Chapter 25: Sheltering in Place: Asset Denial
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, you're less likely to need to shoot them.
Neon Matthew 6:14 (Unified Standard Edition)
- - -
"How did we not know about this!?" demanded the new President of the United States, Gerald Miller.
He had been sworn into office only a half day before due to his predecessor not having chosen a new Vice President before taking a voluntary exit strategy from the highest floor of the Eisenhower Executive Building.
"Sir, we're suffering intelligence failures across the board, with all due respect, this country is coming apart at the seams and we believe it's only going to get worse." The speaker was his new Chief of Staff: Rear Adm. Kerzowsky.
President Miller slammed his fist down on the leather desk pad in front of him, jostling a fine gold plated pen and sending a few papers scattering to the floor for an aide to scramble after.
"I understand that! But how the ever-living FUCK did one of our strongest allies not only forge a peace deal with one of our strongest economic enemies, but managed to do it completely behind our backs!?"
Another man ventured an answer, Stephen Carols, who was on the Senate Intelligence Community: "Mr. President, over the last two days we have lost numerous international assets, both clandestine and diplomatic, not to mention our own domestic troubles. The CIA alone has lost 12% of its operation staff, nearly overnight."
"HOW!?"
Carols hesitated, straightening his thick-rimmed glasses, and then answered: "Mormons sir, the Mormons are packing up and just quitting their jobs, abandoning homes, even in the CIA, NSA, FBI - you name it."
"It'll be on the news soon, sir, it can't be contained. We've been fielding questions about it from our usual contacts at Fox and CNN," Kerzowsky supplied, "They're still confirming all the details, but they're already calling it the Mormon Exodus. They're all headed for Utah like it's their Promised Land."
"Fuck me. You're serious? This is really happening? NOW? Japan fucking INVENTS a new union with China, CHINA of all the - " he stopped himself, feeling the weight of every single former president's gaze on him, for several of their pictures were arrayed around the room, "I can't deal with that right now, it's a free country, they can fucking move to Okeechobee or wherever the hell their asses wanna take 'em as long as they keep paying their taxes. God. Damn. What a mess, well, c'mon, explain the rest to me: What DO we know about this so-called Pan-Asian Union?"
"It happened fast sir, but what intel we do have suggest negotiations began immediately after the assassination of Kim Jung Un by his sister. She didn't last long, we have confirmation she was..." Kerzowsky slid over a folder and President Miller opened it, glancing at the photo inside paperclipped to a sheaf of papers, "Well, as you can see, her own command staff brutalized her before publicizing the event in Pyongyang. They must've been waiting for some time, and the Incident gave them the perfect opportunity to strike."
"Fine, North Korea is a hellhole, I get it. Do they actually have nuclear capability?"
"We... don't think so. They never launched a successful ICBM, we're not under any threat."
"And what about its neighbors? They have proven short range missiles, don't they? Hell, they could just use some of the old USSR surplus they've got stockpiled away, right?"
"Conceivably, sir," Kerzowsky admitted.
The new president simply stared at the tired men and women arrayed around his table: "So that's it? We drop the ball for five minutes and Japan goes and buries the hatchet with Korea and Japan and everyone's best friends? All is forgiven?"
"To be fair, sir, Japan has still signaled its friendly disposition towards our existing treaties and towards NATO itself. However, we have already seen significant mobilizations from each of the PAU's member countries."
"Are they going to invade North Korea?"
Carols nodded, "It looks like it, sir."
"Jesus."
The president stared into space for a minute, drumming his fingers, "Well? What else? This is important, I agree, but what is it you needed to tell me that required us to be down here in this godforsaken place?"
They were, in fact, in the bottom level of the White House complex, in a deep underground bunker surrounded by a Faraday Cage of concrete and wire mesh that was randomly spiked with voltage to prevent electronic eavesdropping.
This time is was a new voice who stepped forward, introducing herself, "Kim Langley, sir, NSA. If you'd take a look at the screen, sir," she said, clicking a remote she held in hand.
The screen came to life, showing the inside of the UN building in New York City. Soldiers and equipment filled the periphery of the video, bustling in activity, laying down electrical lines.
But what captured their attention was an object, floating in mid-air, about where the podium used to be where the former, former president had spoken before he died.
It was the sword.
"We can't move it sir. It's like the Sword in the Stone from the old stories. We've tried a little bit of everything. It's simply: there. It doesn't show up on physical scanning technology like X-Rays or sonar, but you can touch it. Any force applied to it seems completely ineffective, though, it won't budge."
She coughed, looking a bit uncomfortable, "We had just briefed the former president on this, and, well, what we're calling the 'dreamless issue', when he shortly after took his own life."
The new president scoffed, "He was always weakminded - probably believes all this proves that it really WAS God. Idiot."
Unseen by President Miller a few people in the room exchanged uncomfortable glances, but the president continued on:
"So you're telling me we have a mythical artifact from Lord of the Rings floating in mid-air, completely unable to be moved from its spot, the same spot, mind you, where the so-called 'angel' is going to return in a year and let us ask it all of seven questions?"
