Shadows at Dawn. The Presidential Briefing.

Shadowy people, transparent displays, and fear filled the  cavernous space. The Situation Room was a machine of death and violence. People were executed, captured, and subdued with swift efficiency from half a mile underground. The tiered arena stank of adrenaline and fatigue. 

Aides and those vying for the top were in the nosebleeds, all of the young men sat forward with their elbows on their knees. Then a tier of the young, the promising, and the emeritus. It was the modern Coliseum, sand replaced by a slab of old oak, combatants replaced with ideological debate between some of the most powerful and most secretive people in the world. 

The death was the same. 

Only the mud and the blood were too unpalatable, shown through body cam footage broadcast to a wall of screens. They said Kennedy wore the setting at the head of the table smooth during the Missile Crisis. The entire slab of resolute oak was veneered in the sweat of great Americans. But the head of the table stood empty. It wasn’t yet time to make a decision; that moment was fast approaching. 

Everyone watched as a tech spun a digital topographic map like a toy in three-dimensional space. Thin, holographic tendrils knit together becoming a thick forest and jagged coastline. The perspective was fast-moving and aerial. The transparent blue of the hologram was almost placid. 

Visible through the map, red orbs pulsed like nuclear cranberries on branching city streets. They were arrayed defensively, the boulevards of the small downtown joined in red clusters. Another clump, smaller, more vibrant, and fluorescent yellow, drew furtive glances. 

The call of the void; even the yellow seemed to radiate. 

The same tech, somewhere away from the room, too unimportant to even warrant the invitation, overlayed attack plans as staggered green arrows advancing. The army units waltzed through the town, moving from building to building experiencing no resistance. A synthetic voice read dispassionate reports at double speed, a kind of white noise that kept everyone awake and on edge. 

It was such an overwhelming volume of information, the people in the room had almost no hope of hearing it all, let alone processing and digesting it. It was rendered, in sheer quantity, to be meaningless. 

Or perhaps, it was simply impossible to make sense of the images. Pinhole camera footage smuggled out of the town by several citizens that were now officially “missing” was displayed on multiple screens. On one, people moved about with the inhuman fluidness of modern video. The buildings looked contemporary. Many of the town’s facilities were functionally state-of-the-art. 

But the people...the cars, the little pieces of society that gives a small town life, the very clothes they wore were anachronistic. They were wrong. The world had paused in this little town in the 1940s. 

And what was more extraordinary was the negative space, what was missing. There were no cell phones. There were no autonomous vehicles. But the rhythm of life appeared the same. People coming and going, people locked into their own world despite being surrounded by others. A man tacitly ignored his son to read the paper. 

Every face in the room was stupefied, open mouthed and gawking, with dread. This was an American town. One of the junior Colonels in the gallery was actually from the same part of Maine. 

A few in the crowd barely clung to their sanity because of the incessant white noise and the bizarre reality they were witnessing. Many held their hands over their ears. More had closed their eyes. 

An aide whispered a joke to his beautiful counterpart, “That’s hour thirty-one, now” in the very moment the recording finally, mercifully, stopped. He was dismissed with a wave of the hand by a rigid figure seated directly opposite the President’s empty chair, with as much space between either man as possible. 

Against a three-story wall of screens scrolling data and renderings, he was solid, formidable. The medals on his chest, ribbons, patches, spoke of decades of honest service. And roughly the same of wheeling and dealing in covert ops. He called anyone not diametrically aligned with him the enemy. Those he served with were heroes, those he’d killed were bad guys; he was a patriot. 

And as much as he’d been mocked and parodied, when he stood, eyes lifted. He was a hard man. He was, by his own admission, a murderer. But he was American.

 The President, infamously, responded to being asked to compliment the Chairman by saying, “He’s ours.” 

In polite and civil society, men like him would be unnecessary. And perhaps there is hope that men like him would no longer be the very last bulwark against chaos. But the general was not born cruel. He’d watched good men die and bad men thrive. He’d been on special tribunals to investigate war crimes. He had seen the worst of humanity’s violence. And where this would make any person cold, the Chairman burned. He lived and worked like his soul was on fire at the injustice of it. He drank like he was trying to kill himself. 

