by Sean Hoade
“Hopefully transient,” Tyson said.
“Just so.”
“This could end all our careers and leave us being average thinker at best,” Li said.
“Indeed,” Sibbald replied, “but it’s better than ripping your own face off.”
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, The White House
Event + 33 hours
President Hampton and her new advisor, Martin Storch, shot so quickly out of the Oval Office that her press secretary could barely keep up enough to repeat again and again that this was a terrible idea, that people were still going crazy and dying out there, that a 10 p.m. ET address was a waste because no one would be watching, that a 10 p.m. national address could raise a panic because everyone was watching, throwing anything and everything he had at the President, who wouldn’t stop walking so fast even for a second.
This new advisor, this Storch, and his effete assistant both wobbled a bit as they also tried to keep up as the President strode in a completely straight line through the portico to the Press Room. Finally, he yelled as the Marine guard opened the door for her and Storch, “Madame President, I am your press secretary! You can’t have a press conference without me! I’ll quit!”
“That’s okay—you’re fired anyway!” Hampton called as the doors closed behind her.
In the ten minutes before he started screaming and running into the electrified fence at the south end of the grounds again and again until he was a blackened sack of smoking meat, the former White House Press Secretary used every combination of every synonym for both “crazy” and “bitch” in as many ways as he could think of.
***
The assembled reporters, cameramen, and A/V techs in the briefing room were completely caught off guard by the President herself shooting through the doors without preamble or any warning at all, followed momentarily by Martin Storch and his assistant, Percy. Networks cut away from whatever they were showing as quickly as they could and went live to the press room without any explanation, since they had none.
The room fell silent except for the sound of dozens of shutters, and Hampton immediately stepped to the microphone and began speaking.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the press, citizens of the United States of America, a wave of terrible violence and panic is sweeping across our nation and the rest of the world. Or I should say ‘waves,’ since I have been told that this will be a repeating cycle as long as Cthulhu remains active and moving on planet Earth.”
No laughs came from the press corps this time. But, even though the President couldn’t hear it, several microphones did pick up a muttered “Holy shit” and a separate, very quiet “What the fuck?”
“We have no defense against the psionic assault from this Old One who ruled the Earth long before the evolution of the earliest land animals, but I would like to introduce my new advisor, the respected writer and world’s greatest expert on H.P. Lovecraft, Martin Storch, to explain how we can at least temporarily stave off some of the effects. Mr. Storch?”
“Thank you, Madam President,” Martin said, his voice noticeably sluggish but his British-accented words still perfectly clear. “Everyone who can see or hear my words, including you in this press room, must go immediately to any source of intoxicant you can find, and ingest as much of it as you can stand.”
The press corps stood as one and roared questions at Martin, but he ignored them and just kept talking. “The effects of Cthulhu’s superior and malign psychic waves upon the human brain can be stayed by the imbibing of alcohol or the taking of psychoactive drugs. Do it now, people of the world, people of America, everyone who wants a chance to live!”
One question came from the stunned press corp. “Mr. Storch, are you drunk right now?”
“You bet your arse I am!” he yelled into the microphones. “You all have to leave here now and start drinking alcohol, smoking pot, anything to save yourselves!”
There might have been a follow-up question, or the President might have retaken the podium, but before anything else could happen, the opposite door of the press room was flung open and Vice President Steele—followed by Marine Captain Berry and two Secret Service agents—stormed into the room.
“Madam President, you are hereby relieved of command under the provisions of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution—”
“You son of a bitch! You’re signing your own death warrant and that of the entire—” Hampton shrieked.
“—which calls for a President declared physically or mentally disabled to be removed from office and replaced by the next person in the chain of command, the Vice President! Gentlemen, please take President Hampton to a secure facility where she can be treated—”
“You’re going to die! You’re all going to die! I resign!” she shouted to the room in general, but in particular at the Secret Service agents coming forward to restrain her. “I resign the Presidency! Get your hands off of me!”
Every member of the press corps stood stunned. Not a scribble was made, not a sound came from any of the usually vociferous gaggle of reporters.
Algernon Steele smirked as he said, “Let her go. She refuses your protection, and she is no longer President. Escort her off the grounds. Let her go, I say.”
The agents didn’t really have to escort her, as she, followed by Martin and Percy, fled from the room.
Steele turned to the shocked faces of the reporters and others present, and said into the pooled network feed cameras “We are in a crisis. There is death and mayhem all around the country and the world. I am initiating a strong military response to this threat, and asking the leaders of the world to join the United States in this effort. We are going to fire nuclear warheads at this anomaly, this thing, until it is utterly destroyed. Only then can we start to rebuild. So, as your President, I ask for your support in this unprecedented response to an unprecedented event.”
But all the assembled press and anyone watching the news feed heard was “We are ...” because that’s all the time Steele had to say before every person in the room started screaming and rushed for the northern wall—which is the wall behind the Presidential podium.
