after leaving the throwers  hand  a sensor detected free fall and ignit- ed a small solid rocket in the han- dle. An infrared detector  in  the hilt zoomed in on body heat. It was basically a  model  rocket  with  a bayonet  fixed to  it,  deliberately blunted to prevent the  thing  from passing clean through  the  victim. And they were much nastier than the Marine gauss rifles. After burying itself in  the victim,  the  rocket motor burned  right up  inside  the magnesium alloy blade, starting  an unquenchable metal fire right inside the person's body. Only after  the entire blade burned would the  fire go out. Water only made it burn hot- ter, and the flame ripped it's  re- quired oxygen  from the  guy's  own body tissues.

One blade  closed in on  Castle  in tightening  spirals and another  was distracted from its intended target to follow the more attractive engine heat of  the first one. Two class Delta fires  for Castle  then. The pain was vast, like  being  scraped under the foot of a giant with blue- hot soles. He could only scream 'God help me!' and his prayers were  an- swered, because  the  twin  burning blades  finished  him  with   great haste.

Hunky was  the one who  flung  that first blade. Her next blade went out and found Johnson.

Sondra was a two-fisted knife throw- er. The left hand took out Sergeant Hervey, the right hand blade sailed out toward a cocksure rookie. Hervey saw the deadly thing snaking toward him and tried to shoot it down, but all he achieved was a burst of stray needles tearing into Sondra.

As she died, Sondra's final memories were uploaded  to the Swarm  via  a neutrino  link. Lieutenant  Atkins died under a more regular blade from Olivia. His actual cause of death, she later reported, was six  quarts of missing blood due to her  famous 'Filipina Haircut' which was an in- cision that started at one ear  and crossed to the other one under  the chin. A few men who had wavered in retreat  now  joined the  others  in fleeing for their lives.

The surviving defenders, Hunky  and Olivia, ran in different directions through nearby alleys and the back- yards of neighboring houses, making good their escape. The entire inci- dent of United States Marines being driven off by young  women  wearing short tunics and kneeboots was cap- tured by Diane Sawyer and her camera crew.

119 On Inauguration Day  in 1977 the country woke up to find the 82nd Airborne stationed on the per- imeter of the grounds of the  White House as  one of  the  more  likely scenarios mentioned by Mike and Jill played out. President Gerald  Ford canceled the presidential inaugura- tion (set to occur at noon on Janu- ary  20) and in so  doing  abrogated the 20th Amendment to the Constitu- tion of the United States. Instead, at noon, the President met with the top congressional leadership in the Oval Office to explain his  reasons for ignoring the highest law of the land.

For the Democrats,  Senator  Robert Byrd and Representative Jim  Wright were present. They knew the Presi- dent well when he represented Michi- gan in the House and throughout the meeting would call him 'Jerry'. The Republicans attending  the  meeting were Senator Howard Baker and Repre- sentative John Rhodes and they pre- ferred to call him 'Mr. President.'

Sen. Robert Byrd: Thank you for tak- ing the time to answer a few  ques- tions Jerry, and I'd like to  start with the biggest and  most  obvious one. It is now just short  of  one o'clock PM on January 20, in a year following a  presidential  election year. Since 1937 that  has  always meant we would see either the incom- ing President-elect sworn into  of- fice or a sitting President sworn to a second term, we would see hear the inaugural address, and the President would then proceed from the steps of the Capitol building to  the  White House. But this year, instead,  we see  the sitting President, who  was the former  Vice-President  of  the previous Administration,  remaining inside the White House  guarded  by elements of the US Army. Many on the Hill and elsewhere are saying we are witnessing the first coup in US his- tory. Mr. President, what do you say in response?

President Ford: First of all,  Bob, I'd like to make it absolutely clear that the inauguration has not  been canceled as some are saying, merely restored to  the date of  March  4, which was  the  statutory  turnover date prior to the enactment of  the 20th Amendment. This was done on a one-time  basis due to  an  enormous number of extraordinary events pil- ing up in a short span of time which in my  view  could  compromise  the presidential transfer of  power  in our  republic if we do not,  in  ef- fect, call a time out.