He prayed, every time he could get a moment, for forgiveness and peace. He no longer believed the world capable of it, but he yearned for peace within himself. 

The Chairman gestured to the map embedded in the table and everyone leant forward. Those in the third tier stood up. His voice started low, a kind of controlled boom in the space, “Each of these yellow orbs, here, here and...there. Those are confirmed. Boots on the ground, rad positive.”

“I’ve heard all the concerns. We’ve all watched the assault scenarios. And the same thought has been buzzin’ in my ear for two days now: we’ve made a simple problem complicated.” 

Midway down the table to the Chairman’s left, the President’s right, another figure, no medals, leaned forward. The Chairman scowled and White House Counsel had the professionalism, just, not to smirk. 

“Excuse me. No, excuse me. I’m sorry, Chairman, but: confirmed how exactly?”

“I beg your pardon?” A lilt of poison seeped into the Chairman’s drawl. 

“How was this intelligence confirmed?”

“That’s need--” 

“--to know. So you said, I remember. But all those reports, General,” the Chairman coughed and Counsel put his hands up, “Excuse me, Chairman. I apologize. Slip of the tongue.” 

Counsel pointed to the screens, “The briefings, you said we’ve all seen, say no one has been allowed to enter or leave. From what I understand, the cliffs and climate prevent a lot of our satellite imagery. Are you verifying this with ‘boots on the ground’ intelligence or do you have IR images from a little further up?”

The general’s face was still. He gave nothing away, at least not to most. But Counsel knew that the General was caught. 

The old war hawk tried to redirect, to appeal to the room: “Every delay, you understand Keeler’s numbers grow? Followers, devices, his hold on the town. And an American town, I’ll remind you.” 

Counsel: “General, what is the source of your intelligence?” 

And this was why the Chairman hated the Chief Counsel being in the room. Because he spun words around him, sweet as a wise grandpa. But it was a sickly poison, goading people into saying something they shouldn’t. The Chairman resented being constrained in war by the lawyers, the procedure. 

On the one hand, The Chairman could expose the satellite capabilities at the DoD were far beyond what they reported. Or he could admit that no one had managed to sneak into the town by hook or by crook. He would not lie. 

“Infrared Satellites, Chairman?” 

The Chairman said nothing. For all of his brilliance, Counsel needed to be right. Moreover, he needed everyone to know he was right. He needed everyone to know that he was the smartest in the room. It made him the best in the room, at least in his mind. And he fought every single point where he could make that case. 

It was why the President kept him, always watching, and it was why the Chairman hated a lawyer at this table. Counsel slowed the process, slowed their blood. But in doing so, he belittled himself against the greater good.

 All of this, the Chairman kept a rein on, but the veins in his neck coiled up. Ropes of restraint or an encroaching aneurysm. 

“At this point, it would be hard to say how exactly we came by our intelligence without compromising ongoing operations.”  

Chief Counsel raised a placating hand. One of his many gifts was knowing when to stop.  “All that I’m advising is due diligence, Chairman. The legal ramifications are...” and for a moment, the old lawyer’s brow creased. 

He was lost for words and perplexed by the novelty of it. “This will be historic, ladies and gentlemen. Not to mention the innocents still on the ground in Elderbridge. This will be a historic moment. We will be judged as men, as humans, as professionals and statesmen for this moment.”

Counsel paused and turned to look directly at the Chairman. It was a gesture that most missed or misinterpreted. Many thought of it as a kind of face-off, both heavyweights squaring off from their respective corners. 

But what everyone outside the two of them didn’t know was they were friends. Not in a traditional sense, mind. The two men never met in public, never met in private. They didn’t speak save for in the rare occasions where their dominions clashed. And their ideological wars were what sold articles and books for every junior Senator and aide that witnessed them. 