Steele and Berry both saw that the three members of the President’s Secret Service detail also had started screaming and clawing at the screen in front of the north wall. The trio of agents assigned to Steele (and who had been ordered by the new President to ingest shots of vodka) were just able to squeeze out of the room before they would have been trapped by the berserking crowd and clawed to death.
White House Situation Room
10 minutes later
President Steele and Captain Berry took a moment to catch their breath after their flight from the Brady room through the corridors of the White House, which was usually thoroughly protected by agents and police but now were filled with mad screams and bloody streaks on the walls, floor, and ceiling.
The breath they caught smelled strongly of the gin that Berry had seen and swiped off a catering booze table. They were just tipsy enough to feel it, but tipsy they certainly were. Steele thought Hampton’s Cthulhu obsession was all insane bullshit, but he was a man who got where he was—and now that was at the very top of the world—by making sure all his bases were covered at all times. If alcohol kept him safe, then, by God, he would keep it in his system.
Berry looked out the window at the screaming men and women both inside and outside the White House gates. “What do we do now, sir?”
“Hit the canteen downstairs, get every bit of booze. Then we give this shit an hour to burn itself out and we haul ass back to the Sit Room, where we lay it all out for the Chinaman, the Russian, and the rest of them. I assume you still remember your audio-visual duties even after 24 hours and a million promotions?”
Berry allowed himself a smile at that. “Yes, sir, I do.”
“Just what I wanted to hear! Now let’s get a drink and call up some buddies … Major Berry,” Steele said, and slapped him on the back.
“Sir, I
appreciate it greatly, but why do I keep getting promoted? I don’t have any men or women under my command. Why am I a Major now?”
Steele cracked a smile. “You need that clearance, son, as we move up in intelligence reports. A Major can hear things a Captain can’t, let alone a lieutenant, forget about an E3,” he said. “Also, if this situation keeps going FUBAR, you will have men under your command as we fight this thing.”
The new Major closed his eyes and hoped (maybe even prayed) that he had made the right decision by throwing in his lot with the madman Steele. He had a sinking feeling that President Hampton, star-struck by Martin Storch or not, was right about this really being, somehow, impossibly, Lovecraft’s Old One. Fight Cthulhu? Or even just something that seemed like Cthulhu? Maybe 1,000 megatons of nuclear warhead would rid the Earth of whatever this entity was … but he had no reason to think it would.
He followed Steele to the Situation Room, which was where, Berry couldn’t forget, it was he himself who started all of this “It’s Cthulhu!” insanity. His overexuberance—not to mention that it was highly unprofessional conduct as a Marine staffer in front of the President, Vice President, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and most of the Cabinet—had just now brought down the gone-bonkers President of the United States.
But what if she’s not insane? Berry couldn’t help but ask himself. What if I just backed the wrong horse, mistaking Judy Hampton’s zeal for insanity instead of seeing it as someone having an ecstatic religious experience?
What if, indeed.
Steele and Berry were flanked by Secret Service agents, more than just a few short hours earlier, since this man was no longer the hawkish Vice President—this warmonger was the President now. They entered the Sit Room and saw just one other person seated at the long conference table.
“Major Berry, I believe you have met General Patterson?”
Suddenly coming face-to-face with a Major General of the Marine Corps almost automatically snapped Berry to attention as he whipped his hand up into a salute.
Patterson stood and returned the salute with a small smile. “At ease … Major, is it? It seems like only yesterday you were a sergeant in change of slide shows and sound boards,” he said, but it was friendly and made the President and Berry share Patterson’s smile. He waited for them to sit and for the Secret Service to arrange themselves in the doorways. “Mister President, as you know, the NSA is a data collection agency, not so much for data sharing.”
Steele repeated an old joke: “NSA: It stands for ‘Never Say Anything.’ ”
That brought a nod and a smile from Patterson, who then got serious. “The only time that epithet doesn’t fit us is when we have information to share with the President”—he looked at Berry with a you’d better take this seriously expression of stone—“and his chosen advisors during a crisis of potentially republic-destroying magnitude.”
Millions, maybe billions now, dead, Berry thought. He hadn’t looked at it as something endangering their very existence—in the story, Cthulhu went back to sleep! His mind screamed, but then he remembered he had abandoned Judith Hampton when she went all literal fundamentalist on him. Now, however, he saw this was very probably the tipping point for humanity’s extinction. As in game over. As in intelligent beetles being the next race to populate the Earth in man’s absence. As in cosmic horror.
As in the works of H.P. Lovecraft.
“So, Algernon, now that I am dealing with a Commander-In-Chief who can make use of this information. So please allow me to tell you about OPERATION FATCHANCE.”
Steele smiled at this. He always enjoyed how the military and intelligence communities had to name their projects something that had nothing to do with the actual plans—OPERATION MINCEMEAT and OPERATION PAPERCLIP being two of the most famous from World War II.
“You have heard of OPERATION STARGATE?”
