“So why didn’t you align yourselves with an existing political party?” David asked.
“I’m getting to that,” Milt said. “We knew that creating a unified force was the only way to get our candidate on state and national ballots as anything other than an independent—aka a no-way-in-hell loser. At the same time, we knew that, regardless of our financial clout, we had no chance of overlaying our vision on either the Democratic or Republican platforms. They want power for power’s sake. They don’t give a rat’s ass about what’s best for this country if it doesn’t fit snuggly into one of their philosophical boxes.
“So we, Envision-2100, started to cast our net in search of an existing group that we could hitch our wagon to. Did you know that, in addition to the Democrats and Republicans, there are over sixty registered political parties in this country, not including independents? At least that’s the way it was when we started looking for a suitor.”
Melissa twisted her head toward Milt and smiled with a faux bristle. “Now don’t go getting all male chauvinist on us, Milty.”
“Trust me, Melissa, I wouldn’t think of it, especially with you within earshot.” Milt grinned. “You get the idea, David. None of the existing parties came close to representing who we are or our vision for this country.
“We did find one group that represented almost all of our philosophies and values: the centrists. Actually, they weren’t a formally established political party at all; more of a semiorganized group with a loosely written platform that just happened to match, to a tee, what we were looking for. So we started working toward getting the centrist group and our ideologies legally recognized as a political party. At the same time, we had to be careful. Some of us had learned the hard way.”
“Oh?” David asked.
“I’ll give you some historical context. Way back in 2011, a group of moderate politicians and wealthy donors established a coalition that was dubbed Americans Elect.”
“Ah, yes,” David interjected. “I recall a few discussions about that when I was in college.”
“Several current members of Envision-2100 were also part of that group, myself included,” Milt continued. “Although they had a few vaguely defined ideas about how to change some of the laws in this country, which I firmly believed in, their primary objective was to eliminate the two-party system we have today. They failed. And they spent over thirty-five million dollars doing so.”
David nodded. “I understand there were several reasons why the Americans Elect movement tanked.”
“Agreed,” Milt said. “One of the key snafus was the lack of transparency concerning its source of funding. We cooed about being open and aboveboard with our philosophies and objectives, yet we refused to identify our major donors. At the time, our big-money supporters feared retaliation for daring to challenge the political machine. Still, that type of secrecy is a kiss of death when you’re trying to promote the concept of an open government.
“Then there was the palatial, ultraswanky Washington, DC, headquarters and the one hundred and fifty full-time staffers. It’s damned hard to sell a fiscally conservative agenda when your marble-and-walnut office building is crawling with Rolex-wearing, Bimmer-driving Harvard MBAs.”
“But many of their ideas, such as an online open primary election, were brilliant,” David said. “Technically feasible, way ahead of their time, but they just didn’t fit into the then-current political climate.”
“All true,” Milt said. “But something significant emerged from the Americans Elect effort: the legal establishment of the Centrist Party in the United States. As you know, centrism, under various names, has been around for years. It’s well established and successful in western Europe, notably Sweden, France, and Germany. Its time has come in the United States.
“Visualize a political spectrum.” Milt laid out his napkin in the middle of the table and cocked his head. “Maybe a diamond-shaped grid is a better illustration.” He shifted the napkin so its corners faced to the left and right in front of David.
“Now imagine this napkin is divided into hundreds of small squares. Each square represents an individual’s stance on any given social, personal, or economic issue. It could be anything—civil rights, welfare, gun control.” He tapped the napkin. “Over on the left quadrant are the liberals. Some may be on the far left, the corner of the napkin metaphorically speaking. Hell, some are way past the corner, off the table, over next to the wall. But for the purpose of my illustration, let’s imagine some boundaries and assume the napkin and its imaginary grid squares capture ninety percent of the voting population. In addition to the Democrats, there are at last count over fifty established, card-carrying liberal-leaning political organizations in the US.”
David wagged his finger and grinned. “Milt, you know that I minored in political science, don’t you? Or did your GS-Two folks get lazy when they did my background check?”
“No, David, they are uncannily thorough. We would know you had a tattoo on your left ass cheek if you had one.” Milt raised an eyebrow. “Which, by the way, you don’t.”
David blinked. How the hell would they get that information?
Milt opened his hands in a gesture of apology. “I felt the need to make sure that there was no question in your mind where Envision-2100 stands politically. And where we want our presidential candidate, hopefully you, to stand as well. So indulge me just a little longer while I attempt to verbally paint this party-platform meta image.”
“I’m sorry, Milt, I just wanted to make sure you didn’t think I had a brain dump when I was sworn in as secretary of state.”
“Trust me, I think you are the sharpest knife in the DC drawer. Although I admit, that doesn’t set the bar very high these days. But I’ll speed it up a bit and get to my point.”
Nelson returned to the dining room, rubbing his hands together. “Soon, cake.”
