by Stephen Moss
“OK,” Neal said, moving on, “Research: I see Madeline in charge, of course, we couldn’t hope for a more qualified or experienced person there, but it is the field leads that I am most concerned about.”
He indicated the main branches that John had already helped them lay out. In some ways this team would be one of the easiest to bring together, scientists usually lacking some measure of the maniacal national pride of their military counterparts. That, and it would be a foolish scientist that would refuse an offer to work with the kind of fantastically advanced concepts and technologies they were planning on delving into. But many of the skills and categories that John had helped them define were of an ilk not seen by even the most open-minded in Earth’s scientific community.
Head of Tension Material Development. Spastic Elevation Mechanics. Pummeled Extrusion Weaving. Direct Spinal Interfaces. Extensible Manifold Lances. Those were the ones that were outside even DARPA’s enthusiastic imagination. Then there were some entries they recognized from the team’s early forays into Mobiliei science: Resonance Manipulation, Superconductive Shielding, Sonic Field Weaponry, and Subspace Communication. And finally there were those things that humanity’s imagination had managed to conjure but not yet realize, things that excited Neal’s scientific soul: Fusion Fuel Management, Gravitational Convergence and Dispersal, and Neutronium Lasers.
His mind momentarily narrowed with curiosity and a longing to devote a hundred lives to each and every one of these wonders, and for a moment he mourned the passing of humanity’s innocence and the loss of the pride that each of these discoveries would have brought if made on our own. The Edisons and Einsteins of these fields that would never be.
But he allowed himself to wonder for only a moment. For what was any discovery if not the platform on which to explore further? What would the John Harrisons of our future be able to grasp from this newfound plateau of knowledge? Wonder, grief, and hope mingled bitterly in him for a moment, and then he came back to the conversation at hand.
For laying out these ambitious plans for vast teams of hyper-catalyzed thought was going to be the easy part. As Barrett had so eruditely emphasized, getting the world to unite behind them as they moved forward was going to be the hard part. And move forward they must, by any means necessary.
Chapter 4: Estados Unidos del Mundo
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. If we may begin.” Jim Hacker spoke with practiced authority, and the room responded, quieting in anticipation of his next words. “If everyone could take their seats, I believe we are about to begin.” He looked around, a little nervously. The last few days had been hectic, disastrous even.
As the chief of staff for the US president, Jim had seen his world churn in the wake of the attacks on the satellites. After the initial shock of the revelations brought by Neal Danielson and his team, there had come the stunning but victorious attack on the satellites. But their celebrations had been short lived as the first evidence of the threat still among them emerged. The short but vicious firefight between the American Agent Lana Wilson and the team sent to subdue her had triggered a horrific explosion, an explosion that had belched tons of radioactive death into the coastal winds. Jim had barely slept since. Between coordinating relief efforts with the National Guard and FEMA, and helping quell public discord, he had been on overdrive, his acute political instincts flitting him from problem to problem, decision after decision.
It was not the first major disaster he had been party to. Not the first time he had found himself completely consumed for days or even weeks in a spasmic reaction to something that threatened his country, and thus his president, and thus his job. But for the first time he realized that his job, and this radioactive crisis, were overshadowed by something even more crucial, and the fuel that drove him to excel had always been his desire to be at the very epicenter of it all, not handling some subsidiary, if very serious issue.
And so, despite the thousand other draws on his time, and despite the fact that Red Bull and adrenalin had been his sole protection from absolute exhaustion in the last week and a half, Jim Hacker found himself here.
‘Here’ was a large, oak-paneled conference room in Camp David. In the room were assembled an array of extremely prominent personages from Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, India, and Brazil. The prime minister of Great Britain was one of only three actual premiers present, the others being the US President and the German chancellor, who had been on a scheduled visit to the United States anyway.
The other nations had sent various senior cabinet members, from the minister of the interior from France, to the senior envoys from Japan, India, and Brazil. Also seated at the main table were the US president and Dr. Neal Danielson. Jim stood behind them, while a wide variety of individuals sat around the outside of the room, somewhat cloaked in shadow. These included the rest of Neal’s team: General Milton, John Hunt, Madeline, and Ayala. And, among others, Shinobu Matsuoka of Matsuoka Industries, who had received a special invite from the Japanese envoy at the bequest of the president, and had also been called upon by Madeline and Ayala to attend.
Various other assistants and senior staff members sat in the wings as well, but outside of Neal’s team they all shared a common thread: they were all here because of imperative instructions from their country’s leaders born of an urgent request from the president himself, and they were all utterly in the dark as to where the meeting was going to take them.
Because of this lack of information, the room silenced with surprising rapidity, and the president took his cue. Nodding to Jim, who assumed a seat around the outside of the room, the president began.
