Federalize them immediately, that may cause some wavering and give us a little time. Their main weakness is that they take time to activate and they are not trained or coordinated to respond to this type of threat. By the time they get to their bases, we should be in full control."
"Simpson?"
"It's a bold plan and I endorse it. I'm working behind the scenes with loyal Homeland commanders to be ready when the time comes."
"Right. Any other questions?" barks DeWitt.
"Madame President, where will you be when this takes place?"
"I'll be in San Francisco addressing donors and loyalists at a fund raiser. Once the events go down, I'll do the customary national broadcast. I'll charge the conventioners with crimes and show the evidence Bunker is manufacturing. The usual crap about pulling together, the threat to our nation, a brighter future. Then, declare marshal law, Black will hit the Internet kill switch, and then we roundup all the disloyal media types who supported the Convention. By the way, how's the speech coming? When can I get a copy of it?"
"It should be ready by tomorrow, Madame President."
"Good. Make it sound sincere and spontaneous," she says, standing.
"Alright, thank you. That will be all for now."
The others all quickly stand, the honor guard comes to attention.
"Bader will keep you informed. We move in two weeks."
She turns, the double doors swing open and she waddles out. The honor guard follows, the doors swing shut with a thud.
The others around the table turn to one another and whisper quietly. The majordomo reappears and ushers them back to the elevator and the waiting fleet of cars below.
Monday, April 11, 2022
Above the silent prairie, the first rosy limb of the rising sun peeks above the flat horizon igniting a blaze of pink and saffron streamers. A gentle, dusty breeze from the awakening spring farmland wafts gently past the silent, stately, red brick campus buildings. Past the stacks of empty beer cans, scattered pizza boxes, sundry multi-colored undergarments, and not a few still comatose casualties of the prior night's reveries, all sprawled tastefully about the manicured lawns and shrubs.
Across an endless spider network of concrete walkways, returning bleary-eyed all-nighters stagger obliviously past dazed early risers groping their paths either home or to a dreaded sunrise class.
Time: 7:00 AM
A tiny, beat-up, plastic calculator chirps an uncertain wakeup plea, less like an alarm and more like a gagging cricket. Tiny yellow shafts of sunlight poke through pin holes in a crumpled black plastic sheet draped carelessly over the window of an old doghouse dormer protruding from the fourth floor slate roof of the ancient dormitory.
Jim grunts and stirs slowly. A hand fumbles out from under the blanket and throttles the alarm. Several moans, rolls, and a toss later, he finally sits up, blinks, rubs his eyes and groans yet again. Reaching to the window, he grabs the edge of the plastic sheet, tugs it down, and sunlight through stained panes floods in.
Jim lives in a disused storage closet in the attic of Bander Hall, one of the older dorms on the campus of the Fort Dodge State University. The attic is piled with old furniture, lamps, and mirrors, the cast off furnishings of nearly fifty years. From these Jim has salvaged the makings of an otherwise typical, if not somewhat antique, dorm room.
Jim's garret is near the center of the building, high above the picturesque columned formal main entrance. His window commands a view of one of the central campus quads with its crisscrossing ribbons of walkways transected by the inevitable worn shortcuts. A great red brick carillon rises like an Egyptian obelisk, glowing in the stillness of the early morning spring sunshine. Venerable campus classroom buildings, garnished in hedges, silently contour the misty margins of the quad. A few early morning joggers prance by while, in the grassy areas, the empty beer cans shine and sparkle festively in the hazy early light.
Jim gets up, grabs a robe, a towel, some soap, and steps out into the central attic area, beneath the crested eaves of the ancient building's roof. Making his way down the rough old wood floor, strewn on either side with historic debris, lamps, chairs, beds, and bookcases, he arrives, at the far end of the building, at a rickety narrow staircase.
At the bottom, he quietly unlatches the door and peeks out onto the dorm corridor. Seeing no one, he slips out and shuts the door behind him. A confirming click indicates that the latch is locked.
Darting quickly to the nearby stair case, he scampers down two floors and onto an intersecting corridor into another wing of the dorm. Walking more slowly now, he heads to the empty shower room for his morning ablutions.
