AFTER WEDNESDAY MORNING’S sunrise it was not long before the room turned bright but its brightness isn’t what woke them. It was that invisible woman’s voice on the speaker blaring, “All designated members of Acting President Jared’s ExCom 2 please report to the Solarium at eight a.m. All designated members of Acting President Jared’s ExCom 2 please report to the Solarium at eight a.m.”
They both jolted as soon as the word “Solarium” was said for the first time. Then they stared into the other’s face, no more than inches apart. Admiral Kaylin quickly looked at his wrist watch then took his arm from around Traci. Traci gave a contented smile and closed her eyes again, but not Admiral Kaylin. He jumped up and quickly assembled himself.
“Can’t we stay for a while?” She was not in any hurry at all.
“Traci. It’s seven-thirty. Do you want the whole committee to come here and see us? And President Jared?”
“How much time does that give us?”
“No time at all. They’ll be here in less than a half hour. I have to get cleaned up quick; I have to straighten this place up, and you have to vamoose.”
“Do you want me to go?” Only a woman.
“No. No. I don’t want you to go, but you have to go.”
“You think?”
“I know!”
It came to be that she straightened up the place before leaving since most of the clutter was due to her clothes being scattered all over the floor. Admiral Kaylin unashamedly gave her the empty cafeteria bags to take out with her, then began the torture of competing with the hands of his watch as he went about the hurried tasks of cleaning himself up, shaving, and looking somewhat respectable as anyone would want to look should the world be scheduled to end in short time with other people around.
Then he saw it. On the table in front of the lounge chairs was the envelope he marked “Eyes Only: President Eli Jared.” It was now five minutes before eight o’clock and he had failed to deliver it. Too late. Two members of ExCom 2 came in the Solarium. Admiral Kaylin had to act as though he came in minutes before them. They looked so respectable.
They were followed by the entrance of Eli Jared. The two members who preceded him looked at the view through the window with expressions of amazement.
“Admiral?” Eli Jared said which meant “hello.”
“Mister President,” Admiral Kaylin responded in the appropriate way of answering the short greeting.
And then Eli Jared started sniffing, and then he started pacing while he was sniffing. He walked around the room. Then he looked at Admiral Kaylin. Neither one said anything until Eli Jared said, very softly, “I didn’t get your advice, Admiral.”
“Oh, I know, sir. I have it right here. I brought it with me. It took a little longer to write than I hoped,” and he handed him the envelope.
Eli Jared grunted and looked at the envelope in his hand. “It says ‘Eyes Only.’ It should say ‘Eye Only.’ You know, I only have one of them.” He pointed to his right eye. Then he pointed to his left eye. “You probably never noticed but I have a patch.” Then he felt around the area of his face near the top left of his nose, but, of course, the patch wasn’t over his left eye; it was on his forehead. He quickly pulled it down to cover his left eye. “See? I have a patch. Blind. The eye is blind.”
Admiral Kaylin smiled. “I know, sir.”
Then the door opened and other members of ExCom 2 came in. They walked all around the room, looking at the surprising view of a rainy day in Virginia’s mountains in what appeared to be the outside. They murmured among themselves about the view, thinking the view was really the outside. Then a stranger came in; a young man of medium height with black hair and thin-rimmed glasses, dressed in a dark blue sports jacket and gray slacks. His face and manner had a unique look of depth that perceptive people could recognize in an instant. It was as though he was thinking of things they weren’t thinking.
Eli Jared looked at the guests and nodded. “Sit down! Sit down! Sit down! Sit down! I read all your reports or whatever they are. Your advice. I read all of them except Kaylin’s here. I just got Kaylin’s. He was late. He just gave it to me. Let me read Kaylin’s advice. Then we’ll talk.” It was the first time Admiral Kaylin heard Eli Jared say his name without the preface of ‘Admiral.’ Eli Jared plopped down on the same lounge chair that had been taken by Traci Howe. No one was sitting next to him. “It seems Kaylin had other things to do rather than get the paper in to me on time.”
For the first time Admiral Kaylin became a target. All his colleagues looked at him or at least glanced at him. If Eli Jared showed disapproval, they would show disapproval.
Eli Jared looked at the young stranger. “Wayne—come here, boy.” He patted the chair next to him where Admiral Kaylin sat last night with Traci Howe. Wayne Stuart sat there while Eli Jared tore open the envelope given to him previously by Admiral Kaylin. Then he unfolded the yellow legal-sized papers from the envelope. Everyone was quiet as he read the papers by holding them only inches away from his right eye. Then he tossed them down on the floor. “What the devil is this about, Kaylin?”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“What you wrote on the last page. Here. Here. Wait.” And he leaned down, picked up the pages and found the last one and put it near his right eye. “‘Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.’”