Rep. John Rhodes: Could you comment on some of these events, Mr. Presi- dent?

Ford: Well, the first one, obvious- ly, is  the  assassination  of  the Vice-President in a federal  deten- tion facility in Nebraska that  was being toured by the  Vice-President and President-elect Henry Jackson as part of the transition process. We have obtained video-tape of the ac- tual murder, and it is  clear  that the President-elect, if not directly responsible, is at least a material witness, and a witness that has gone missing for  some reason. Bear in mind  that the death of  Vice-Presi- dent Roland was an incredibly grisly thing and  will  be  difficult   to watch.

The door to Hunky's cell opened and Roland walked halfway, stopped  and stood there for a moment before his legs buckled. Roland jerked   and bounced down on Hunky's deadly  web of Polywire, letting gravity finish the job. Guards tried to cut the web down but only succeeded in  slicing their own knives into little  razor blades. Hunky began to laugh. Final- ly they used their hand guns to blow chunks out of the door frame  where the wire was slung. The web drifted down to  the floor and  the  guards stepped through aiming their weapons directly at Hunky. The Secret Serv- ice agents guarding President-elect Jackson followed, and when they mo- tioned it  was  clear  the   actual President-elect stepped through into the cell after them.

Ford: Note that the prisoner in the cell who  laughed  when  the  Vice- President died, a woman  who  calls herself Hunky, as well as the Secret Service agents shown in  the  video entering the cell before the Presi- dent-elect, and the President-elect himself have all gone missing. Obvi- ously what we have here is some kind of  conspiracy,  not  unlike   when President Lincoln was killed.

Sen. Howard Baker: Mr. President, do you have any theory why the  Presi- dent-elect would want the President to be killed when it was  only  two days before the hand-off  of  power anyway?

Ford: I have another video, Howard, one which was in the possession  of the Vice-President before the assas- sination. In some ways this one is even  more unbearable to watch,  but it might go a long way  toward  ex- plaining why Scoop Jackson would be mixed  up in this. The first time I saw  this video, I was  reminded  of the  old joke that the one sure  way to end a political career was to be caught in bed with a dead woman,  or a live boy.

In the hotel room all of  the  male escort's clothing  were shed  in  a flash,  and it was abundantly  clear that this was not the wife of Henry Jackson. The unexpected suddenness of this strip act caused  Henry  to shudder in a frisson of delight  and they both crawled on top of the ho- tel bed, not bothering to turn  off the room lights. As the President- elect caressed every square inch of the escort's naked skin with a  des- perate physical hunger, the  escort slid Jackson's pants off his hips to mid-thigh, an action made delicious- ly messy with the upended  half  of the  contents of a bottle  of  clear lube. Jackson massaged  the  shiny overflow on  the escort's  hips  as they  both writhed in  bed,  rubbing directly against each other. After a few minutes Jackson's back suddenly arched, both of his legs stiffened, his eyes crossed and his mouth fell wide  open. Jackson grunted   and moaned with a physical release  far more satisfying than anything  that love with his wife had ever done.

Rep. Jim Wright: Jesus Christ, Jer- ry, that  was the  most  disgusting thing I ever saw.

Ford: Unless I'm tragically mistak- en, fellas, I don't think even  the Democratic Party is willing to tell the American people they just elect- ed their first faggot as President.

Robert Byrd  just shook  his  head, conceding the point.

Ford: In terms of electoral college votes, which are what really count, the recent election was the closest since 1876. Just five votes! Yet I don't  think it would have  been  so close  if  this video had  been  re- leased before last November,  don't you think? And disgusting as it is, there are many more like it. This is probably the least objectional one. Jackson probably did the country  a favor by going on the run. Think of the damage that could have been done to this country with a President who was operating for at least the next four years  under  the  threat   of blackmail.

