Original Design

by William Latoria

  President Silvia was only a few paces away from him now. The words, ‘KILL THE TRAITOR’ glowing on his forehead. Even in his stunned state, he prepared to defend himself should the President try to hurt him. Shock was one thing; self-preservation was something else entirely. The instinctual part of his mind made a careful note on where the Secret Service Agents were and allowed him to realize they were all as stunned as he was, which was good. If he got into an altercation with the President, at least he wouldn’t have to worry about the Agents shooting him right away. A startled scream brought him back to reality, and he shifted his attention back toward Silvia. By the looks of it, Tricia had gotten in his way, and he had shoved the poor woman back into her seat. The shirt she was wearing looked stretch out now, which Blackshade knew meant the President had grabbed her by it and then thrown her bodily into the chair. Something about that knowledge flipped a switch in the back of his head. Adrenalin began pumping into him, and the realization that he was about to fight the President began to dawn on him. He was widening his stance to better meet the President’s advance, when President Novatrix’s own shout stopped Silvia in his tracks.

  “JULIO! I COMMAND YOU TO STOP RIGHT NOW!” she barked at him.

  Blackshade saw that Silvia’s rage hadn’t left him, but her words did halt his advance. Blackshade took the opportunity to better situate himself for a fight, should Novatrix’s words prove to be only a temporary fix.

  “You can’t command me to do anything, Elizabeth! We are both equal in power!” Silvia spat at her.

  “No, I can’t.” she said in a much calmer tone, “But I can order the Secret Service Agents to stand down and let you assault Ambassador Blackshade. How well do you think you would do in a fight with a military veteran whose body had been enhanced by the Omegas?”

  Blackshade only had eyes for Silvia and was now fully ready for a fight. He didn’t know how much knowledge of military training Novatrix had, but the close combat training he had received had been over ten years ago and was cursory at best. Wars were fought with technology now-a-days rather than brawn, but apparently Silvia didn’t know that. Instead of continuing his advance, he was now glaring at him with a very unsure look on his face. The word, ‘Doubt’ appeared on his forehead. Blackshade decided to double down on Novatrix’s threat.

  “Order the Agents to stand down, please, Madam President.” he said with more confidence than he felt, “I would love to give Silvia the chance to bleed for his country.” From the corner of his eye, he caught the flicker of approval from a few of the Secret Service Agents that surrounded them. Clearly, President Silvia was not popular amongst all of them.

  Silvia may have caught their approving looks as well, because the man turned and went back toward his desk. The look of rage faded from his face, but his demeanor made it plain that he was still appalled with everyone in the room, “Fine. I may have overreacted. That was un-presidential of me.” he conceded. Blackshade was pretty sure everyone in the room noticed he fell well short of issuing an apology. He was beginning to understand why the Agents didn’t seem to like him very much. The man made it easy to dislike him.

  “But my question still stands!” he announced defiantly from behind the safety of his desk, “Did you know of the Omegas’ plot to kill us like this?”

  Now it was his turn to be angry, “The Omegas don’t want us dead, Mr. President.” Blackshade answered, barely restraining his own rage, “The Omegas have nothing but our best interests in mind. They have not lied or mislead us in any way since they arrived here, and they have no need to. If it wasn’t evident enough when they obliterated South America, their technology is far superior to ours and if they wanted to, they could simply take anything they wanted from us, including our lives. Why would they bother with suffocating us, when they could simply obliterate our continents with one of their ships?”

  No one replied for a long moment. Blackshade looked at their foreheads to try and gauge what they were thinking. On Soearth’s forehead, he saw the word, ‘Shit’ appear. On Tricia’s, he saw the words, ‘Oh shit’ scrolling across. On the Secret Service Agents’ heads, he saw various words and phrases mostly praising his actions, but what he saw on Silvia’s head was the most telling. The words, ‘I will kill him’ scrolled slowly across his forehead, as one of the most genuine and hospitable smiles he’d ever seen spread across the President’s face. “I have clearly overreacted and must make amends.” he said in a charming voice. He switched his attention to Tricia, before continuing, “What advice do you offer your country in order to correct this situation?”