“That’s Shakespeare, sir. I wanted to wrap it up that way. It summarized what I had written.”
“Shakespeare! Very Harvard of you.”
“I didn’t go to Harvard, sir. I went to Annapolis.”
“Good! That’s good! But I’m not going to take your advice.” Some of the others looked a little smug until Eli Jared added, “And I’m not going to take any of the advice that any of you wrote. Do you know why? Because all you showed was your willingness to die and I don’t think you have much choice, judging from your advice. It’s very noble to say we have to die in one way or another and that’s all we can do. This may surprise you but I have no interest in volunteering death. Not yours, not mine, not one American’s. I wanted creative ideas, not papers on the value of martyrdom. If we have to die to win, that’s one thing. That’s worth it. But no one is suggesting winning. There isn’t one idea here about how to win. They’re all ideas on how to die. It’s how to lose with our boots on. I don’t care if we die with our boots on or are barefoot. Let’s win this thing.”
There was silence and there were some nods.
“But thank God one person has a solution. One person is creative enough to have thought this through before it ever happened. Gentlemen, I want you to meet Wayne Stuart. He isn’t a member of Sebotus. He’s on the Sebotus staff. He met with me last night and we talked until early morning while you were all sleeping. I invited him here this morning. Gentlemen, take a look through the windows that surround us here. What you are looking at is an illusion created by Wayne Stuart. You’re not looking at the outside. You’re not even looking at a third-dimensional image. It’s flat. It is all a fake. A fake. A magnificent fraud.”
There were looks and even sounds of astounded reaction. Among those present, only President Jared, Admiral Kaylin, and, of course, Wayne Stuart had ever been in the Solarium before. “Those are no more the mountains of Virginia than I am. And that is no more rain in the Shenandoah Valley than it is—than it is—I don’t know—than it is sand in . . . sand in the Sahara Desert. It is the work of an artist whose paints and brushes are mixed with imagination, photography, skill, and computers. Mr. Stuart. It all comes out of the mind of Mr. Stuart. This view has been here for six years. When it was completed, President Wadsworth invited me up here to see this room and to see what Wayne Stuart had created. I was absolutely dazzled. After I left here that day I thought about what Mr. Stuart had created and I thought about what he might do next, based on what he already did here—and based on my experiences with General Daniel Graham and Buzz Aldrin many years ago—the end of the 1970s when Dan Graham came up with his idea of High Frontier utilizing some 432 satellites. It wasn’t for something like this—it was for a missile defense system but some of the elements of his idea seemed to me they could be applicable here. Graham’s idea gave birth to Reagan’s program for his Strategic Defense Initiative. So after I saw what Mr. Stuart did here, that memory of Graham kept rattling around in my head and about a week later—maybe a couple days more—I asked him to come to the White House to the office that President Wadsworth was kind enough to let me use when an occasion arose. I told Mr. Stuart I had a far-fetched idea for him to consider. At least it was far-fetched at the time. But I knew I was talking to a creative genius, so ‘far-fetched’ wouldn’t mean anything to him. He said he would work on it. He was excited,” and he looked at Wayne Stuart. “Weren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Eli Jared looked back at the others. “I expressed to him this thought: Since 9-11 we have lived at a time when there has been a surrealistic superimposure of the dark ages and space-age technology. They live together. Islamist terrorists video-taped beheadings to exhibit around the world; we read text messages on a Blackberry regarding a missile attack on Haifa; cell-phones were used to detonate explosives; terrorists used internet websites for indoctrination; in the comfort of our living rooms we watched satellite transmissions of combat as it took place; and periodically we heard newly released audio tapes of the victims of attacks. Let’s let technology work for us and not for them. Not for what they want us to see and hear, but what we want them to see and hear.
“In foreign policy there are times for everything. There are times for diplomacy, times for economic threats, times for military engagements, times for covert actions, and times for artistry. And so you have the State Department for diplomacy, the Commerce Department for economic threats, the Pentagon for military engagements, and the CIA for covert actions. There’s nothing for artistry. And so we created it. Not we, but Mr. Stuart did. As for me, all I did was give the nod and say ‘go ahead, Mr. Stuart.’