But years ago, twenty or more, Counsel’s daughter had passed into the General’s distant command. And Counsel asked a favor. A small favor for her career and safety. Counsel wrote the General a letter and the General wrote back, agreeing without argument or question. And they’d written each other weekly letters since.

It was the perversion of power that neither had ever spoken a friendly word in public to the other but held each other in deepest esteem privately. 

An aide came into the room from the grand entrance, a plush carpeted staircase that opened from double doors inlaid with an enormous seal of the United States. Everyone turned to look, the fluorescents of the distant hallway shocking pupils.

The aide, a young woman that looked strikingly like the General’s youngest granddaughter, blushed scarlet. The exhausted audience stirred. Here, at least, was a distraction. The Chairman stood on ceremony and those doors were only for the President. Furthermore, he had fired and demoted more than his share of subordinates for ineptitude. 

The younger aides in the gallery felt the bizarre joy at witnessing legend and the deep empathy of knowing thoughtlessness at this level was expected and inexcusable. It could have been any of them, but today it wasn’t and there was joy in that luck. 

The General started to shout at the intruder, at the interruption and delay. But then the man saw the aide and Counsel saw him hesitate. Saw the crease in his brow and softening of his gaze at even the allusion of his family. 

The aide brought him a folded slip of paper and he thanked her quietly. An audible sigh of disappointment slipped out of the crowd as the Chairman read the latest brief. The Chairman finished, looked up at the room and grinned. He was the fox and he’d finally cornered the exit of the henhouse. 

“Intel from this evening suggests that every person in the city proper is a member of or participatory in Keeler’s movement.”

“Oh, bullshit General.” 

And on it went. On and on, round and round. 

The Chairman even threatened to put back on the digital briefing again and some of the older staff grumbled complaints. The room hummed with discontent through the night. 

****

Reinvigorated by the coffee that had been brought in as the conversation bridged night to morning, the Statesman coughed politely. Somewhere, floors above their heads, the world was waiting. 

The Statesman wiped a small dribble of espresso from his lip with his pocket square. “Just for a moment, please General, just for a moment consider the international fallout.” 

The Statesman finished dabbing his lip and folded the small piece of silk and tucked it in his jacket pocket. He paused long enough to adjust it properly. The Chairman wondered about his role in all of this but kept quiet and patient. 

“I know you’ve said ‘an American solution to an American problem’. I think we all have agreed to that. And I understand it even if I don’t agree.”

Counsel cut in, “We cannot do this again.”

“No, I understand that. That is closed. But this decision, this room’s decision today, will be as tangible an inflection point as enhanced interrogation. The world is, indeed, watching.” 

All at once, the three-letter agencies tried to cut in, triplets arguing over who did the most to keep a secret. The Statesman let them squabble and took another sip of espresso, draining the small porcelain cup. He raised a finger to order another at no one in particular. 

“The world may not be watching, yet. Yes, thank you,” the Statesman took the new cup and set it down impatiently before waving the Lt. Colonel who brought it to him away like a waiter. 

“Maybe not yet, but someone, somewhere will see us. Counsel has made a good point. This is generational. This is global. What we decide will shape our ability to conduct relations, America’s ability to participate in international relations….” 

The Chairman’s rebuttal was instant and effective because it was impatient. 

As fast as the world had become, damn near instant in most cases, international relations was arduous. Slow by the very virtue that made it stable: it required people to agree. 

And despite people needing instant gratification for everything from sex to brunch, agreement on the international scale was measured in lifetimes. It took whole generations to die before some agendas could be cleared off the board. 

The Statesman had gained fame for coining, “it takes three generations for hate to disappear” and more for it bearing out in various hot zones the world over. 

But the Chairman could dismiss all of his ideas with impatience because most in the room had reframed their almost infantile impatience as efficiency. In a room full of bureaucrats, all of them thought themselves most efficient as a point of pride. And all of them hated State for its inefficiencies. 

Almost mechanically, the Chairman rattled off State’s talking points: “‘We’re so close with Iran; closer than ever, in fact. And while it is a slow process, every advancement, however incremental, is advancement for peace in the Middle East.’ 