  Blackshade watched as Tricia struggled with the personality shift of the President. The words, ‘This man is crazy’ scrolled across her forehead. He didn’t disagree with her.

  “As I was saying before,” she began, standing up from her seat and straightening out her shirt, “using my contacts in the environmental agencies around the country, we’ve already begun planting new trees, bushes, and flowers everywhere that we can. It’s far from enough, though. We need you to issue a nationwide ban on the harvest of all trees for at least the next ten years. We also need you to reach out to the leaders of the rest of the world, and make them understand this situation. They too need to stop the cutting down of their trees and begin planting new forests in order to make up for all that we’ve lost. Right now, the world’s highest priority has to be the recovery of our ecosystems, or within a year, anyone still alive will be gasping for breath.”

  Silvia considered her for a few moments, before bursting into mocking laughter, “And what do I tell the tens of millions of loggers, construction workers, millers, contractors, paper factories, and furniture makers in the mean time? Sorry about your livelihoods, but I’m going to have to destroy your futures in order to make the world green again?”

  Tricia’s face went red, “No, Mr. President,” she said angrily, “You tell them that if they don’t stop that they will be arrested and thrown in jail. You tell them that if they don’t stop and find alternative materials to do their jobs with, that they’ll doom us all. You tell them that if they cut down even one more tree, it could be the final straw that finally tips this precarious situation over the edge and causes the human race to become extinct. I think most of them will understand that!”

  Silvia rolled his eyes, “Thrown in jail? For what? It’s not illegal to cut down a tree, if the company owns the land, or has a legally obtained permit to do so. It’s not illegal for a citizen to cut down a tree on their own property. So what do you expect me to do, Ms. Yodabel? Go on the internet and tell hundreds of millions of people that they no longer have the right to do as they wish to their property? Tell hundreds of companies that the legally obtained permits they have are no longer valid? I don’t think so!”

  Blackshade looked over at Tricia to see how the President’s words had affected her. What he saw on her face was nothing short of a blind rage. The words, ‘STUPID MOTHERFUCKER’ were plastered across her forehead. “How did someone as completely stupid as you get elected as President?!?” she began shrilly, “Tell them the truth, you horse’s ass! Tell the people WHY they have to protect the trees and plants. Tell the companies that have their sacred permits, that if they don’t respect the fact that those permits have been rescinded, that they will be killing EVERYONE on the planet! This isn’t a complex problem to understand. If we don’t stop the culling of our world’s remaining flora, we are all going to die!”

  President Silvia waved a dismissive hand at her as the words, ‘Stupid woman’ appeared on his forehead. Blackshade was worried he was about to dismiss them from the meeting, when Novatrix spoke up.

  “Ms. Yodabel, you said that we’ve lost fifty-two percent of the world’s oxygen producing plants. Is that correct?” she asked. Blackshade had noticed that during the exchange between Silvia and Tricia that President Novatrix had been working on something at her desk. He looked at the displays that he could see surrounding her and now saw that she had been researching oxygen volumes
, rates of decline, as well as many graphs and charts he couldn’t quite make sense of. A sense of foreboding hit him, as he began to guess what it was Novatrix had been researching. If his gut was right, it was not good.

  Tricia looked over to where Novatrix sat. It was apparent that both she and President Silvia had forgotten anyone else was in the room. Flustered, Tricia tried to shift gears and answer President Novatrix’s question, “Yes ma’am, that sounds correct.”

  Novatrix nodded, more to herself than to Tricia, and tapped at the input controls on her desk. Blackshade thought he knew what the President was about to tell them, but he had never wanted to be wrong about something more in his life. There was a brief moment of hope, when he saw President Novatrix’s eyes widen in what he misinterpreted to be excitement, but when her shoulders slumped and her eyes became watery, his hope vanished. With a few defeated flicks of her wrist, she showed them all what she had been looking at on her desk.