“You’ll hear the idea in a second. We both knew that people in the bureaucracy and in the congress would say we were crazy. We, therefore, knew the importance of keeping it secret and we did exactly that. If one other person knew, it would no longer be a secret—not in this town. Maybe not in any town. And so Mr. Stuart couldn’t tell anyone; not even the people he worked for here at Sebotus Headquarters.
“I told him that once before the United States used technology to its fullest in a grand piece of inventiveness. In 1961 President Kennedy said that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade was out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. At the time it was so crazy—so outrageous. No one knew how it could be done. At that time, in fact just twenty days earlier our largest accomplishment in space was nothing more than sending a man, Alan Shepherd, up into space and back down again—not even in orbit. He went up and down. No more. And the Mercury space capsule he was in fit him like a suit. No room for anything. But President Kennedy not only had the guts to initiate a lunar mission, but he set a deadline on that imaginative and untried idea. He had the help of the greatest rocket scientist of the time—Werner von Braun. And so the deadline was set to go to the moon before the decade was out.
“To do it, for the first time in history, inventions were scheduled—scheduled to achieve his goal. All of that because President Kennedy said ‘do it!’ They had to invent one thing by March of 1962, something else by December of ’62, another invention by August of 1963, something else by some date in 1964, ’65, ’66, ’67, ’68, ’69—before the clocks turn to 1970. And it was done. The goal was achieved in 1969 with Apollo 11. Before the decade was out man was on the moon and returned safely to the earth. Artistry. Creativity. Far-fetched. The impossible was done. Buck Rogers, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells had become Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.
“Now let me take you to when Mr. Stuart finished what you’re looking at here in the Solarium. There was something to do before this decade was out. And Wayne Stuart would have to be the inventor—the Werner von Braun of our time. And with no position of authority at all I had to copy President Kennedy by simply saying—do it.
“I promised him,” and he looked over again at Wayne Stuart, “that I would stay out of your hair. And I did stay out of your hair, didn’t I?”
“Yes, sir.”
Eli Jared looked away from him to rescan the others. “You know why I stayed out of his hair? Something I learned when I was just a boy. I learned it in high school from an art teacher; Mr. Pratt, who was telling the class how important it is to leave creative people alone and not to bother them. Now I’m not one to quote historical figures. I leave that up to Admiral Harvard here to do that,” and he took a quick glance at Admiral Kaylin. “But Mr. Pratt told us that when Diogenes was visited by Alexander the Great, Alexander asked him if he could do anything for him. Mr. Pratt said that Diogenes is quoted as answering Alexander by saying, ‘Only stand out of my light.’
“Now, I’m the first to admit I’m no Alexander but the lesson was learned. So I left Mr. Stuart alone. And he did it. No permission, no authority, no conversation, but he took it on his own to go on to what we discussed. He recorded his costs to the Sebotus Accounting Office as ‘miscellaneous’ and sometimes to ‘computer repair’ or what other categories did you use?” Eli Jared looked back at Wayne Stuart.
Wayne Stuart answered, “I used ‘canvas supplies’ and ‘hard disk upgrades’ and ‘scanning operations’ and ‘Microsoft coordination.’ I guess they were things that wouldn’t be understood but wouldn’t be questioned.”
“You mean you made up things with terms that would escape the notice of your superiors, right?”
“That’s right. And I used a lot of initials that had no meaning. R.D.L.’s and F.F.P.’s. People in government hate to admit they don’t know what something means. Particularly initials or acronyms.”
Then Eli Jared looked away from Wayne Stuart and gave quick glances to each of the others. “He lied. He knew no one would approve what he was doing, such wild thinking that he was working on. Insubordination? Absolutely. He’s an insubordinate who chose insubordination over the death of the nation. God love him.” Then he looked back at Wayne Stuart. “Mr. Stuart, tell all of us what you’ve accomplished, boy.” Then he again scanned the group of men. “We’ll find out if we execute him for defrauding the Sebotus Accounting Department or if we give him the Medal of Freedom.”
Wayne Stuart took the floor like a professional. He was so sure of his subject that he had no reason to be uneasy, no matter the significance of his audience. “It’s not what I accomplished. If it wasn’t for that idea of Mr. Jared after he saw what we had already done, and if it wasn’t for a great team of those who worked on it without any of my team ever questioning what it was for, it wouldn’t have been done. The team I put together had already been cleared by Sebotus Security for other things—they had worked with me on this room and the view that surrounds us now.
