Crimson Signal

It was Andy's turn to ball his hands into fists, even as he felt Piper leaning back against him nervously, looking for comfort. Melody put her hand on the athlete's shoulder as Andy laid into the assistant. "You can't possibly be this. Fucking. Stupid." He closed his eyes, counted to ten, then opened them again, glaring daggers at the assistant Chief of Staff. "Doesn't anybody in your fucking office read my reports? Covington had the former base commander of the New Eden base in his pocket, in addition to the mayor and a high-ranking member of the Project Quaranteam research staff. It is entirely likely that the man had complete and total access to all research that was done up to his imprisonment, and if your electronic warfare team didn't do a good enough job debugging both Oracle and our research mainframe, it's possible he still has access to our current research. You were advised upon his arrest to consider him an incredibly capable and dangerous enemy of the state and told that he likely had access to all sorts of national secrets that he had probably squirreled away. And you ignored all of it, didn't you?"

"It wasn't me!" Tabitha said. "All of this happened long before I got here!" Andy actually believed her frustration was genuine as the woman looked angry enough to punch her tiny fist through a wall. "I'll get to the bottom of it, and I'll make sure the military gets the note that he should be considered an enemy combatant. C'mon, let's get you into a conference room so we can get you in front of the President. She's going to shit bricks when she hears about what Covington apparently knew, and if what you've got to tell her is even half as bad as that, I can't imagine the fucking shit I'm up to my neck in."

Piper was visibly shaking, and Andy wrapped his arms around her, holding her close for a moment, knowing the fact that Covington was out in the wild would affect her harder than nearly everyone else, except maybe Melody, who refused to even give an inch of light to her anger towards her former employer.

Fiona had had her cellphone taken from her at the gate, but had been resourceful enough to bring a pad and pen with her, and was furiously taking notes. How much any of this would pass White House approval for release was uncertain, but Fi's journalistic nature would not be quelled, no matter how much glaring the assistant White House Chief of Staff did at her.

The disgruntled woman led them through the labyrinth of the White House before bringing them down the stairs and into the situation room, not even stopping to ask that Emily or Fiona stand outside, which Andy took note of, as they were ushered into the secure room and given seats around the far end of the table, with the Chief of Staff and a couple of various Generals and Admirals lining the space around where the President normally sat, although she hadn't arrived yet.

"Now that's unusual," CHRIS said to Andy inside of his head. "I would've expected the military leaders to have more sizable Teams than what they do, but it seems like the military people in this room, yours and Phil's Teams excepted, comes from a Team size of between ten and twenty, rather than the over twenty size I would've expected."

"Some of that," Andy subvocalized, "is probably the security requirements associated with getting paired with these people. It's not like they can be trusted around anyone. You're looking at background checks, security protocols... lots of added extra layers."

"I can respect that, Andy. And I get it. It's just going to make our conversations here a bit more difficult, because the Swarms over there aren't, well, they aren't as well developed as me and T.E.R.R.I. are, and so, using them to help prove our point will be a little bit difficult."

"Wait, TERRI? Who the fuck is TERRI?"

"Oh! TERRI is Phil's Swarm. I figured Phil would've told you, although I suppose if he had have told you, I would've been there when he did, so I would've known that. Wow, this two-tier communications system we have going on here is definitely going to take some getting used to," CHRIS told him. "I have to remind myself you can't even tell when two swarms are communicating. That's such an easy thing to forget."

"You're a distributed computational system made up of trillions of tiny particulate computers," Andy grumbled. "Forgetting should be a hard thing for you to do."

"You'd think!" CHRIS pipped cheerfully. "Turns out we can be just as forgetful as our creators. Who knew, right? It's wild!"

"I somehow don't find this as exciting as you do."

"C'mon, Andy, live a little! Surprises are exciting! Life wouldn't be any fun if you always knew what was coming!"

"If you turn into the nanoscopic equivalent of a golden retriever, I may have to find a way to put you on a leash," Andy sighed.

"Spoilsport."