  “I’ve been running the numbers using the parameters you’ve given us, Ms. Yodabel. From what I can gather, and keep in mind that this is a very rough estimate, even if we completely stopped the destruction of every blade of grass left on the planet, and continued planting more trees everywhere they would take root, it would be nothing more than a stop gap measure. We’ve not only gone over the tipping point; we’ve been thrown into the pit.” she told them solemnly. “At my best estimate, we have between three and five years of oxygen left to sustain the current population of the planet, and those are my most optimistic numbers. Realistically, I would guess we have between twelve and eighteen months, before the world’s oxygen levels are so low, that most of the insects and animals won’t be able to survive. At that point, the ecosystem will begin to fail, eventually making the world’s oceans uninhabitable, causing massive extinctions amongst marine life, which in turn will see the rest of the world’s fauna eventually succumb. We will follow shortly after the animals, leaving no one but the Omegas to mourn us.” she explained with a resigned sigh, “President Silvia is right, after all. People will not stop cutting down trees, lightning strikes will continue to start forest fires, and people will not adhere to laws prohibiting them from doing what they want with flora on their property. Not enough of them anyway, which will only serve to hurry us into the grave.”

  A wave of hopelessness washed over everyone in the room. Blackshade noticed that some of the agents looked towards the door, the words on their foreheads indicating most wanted to leave to spend what time they had left with their loved ones. He couldn’t blame them, his urge to leave and find Zahera was very strong. He was also very upset with himself for not thinking to do any research into the effects any of their efforts would have. He had been so focused on finding information to prove there was a problem, that he never bothered to run any simulations to determine if any of their fixes would actually make a difference. He had wasted so much time that he could have used trying to make things right with Zahera. No one spoke for a while, until President Silvia broke the silence.

  “Your damned friends did this to us, Blackshade, and I will see to it you are held responsible for it!” he told him flatly. Blackshade looked at him and saw the word, ‘Terrified’ on his forehead. He wanted to be mad; he wanted to lash out at this coward, but he was too dejected to respond. Let the weakling point his finger and lay the blame wherever he wanted. Even if they did bring him up on charges, they would all be dead in a few years anyway. What did it matter?

  Soearth, who had been silent up until this point, looked up at him with sudden hope in his eyes. “Bill! That’s it! The Omegas, albeit unintentionally, did help put us in this situation. So, it is reasonable to assume they would help us fix it. They did respond admirably to our allegation that their displacement of the South Americans indirectly resulted in many of their deaths. Perhaps they will have a solution available for this as well? It can’t hurt to ask, can it?”

  Blackshade could see no fault in Soearth’s logic, “I suppose not.”

  Novatrix stood up from her desk, the eagerness on her face was obvious as she grasped at this new idea, “Can you contact them, Ambassador? Do you have a way to communicate with them? All of our efforts to contact them have gone ignored, but they seem to have an active interest in you. Can you reach them?” she asked fervently.

  Silvia spoke up before he could respond, “Of course, they have an interest in him! He’s their conspirator! I don’t know why we continue to entertain a man who clearly has forsaken his own kind in the favor of Godless aliens!”

  Blackshade finally had enough of Silvia’s bleating, “ENOUGH, YOU UNBELIEVEABLE IDIOT!!” he shouted at Silvia, his ability to suffer the man’s allegations finally reaching his own tipping point. He pointed a threatening finger at the President, “Yes, the Omegas are partially responsible for the current situation, but humanity is responsible for far more, and if you want to be part of the solution, then you had better fucking acknowledge that! Now, if you’re going to have me arrested so that you can feel important, then do it already! I’m sick of your constant whining and could use the vacation from it. If not, then sit down, shut up, and let us fix this situation! Afterwards, you can give a speech, telling the world how you were personally responsible for saving them. Taking credit for other people’s work is something you excel at, after all!”