“To understand the proposal, take a look at that view. That’s what I invited Mr. Jared to see six years ago. Right after that is when he presented his idea to me. Let me first explain the view here as you can see it. Just like you can see rain right now and you can see every tree swaying separate and apart from the others, I can cast any other images in superimposure. I can cast the image of hundreds, even thousands of soldiers coming forward from the horizon with weapons that appear to be firing. I can fill the sky with combat aircraft. I can have missile nosecones appear to enter the atmosphere and come down on earth all the way to produce mushroom clouds that look like nuclear explosions in the distance or closer than the distance. I can duplicate the illusions of dark skies coming over the horizon and gas clouds moving toward the enemy.
“And that’s what we have done. All of this has now been programmed by my team. The illusion is as believable as the view of Shenandoah Valley from this window. This window’s view was done with the technology that existed in those years. These files are far superior.” And he reached in his breast pocket of his suit and pulled out a small black plastic case.
“All of what I just described now exists on this external hard drive.”
After a long quiet, Vice President Mapes asked, “Can you give us a demonstration here?”
“Yes, I can but I won’t. President Jared told me last night that he didn’t want to take a chance on a demonstration for him or anyone else because he isn’t sure what the enemy knows about our capabilities or if they’re able to delve into our system. There is no value to an extraneous preview. President Jared said that if he orders us to go ahead on this, sight unseen, it will either be effective or it will fail. If it is effective, it will speak for itself. If it fails, we will be no better off then before the order was given. Did I quote you right, Mister President?”
President Jared nodded. “You quoted me right on the nose, Mr. Stuart. Go on. Keep explaining.”
“A friend of mine, Mort McClure, who is one of those who helped me on the political angle of all this, suggested to me that it’s possible that in case of sudden attack on the United States, all contingency headquarters might be destroyed or beyond our ability to communicate depending on what the enemy would do. He was quite a prophet. Now I can’t get hold of Mort. Maybe they killed him. He was an older guy who was once a low-level appointee with the Department of Defense back in the 1980s in the Reagan Administration and went on to travel the world throughout most of his adult life and knew people everywhere. Without telling him why—and he never asked—I told him I wanted a list of people he knew throughout the world who would have his absolute trust; who knew current technology and would keep up with it, and most of all, who would put liberty above all. He used eighteen months getting hold of individuals throughout various specified cities of the world and then compiled for me a list of their names and backgrounds and priority of trust, along with their computer codes. He gave me the list. I contacted the best of them as soon as we got wind that a crisis could be in store. I told them it was uncertain but to stand-by until they heard more from me, and to be in contact with chiefs of any of our armed forces in their local areas, if there were any. I don’t want to give the impression that no one knows about all this, but no one knows about this in its entirety including its world-wide scope. I’m not even telling you all the cities involved. No reason to do that. Everything was on an absolute need-to-know basis but I have to admit, a lot of trust has gone into this.”
Again he held up the small plastic case. “If these files are downloaded to those people throughout the world and if they can launch them correctly—I am certain they could cause panic of the enemy, and at a minimum the enemy can be disoriented and diverted, and if our own armed forces and allied armed forces still exist even in small numbers and then come into play, I believe and, more important, President Jared believes that some of the enemy revolutionary forces can be wiped out. It depends on our troop strength and our weaponry that might still exist and the ability of our armed forces and allied armed forces to take advantage of the moment. I repeat, that is—if some of our own armed forces and allied armed forces still exist. It’s something we don’t know. What we are doing is providing what President Jared calls the forward troops—the most massive and imaginary forward troops in history. Right behind them will be the real ones. The enemy does have to have someone to whom they can surrender.
“President Jared believes our armed forces do exist and are still fighting. If so, our underground knows how to contact them and will contact them as soon as they receive the files from me for them to download. Those chiefs of U.S. armed forces have already been contacted by our underground before the crisis began, on an ‘only if it happens’ basis. I re-contacted them just hours ago after meeting with President Jared—but still on a ‘maybe’ basis.
“Remember, these files don’t have to be sent from here to any Contingency Headquarters or any Command Centers or anyone connected with any government. The people on the list are part of what we call our underground. We set up a private network. And it is operational. Of course, it goes up to and down from our satellites.
“Any time I’m directed to do it, I can send the computer files up to the satellites and then down to the names on the list, directing the underground members on the downloading instructions in line with their own topography, and also giving them instructions of how and when to launch them. They should all be launched by our underground simultaneously so the enemy has no time to investigate and notify others throughout the world of what’s going on in their own locations. It all has to happen at once.”
There was nothing but silence. No one felt worthy of touching what he said. And what he said was even more astonishing than the view that surrounded them for which he had been responsible.
