by JC Ryan
“As I have said before, I work for the Rossler Foundation, and I am here to explore the possibilities for a joint venture.”
“What makes you think we are interested in working with them?” Weinstein asked.
“Your conversation over breakfast this morning.”
The two councilors were speechless. Weinstein was the first to get his voice back.
“You mean to say you listened in on that conversation?” He was a worried man. If Jack could do it, others could do it.
“Yes I did, and I heard every word of it, I have it here on the tablet, if you want me to refresh your memory.”
“I don’t believe you. Show it to me,” Weinstein demanded.
Ten minutes later the councilors stopped him – they knew he was not bluffing.
In the Rabbit Hole, the ops team took their first deep breath and sat back to watch the rest of the show. Jack was about to hit them with one more nasty revelation.
“Gentlemen I don’t want to waste your time, but I was just wondering if you know about the work of Professor Barbara Cohen’s Science Advisory Panel? I mean, have either of you been to their headquarters in China?”
“We know about the research she is doing. She reports to the Supreme Council, and we get regular reports from her, but neither of us has been over there yet. Why do you ask?” Weinstein replied with hesitation, as he suspected there was another nasty revelation coming up.
Jack found the videos and started playing them without saying a word. He sat back and watched the two men’s torment growing to the point where they both shouted. “Stop it!”
“Are you sure it comes from SAP?” Weinstein was shaking.
“One hundred percent. You have only watched a few minutes of it. I have about six hours of video footage and over hundred pages of documents.”
Weinstein and Martinez were sick as they looked at each other and nodded. It was time to trust this man and have a serious discussion.
For the rest of the night Jack explained to them what the Rosslerites had achieved and what help they required. Jack revealed his real identity, and they were all on a first-name basis. The councilors had many questions, and they also shared everything they had with Jack and Brad, who’d finally recovered from his shock and was participating in the conversation.
Shortly before sunrise the next morning, Martinez recapped the main points of the discussions.
“Ruben and I will give you all the help you need. You just tell us what, when, and where, and we will take care of it. Access for your technical people to the Skywalkers, as you call them, in addition to the CHCU and all communication satellites will be arranged.
“You will provide us with the technology that will enable us to demilitarize chips so that we can use it until the day we are going to deactivate all chips through the Skywalkers. You will provide us with the blueprints of your EMP devices and nanonukes, which we will build and plant at stockpile locations and warehouses outside America and any place that you can’t reach.
“Have I missed anything important?”
“No, I think that’s about it for now. I brought along a few gifts for you, compliments of the Rossler Foundation.” Jack laughed as he took out the two pens of silence, two mirror phones, and a dozen spyflies that he placed on the coffee table.
“I see you came prepared and sure that the meeting was going to go down like it did.” Ruben laughed.
“After listening to your breakfast conversation I knew what to expect.”
Jack demonstrated how to use the equipment and then lectured them for almost thirty minutes about security.
“You should stop having face to face meetings - use those phones I gave you. Make up a reason for a disagreement between the two of you and make sure a few people see that, so there is a logical explanation for why you are not seen together anymore. If you are going to demilitarize chips, be very careful. You saw what happened in Austin the other day. Although it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, it could have turned out very different for us.”
Ruben, Rafael, and Brad paid close attention while Jack coached them and reiterated the importance of them not removing the bugs from their houses and offices.
***
Back at their hotel, Jack was packing his bags to catch a flight back that afternoon. Brad was sitting on a chair, watching him. He was still a bit shell-shocked from the events of the past ten hours.
“Jack, you son of a bitch! To think all this time you had me convinced you were an honest man.”
“Well, I have been more honest than you. At least with the councilors that is.”
“What do we do now? What is it you want me to do in all of this?”
“You finish your European tour as planned and when you get back to America, we'll meet again and discuss the way forward. Remember this is only the beginning. We have a mountain to move before we are ready. You are going to play a big role in that.”
“I will do my part.”
“Good to hear that.”
“I guess you want me to give you a name now?”
“What name?”
“The name of my family member whose chip you will demilitarize. That decision is impossible to make. I love them all. I would like them all to be free - can’t choose anyone above the other.”
Jack smiled. “Brad, don’t stress about that anymore. I will see to it that all of your family is taken care of as soon as I get back. As far as your own chip is concerned, I deactivated both the pain and killer bots that day in Austin.”
“You bastard! You had me living in fear all this time that the councilors or you might kill me! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Needed the guarantee of your cooperation, Brad.”
An hour later, they had coffee in the hotel lounge and shook hands. Jack left for the airport, and Brad continued his scheduled tour.
When Jack walked back into the Rabbit Hole late the night he arrived home, he only had enough time to embrace his wife and children before he was dragged off to the Town Hall where the entire group was waiting. They were on their feet in applause the moment he and his family appeared.