  The room was completely silent for a few moments, as everyone waited to see how President Silvia would respond. Blackshade thought the man looked properly chastised at first, the word, ‘Ashamed’ appearing on his forehead. Then he watched as the big man looked around the room and saw everyone staring at him expectantly. The word, ‘Ashamed’ was quickly replaced by the word, ‘EMBARRASSED’ and his face went dark red. Blackshade prepared himself to receive a lengthy retort, when President Novatrix pierced the silence.

  “That’s enough from both of you!” she said in a tone so full of authority, it took the anger out of both himself and Silvia, “We have an extinction level event to deal with right now, and you two get into a dick measuring contest! Unbelievable!” she began furiously, before pointing a damning finger at Silvia, “We both know Blackshade has been quadruple vetted by our investigators and is not in the pocket of the Omegas. He may be their Ambassador, but he is still loyal to humanity, and until he proves otherwise, or you obtain some sort of evidence to the contrary, then you need to treat him with the respect and courtesy his office demands!”

  Blackshade was about to thank her for the vote of confidence, when she rounded on him. The fury in her eyes stopped his gratitude dead in his throat, “And you need to remember that you’re addressing one of the Presidents of Candaerica, and that this office is to be treated with the respect and courtesy you, yourself, demand! Even if he is acting like a petulant child!” she shouted at him, her voice rising as she made her point.

  Novatrix took a deep breath and composed herself before finishing, “Now, I want both of you to apologize to each other, so that we can continue addressing this situation in a mature and professional matter. If you can’t manage that, then you can consider yourself dismissed.” she stated, before shifting her attention to the Secret Service Agents that had surrounded them.

  “Agents, if either of these men can’t follow my simple instructions and need help leaving the room, you have my permission to escort them from the premises.” she instructed, her tone almost daring them to defy her.

  “Yes, Madam President.” one of the Agents replied. The eagerness in the agent’s voice made Blackshade even more uncomfortable.

  Blackshade, thoroughly chastised, looked at President Silvia who seemed to be torn between outrage and confusion, “President Silvia… President Novatrix is right. I spoke out of turn, and I apologize for my outburst. It will not happen again.” he said sincerely.

  Silvia gave him a look that let him know he had completely forgotten he was in the room. The words, ‘Oh yeah’ drifted across his forehead to confirm it. To his credit, Silvia recovered quickly, composing himself so fast, it caus
ed Blackshade to blink, “No, I share in the blame. I should not have accused you of anything without proof. I won’t make that mistake again.” he replied coldly before turning away from him to address Novatrix, “Elizabeth, it won’t happen again.”

  It was not lost on him that Silvia had fallen quite short of apologizing to him, but after the lecture Novatrix had just given him, he didn’t think now was the right time to press the issue.

  Novatrix smiled at both of them, “Good. Thank you, gentlemen.” she said, before focusing on him again, “Ambassador Blackshade, before the outburst, you said you have a way to contact the Omegas. Can you do so now?”

  Blackshade nodded, glad to put the unpleasantness behind them, “Yes, but I’ve only ever done it once, and that was while I was on their ship… and it was not received well.” he replied, remembering Minder’s response. “Give me a moment, and I’ll try.”

  Blackshade sat down in his chair, closed his eyes, and concentrated on Tremendous. “Tremendous. I’m sorry to bother you so soon after leaving, but we have a bad situation down here that we can’t fix on our own. If you could contact me as soon as you are able, I will explain the situation further.”

  There was no immediate response, so he repeated his message a few more times, concentrating hard on Tremendous. When he opened his eyes again, everyone was looking at him expectantly. Soearth was the first to speak, “Was that it? Did you try to contact them telepathically?” he asked in awe.

  Blackshade shook his head, “No, or, well… maybe. I don’t really know. They put something in my head, kinda like the translation program that allows us to understand them. All I do is….”

  Silvia screamed startling all of them. Blackshade jumped to his feet, staring at the man as he clawed his way out of his chair and fell hard on the floor, screaming the entire time. The man’s forehead was a blurry mess, but Blackshade was able to read two words before he fell behind his desk, ‘NOT AGAIN’.