President Jared interrupted the silence by saying, “If I did anything at all to help you, Wayne, it was to ‘stand out of your light.’ Wayne can have this thing sent off to the allied underground in thirty hours from my go-ahead. The only reason I didn’t give him the order right away is that I wanted to wait until I read your advice in case any of it was better—and to give more opportunity for President Wadsworth or anyone in the constitutional line of succession to make it known they are alive and able to make decisions as president. None of your advice was better, and President Wadsworth still hasn’t presented himself nor did anyone in the constitutional line of succession.”
Secretary Brendon asked, “Wayne, doesn’t there have to be white screens set up at all these locales?”
“No. You’re thinking of projection. These are digital images that are not projected. If you want to think of it this way—the program offers a black screen, not a white one—it blocks out the real image that’s ahead of the viewer. What is really in front of them becomes blotted out; a shield that produces a transition to a new sky, a new foreground, thousands of separate pictures from which the people we send the download can choose. I will instruct them on what I think is best for their circumstance but it will be up to them. They will have a lot of choice of topography, armies, explosions, everything and practically anything they want to be viewed. That’s just a quick way to think of what this is. It is called augmented reality. I call my version a digital mask.”
Secretary Anderson turned to President Jared. “What’s this got to do with missile defense?”
Wayne Stuart took the initiative to answer for the President. “What I just said has nothing to do with missile defense. President Jared was just trying to explain what gave him the satellite idea to—”
“Don’t bother explaining it, Mr. Stuart. Forget it, Anderson. Now, let me ask all of you: give me your vote. You don’t have to understand it. You have to believe in it. It’s what Mr. Stuart said. It’s a digital mask. Do I give Mr. Stuart the order to go ahead? Remember, a ‘yes’ vote means in thirty hours he sends the programs out to the underground. Let’s go around the room, one by one.”
“Absolutely.”
“I should say, sir.”
“Do it!”
“I’m on. Do it.”
“Positive.”
“I’m for it, Mister President.”
“Of course.”
“Yoh!”
“As you said, sir, there is no down-side to going ahead.”
Eli Jared nodded. “Did I say that? Yes, I guess I did.” And he looked at Wayne Stuart. “Then I’ll give you your order. Go ahead, Wayne. And we thank you for six years of very dedicated work. And let’s hope it pays off in victory.”
“Thank you, Mister President.”
“One other thing, Wayne. I vote for accusing you of insubordination. You didn’t tell the Congress, you didn’t tell the State Department, you didn’t tell anyone in a D.C. bureaucracy and, in fact, you lied to government officials about what projects on which you were spending taxpayer’s money. So you stand accused of obstruction of justice, contempt of the congress, and perjury. And you even confessed to those crimes—in front of all these witnesses in this room. However, out of the kindness of my heart I am now also exercising my ability as Acting President to give you a full presidential pardon. Now, Mr. Stuart, since you’re a free man again—go ahead and win the war.”
Wayne Stuart was smiling. “Yes, sir.”
“Gentlemen, not one word about this to anyone. This is strictly on a need-to-know basis. No one other than those in ExCom 2 of which Wayne Stuart is now a member, should be told one hint of this. None of us know what the revolutionaries will do in the next thirty hours. Understood?”
There was a unanimous “yes” and “understood.”
“And so ahead of us is a countdown for some thirty hours requiring our patience while Wayne does his magic. To borrow a timekeeping phrase from our missile and space exploration terminology it is now—” and he looked at his watch and clicked a button by its bezel—“T Minus 30 Hours.”
“No, Mister President,” Wayne Stuart interjected quickly. “T-Time should be the time of launch. In thirty hours I should be able to send the programs out. Then the underground needs to have eight days before they launch the programs. That’s important because there’s too much for them to do and too much can go wrong. The time of launch has to be coordinated so that, as I said, every launch is simultaneous with the others. They need eight days. I have already given them the warning to standby, but no more than that because I needed your go-ahead. When I send the programs they need the eight days I told them they would get.”
“So we’re talking about another eight days after your thirty hours before these things are launched?”
“Yes, sir.”
“God, that’s a lot.”
“Quicker!”
“That will be difficult, sir.”
“Everything is difficult, Wayne. Everything. It has to be quicker. Every second that passes, people are being killed. Maybe every second thousands of people are being killed. More people are being tortured. We know that. Every second. Wayne, you have given this six years. Now every second means human misery.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What can you do to make it quicker?”