A new joie de vivre
There was a new joie de vivre amongst the Rosslerites since Jack’s return. The next morning, an encouraged ops team gathered in the war room to start the preparations for the last item on the Phoenix Agenda. All of the major obstacles that slowed their progress in the past were now surmountable.
Roy and Raj with their technical teams engrossed themselves in the technical preparations, while the rest of the ops team commenced the development of a detailed plan with timelines and responsibilities.
A ruckus ensued one morning when Mark indicated he had a request.
“Let’s hear it.” Sam invited him to speak.
“I speak on behalf of all the former military personnel and a few others here in the Rabbit Hole. Our request is that we be implanted with demilitarized chips, so we can get out of here and be part of the preparation work going on outside. We believe that …”
Daniel did not give him a chance to finish. “Over my dead body.”
“No, wait, Daniel, let him finish,” Sam demanded. “I’d like to hear all of it.” He nodded for Mark to continue.
“Well, what I was about to say was that we have the skills and experience that’s required on the outside now. We can work with Tectus and help them.”
Daniel had calmed down a bit, but was back on it immediately when Mark finished. He couldn’t forget how he felt during the first Antarctica expedition, when they believed the expedition members were all dead. He’d blamed himself for sending his youngest brother to his death.
A heated debate followed, but Mark stood his ground, and in the end, Nigel suggested that the matter be voted on at a community meeting.
That night in the Town Hall, Sam explained the request from Mark and others.
“Before I put that to the vote let me just see how many of you here are prepared to do what these men want to do?”
Sam was not entirely surprised when everyone put their hands up including the ninety-year-old Bess Rossler, Nigel, and Esther, although Bess’s hand in the air had him smiling.
“Well, the bad news is you can’t all go. The good news for those who stay here is that we have more than enough important work for you to do.”
When the laughter receded, he continued. “So I take it, then, that you are all happy for these men to go and do as they suggested?”
Bess stood up. “No, Sam, I don’t think we are happy for them to go. But if they have something more important to do on the outside, they should be allowed to go. One of them is my grandson, and I know the danger the boys are getting themselves into. We have all made a commitment to do our part in this - those men are only asking to be allowed to do their part.”
When the old matriarch sat down a few moments of silence followed before everyone started clapping hands. The matter was settled. Mark and his comrades were smiling.
Daniel and Sam were standing next to each other as the people were leaving when Nigel approached them. “Daniel, I have to say that grandmother of yours is a gracious lady. With a group of people like this, we can conquer the world.”
“That’s exactly what’s going to happen very soon, Nigel.” Daniel beamed.
The next morning JR, Mark, Doug, Peter, and two others reported to the clinic for the chipping procedure, accompanied by spouses with miserable looks on their faces.
“Oh, how I hate John Brideaux for this,” Rebecca whispered. Her hands were shaking a little as she performed the small incisions and inserted the chips.
She left JR for last, and when she finished, she stood back, wiped the tears from her eyes, and looked up at her husband. “Joshua Rossler, you come back to me - alive - you hear me?”
JR took her in his arms and whispered. “I love you more than anything else in this world Becca. I will be back - alive - I promise you.”
Six proud but sad wives embraced and encouraged their husbands as everyone watched in silence. The scene in front of them was yet another reminder of the seriousness of their situation.
Martinez and Weinstein gave their support and cooperation exactly as they’d promised, and more. With the additional resources, Tectus was able to expand their operations into the rest of the world. Martinez’s control over the world’s communications gave them an enormous boost in their efforts to access government networks to extract vital information.
Roy and Raj had the time of their lives when they got access to the Skywalkers, the Beast, and the communications satellites from Martinez.
Mark, Doug, JR, and others were welcomed by Tectus and immediately placed in charge of teams of former combat veterans, ensuring that all apparatus were positioned at all the chip warehouses in America, Canada, and parts of Mexico.
They were under strict orders not to appear in public, and if they absolutely had to, they must be properly disguised to pass by the facial recognition systems. None of them ever liked the idea of leading from behind, but they understood the dangers of being recognized.
Brad Johnston had a lot of time for soul searching after Jack left him in Europe. When he arrived back in America, he was a changed man - he definitely had a different outlook on life and his fellow human beings. He was ecstatic to learn that Jack had kept his promise and modified the chips of his entire family. He would keep his promise by doing his part when he was called upon from time to time to get the police out of the way of Tectus operations. He also got the help of Tectus to help identify members of the current and former law enforcement community. Across the country, these people would be useful in establishing and maintaining law and order when the current government was finally defeated.
During one of the musketeers’ happy hours, Nigel raised a matter he had on his mind for a while.
“The way things have started to fall in place lately, I’m convinced that the day of our freedom is fast approaching.”
“Let’s drink to that!” they shouted. Everyone lifted their mugs in a toast.
“I was wondering if you guys have given some thought about what happens after we have dethroned John Brideaux?”
“I have been thinking a lot about that.” Sinclair laughed. “I like this place, and I've been wondering if the new government will allow me to live the remainder of my days out in this place with my wife and buddies.”
