Bush felt strange, and dizzy, and aware.
He had never felt this before.
It felt like a panic attack, but also there was an odd numbness, like his body was not corporeal.
The feeling lasted for several minutes, and all the while, Bush watched the fish and the lure, defying physics as they stood stock still – immobile against the river’s rushing waters.
But, he noticed, that was only an illusion as well. He could see a diffraction pattern, but the water was not actually moving.
Several minutes later, Bush was sitting in the water, near the shore.
He had somehow managed to wade there but did not remember doing it.
He felt fine, just disoriented.
He looked to see where Willy was, and there was a pile of clothing near the cooler, and shoes.
There was also a naked four-year-old boy, standing there, holding a pistol.
He looked frightened, but not from the fear of facing an enemy or adversary.
The boy looked terrified of something he was seeing.
George Bush walked to the boy, the fishing rod in his hand, all but forgotten.
“It’s okay, son,” he said.
“President Bush! Are you all right, sir?” asked the boy in a squeaky, childish voice that had a tinge of hysteria in it.
The boy dropped the pistol and tried to pick it up again.
George Bush walked over to him, and carefully took the gun, thumbing the safety, and assuring it was pointed in a safe direction, unloaded it.
“You shouldn’t be playing with that, son,” he said.
He put the magazine in his vest pocket, and the bullet that had been in the chamber into the pocket of his pants.
“Mr. Bush! It’s me, Willy! What the fuck happened? Are you okay?” said the boy.
He followed Bush as the President strode up to the door of his log home.
Bush ignored him, for the most part, but was troubled as to who had given such a dangerous thing to a child.
It annoyed him, that kind of foolishness. He was going to soundly mention that to whoever had been so stupid.
George Bush walked into his house and set the rod and the gun onto the walnut table in his dining room.
The boy came in after him and went to the telephone.
He picked it up to dial, his tiny hands cradling the remote handset, and his little fingers frantically pushing buttons.
“Hello! Hello!” he cried, and then put it down when he realized there was no tone. He watched as George Bush walked across the kitchen, and into the living room.
Bush knew would catch hell later from Barbara for leaving his gear in the kitchen, because it smelled like fish, and she would complain.
He still loved her, after all these years, and he had the amiable tolerance for her that develops with a long marriage.
He walked into the living room, where she had fallen asleep on the sofa, watching some foolish thing on that Netflix thing.
He rarely watched television, and she only watched movies that were her favorites. He had mentioned they could be invited to any number of celebrity’s abodes to see their favorite films, with the stars themselves in attendance, but they also liked their privacy.
Still, he had relented and asked the President of Netflix if something could be done. They had received a lifetime subscription as a gift, and he felt glad that Barbara enjoyed it as much as she did.
He looked at her and saw the woman she had been almost forty years ago, reminiscing about their good fortune, long love, and the path they had traveled together.
He looked and saw she was breathing easily, which was a beautiful thing.
Her snoring could shake the rafters, usually, and it was such a lovely day, and he could clearly hear the river and the birds.
George H.W. Bush took a longer look at his dear wife.
He shook his head, and rubbed his face with his hands, and then rubbed his eyes with his fingers.
He took off his glasses. His eyesight was perfect.
He was looking at his wife, and she was indeed younger.
It was not his imagination. Her hair was the blonde color she had naturally had when she had been pregnant with George W. Her body was more lithe.
She breathed easily, and naturally.
He shook her gently, and she woke, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, sensuous and mischievous all at once.
Then, she looked at her husband and screamed.
“Well,” he thought. “I guess I’m not crazy, after all.”
*****
LONDON, ENGLAND
Diana looked into the mirror for the hundredth time that day.
“It’s just not FAIR!” she screamed as she broke the mirror with an antique, sterling silver candlestick worth a small fortune.
With The Wave only moments from predicted impact, and as a precaution, her protective detail had insisted that she be moved to the most secure location they had constructed for her.
Below her memorial on the island situated, in the small Lake at Althorp, below the waters, was a hardened bunker.
Inside the bunker was a panic room.
Its opulence and size would have beggared the most luxurious Palm Beach mansions.
There were two entrances, both through hermetically-sealed airlocks. There was an area set aside as a last resort retreat for her, providing one final safe room, where the only people allowed inside were the original technicians and fourteen sets of two highly trusted and Elite cleared workers, who would clean and inspect the room.
They worked in pairs, each one rotated into another pair at random times.
They were constantly armed and instructed to kill the other member of the pair if they saw any deviation from the established protocols.
Each also wore explosive devices that would kill only them if they were detonated. The devices were monitored by Elite agents, which could trigger them if the workers posed a threat to Her Royal Majesty, Diana.
Diana had been urged to enter the safe room and decided that it was a wise precaution. She gathered her support personnel around her and entered the elevator to the underground bunker.