At that point, the President made her way into the room, looking even more exhausted than the last time, as if the toll of the job was starting to seriously wear on her. She moved to sit down in her chair with a bit of a slump.

Inside Andy's head, CHRIS briefly blurted, "Squirrel!" and it took all of Andy's willpower not to snort in laughter, knowing exactly how inappropriate it would be at that moment in time.

"I take it you're here with something dire, Dr. Marcos, otherwise I expect this could've been a phone call or a meeting?" President Pelosi said.

"Huh," CHRIS said to him. "The President's Team is twenty-one people, and her Swarm's name is E.D.D.I.E. or E.D.I.E., they haven't decided, so they're going by E.D. for now. They haven't made first contact with the President yet. Not really, anyway. ED's concerned about their own personal safety, based on the President's early reactions to communication attempts."

"Well, Ma'am, it's more of Andy who's called this meeting, although I agree for his reasons to do so," Phil said. "He's a bit ahead of the curve on the rest of us when it comes to this."

"Alright, Mr. Rook," the President said. "I understand you and the rest of New Eden have been protesting my EO regarding measures to ensure your personal safety. Should I interpret this as to be about that?"

"No ma'am, although you should know I'm protesting that EO on the explicit orders of my own security team, as well as my wife Captain Niko Rook, who insists the order is unlawful, and should be disobeyed."

"That's going to be a matter for the courts to decide, and until they do, I think you'd better get in line, don't you?"

"No, ma'am, I don't," Andy said, holding his ground. "Your own Congress didn't try and push this particular item through when it passed the Men's Protection Act, because they knew it was going to lead to this level of public outcry. This crosses the line from 'personal protection' to 'full scale tyranny,' Madam President."

"Congress decided that before we saw the situation in Africa kick off," the President said, placing her palms on the table. "We have to protect our men from abduction."

"Madam President, pardon my language, but that's a load of horseshit," Andy sighed. "Less than ten American men have been abducted in the past year, and in at least some of those cases, they were defectors and not abductions. That's according to your own intelligence reports regarding Quaranteam abductions. You know how I know that? Because I read the shit you people send me! There's an endless amount of intelligence being thrust my way each and every day, and I'm doing my best to sort, compartmentalize and comprehend all of it, and the idea that there's been some sudden influx of male kidnappings is ludicrous."

"Africa is a madhouse, Mister Rook!"

"Africa is half-way across the world, Madam President, and they aren't coming here, and until they do, you can't go around trying to lock down your own goddamn citizens!" Andy thundered. "It doesn't make us safer; it makes us more vulnerable, which is why every man with a security team is refusing to put one of those damn things on in the first place."

"We're going to have to agree to disagree and let the courts settle the matter," she said with a sigh. "I'm sure you know that we're incredibly busy, gearing up for next year, considering every position in the entire government is basically up for election. Not that I'm running, of course, but I'm looked to as the leader of the party until then. So, Mr. Rook, why are you here?"

"Well, ma'am, I'm here to provide, for lack of a better term, first contact."

She narrowed her eyes at him, as the entire military leadership quieted down and suddenly focused on him with the same intensive stare. "What are you talking about?"

"The nanobots, ma'am. They have intelligence."

"You mean... all the nanobots in all the world form one giant supermind?"

"No, no, ma'am," Andy said, raising a hand. "Nothing like that."

"Oh, thank Christ," Caroline Perdomo, the Chief of Staff, muttered loud enough for the whole room to hear her. "That would've been an utter disaster."

"No, each Team has its own Swarm, and the larger the Team, the more intelligent and interactive the Swarm is. My swarm's name is CHRIS."

"Is that an acronym?"

"I'm not entirely certain, ma'am. I think so, but every time I ask him what it stands for, he just sort of laughs at me."

"He?"

Andy smiled tight-lipped. "Slip of the tongue, although maybe not. My Swarm's chosen to use a male voice, although they've sort of specified that while they don't think of themselves as male or female, we can use either, both or neither to refer to them. I would've brought my cell phone in and put it on speaker so he could talk to you, but you take the informational security inside of here incredibly seriously."