“Great,” Milt said as Nelson sat down again. “Now, back to the napkin. Over on the right quadrant, we have our conservatives. You know the right-hand-corner types. They fight any change of any sort. My father epitomized the image of a traditionalist. Old-fashioned, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ stay-in-a-rut folks. For example, did you know that there still is an active Prohibition Party? In fact, it’s the oldest existing third party in the country. Talk about political Luddites.”
He tapped the top center of our napkin. “Here, we have our Libertarians. Basically, these folks oppose any government control or interference in their personal or business lives. They run the gauntlet from being mildly annoyed with government meddling to the total, off-the-table anarchist. No-government, no-rules, batshit crazies.”
Milt’s napkin analogy and the way he was presenting it were oddly appealing. David could visualize the transition from left to right, from long-haired hippy to blazer-clad preppie, as Milt traced his finger over the crisp white cotton cloth.
“The bottom of our napkin metaphor is home to the Statists, those who believe, as always to various degrees, the government should have significant if not total power over the economy and individual freedom. Statists generally do not trust a capitalist free market, or personal freedom to any real extent. They rely on iron-fisted central planning and have zero tolerance for what we consider lifestyle diversity. A perfect example of a far bottom corner of the napkin, the Statist system, is the former North Korean regime whose demise you helped orchestrate.
“That brings us back to the area represented by the center section of the napkin, the centrists. Everything I’ve been talking about for the last twenty minutes was to set the stage for a focus on Envision-2100’s political ideology, who we are, our party and the party that we desperately want you to represent and take into the White House.
“In the words of Victor Hugo, ‘Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.’ Our time has come. That phrase may be close to worn out, but it perfectly illustrates wh
at we believe. It’s time to shake the shit out of the two-party, ‘vote for who we pick for you to vote for,’ back-slapping, martini-swilling system that has run this country since the Roosevelt era.”
Melissa sat up straight, fire in her eyes.
Milt’s passion was palpable. Not just in the tone of his voice or in the words he so carefully articulated, nor simply in his soul-piercing gaze, which locked unwaveringly on David. No, there was more. There was a dynamism. True convictions that had all but evaporated in Washington, DC, circles. But it wasn’t just Milt; it radiated from everyone else in the room as they, too, sat wordlessly transfixed.
Milt’s passion was contagious, and David felt the emotion swell inside himself as well. Despite his time in Washington, his bureaucratic immune system hadn’t made him nearly as jaded as he had feared he was becoming.
Mattie and Lucas silently reappeared in the dining room. Lucas carried a pot of coffee and a tray of sizeable white porcelain cups. As he removed partially drank glasses of tea, he replaced each with one of the cups, which he filled with steaming obsidian coffee.
As Lucas went about his task, Mattie prepared enormous slices of the coconut cake, placing one in front of David and four of the five board members, skipping Melissa, as she removed their dinner plates. David assumed this had something to do with Melissa’s exercise regime and its clearly effective, pleasing results. She looked like she belonged in an ad for Gold’s Gym.
Dessert signaled they were nearing the end of their meeting.
Using his fork, Milt whacked off a chunk of icing-laden cake, wolfed it down, followed it with another, took a sip of his coffee, and continued his monologue. “President Sheppard has done a remarkable job of repairing much of the damage that his predecessor wrought with our European and Central American allies. At least our United Nations ambassador can address her peers without getting booed out of the building. The economy is starting to stabilize after the roller-coaster ride that lunatic put the stock market through for four years. And we haven’t had to suffer a government shutdown since Sheppard took office.
“But we have a long way to go. When Sheppard steps down, and Vice President Phillips takes the helm, we go right back to square one. Another unstable nutjob staining the carpet in the Oval Office with his unique brand of distilled evil. We can’t let that happen, David.” Milt pounded the table so hard that his coffee cup rattled.
Everyone looked up from their cake; Melissa from her coffee.
Milt’s voice softened. “Of course, we didn’t anticipate Sheppard’s demise. Like Judson said, we were all set to coast for another four years and take what we saw as a lull to get our own ducks in a row. Fortunately, thanks to Judson and the other folks in this room, we had the foresight to start organizing the Centrist Party even before Sheppard took office. There is plenty more that we wish we could do, but as Donald Rumsfeld once noted, ‘You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want.’ Ready or not, David, it’s time to go to war. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
“We can’t wait for Phillips to fuck up what Sheppard has done and push us back ten years. The eighty percent may not know it yet, but they’re ready for Envision-2100’s party. They’re ready to become centrist.”
Melissa leaned forward, clasped her hands together, and cleared her throat. “David, a centrist almost always seeks middle ground when it relates to government control, the economy, and personal freedom. Quite simply, we don’t tolerate extremes. We’re liberal but not overly liberal, conservative but not too conservative,” she said. “We tend to adopt the ‘Golden Mean’ mindset. I don’t want to sound too philosophically esoteric, but Aristotle summed us up over two thousand years ago when he said—and I’m paraphrasing here—that the golden mean is the desirable middle between two extremes. For example, bravery is a virtue, but if taken too far, it’s reckless. And too little is cowardice.”