Byrd: Mr. President what do you say to the  Vice-President-elect,   who claims that under the 20th Amendment to the Constitution this case should have been  treated  as  though  the President-elect had died, and it was she who should have been sworn it at noon today?

Ford: Ah, yes, but the 20th  Amend- ment is  quite  specific  that  the President-elect may only be sworn in under the situation where the Presi- dent-elect has  actually  died   or failed to qualify, not merely become a fugitive. Jackson is not dead, as far as we know, and was fully quali- fied by the Electoral College, even if such a selection is now in doubt in light of these  videos. Section three then goes on to say that Con- gress may declare who shall act  as President,  or the manner  by  which the President shall be selected.

Rhodes: So if I understand what you are saying, Mr. President,  if  the Congress says that the  Vice-Presi- dent-elect or even  the  President- elect shall be sworn in  as  Presi- dent, you will abide by that  deci- sion?

Ford: Absolutely! I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of this  great nation and  that  is exactly what I'm doing. We seemed to have slipped into a kind of loophole that isn't  covered  by  the   20th Amendment. Moving the date of  the inauguration out to the right a bit, to the  original date of  March  4, will give  us the time we  need  to sort this mess out.

Baker: Do you have a recommendation that we can take back to  Congress, Mr. President, as to who they should decide should be the next President, or what manner they should  use  to select him or her?

Ford: The lower House  of  Congress stands for election every two years. This is  how our  founding  fathers ensured that Congress remained clos- er to the will of  the  electorate. The only  recommendation  I   would make, and I believe it is the  sim- plest way out of this  dilemma,  is simply to have the House select  the new president and the Senate confirm their choice. Since both houses of Congress  are in the hands of  Demo- crats this  cycle, I  presume  they will settle on a  Democratic  Party ticket. They might even choose the same ticket. No one will be able to say  I  overturned the will  of  the voters or made a pure party play.

Wright: In that event,  Jerry,  I'd like to turn to the question of  why the 82nd Airborne has been posted on the perimeter  of the  White  House grounds.

Ford: It is purely a  precautionary measure, Jim. There are indeed some people who  might decide  what  has happened has been, in fact, a coup. To be honest, I'd much rather deploy the paratroopers to  Barbuda  right now, but they can serve  a  greater purpose acting as a deterrent to any self-deluded patriot hotheads.

Baker: Mr. President,  you  mention Barbuda. There has been very little information released about the ongo- ing Operation Caribbean  Rage. Can you at  least tell us how  that  is going?

Ford: I can say that the Richard M. Nixon  battlegroup and their  Marine detachment has performed remarkably well under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. In fact, I've  just ordered the USS Eisenhower and  her battlegroup to postpone a scheduled deployment to the Mediterranean and immediately steam south to  Barbuda to relieve the Nixon, and I'm moving a carrier  from the South  Seas  to fill in for the Ike in the Med.

Baker: Well, Mr. President, the rea- son I've asked that question is the basic fact that Barbuda is half the size of  DC, yet we have  all  seen images and videos that much of Bar- buda has been devastated  from  the air.

Ford: Howard, have a care what  you get from  the Swarm. Bear in  mind that the Swarm is nothing more than a kind of propaganda outlet run  by the  Church  of End Dome,  which  in their  own words is the sworn  enemy of the United States government.

Baker: This was Walter Cronkite  at CBS, Mr. President.

Byrd: Jerry when you say  they  are sworn enemies how do you account for their macro  power plants,  one  in each state, offering clean  electric power at only once cent  per  kilo- watt-hour, which is only  one-tenth of the  historic  average  cost  of electric power nationwide?

Ford: Bob! Do you think money is the only cost?

Byrd: Jerry, cold water seems to be the only requirement, and warm  non- radioactive water is the only waste stream. Home power bills rarely top ten dollars a month if the are get- ting power from their plants, unless there's a real cold snap. So why are you moving  to  shut  these  plants down?

