Flagstaff, Arizona
0800

The helicopter lands on the roof.
A hospital orderly died due to an amazingly rare flesh-eating bacteria less than than 3 hours ago.

Our orders come straight from OV1600 and we took a chopper on the run straight from Luke AFB.

"What do we have here?"

"What we have is scary as hel-, and I don't think anyone knows what the ---- is going on! Who are you guys anyway - military? CDC? Or what?"

"I think we fall into the 'or what' category."

"Is something loose? Is this bio-terrorism or what? In 20 years as an ER physician I have NEVER seen something move so fast and so deadly."

"I don't know yet. We will be taking samples of the air in here, emf measurements and water samples. We will try to stay out of site, but if you have some spare scrubs handy - we will try to be less conspicuous if we are observed."

"We already have had twelve resignations, doctors, nurses that sort of thing - no one want's to be here. Heck, I don't want to be here either - but have little choice."

1900
Shamballa

I am sitting in the fortified halls of Shamballa. The room around me is slate gray and the carpets are a shade lighter. The nerve center of the special activities directorate and at this moment also Compound One - as the President of the United States was on a rare 'housecall'. We are chatting and the diet coke and Doritos have been drudged up from the compound's galley.

"When I was growing up, it was a dangerous world, and we knew exactly who 'they' were. It was us versus them and it was clear who Them was. Today we're not so sure who They are - but we know they're there. Condoleeza and I have had long talks about the state of the world. I could listen to her for days and not have tapped a fraction of all that's locked up in her mind. But why am I telling you? This is something you already know!"

I smile and speak, wiping the 'now even cheesier' red powder from the corner of my mouth where I can feel some has lodged.

"Condoleeza is the best NSA the EOP has had in twenty years, perhaps ever. She has the kindest way of listening to you when you speak and yet there's a look in her eyes that appears as one speaks - you know the one - that tells you she is already two steps ahead of you and is now only listening out of courtesy! It can be unnnerving!"

"You've seen it too?! Thank god, I thought it was just me!"

He laughs hard and grabs a handful of the chips out of the bag sitting on the conference table. He is leaning back, one of his legs kicked up and resting on the table. Shamballa is a place one can truly relax freed from media scrutiny and possible electronic monitoring.

A hot pot of coffee is brought in by my assistant. She sets it down upon the table and smiles at Bush unexpectedly.

"What you've never seen a Texan in Arizona before?" Bush says with a longhorn drawl and a smile while lifting up his other booted foot onto the conference table and crossing his legs.

She is 25 and flustered. Her face gets beet red and I can see she is tongue-tied.

"She wont speak to you - G-dubb - she voted for Gore."

The president laughs and the chair he is rocking backward nearly falls.

"I did not!" she shouts as she finds her tongue. "This man is a liar!" She pretends she is going to pour hot, scalding coffee on my lap.

"You may be onto something there. I have heard some pretty far out things from him."

"Hey - I never lie, I just use general relativity better than most!"

"Riiiggghhht!" she says as she exits the room.

Bush is still smiling but I can see he's thinking about something of greater importance.

"T1 I want you to do me a favor."

"Sure anything. You name it."

"Today was a warning shot across the bow of my administration. The report on my desk from the BNCom unit says this stuff was Russian engineered."

"I want you to prepare a contingency plan for a massive bio-attack. We are simply not up to speed in this area. The CDC folks I talk to are all fatalists and say that if something big hits us, we might as well just kiss our a--es goodbye and right off whole cities, declaring Marshall law - keeping people from spreading infection further. Others suggest we wipe out infected regions ourself in some sick burn and flee policy. I refuse to accept either of these plans."

"And you want me to come up with a viable alternative?"

"Precisely. I want a plan which allows for saving as many lives as possible. I want a plan which does not write off people."

Bush stops. He is getting angrier as he talks and his lips purse together with something resembling disgust.

"These forces which are set against us are evil. The shades have given birth to these folks. The only thing they would enjoy more than destroying us - is making us as evil as they are."

"I was expecting this request for sometime George, and I have been toying with ideas for sometime now - some really, REALLY revolutionary ideas."

"Anything promising?"

"One of my ideas has definite potential: Ultrasonic decontamination. Drugs are too slow in killing these bacteria. Radiation in the intensity needed to burn them out is almost as deadly and hard to focus. I am working up a field unit which can burn out the flesh in the region of the contamination. It will cauterize internally and can be focused for precise or broad movements. Ultrasonics, sounds over 16,000 cycles per second can boil water at room temperature and blend oil and water by steeping up the frequency of the molecules, expanding the vortical motions of their atomic particle orbits and allowing new balances to occur."

"A field device which can target the specific resonant frequency 'weak link' of CDC known bio-warfare agents is the key. I eventually imagine shelters with booths which can eventually, treat people showing symptoms and act as a field-based decontamination unit."

"What time-table are we looking at here?"

"Working miracles isn't ever easy or guaranteeed. But give me 3-6 months for a working prototype - and thats if we are given considerably more minted paper to work with."

His cell phone rings. He frowns again.

"If that's the way they want to play it - that's fine with me."

He closes the polished stainless steel lid which has a small presidential seal on it. I am familiar with the unit and helped design the attenuated modulating frequency scrambler which keeps would-be listeners unable to follow more than a fraction of a second of conversation.

"Beijing has made a massive new weapons spending splurge. Not surprising. Today has been bad news almost all around."

"It isn't easy is it?"

"You know what T1...it's a heavy burden - but one filled with an incomprehensible sense of duty and honor. The duty to the people and the nation is monumental. But all of the people around me, and then there's Laura, who all make my job easier and make me proud to be an American at least a hundred times a day - and I wouldn't have it any other way."

"No one wants to admit it G-dubb, but the Unites States, and the world is better for all of this - much better. The people, the families...the future of the world. This unleashed evil will in the end have set in motion unprecedented good."

He pauses and looks me in the eye.

"Believe me....I know."
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SDAI-Tech1

Dedicated to all those who have fallen in the past 72 hours - whether in a battlefield halfway around the world or all alone in a hospital ward.