I wonder, has State trademarked that? You get a cut every time it’s printed, ol’ boy? Or is that just something we say?”

Counsel tried to cut the man off, but this simply inflamed the Chairman whose restraint had worn thin. 

“No, no, it’s okay. How about Russia? Russia is a great line. What is it?

 ‘Welll...Russia needs to come back to the table’ That one is always nice to see in print. ‘Come back to the table’ as though they haven’t been bombing people. 

What about a really sticky one? This is where your bullshit really shines. How about Taiwan? You want to talk about Taiwan?” And the recaffeinated voices rose again, overlapping fear and shifting responsibilities. 

Dust motes and wood polish seemed to rise up off the tables and rails that encircled the room. Somewhere, the same tech was playing a simulated sunrise on peripheral displays. And the room was warming, somehow, in this synthetic morning. Growing brighter to reveal deeply exhausted people. Just ordinary people, suffering through as much elective stress as a person could handle. 

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was a puffy seventy-year-old man. His eyes were full and red as though he’d been crying, his posture rigid. Not because of some military bearing, sense of propriety, but because of a pinched nerve in his neck. 

White House Counsel was just as doughy, but now on his third vyvance, he seemed to vibrate. The President’s own physician had to find expired Xanax samples around 3am to calm the man down enough to stop shaking. 

Even now, hours later, dawn breaking virtually, the counselor was rocking back and forth in his chair. He wore thick spectacles that he took off and polished when he thought he had made a good point. Or, like now, when he wanted to demonstrate how truly exasperated he was at this process, he threw them out over the table.

The Statesman was whisper thin, almost too pale to believe. He sported a feminizing mustache and he did everything delicately. The Chairman hated him. But there was a kind of unity in suffering. 

They all heard the distinct click of the room’s double doors. The President was coming.

Chapter 2

The Seal of the United States of America parted in layers of interwoven metalwork, unfolding as if by magic. An unsettled silence, anticipation certainly, but something else, something closer to reverence. 

From down the hall they could hear footsteps, the click-clack of expensive Italian leather shoes and the drum-roll of the President’s entourage. And then he appeared, at the far end of the hall. He was flanked by his almost spineless Vice President and a contingent of stone-faced Marines. 

The Marines escorted the men as far as the double doors, then sealed them in with a snap. The authority of the President’s Office brought the beleaguered to their feet. The President nodded to the room and then started down the stairs. 

He found the eyes of the Chairman, then Counsel, and then the Statesman. And each felt as though he was their man. The Chairman saw a retired Army Colonel. A man who had served his country with purpose and distinction. And hadn’t let civilian life make him soft. The President wore his hair close-cropped and ran miles and miles every week. 

Counsel saw an old classmate and rival; the only person to ever match him for intensity in a debate. The President was a fierce legal mind. Counsel’s keen eye caught the handwritten notes tightly clenched in the man’s fist. 

And the Statesman simply enjoyed the pageantry of it all. Each step the President took was a wooden gavel cutting through the maddening noise. The Statesman also appreciated the way the President worked a line. He was so casual, never breaking stride. Subtly greeting all the right people, all those due or owed favors. And he effortlessly snubbed those who were outside of his sphere of influence.

When the President took his place at the head of the table, all arguments hung suspended in his silence. As he surveyed the room, pale eyes and a jaw like Kennedy, he seemed to bask in the anticipation. The President sat and the room sat with him. 

He opened the information packet, bound in rich leather and annotated by America’s best and brightest. 

He pulled a pen from his inner pocket and spoke in a practiced voice, “I have found all of your insights invaluable. Truly, I want to thank you for making sense of what, to me, looked like utter chaos.” 

He spoke in a practiced voice, the barest hint of an accent. Just enough to be quaint, sometimes “folksy” if the press was feeling particularly festive. 

At times, the President no longer felt like a real person. So much of him had been vetted, focused-grouped, edited and rewritten; he felt as though he’d become his own creation. He looked well-rested. 