Ford: It's patently unfair to say we shut the plants down, Bob. We made certain investigations,   primarily focused on safety, that the  Church of End Dome found unacceptable  and they shut down their own plants  in an  immature little temper  tantrum. So far  this has happened  in  four states.

Wright: Does the Administration in- tend to go forward with this policy until the macro power plants in all fifty states are off-line?

F

Ford: There's ancient concept called hydraulic empire, Jim, have you ever heard of it? One might even say it is  the default structure  of  human civilization. A hydraulic   empire maintains itself through a monopoly on access to water. I see the same thing happening with Robyn's  power plants and my policy is to  prevent her from setting up something  like that up where we can't touch her.

Bryd: Jerry, I'd like to go back to the  assassination of  Earl  Roland. There is not much  information  out there as to precisely where it hap- pened. You say it was a federal de- tention center in Nebraska. What and where, exactly, did the Vice-Presi- dent get killed?

Ford: Proceed to the next question, Bob.

Bryd: Does your secret police  have any compromising  videos  of  Jeane Kirkpatrick?

Ford: Not yet we don't.

Byrd: So you wouldn't have any prob- lem if the House and Senate moved to swear her in as your replacement by March 4?

Ford: Other than the fact that she's an AFL-CIO Democrat, no.

125 - BIRD FARMS

After World War II the United States dominated the globe as  a  military colossus, projecting  sea  and  air power with aircraft carriers  named after what the US Navy considered to be great American presidents.

One of  the  newer  nuclear-powered carriers, the USS Richard M.  Nixon and her support ships, had  steamed in the waters off Barbuda in support of the  ongoing  combat  operations there ordered by the President. At the time this represented the  only combat ready carrier power  on  the east coast, since the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower  was half-way across  the Atlantic embarked on a deployment to the Mediterranean, the USS  Herbert Hoover was already in the Med,  the USS Calvin Coolidge was  monitoring the whirlpool near New Zealand, and the USS Warren G. Harding  and  USS William Howard  Taft were  both  in drydock for overhaul. The remaining six carriers were based in the  Pa- cific and were unavailable for Oper- ation Caribbean Rage.

After nearly a week, and despite one of the most intense air campaigns in American history which leveled  the port and every building larger than a hovel in the tiny hamlet  of  Co- drington, three successive attempts to take  the island  by  amphibious assault had failed. Invading troops would literally find the ground open up beneath  their  feet  and   fall through and nine times out  of  ten not even  their  bodies  could   be found.

Then the unthinkable, the unbelieva- ble happened. The USS Richard  M. Nixon  was suddenly hit in  so  many places and sunk so quickly that the Navy didn't even have video footage of her demise.

After the Chief of Naval Operations advised President  Ford,  the   USS Dwight D. Eisenhower was ordered to make a starboard turn and steam  for Barbuda, a leg that would take near- ly three days. She was twenty-four hours from arriving on station when Diane Sawyer began to broadcast live from Codrington, the only  reporter to manage to do so during the entire evolution of  Caribbean  Rage. She even covered an attempt by  Marines to attack the house from where  she had initially set up to do her  re- porting.

After discerning  that  Sawyer  had moved to  the house  next  door,  a seemingly endless series of attempts by attack helicopters to  take  out this house were nipped in the bud by Church of End Dome air  assets  and woman-portable air defense systems, providing a great deal  more  fire- works for Sawyers's crew to capture and broadcast. But with the immanent arrival of the Ike, Dory recommended that Diane Sawyer get back  in  the air with her again, for two reasons. One, the house would be  the  first target of an air-strike package from the carrier, and two, Sawyer  might want to get footage of Del's  coun- ter-response.