A few minutes later, hair wet and dangling, he heads back to his unorthodox accommodations. Checking to see if the coast is clear, he quickly slips unnoticed through the attic access door and back up to his abode.
He finishes drying his hair, pulls on some socks, jeans and a crumpled sweatshirt. Sitting on his borrowed bed, he pauses, looking out through the dirty dormered window on the stirring campus below, and thinks back on the past four years.
Graduated from Algona High just as the economic collapse was accelerating, he pooled his savings from a high school job with the Kossuth County highway department, a government student loan, and a small legacy from a deceased great grandparent and set off ambitious and hopeful to college in Ft. Dodge.
Jim is twenty-one. He was a full time student until his loans dried up. The massive government money printing, along with zero interest rates wiped out his college fund. Then his parents divorced. After the secession movements began, Federal loans became impossible to get in Iowa and Federal dollars were pretty much worthless anyway. He was broke.
But did it matter? He and all his friends were in debt for life and the government had already spent every dollar they would ever earn.
His mother moved to California to stay with her sister while his dad just disappeared completely. Jim's assets consisted of a bike, some aging clothes and an old laptop. Getting a job was close to impossible after the government granted amnesty to another 60 million illegals.
This was not the economy to find work, especially if you had no degree and no marketable skills. While he could get odd jobs for short periods around campus, there was no way he could bring in enough money to stay in school let alone pay for his own room and board.
So Jim, considering his options, just decided to stay at school anyway, but in a less formal manner and with a somewhat reduced financial profile. He adopted his own, non-traditional, scholarship plan.
He and a friend hacked the Registrar's system so his enrollment bypassed the nominally required, but currently inconvenient, Financial Office authorization. For accommodations, the garrets of the old dorms would do fine and they even came with a ready and varied assortment of used furniture, conveniently stacked for the taking.
Back when he was a regular, fee paying student, he had worked part time for Information Technology Services (ITS) doing all manner of network related service on campus. He had pulled network cable through just about every building, office, closet, basement, tunnel and attic on campus and he had the keys to prove it.
Grabbing his old cell phone and wallet, he hitches his heavy key chain to his belt, then squirms into his backpack harness. Snatching sunglasses and a hat which he carefully puts on backwards at exactly the right angle, he returns out to the main floor of the attic, closes the door behind him and quietly top-toes off, not wanting to prompt anymore rumors among the paying denizens below that the building is haunted.
Heading this time in the other direction, he descends the other staircase at the far end of the attic. This one opens in a door at the top of the main staircase that leads to the building's entrance. Again, peeking first to see if anyone is watching, he slips out, closes the attic door behind him, clambers down the stairs and bursts through a metallic door bar with a clang and out onto the walkway leading to the student union.
Time: 7:40 AM
All around him, stagger
ing forth from dorm doors, all along the quad, on intersecting paths, a churning torrent of students merges into a patchwork bedraggled processional, heading to 8 o'clock classes, work, or coffee at the Union.
Keys clattering and backpack bouncing, Jim is immersed in the gathering cataract, parading haphazardly across campus.
Around him, in clothing at best described as eclectic, they walk, stumble, chatter into cell phones, nimbly text one another with swift, agile thumb strokes, or fiddle with their pods, earphone cables dangling.
They wear shorts, sweatpants, jeans, t-shirts, sweatshirts, jackets, bulging multicolored backpacks, hats backwards, sandals, flip-flops, running shoes, loafers and, sadly, more than one set of fuzzy pink slippers that look like bunnies.
They have long hair, blond hair, dark hair, bright dyed red hair, no hair, tattoos, earrings, and piercings.
There are jocks, nerds, frat boys, sorority sisters, farm boys, perky cheer leader types, game boys, the fat, the thin, the dorm rats, the zombies and the lost.
They all fall in step and lumber on in a carnival-like academic cavalcade. They are destined to sleep through most of the day.
From the top of the carillon tower above, a sudden whoosh is heard as the first of several great air pistons rams a steel hammer at an unsuspecting bell, the first martyr of the choral three-quarter hour chime. Altogether, twelve consecutive gongs resonate