She was then escorted, by her armed entourage, to the entrance to her manse.
Once inside, she spent twenty minutes reviewing the condition of her surroundings, critiquing a few aspects that caught her attention.
Satisfied, for the moment, that all her communications channels were secured and operational, she walked to the hermetic door to her security pod and entered the combination.
She placed her eye against a scanning instrument and her hands on two separate pads. The biometric detection activated, and the door opened.
As she stepped into the doorway to the pod, she suddenly realized the air was shimmering around her.
She was half-way through the door into the pod, and frantically attempted to cross the threshold. But, she was suspended half-way between the openings.
Several minutes passed, and she found that she was seated inside the pod, with the door closed. She examined her surroundings and noticed that several people outside of her pod who looked vaguely familiar.
She couldn’t quite identify who they were, but some were wearing the uniforms of her staff, and others were clothed in ill-fitting clothing that indicated they were indeed members of her entourage.
A youthful face was pushed against one portal window, and she could see the man’s mouth moving soundlessly.
She knew from his insignia that he was the Captain of her security detail.
His eyes bulged in horror and disbelief as he looked at her through the protective glass.
She could just make out her face reflected in the window, and looked closely for the first time at her new visage.
For the first time of hundreds that day, Diana screamed in rage and frustration as she saw the reflection.
*****
CAMP DAVID
A huge controversy had arisen over the apparent age of the current President, and h
is ability to lead the country in the wake of The Wave. Lauded for his performance during the Global Missile Crisis, he nonetheless was effectively ineligible for continuing his duties under the current version of the Constitution. At sixteen years of age, he no longer met the minimum age requirements.
Rather than hold a prolonged and virtually meaningless series of Constitutional Conventions, the Supreme Court had made a simple edict that the current Constitution held the basic tenets of whom should govern, and how. The re-established it as the law of the land, and with that pronouncement, the Congress was compelled to find replacements for the chief officers of the country.
Evoking Executive Orders, and even Martial Law was considered. However, enough of the members of SCOTUS remained at the age of majority to retain their seats. Again, they fell back to the Constitutional remedy of just following the rules regarding the loss of leadership.
The senior members of Congress, who had both survived and were old enough to cast their votes, had convened an Emergency Session.
With the arrival of two men, both former Presidents, it was unanimously decided to allow them to regain the mantle of leadership for the United States of America.
The remaining Senators and Congress elected James Earl Carter, Jr. and George H.W. Bush.
The two men were then sworn in as the President and Vice-president of the United States of America.
President Carter convened an immediate emergency session of the Congress and directed that all branches of the Government of the United States of America attend.
The date was set. Invitations were sent out, and the members of government came to the agreed upon place.
The men and women, their physical bodies forever altered by Regression, and their minds and spirits forged by the determination and memories of their lives, assembled at the United Nations building in New York City.
There, they came to order.
President James E. Carter addressed the amassed leaders and ordered the immediate cessation of all hostilities against foreign governments, as could be accomplished.
He had a series of Executive Orders readied. Each one was read and ratified by the Assemblage.
As they were signed into law, significant changes occurred, both in the reach of the government and in its implementation.
Professor Stephen Hawking, concerned about the possibility of extinction of the planet, had written to Carter a letter that was to be every bit as famous as the one Einstein had penned to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt regarding the development of the atomic bomb.
President Carter realized that the future of his nation, and of the world, had been affected by The Wave. He had sought guidance from thought-leaders across the spectrum of science and humanities, from art and entertainment to the man on the street, the mother, the worker and the people of his country.
In response, Professor Hawking had written the guiding principals that from now on would aid the President in his managing of the brave new world.
Carter remembered, word for word, the intensely honest and grave meaning of Hawking’s words:
“Mr. President, there has been a paradigm shift in our way of life. The Coming of the Wave was an unprecedented event of historical significance. It’s passing has upended all that we have held dear to our hearts. It has united and divided the world in unique ways, the consequences of which will be felt in the decades to come. We have an opportunity to create a truly united Humanity, one whose lessons of the past have been retained by ourselves. We can learn from our mistakes, and in doing so, move forward with an earnestness that Mankind has never before attained.
Mr. President, I urge you to consider the import of my next words – it is imperative that I and others such as Dr. Groening are given the resources needed to develop an array of offensive and defensive strategies and equipment so as to protect and guarantee the survival of the Human Race.
We are all of us, affected by the phenomenon of The Wave. With luck and courage, and by the grace of Providence, we shall one day be able to cross the gulfs of the void of space.
We have been given a second chance, Mr. President. Let us not throw away our futures by ignoring it.
We have been given a Terminal Reset.”
THE END
BONUS:
The Return Of The Wanderers
A TERMINAL RESET RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY
By A.E. Williams
"The past is but the past of a beginning."