And so once again Dory  took  Diane Sawyer, her cameraman, and her pro- ducer up in her flying  saucer  and out over the waters north of Barbu- da. There was no need to resort to night-vision once more, because  the USS Eisenhower was lit up as though for Christmas for  aircraft  launch and recovery operations.

Most of the radio traffic monitored by Dory had consisted of  scrambled fragments of voice as  orders  flew back and forth under encryption, but at one point a woman's  voice  went out in the clear, speaking with en- tirely unique accent. 'Alpha Whiskey this is  Del of the Church  of  End Dome, over.'

Alpha Whiskey was shorthand for the commander of the air war, the  com- manding officer of the cruiser which was accompanying the carrier or  at least  the officer who was  standing in for the CO of that cruiser. Del repeated her  call, and  this  time there came a response. 'Del this is Alpha  Whiskey,  state  your  piece, over.'

'Alpha Whiskey, this is Del, we are observing that your carrier is  lit up and has turned into the wind. Be advised that the instant the  first strike aircraft starts to roll down the flight deck we will  sink  your bird farm  almost as  soon  as  the plane clears the catapult. You might want to advise your admiral of that fact. I should think that what  we did  to  the Nixon  would  establish whether I'm  bluffing or  not. Del out.'

Diane Sawyer noted that  the  coded voice fragments reached a  sort  of crescendo   after  that. Obviously Del's comments were being  weighed, but apparently not by wiser  heads. One of the new F-14 Tomcat fighters started to roll off the deck and was pitched into the wind.

Hovering in the night sky over  the carrier at 15,000 feet and matching her course and speed were  a  dozen stealthy flying saucers  rigged  as unmanned drones, their crew compart- ments filled  instead with  a  four thousand pounds of  high  explosive paste. When the F-14  cleared  the deck, as Del promised, these drones cut power and allowed themselves to fall under gravity.

The superstructure of  the  carrier sustained a direct hit that blew out the island's windows and outer skin of steel, instantly killing most of the ship's senior officers.

The forward elevator was hit  by  a second  drone and warped in  such  a way  that  it could not be  used  to move  any  more planes up  from  the hangar deck. The blast was  suffi- ciently powerful to throw dozens of flight crew overboard.

The aft  part of the  flight  deck, already filled with  planes  fueled and armed and ready to launch,  was hit by a third drone and exploded in a series of chain reactions scatter- ing burning  parts  of  planes  and bodies everywhere.

The fourth drone dropped through the middle elevator,  which  was  flush with the hangar deck. When it  ex- ploded, the  blast set  up  another chain reaction of secondary  explo- sions among the planes and ordinance being prepped down there as well as setting   the  criss-crossing   fuel lines on fire.

With the initial damage  done,  the rest of the drones dropped  succes- sively in pairs through the damaged elevators and exploded one after the other, five  and  six,  seven   and eight, nine  and  ten,  each  blast opening holes through two or  three more decks until the  eleventh  and twelfth drones punched all the  way through to the ocean.

After that seawater started to flood into the  red hot interior  of  the carrier and  some  of  this   water turned to steam. The aft end of the carrier remained more or less buoy- ant while the ship pitched  forward at the same time she turned turtle. The Ike went under the waves so fast there wasn't even time to call aban- don ship, and there was no  officer left alive with the authority to do so at any rate. All of this carnage was captured on camera by Diane Saw- yer and her crew. Dory said, 'Welp. A slightly different death than the Nixon, but just as fiery and quick.'

When Dory touched down back in Anti- gua, Sawyer, who had been shocked to utter silence since the sinking  of the  Ike managed to say, in a  trem- bling voice,  'At least I  got  the round trip you promised  me,  Dory. Thank you.'

Dory said, 'But I don't  think  you are very much safer now. Dory says that one  fighter they  managed  to launch  before  we  hit  them   went straight to  the  house  you   were broadcasting from and took it  out. Essentially your  pal  Jerry   Ford threw away an aircraft carrier  and another five thousand people just to get you off the air.'