The TV show? Berry wanted to say, but didn’t.
“Of course,” the President said. “Psychic program, remote viewing, clairvoyants, all that bullshit. Came to nothing in the end and funding was pulled in 1995.”
“True, except it didn’t exactly come to nothing.”
Steele sat silently, his expression now grave. “Is that so?”
The head of the NSA wasn’t cowed by anyone, but Algernon Steele had been a staunch supporter since his days in Congress, and he had Patterson’s respect. Thus, treading lightly, he continued: “The funding was cut, but it was reinstated secretly after 9/11, when some in the halls of power thought bringing in alleged psychics to help predict future attack attempts.”
“A slush fund to pay mind-readers.”
Patterson smiled at the comment. “Even with this continued funding, OPERATION FATCHANCE could never find an iota of evidence that ESP or clairvoyance or telekinesis or any of that … as you called it, bullshit. However.”
“However?”
“However. What we were looking for didn’t materialize in the way we had hoped or expected, but several of our monitored ‘psychics’ simultaneously got huge spikes in their gamma brain waves, higher in fact than any we had ever recorded in any subjects, no matter how ‘accurate’ any of their visions seemed to be.”
Berry very hesitantly spoke up. “General, sir, did these spikes correlate with a greater incidence of disturbing dreams among service members? Or complaints of unusual paranoia or aggression, especially in those soldiers and sailors in the South Pacific?”
“How would we measure anything like that, son?”
Berry swallowed and said, “Sir, with all due respect, I believe that the NSA or other intelligence agencies must have scoured the medical records of military personnel and civilian contractors for any reports of unusual mental complaints to see if they coincided with the period of the spikes in your monitored subjects. Any unusual creative or obsessive tendencies during that time. I mean it as a compliment, sir, that the National Security Agency has eyes everywhere and has full access to military and contractor health data. Was there a correlation?”
Patterson looked to the President with an expression of surprise. “Algie, you’ve got a live one here,” he said, and then again addressed Berry: “There certainly was, Major. In fact, that’s what prompted this meeting—the President needs all the facts before any attacks commence.”
“Am I that transparent?” Steele said with amusement.
“Judith Hampton would have us all sitting in a circle and sending healing thoughts to the anomaly,” Patterson said, “but you’ve already said you want to bomb it to Kingdom Come.”
“And I do.”
“In any case, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, and Coast Guard base hospitals as well as VA behavioral health wards all reported their therapists and psychiatrist fully occupied with urgent cases of mental distress and agitation. For 11 days—completely in sync with our OPERATION STARGATE subject seers’ and psychics’ spiking gamma brain waves, which accompanied mental distress on their part as well—the beds filled up and many personnel were given light duty or none at all. Then, as soon as it arose, the phenomenon ended and everyone affected returned to normal.”
“Eleven days?” Berry squeaked, again his mouth getting ahead of his brain. “Please excuse me for interrupting again, sirs—but General, it was exactly 11 days?”
“Not 10, not 12. Eleven. Is there something you’d like to share with us, Major?”
No, nothing I’d like to share, Berry thought as he tried not to show anything on his face. Just something that tells me how fucked I really am. “No, sir,” he said. “Just trying to calculate in my mind how long this might last. May I ask what the dates of this earlier event were?”
“Sure, but I don’t know why it …” Patterson said, but trailed off as he checked the records he thought would be relevant for this meeting. “Huh. March 23 to April 2, last year.” The date today was March 24, and Patterson couldn’t help mulling over this coincidence.
“Maybe it’s some kind of space-based issue, like solar flares, that we run into at t
his point in our orbit?” Berry offered, even though he knew exactly what it meant. It meant that former President Hampton’s literalism was looking more and more sensible. And he had run to the Vice President because he felt ignored by Hampton in favor of Storch. Jesus Christ, you called the President a celebrity-fucker? he muttered inside his brain. You just doomed the world because your widdle feelings got hurt.
“So Jack, what am I supposed to do with this information?” the President asked, looking at the clock on the wall. “I’ve got less than an hour until I see the faces of the Security Council on these screens. Speaking of which—Major, I know it’s way below your pay grade now, but would you be willing to get the AV set up for the meeting? I don’t know if they’ve been able to round up the sergeant who replaced you at the controls. Good man, thank you.”
Berry tapped away at his phone.
Patterson said, “Here’s the information that ties it all together, Algie—we triangulated the strength of the effect on personnel based on their medical and mental evaluations and found that if there were a source causing this perfect correlation, it would be located at—”
“Don’t tell me: Point Fucking Nemo.”
“True, that is exactly where—that is, within a degree or two of the coordinates of the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility.”
“This is looking more and more like the crazy bitch was right.”
It was unnecessary for Patterson to acknowledge his agreement with the President.
“That goes no farther than this room, okay?”
“Algie, I’m the head of the NSA. We don’t tell anybody anything we don’t have to.”