“I must start by thanking you all for coming on such short notice. My staff have made me aware of the pains you have all taken to get here, and I wanted to express my heartfelt thanks for your attendance, especially considering the lack of information provided in advance about the subject of this extraordinary session. I hope what you will see and hear today will give ample support to the urgency with which this session was called, and the secrecy under which it is being held.”
He took a breath and looked around the room, engaging each person in turn, making sure that he leveled the playing field amongst the diverse spectrum of representatives that each nation had been willing and/or able to send on such short notice.
“I do not want to delay things any further, but before we get to the meat of the meeting, I wanted to also let you know why this particular group has been formed. In the spirit of complete transparency, I will tell you that not all the nations that were invited to this meeting have accepted. Most notable among those that refused to come without more information were representatives of Russia and the People’s Republic of China. I cannot say I am not sad they were unwilling to join us, as they will be an important part of the solution to what you are about hear about. For, along with those two countries, the nations represented here today account for over 75% of the world’s economy. And we are going to need to pull together if we are to face what you are about to see. Nothing less than a united front will suffice to deal with what is coming.”
He let the words hang a while, the dramatic effect reverberating around the room, and then he allowed his hand to rest lightly on the forearm of the doctor sitting to his right. Without turning to the man, he then said, “With that said, I would like to introduce Dr. Neal Danielson.”
The doctor nodded in acknowledgement, then slowly stood up and took a long look around the room. He surveyed each face in turn, assessing how best to begin, which tone to use, what route to take to the bombshell he was about to drop on them.
He spared himself a brief glance at the people he knew had already been informed. Shinobu sitting with a pensive frown behind the Japanese ambassador, the British prime minister who had been told in private by the president in order to help Neal secure the release of John Hunt, and of course his own team, who each had roles in the coming presentation. It was a short list but it was all he needed. He cleared his throat s
omewhat unnecessarily and began.
- - -
“Even if I agree that this threat is real, what you are telling us would require … mein Gott … it would require the mobilization of a planet.” the German Chancellor said.
Along with the French minister, she was one of the main skeptics in the room. After an hour of intense presentations by Neal and General Milton, the room had become divided into two camps: those that were vocally resisting the information being presented to them, and those that were sitting in mute shock from it. On the whole, Neal was more worried about the silent ones, because they represented an unknown. He could not refute an argument if a person did not make it, and he did not believe for a moment that the shyer members of the conference lacked their objections. He had a series of trump cards to pull, some subtle, some more obvious, and at last he decided what order he was going to use them in.
“You raise a fine point, Chancellor, if what we say is true then it is going to require an unparalleled mobilization. All the more reason we cannot afford even the slightest shadow of a doubt as to whether what I am saying is indeed true. So why don’t we focus on that first. If, after we have finished saying what we have to say, you still harbor doubts as to the scale and validity of the threat, then there will be little point in discussing next steps. That said, I think you will find that find we have some very persuasive evidence to show you.”
With that he turned to Madeline and invited her to the table. Her subtle beauty was a waft of fresh air into the conversation, and she smiled as they all sighed inaudibly, relieved at the change of speaker. But her sharp eyes left no doubt as to the intelligence behind them, and she took a deep breath and looked around them each in turn, as if to say: do not think me just a pretty face, my friends.
Her silent point made, she stepped to the table and placed a small case upon it with a black-gloved hand. She looked at the case, almost hesitatingly, and then returned her focus to the room.
“Good evening, everyone. For those of you that do not know me, my name is Dr. Madeline Cavanagh. For the last year I have been working on the cure to the virus Dr. Danielson has already mentioned. I could spend some significant time demonstrating how the cure works to show you just how advanced it is, or I could show the process by which it was manufactured, which I assure you is nothing short of miraculous. But I have decided to show you something else that I have been able to manufacture with the tools and designs given to us by our new allies. Something more … tangible.”
With that, she walked around the table to stand in the middle of the large U, allowing everyone to see her. Then, without hesitation, she began unbuttoning her blouse. The room was stunned a moment, but she turned slowly as she undressed, and underneath the silky material they could see some kind of black undergarment that matched the black gloves she was wearing. At first the room seemed relieved. The meeting had appeared to be taking a strange turn. But then, as the blouse was allowed to drop from her shoulders, they saw that the undergarment was not as it seemed. Almost as one they all leaned forward. They were trying to see a fold, a crease, any kind of texture, a shadow, or reflection. But there was only blackness. Pure, unreflected light, an absorption of all around it.
If the material was capable of revealing something of its shape, it would have been possible to see fine ribs, pistons, and spars running down the arms and spine of the strange suit. These ribs were linked by angular joints at the shoulder, elbow, and down her back that mimicked her own skeletal structure. But such details were hidden in plain sight, as the suit gave no hint of the way it hugged Madeline’s taut figure beneath.