'It looks like he succeeded at doing that despite  everything,'   Sawyer said. 'My producer tells me  we've just  been fired and my own  network refuses to accept our feed. No one will see the death of the Ike.'

'Then I'd say welcome to the Swarm, Miss Sawyer,' Dory told her.

'Please. Call me Diane.'

'Okay. People trust what you  say, Diane, it doesn't matter if it comes over cable or broadcast networks or or as neutrinos in the Swarm. We'll get your footage out there. And I have  no  doubt that you  have  many more questions about what is  going on. We are prepared to provide any assistance you need as well as  any protection that we can offer, which as you might have seen recently, is considerable.'

'And what is going on?'

'Only the  second  American   civil war.'

TC2Y-SECOND BIG BLUE

For a  week DECON had  been  making raids on Round Robyns  macro  power plants across the midwest  with  precisely the same  result  every  time. The plants were sabotaged by its operators  in such  a way that it could  never  be start ed again. Still, DECON continued to come,  time after  time,  performing the same assault and hoping for a  dif- ferent result each time, until  six of them were offline. That was  the  very epitome of insanity under the defi- nition once held forth by Albert Einstein.

Dory was  fairly certain  that  the Kansas City plant was next  on  the list. She invited Diane Sawyer and a hand- ful of employees who remained loyal to her to travel to Missouri  to  tour the plant, with a high  probability of covering the impending raid,  which Ford continued to  assure  everyone were merely routine safety checks.

President-elect Henry Scoop Jackson had joined Dory and Diane Sawyer to tour the macro power plant,  and  a federal  district judge  named  Ryan Wustner had also joined Dorys party by invi- tation to see for himself what Dory promised would be some pretty anti- American shit.

The power plant was located  in  an industrial  park south and  west  of down town Kansas City on the Blue River, near the site of a Civil War tussle in 1864 called the Battle of  the  Big Blue, after the Union  tendency  to name battles after  the water  that  was nigh at hand. A second battle  was destined to ensue  on the  same  site. Sure enough, before Dory could even give Sawyer, Wustner, and Jackson  the  standard tour of the plant, DECON came call- ing with guns drawn.

Since the Great Leap  Backward  for women that began with the New Right- eous ness the potential combat abilities of half of the human race had  been held of no account. So the sight of teen- aged girls and young women  burning any thing that moved was an awful shock. Any hesitancy on the part of the agents storming that entrance there- fore was forgivable. Or at the very least understandable.

But weapons from Barbelo,  even  in the  softer  hands  of  women   from Earth, were not forgiving in the slightest, nor understanding, but rather very lethal. At a certain point panic set in among the attackers and the DECON guys started to shoot at motion, or even sound, not bothering to identi- fy their targets first. In the  hail- storm of bullets they did manage to shoot down Noelie and Paige, as  well  as three of their own people.

The sight of Noelie and Paige fall- ing in battle merely drove the sur- viving Bnei Elohim girls to new levels  of ferocity. For some of them this was their first Church campaign,  their baptism by fire. Since it was almost possible for a member of the Church of End Dome to truly die, they truly did not  fear death. No one  could have withstood such a suicidal  as- sault, and DECONs  numbers  were  steadily whittled down to a manageable  num- ber. But to deceive  the  remaining  agents, Dory and her fighters slowly  edged back into the power plant as Diane Sawyer and her crew edged back behind them and filmed the entire firefight, the Second Battle of Big Blue,  in  the Sec ond American Civil War.

Two other  girls  died,  but  their souls were saved to the Swarm as  a data stream. Only Cheryl and Karen were left to fight with Dory as they made their way to the  corridor  outside the cafeteria. One DECON agent re- mained alive, but he managed to grab Karen and manhandle her around with a pis- tol pointed at her head.

AGENT Drop your weapons now!

He looks both smug and guilty,  si- multaneously scared  and  full   of bluster.

AGENT I guarantee I can finish her before you make a move.