“Exactly right,” Elton said.
Melissa nodded. “Thank you, Elton. Eighty percent of America wants that middle ground in our government, in our laws, in our economic policies. Notice I didn’t say I think they want. I said they want. That’s a fact, not an opinion. Eighty percent of Americans want a hamburger jockey to earn enough to survive, but they don’t want a high school dropout to suck the financial life out of his employer.
“We believe in personal freedom while at the same time stressing what is best for the common good. It’s not easy. Too many times, government and business take the path of least resistance. They emphasize one at the expense of the other or totally ignore the other. I suppose it’s human nature, but our philosophy is based on a constant quest for checks and balances, dissension, and compromise. These things have to be done consciously and overtly. There just isn’t room for emotionalism or gut reaction when it comes to making our laws and running our country. Nor should there be. We’ve seen way too much of that, especially during the previous administration. But you know that. You saw that lunatic nuke a pissant country into the Stone Age. Well, in their case, further back. What he did worked out for us but at the expense of well over two million people. It could just as easily have gone the other way. Washington, New York, San Francisco, and a dozen other of our cities could have ended up as massive dark spots that glow at night. We can’t let that happen again.
“Like Milt said, for the past three years, we have been working hard to build the Centrist Party. We’ve spent a ton of money getting it established in every state, getting it legally registered by the Federal Election Commission, and promoting its ideologies to the public.
“Of course, we’ve used every marketing trick known to Wall Street to focus on our eighty percent target group. We even picked our party color by combining red and blue. Purple, that’s our color. We are both red and blue, Republican and Democrat. We are too conservative for the Democrats and too liberal for the Republicans—just like the eighty percent of Americans we represent. We certainly could’ve used a couple more years to grind off the edges, but in reality, we’re ready to go.”
“Here, here.” Judson thumped the table.
“All we need is a candidate,” Melissa said. “A face with a brain. A little experience but not politically tainted. Not a sinner, but not a saint. We’ve conducted thorough research, a personality analysis, and plenty of background checking. And you know what, David? You’re our man. We know you’re the one. Now, what do we have to do to make you realize that?”
13
Idaho Falls, Idaho
22:46 the day of
Joyce King was a little more than an hour away from the end of her shift as a 9-1-1 operator. She worked for the Idaho Falls Department of Emergency Communications, or IFDEC as it was proudly and prominently stitched on the breast-pocket patch of her blue uniform shirt.
The IFDEC was a multijurisdictional agency that served dozens of geographically dispersed communities in western Wyoming and eastern Idaho. None of the cities in its service area could afford their own 9-1-1 services, even Jackson Hole, with its collection of out-of-state millionaires. For this reason, fifteen years ago, the Idaho Falls City Council established the IFDEC as a public service coalition. It was funded by a combination of federal grants and dues from surrounding municipalities.
“Sir, are you still there?” Joyce spoke into her microphone-earpiece assembly, her husky voice tired and drawn from a long shift. She had been with the IFDEC for just over a year and was the most junior of the three operators on her shift. Like the others, she loved her job and thrived on the near-constant adrenaline she got dealing with the “front end” of an emergency. There was no such thing as a dull day at the IFDEC.
She focused intently on the four computer monitors on her new New World Enterprise Computer-Aided Dispatch, or CAD, workstation.
The monitor on her left showed a map that automatically zoomed in on an electronic pin indicating the caller’s location. Thanks to a government-funded program t
hat had added powerful, advanced cell towers in hundreds of previously underserved areas nationwide, and new satellite communication interfaces, cell phones could now be used and traced in virtually every square mile of North America. The CAD system used triangulated signal information to calculate incredibly accurate, real-time caller locations. This particular call had originated northwest of Shoshone Lake, more or less in the middle of Yellowstone National Park.
Joyce moved the wheel on her mouse and zoomed in. Another pin appeared indicating the location of the Yellowstone Caldera. “Sir, can you hear me?” she repeated. She shifted her focus to another monitor, which reflected first-responder locations and information corresponding to the caller’s physical location. There was no answer. Joyce tried once more. “Sir, if you can hear me, please tell me about your situation.”
No reply.
The first-responder monitor indicated there was a fire station at the National Park Service headquarters next to West Thumb Lake, about six miles from the caldera location. Joyce clicked the link on the screen, which automatically dialed the station’s landline. Seconds later, an automated message blared from her computer speaker: “The number you have dialed cannot be reached. Please hang up and try again.” Joyce clicked end call on the screen and tried again. After getting the same results, she scrolled over the map until another fire station appeared on the screen: the Hebgen Basin Fire District located outside the park entrance in West Yellowstone. She clicked on its number and was rewarded with a ringing sound. No answer.
Ten rings later, Joyce clicked on the emergency radio reference icon and scrolled down a list of repeater locations until she found the Yellowstone West Net, frequency 166.8750. As the phone continued to ring, she keyed her radio mic. “Hebgen Basin Fire Station, this is IFDEC, over.”
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