“I can’t give them less time after receiving the programs.”
“How about six days rather than eight?”
“It’s taking a chance. That’s quite a reduction of time for them.”
“Let’s take the chance. Now, what can you do to reduce your time before sending it off?”
“If they have to cut their time, I can cut mine. I’ll cut three hours from my thirty hours. Twenty-seven hours for me. I put in some safety for myself. I’ll cut three hours from my time.”
“Six.”
“Cut my time by six hours?”
“Six. That will give you an even twenty-four. Can you do it, Wayne?”
“So that’s twenty-four hours from now until the time of no return. Once the programs are sent out, that’s it.”
“That’s right.”
“Six days after that until launch.”
“That’s right.”
“We’ll do it, sir.”
“You’re not going to get much sleep, are you?”
“I planned on not sleeping for a long time. Now I can go to sleep a little earlier. I’m expecting some troubles after they receive them: some complaints from one of the underground who won’t be able to download it. Or for one reason or another won’t be able to launch it at the right time. Things like that can happen.”
Eli Jared nodded. “So what’s the new schedule? Repeat it, Wayne, so I get it straight.”
“I’ll send off the programs in twenty-four hours. They’ll launch them six days from then. So it’s a total of 171 hours. No, no. That’s not right. I was originally going to have thirty hours and they were going to have eight days so that was a total of—”
Vice President Mapes said, “Wait, Wayne, wait. You just made a simple mathematical mistake. You said thirty hours at first when you should have ended up figuring twenty-four. So you said—”
Eli Jared said, “Alright. Alright. I don’t care what anyone said at first. So what is it?”
Wayne said, “In twenty-four hours from now I’ll send it off. In six days from that time will be T-Time all over the world. So that’s whatever six times twenty-four is plus another twenty-four. Right?”
Vice President Mapes nodded. “That makes 168 hours total. Or, as you say, T-Time will be 168 hours from now.”
“Actually, it’s more accurate to start the clock when I get out of this Solarium and into my office.” He looked at his watch. “Let me start the countdown clock at 8:30 a.m.”
Eli Jared looked confused. “Look, do me a favor, Wayne. I’m an old man. I can’t count all these hours and things. Make your T-Time when you launch the programs to all the world-wide posts, so I can figure this thing out. Then when that’s done start a new launch cycle for the six days. So when you start your count, just call it T minus twenty-four hours. Can you do that for an old man?”
Wayne Stuart nodded with his frequent smile. “I can do that for a man of any age, Mister President.”
Secretary of the Interior Houghton said, “Mister President?”
Secretary Houghton was probably the most knowledgeable expert on the natural resources of the United States, and for that reason he was selected by Eli Jared to be on ExCom 2. He didn’t seem to know much about anything other than natural resources and he seemed to be drifting at this meeting. He was a man with eternally sleepy eyes with lips extending downwards at both tips as if to say, ‘Oh, I don’t know. What’s the use? Who cares?’ This time he said, “This is a good step, Mister President.” Then his lips went back to their usual disinterested downward position.
Eli Jared looked confused and said, “Profound! Profound!” Then he looked at back at Wayne Stuart. “Wayne, whenever you want you can be excused. Thank you. I mean that more than I can adequately express. Thank you, Wayne. And when you get to your office we will have twenty-four hours until—for all intents and purposes it is—whatever you said—passing the line of no return. Right?”
“That’s right, Mister President.”
“Then once we pass that mark we wait for six days from then—that will be a new T-Time. Right?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“That’s right. Now,” and he looked around the room. “Mapes?”
“Yes, sir,” Vice President Mapes responded.
“You seem to be good at mathematics, Mapes. This is simple stuff—this isn’t Einstein, so I want you to figure it all out for me so I can follow it on my watch. I need times. Exact times. Our time here in Virginia. I’ll know what time it is here when Wayne is going to press the button, but I want to know what time it will be for the next launch when the buttons are pressed around the world—our time on regular human watches.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That will be good.” And he scanned the room. “We now have a long period to hope and pray that nothing catastrophic happens. Any other ideas that we can enact, I want to hear them. I still want to hear them. One idea doesn’t preclude others. As I told you before, I don’t want ideas on how we can die; I can think of a million of those. I want ideas on how the United States and the rest of civilized societies can live. No matter that we have this magnificent, innovative and creative idea or if we have a number of ideas, let’s always search for more. And through all of this, we hope—we pray—that President Wadsworth is alive and well and is giving directives that win the war, making our efforts expendable and unnecessary.”