Cheryl whips up her rifle to bear.

CHERYL Fuck you!

The agent's  self-preservation  in- stinct took over. In a split-second he real ized they were willing to write Ka- ren off if they pressed. He shifted his aim to Cheryl and caught  her  mid- stride with two bursts, blowing the tiny nineteen year-old back  into  Dorys arms.

With an underhand swing Dory hurled Cheryls body right back at him and pinned his  gun  against  him  long enough for her and Karen to descend on him like vultures.

DORY Don't kill him. We're not butchers.

With the  muzzle  of  Dory's  piece nudging him the agent went slack and re leased his pistol. Dory kicked  it away while Karen began securing  his hands behind his back with tie wraps.

DORY If he moves blow his dick off.

KAREN What if he doesn't move? Can I still blow his dick off?

When pressed the man identified him- self as DECON Agent Phillip Shields.

DORY I'm Dory,  Agent Shields. This is Scoop Jackson, who was chosen by the voters of this country to be its President. And this  is Diane  Sawyer. Smile, you're on Candid Camera. PHILLIP There's a bulletin out on you. Jack- son and Sawyer both need to come in for questioning.

DIANE We can talk right here.

The agent  himself had  nothing  to say.

DORY Well, lets see, you're up to  power plant number seven now, aren't you? The first one in West Virginia you came in with guns blazing and that power plant doesn't work anymore. And I think  you will find it  will  never work again. At the second one in Kentucky you came in nicely enough but you d

didn't let the employees go and  so that power plant don't work  anymore ei ther. Now you're back to  the  gun thing.

PHILLIP We're prepared to let the people go this time.

DORY Great! Agent Shields,  there   are ninety-one Church employees who work in this plant, and I ask that they  be allowed to go without being hindered or followed.

PHILLIP Will the plant continue to  operate if they go?

DORY Yes, of  course. You'll find  that everything is quite  automatic,  as long as you  don't shoot things up  that  do need to be in good working order.

PHILIP In that case we have a bargain. I've already been given the authority to negotiate. So with your permission?

Dory nodded to Karen, who cut Agent Shields hands loose. The man got on his radio and issued a few orders before assuring Dory.

PHILIP I give  you my word,  my  men  will stand fast while your people go.

DORY (nodding) Fair enough. Oh, Agent   Shields, don't even think about  doing  any- thing to them after they're out of eyeshot or this tour will be over pronto. Be- lieve me, I  will know if  anything  goes wrong, the instant it goes wrong.

He was a little annoyed at Dory now.

PHILIP I gave my word.

DORY Well, this  is a war and a  lot  of bitterness  has  spread   everywhere since 1943. I'm sorry to have to say this but I don't fully take your word to be your  bond. If any of my people are accosted or  harassed  after   they leave I can shut this whole place down hard and I won't even need to be near  a con trol panel to do it.

Presently a train of people  strag- gled out, crossing the lobby. They went out to  the parking lot to  get  in their  cars. Some of the  employees were full members  of the  Church,  some were catechumens,  and  some   were merely local employees hired to  help  run the plant.

It took  about ten  minutes  before everyone was accounted for. None of the DECON agents detained them, so Dory smiled and spoke to Diane  and  the oth ers.

DORY Very well, folks, then let started.

Shields was surprised.

PHILIP Started doing what?

DORY Started turning the plant  over  to you. I'm going  to  give  you  the standard tour of the plant, so you know where everything is.

PHILIP Why would you cooperate with us?

Dory led them through a set of dou- ble-doors to a long white  passage- way.

DORY It's good business, Agent Phillips. Okay, so  you've  nationalized  our power plant, but we won't take that  per- sonally. You win,  we  acknowledge that. So let's have an  orderly  transition. Can you get on board with that?

PHILIP Like I said, I was told to  make  a deal with you.