"Yes sir, that's about it."
He rubbed the back of his neck, considering the situation: "Well, sounds like I get to make a world-changing speech too, then, doesn't it?"
- - -
"Sakura doesn't feel well," Hitomi explained to their usual JSDF escort in the IT department.
He nodded, and she noted for the first time, since she wasn't distracted, that she hadn't actually learned his name. It looked like it was Shigenobu.
"Sorry to hear that, although, I can't imagine there's much going on in here today anyways," he said, simply.
Wow, it was so strange to hear him speak, Hitomi realized. He'd given the girls the impression he was just the strong, silent type.
"I guess you're right. That server over there had a failover mounted in the same rack, so there's not really anything left to 'fix'. And with the blackout still in effect, well, I guess I'll do some coding or study."
"Good luck with that, I'm on rotation, so I'll check in after lunch."
"OK! Thanks!"
Hitomi was free to do whatever she wanted while Sakura slept off whatever ailment had overcome her after the Emperor's speech: probably stress. Stress was a real killer, in Hitomi's limited experience. Heck, she had lost a whole kilo once while cramming for a Comp-Sci test.
Aced it though, so, totally worth it.
For the next few hours she toyed around with the network inspection codebase she had written, trying to figure out if she could identify which desktop was receiving the rogue data she had seen. That way she could eliminate any false positives and report her suspicions to Mr. Yamada.
It was just after dinner (which she ate at her desk after dropping off some treats for Sakura in their room) when she saw another series of strange data come across the network gateway. It was repeating, again and again at minute by minute intervals.
Korean characters mixed in the binary data, again! This had to be related to what the Emperor was talking about!
The parsed text was short, and Google Translate said that it meant: "Report Status."
She hit the compile button for the second, newer part of her coding project, and then ran her TCP/IP stack disassembler. There was so much data! Most of it was error-checking and routing information, but buried in that routing information was also a section that told the network gateway which of the dozen desktops in the embassy complex to forward the packets to.
There! 192.18.5.67.
She quickly pulled up the org-chart for the embassy that she and Sakura had labeled each network-accessing computer for.
Got it! It was a desktop in... Mr. Ueno's office?
What on earth?
Mr. Ueno might be in on it? That made no sense.
She could see his computer from where she was sitting, and there was indication it had been broken into by anyone.
She felt like she must've made a mistake in her code, so felt completely foolish for thinking she had something to report to Mr. Yamada.
Yawn.
Oh, wow, it was getting late, wasn't it?
Hitomi packed up, cleaning up for the evening and doing her end-of-day-routine in the ladies bathroom before entering the dimly lit room she shared with Sakura. Oh, speaking of, her temporary work partner and friend must still not be feeling well, because she was already asleep.
Oh well. Hitomi decided to try to debug the program she was running to figure out why it was throwing the wrong routing information, sifting through packet dump after packet dump trying to figure it out. She took copious notes as she laid down on her couch, laptop on her stomach, and before she knew it she had fallen asleep.
The white space was the same as always, but her laptop was with her again! Score!
She tried to open a new tab and access the internet, but, of course, that didn't work. It looked like she could only interact with things she had physically seen in the real world, so she couldn't "magically" access the internet from her dreamspace.
It was about thirty minutes later that something changed in the white space.
Her mouth felt weird. Her tongue felt heavy, and then her cheeks felt sore. Weird.
She realized she was breathing really hard through her nose, but her nostrils hurt for some reason.
Were dreams supposed to hurt?
Why did he cheek feel wet?
Hitomi's eyes opened in the real world and she tried to scream, but only a light, muffled sound came out of her mouth. Sakura! Oh god, what was happening! Sakura was on top of her, crushing her chest with her weight, leaning down with her hands around her throat and Hitomi couldn't scream! Her mouth was stuffed with cloth of some kind.
Her eyes begged Sakura's: WHY?
Sakura was saying something, but the blood was pounding in Hitomi's ears, she could barely hear:
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry... I can't..."
She lifted up her arms and tried to grab Sakura's hands away, but the bigger girl was so strong! The grip on her throat kept releasing and then renewing. Hitomi was terrified. She wrenched a hand towards her mouth, trying to pull out the cloth stuffed into her cheeks, but Sakura batted her hand away. Her grip got stronger on Hitomi's throat.
"I'm sorry Hitomi, I don't want to! I'm sorry!"
She was crying? Stop! Stop hurting me! You won't have to cry if you stop!
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Hitomi, I'm sorry - you shouldn't have tried to figure it out! I'm sorry!" she was whispering her reasons at Hitomi, pointing with one hand while the other held her down. Wait, the hand wasn't on her throat?
She looked over at Sakura's finger and saw her pointing at the code.
Oh God, no, of course, it had been Sakura! The whole time! She was the leak! Of course!
Hitomi tried to buck her off, but Sakura was straddling her, leaning back while holding onto her shoulders. Only a second passed for them to share an understanding: Sakura had wanted Hitomi to know why she was doing it.
Then the hand came back to Hitomi's throat.
Wait. She was in danger.
Why wasn't her power activating!?
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
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