The room’s fascination with her second skin was such that they barely flinched when she unbuttoned her jeans, showing that the suit enveloped her entire body, the same framing of joints and rods covering her hips, legs and feet as well. With a couple of flicks of her slender legs, she kicked off her shoes and the last of her clothing and stood there, black as blindness, her head and long red hair seemingly disembodied on her inhumanly midnight body.
“What you are looking at, ladies and gentlemen, is a suit made of the same material as the shielding that took our missiles through the satellites’ laser defenses. This one is woven rather than plated, giving it a necessary flexibility with only a minor loss of strength. It is light, the entire suit weighs less than twenty pounds. But it gives me more protection than a military issue bomb disposal suit.”
She let the statement hang a moment, and then she did what they all feared, and kind of morbidly hoped she would do. She set about proving it.
First she pulled out a lighter. Flicking its flint wheel, she sparked it to life, and brought the small orange flame under her right hand. They waited … waited … waited. Nothing happened. After about a minute of expectant silence, she walked slowly over and stood in front of the British prime minister.
“Prime Minister, if you don’t mind, could you verify something for me?” Behind him, two of the important man’s staff tensed as if to intervene, but he raised his hand. He was more aware of what was going on than most in the room, and he knew that if he couldn’t keep an open mind then he could not expect the rest of them to. He stood, and when Madeline extinguished the lighter he took her proffered hand, straight from over the flame.
“It’s cold!” he exclaimed, despite himself, a broad, childlike grin spreading over his face as he shook her black hand. She smiled in return, thanking him with candid gratitude for being a good sport, and then she offered her hand to other members of a now curious group. They reached out one by one and she explained as they did so.
“The material has phenomenal conductive properties, which means it almost instantaneously conducts any energy applied to one part of its mass across its entirety, taking the heat from a cigarette lighter that would have quickly burned my fingers and spreading it out across my entire body. I could not even feel a change in the temperature, any more than the lighter made the room feel warmer as a whole.” She looked around, sensing the room’s mood before she went to the next level, and then stepped gingerly over to the case once more. From it she extracted a small wooden board about six inches by six inches, with four long nails protruding from it, their sharp points facing outward.
“Heat is one kind of energy. When a bullet hits someone it carries another kind: kinetic. Its momentum is in itself a form of energy, and focused into a point that energy can be devastating. But spread out …” She let the sentence hang as she placed the board on the floor nails up, and without equivocation she stepped firmly onto their sharp points. The room cringed as she placed her entire weight onto her right foot, pressing its sole onto the large spikes.
But nothing happened. She stood there, the suit spreading the pressure out evenly, disseminating the needlepoints of pressure into a flat platform.
“I had wanted to do my final demonstration live, but I was informed in no uncertain terms that it would not be advisable to bring a weapon of any kind into such an auspicious gathering,” she smiled broadly, and for the first time that day something akin to a laugh echoed around the room, “but we did manage to capture the most dramatic feature of this armor on video, and I think we would like to share that with you now.”
She turned to Neal who nodded and smiled his friendly approval at her eloquent demonstration, and with that an image appeared on the large screen that had been used to show so many powerpoint slides earlier in the meeting. The room was silent as they watched an unknown woman’s hands load a small revolver with copper-tipped bullets. Without breaking camera shot, the scene panned out, revealing the woman holding the gun to be Ayala Zubaideh, a fact that was not lost on the French minister sitting quietly in his chair. The sight of her face banished any last thoughts he had of further dissent, though he would not share that with anyone. In her chair back in the shadows, Ayala saw his expression shift and smiled discreetly.
But the rest of the room was unaware of such nuances. They only saw with some trepidation a dark-set, serious-looking woman raise he
r gun and point it with clear professionalism at the heart of a black-suited figure standing not ten feet from her. They were in some white room, a laboratory perhaps. Shinobu Matsuoka recognized it as his company’s lab in the Midwest, but again the point was lost as suddenly the gun flared and Madeline rocked back on her feet as if the floor had shifted under her.
A moment’s stunned silence from the people on the screen and the members of the gathered meeting, and then the image of Madeline shrugged and laughed a little, saying, “Is that all you’ve got?” The other woman on the screen shook her head, also smiling but with eyebrows raised as if to say, ‘oh sister, do you really want to go there?’
Shaking her head, Ayala turned to an unseen table, her hands returning with a much larger, longer revolver. The Magnum looked ridiculous in her delicate-seeming hands, but she wielded it with practiced confidence, bracing herself and holding it up with two, outstretched arms.
Madeline looked momentarily trepidatious and then BAM!
The gun was significantly louder than the first, and Madeline was thrown bodily off her feet as Ayala rocked back from the tremendous blast. At first it seemed like the black-suited woman on the screen was crying, and the room momentarily forgot that the woman they were watching was standing, strong as sunshine, in the room with them, and fear for her life filled them.