DORY T

That's good. Now, those people  of ours you saw leaving the plant  will have to be replaced. People are actually very important to the continued op- era tion of this plant. There's a lot of preventive and  corrective  mainte- nance that needs to be done every day. For instance, you  will  see  that  the lights are out on a few generators here and there. Those are ones that are cur rently off-line to be lubed or  ad- justed. And the lubers and adjusters like anyone else anywhere you go in this country will expect to be  paid. I don't know whether  you intend  to  bring your own people in here or not, but if you hire back our people, the government is going to have to take  over  the pay roll.

PHILLIP I'm not an accountant, I don't know how that's supposed to work. What I really want to know is, how long can every- thing run without being attended?

DORY I'd say you would have a good twen- ty-four hours before you started to have problems.

PHILLIP In that case, Dory, I'd like to ask you to stay and tell our people com- ing in what they have to do to keep ev- erything going.

DORY Uh, no, sorry Agent Shields, that's not  part of the deal. I'm sticking around just to give you a quick familiari- zation tour. That should take about an hour. After that, I expect  to  be allowed to leave just like the  rest of my people were allowed to leave.

PHILLIP But I can see there's going to be a steep learning curve involved  here. What if our people can't  figure  every- thing out in only twenty-four hours?

DORY Well, Agent Phillips, that's a risk I suppose you should have been pre- pared to take when your people decided to take  over our plant. If you  don't have some really sharp fellows  who  can come in here and figure  everything out in

less than twenty-four hours, my ad- vice would  be to leave  our  other forty- three macro  power  plants  in  the United State the hell alone.

PHILLIP So you wont comply with my  request and that's that?

DORY That's that.

PHILLIP Then Dory, you leave me  no  choice but to instruct my people  to  take you, the President-elect,  Diane  Sawyer and her people into  custody. That means the deals off as of right now.

And at  that  precise  instant  the lights flickered. There were ninety simul taneous thumps as breaker  switches snapped off  and the  high  pitched whir of the generators began slowly, slowly running down. Now none of them were illuminated, indicating  they  were off-line. The lights overhead  got dimmer and dimmer. A cacophony of thumping began under the floor of the power house. Large steam pipes burst free of the deck plating, howling and screaming as they filled the entire space with water vapor. Soon it grew difficult to  see, and  the  entire vast space grew uncomfortably warm.

DORY Damn, you  DECON  people  are  slow learners.

She shakes her head in disbelief.

PHILLIP What happened? What did you do?

DORY Agent Shields, my recommendation is that  you flee. You should get your men at least as far away from here as my people hope to be by now.

PHILLIP Why?

DORY Well the words that come to my mind are Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

It was a bluff. There was no danger of an  explosion. But her   bluff worked well enough for Shields and his peo- ple to leave, not even waiting  for or ders from on high.

Dory turns to Jackson.

DORY We'll never get you  close  to the  Chief  Justice of  the  Supreme Court, sir, but you already knew that. For- tunately, the  oath of  office  for Presi dent of the United  States  doesn't require the Chief Justice to  admin- ister it.

Jackson glanced at the federal judge and at Diane Sawyer's team standing their rolling cameras.

SCOOP Then I shall take the oath at once.

Judge Ryan Wustner held up a  docu- ment on a clipboard. No Bible  was used. The oath of office was carried  out over the written affirmation itself. Henry Scoop  Jackson put  his  left hand on  the clipboard,  his  right hand in the air, and repeated  after  Judge Wustner.

SCOOP I Henry Jackson do  solemnly  swear that I will faithfully execute  the Office of the  President  of  the   United States, and will to the best of  my ability, preserve, protect, and  defend  the Constitution of the United  States. So B `=help me God.

JUDGE Mr. President, please  attach  your signature.

And so the President signed the pa- perwork on the clipboard and it was done. Jackson was  now  on  a   collision course with his own  Vice-President pick Jeane Kirkpatrick,  who  was  being groomed by the Congress to be Presi- dent of the United States herself.