-- H. G. Wells
Chapter One
The hulking ship was slowing down from its long interstellar voyage. Built strictly for the rigors of spaceflight, its odd geometry hurt the ordinary human eye.
But, the passengers of this vessel had not ever been considered as human; long before life had reached sentience on the Third Planet, these creatures had embarked on an outbound journey from the Sol system.
Their alien physiognomy would have been repulsive to almost every sentient being of that water-covered world. Warty, dry membranes covered their hollow-boned bodies. Endoskeletal notochords provided locomotive geometry, the evolutionary outcome of a process that produced an interior core of glycoproteins. These cores were shrouded by collagen fibers, wound into two opposing helices. Not actual muscles, the divergent angles of these internal fibers regulated the pressures in the core, which allowed for the limbs to function from the shortening and thickening of the fibers, as opposed to the nominal lengthening and thinning that is found in biologics that use muscle.
Optically, they were more akin to snakes, sensing heat and sound vibrations. Their visual spectrum ran into the ultraviolet, but they had special organelles on their bodies, much as a shark, that detected infra-red wavelengths.
The living quarters of their spacecraft was permeated with a dusky, ancient smell of mold and the desert. The creatures were relatively long-lived. Three hundred years was not unusual for them to span before desiccation claimed them. Always they had fought a battle with hydration; from their ignominious birthing process, as an excreted worm-like being; through their metamorphic cycle, whereby they shed their wet outer flesh for a chitinous protective armor; through their mating frenzied middle age; and then through their inevitable death from vapor loss.
The ship’s name was unpronounceable to the human tongue, but an approximate translation that used phonetic sounds would be Urkses Beatnoy-Klardn. The ship was a Klardn-class cruiser, armed with formidable weapons for both offense and defense. Protective ablatives were strategically located, and the electromagnetic repulsion fields, powered by nuclear fusion reactors, provided ample protection from the dangers posed by particulates at the interstellar speeds that Urkses could attain.
As it decelerated from its journey, bleeding off the enormous speeds it possessed, mechanisms engaged that dampened the inertial effects of momentum and velocity. Long ago, the immediate necessity of imminent destruction had forced these Wanderers to create super-scientific machines and technologies. Artificial gravity, momentum retardation devices and converters that stored kinetic energy in magnetic bottles as a Leyden jar stored electricity were aids to mitigating the tremendous physical and structural forces encountered during space travel.
The crew was momentarily inconvenienced by being ordered by the T’truggl (analogous to a Commander in a human navy) to prepare for braking. Cushioning themselves in fibrous, semi-rigid sacks suspended from various support members, they entered a trance-like state of consciousness. A weird tonal sound emanated throughout the vessel, providing a focal point for them to attain the desired mental and physical detaching of their minds and bodies from the material.
The maneuvers that commenced were violent, and parts of the vessel collapsed under the immense strain. Silently, the crew stupefied and immobile, the great ship fell towards its target, a small moon orbiting the Fourth Planet. Twenty-three thousand kilometers above their home world, the ship began docking maneuvers with Deimos’ [1]. As it automatically contacted the subterranean computers housed beneath the reg
olith surface of the satellite, long unused coded transmissions brought defense systems online. The ship communicated via its sub-ether and radio frequency transmissions, verifying and validating key ideological concepts and symbols that the corresponding receivers on Deimos interpreted. The defense protocols were authenticated.
The vast ship snaked out mechanical tendrils towards the surface of Deimos, as the crew returned from their semi-conscious states. A sudden flurry of activity occurred, and several smaller spacecraft emerged from the Urkses. Only two of the ships were streamlined for atmospheric travel, and these descended towards the Red Planet below. The other vessel - an ungainly mass of distorted geometric shapes, planes, and towers – continued to sink to Deimos. A large opening appeared below it, and the ship fell into the interior.
The two space planes diverged, one heading for each pole. Called Ytrelk, these vehicles were designed to rapidly traverse any planet’s airspace and contained vast sensor arrays,
On board one of the Ytrelk, the enormous bulk of the ancient extinct volcano, Olympus Mons[2] appeared in the visiplates. Spectral analysis and detectors showed little of the expected life was present across vast swaths of the landscape below. Typically a great plain of life, the screens and monitors showed a large red sand and rock desert.
Occasionally, there were shlorg pods, but the stark nature of the terrain bothered the creatures piloting the craft.
The crew conferred, via sub-ether, with the Urkses and the other Ytrelk collating data and arriving at a grim conclusion.
Having detected The Wave far out in interstellar space as they began their descent towards our Solar System, their greatest fears were realized. They had observed the strange effects of The Wave firsthand as they passed the outer gas giants, Neptune, and Uranus. They had not heard any transmissions from their bases on Europa, Titan, Io, nor Triton; they worried that the inhabitants of those bases had not had enough time to flee The Wave.
Instruments reported that Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter’s atmospheres were all deficient in large quantities of organic compounds.
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