“Hear, hear!”
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I had the best time of my life in this place with you and my family here. I can’t think of a more idyllic lifestyle.” Ryan remarked while the rest of them lifted their mugs with honey-shine in another toast.
“I feel the same as all of you, but that isn’t what I was talking about.” Nigel was serious. “We will have to think about elections and forming a new government. We’ll need a new president, Congress, and Senate. There’s a lot we’ll have to do.”
“Thinking of running for president again, Nigel? You’ll get all our votes. With everyone else’s in this place it should give you a hundred count head start on any competitor,” Sinclair joked.
“No, my time is over. I have no intentions of running for any office ever again. I am going to retire right here with the rest of you. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“So what are you thinking, Nigel? Who do you think will make a good president? It must be someone that will, on his first day in office, sign a Presidential decree that allows the musketeers to live here in this place as long as they please.” Luke smiled.
“I don’t want to influence you, so why don’t we all write down the name of our candidate, and I will keep it until the time comes to reveal it?”
They all nodded, and Nigel gave them each a small piece of paper from his notebook. Later that night, in the privacy of their quarters, Nigel opened the nominations, showed them to Esther, and they both smiled broadly – it was unanimous.
The ops team carefully plotted the progress of the field teams and slowly built the D-Day plan, which according to their estimates would be ready for execution in about three months. It was a multi-faceted and complex operation, requiring painful meticulousness. The sequence of each of the stages, the timing, who, what, where, and how had to be mapped out and considered many times over. There was no room for error.
With the increased level of activities, there was growing concern amongst the ops team that the potential for discovery was also rapidly increasing. Some were wondering if it wouldn’t be better if they speeded things up. However, Nigel was the one who reminded them of Martinez’s wise words – ‘Make Haste Slowly.’
Two and a half months had passed since Jack’s return from Brussels when Roy and Raj reported that the technical preparations were complete, and they were ready for the first walkthrough. Another two weeks of fine-tuning, walkthroughs, and demonstrations followed before the ops team was satisfied that everything was ready to commence execution.
It was D-Day -3.
Rafael Martinez, Ruben Weinstein, and Brad Johnston all received their final instructions and knew what they had to do. For the next three days, every step in the plan was rehearsed twice a day.
The ops team agreed it was important for everyone in the Rabbit Hole to be able to see what was happening during the last stages of the operation. Everyone had worked for this day, and everyone was going to see the fruits of their labor. Raj installed a projector screen in the Robert Cartwright Hall and hooked it up to a video camera in the war room.
Inform him about it
It was D-Day. Sam got the final confirmation from everyone who had dialed in via video conference and mirror phones.
He tapped Raj on the shoulder, “All yours, son. Give them hell.”
The code for the shutdown routine of the chips had been uploaded to the Skywalkers weeks before. Raj typed the command, and a few seconds later, he looked up to Sam. “It’s done - all twenty-four of them are downloading the shutdown sequence to the chips across the globe. In forty minutes, it will
be completed.”
Sam walked over to Roy. “You’re on next, son. You can take out the bots now.”
Roy leaned forward and pushed the button that would shoot a laser signal to the four mirrors, fifty-five thousand miles away. The signal would be distributed to more than one thousand five hundred locations where the free-roaming bots were stockpiled. Spyflies equipped with EMP devices would be triggered. Twenty seconds later, he looked at Sam.
“No return signals from any of the spyflies. The bots are history and so is the plant in Austin. Good job, Tectus.” Roy smiled as he showed Dennis and Eric on the screen a thumbs up, followed by thundering applause.
“Raj you can send the telephone messages out.” Raj nodded and got busy. Within the next twenty minutes, his voice biometrics system would have called every chip warehouse manager on the planet. It would be the manager’s superior instructing him or her to vacate the premises immediately due to an imminent bomb explosion.
Everyone was quietly watching the screens. Nigel was sitting next to Daniel, whispering. “This is way above my little brain. We are in the middle of a raging battle, and there is no noise, no explosions, no deaths, and what’s inconceivable is the enemy doesn’t even know they are getting their butts kicked.”
“Much better than the old battlefields with all their blood and guts, wouldn't you say?” Daniel smiled. “I don’t have the stomach for that anymore. Maybe I’m getting old.”
“Ah, buffalo bagels! You are in the prime of your life. There’s a lot you still have to do for this country.”
Raj reported that the calls to warehouses were completed.
Sam nodded to Roy. Roy looked at Peter sitting next to him and said. “Okay, Peter this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. Let’s start at the top of the list - those would have been evacuated by now.”
Peter held his index finger up. “Oh man, this finger of mine has been itching for days - this is going to cure it.”
Within minutes, they got the first confirmations from Dennis and Eric, who were in contact with their people observing the warehouses. Soon the video clips would stream in showing the explosions. These were the first visual evidence of the battle that was going on.