“This is beyond any scenario that we’d hoped to ever even contemplate. And that means it's not a test of our capabilities. We should never worry about what we can accomplish, together. Keeler is not a challenge to what we can do,but he is a grave test of our values.”

The distant,faceless tech finally had the sense to kill the sunrise fed and they all became shadows again, save their Commander-in-Chief. The man glowed in the reflection of the displays. The constant scroll of information projected onto him made him seem inhuman, digital. 

It reminded the General of the campaign. The unstoppable political force the man had been, raiding through the country en route to the Capital. But there was one attack that the President had struggled to address, one critique he could never quite be rid of: that he was the inadvertent person at the intersection of the worst algorithms on the internet. 

“I am, of course, swayed by our duty to every American citizen's rights and safety. But all plans have now been properly vetted by the Pentagon to maintain the rule of American law in a place of lawlessness.” 

White House Counsel started to speak, but the President quieted him with a deft lift of his hand. 

On this day, for this moment, he wore his Harvard class ring. The same ring he had gifted White House Counsel during their first campaign together. It was a memory and a reminder. Counsel was as moved by it as he was irritated at its efficacy. 

“It seems Keeler’s most recent writings constitute a renunciation of his citizenship. And that falls into an existing legal framework.” 

Counsel picked up his glasses, “Sir, please--” 

“I have heard you, counsel. But the law is clear.”

“The wording is ambiguous, sir. It’s been challenged repeatedly, not to mention that it has only ever applied on foreign soil.” 

“Nowhere in that law does it mention foreign soil.”

Counsel thought for a moment and then spoke in a monotone, “’...in cases where an American citizen possesses an imminent threat of violent attack on the United States, if and only if capture is not feasible...’ that’s a pretty gross stretch of ‘feasible’, sir.” 

“Two points, Counselor. First, please finish the statute.” 

“Sir.”

“Counselor. Finish the statute, please. That is an order.”

Counsel paused just long enough for his pride and then said, “‘If and only if capture is not feasible, lethal force is justified by the AUMF and international principles of self-defense’ but--”

“No, Counselor, I’ve allowed this long enough. For the purposes of this situation, ‘lethal force is justified’ is all that matters.”

“It’s a suspension of the Fifth, sir.” 

“...which brings me to my second point: Keeler renounced his citizenship.”

“Sir, that is a formalized process.”

“That’s enough!” 

The President’s anger dissipated as soon as it appeared, “Counselor. This is not a hypothetical. This is the precedent we established to apply to situations that exceed the purview of the law. Keeler far exceeds any law we could have written. How do you legislate a single individual with the power to destroy so much?” 

The Chairman nodded but Counsel was still lost in the actual details, the implications, second and third-order consequences. And he only swallowed that in the face of greater authority. 

The President turned his attention to the Secretary of State: “As State has reiterated (over and over, I might add), Mr. Secretary, the world is indeed watching. The news, the number of eyes locked to their phones watching Keeler’s videos and briefs, is global. 

How we resolve this, in full view, will define our administration’s stance on domestic security; but it will also define our nation’s perceived commitment to civil liberties.” 

“Our response will be measured and just. But in the face of so much attention, we will first exhaust every avenue available before escalating to any kind of force.” 

The Chairman tried to cut in, “Sir, if I may-”

The President’s rage was instant and ferocious. 

He turned his attention to the general with a snap and simply glared at the senior military liaison. The General retreated, furious in his own right. But the President knew that the general respected his office more than any man who held it. 

The President, in the General’s mind, was a godlike power. And he knew the general; knew the man would expect all men to wield power as he would have. If power was access to force and the ability to apply that force anywhere, at any time, in any scale, then the President’s power was absolute. He had the power of life and death, legally, over every American citizen. And, increasingly, over any person maligned against the U.S. of A. 

The President took a deep, steadying breath entirely for show before he continued: “We need actionable intelligence from within Keeler’s operation. We understand, obliquely, their capabilities and our responses. 

But what does this cult actually believe? What is Keeler hoping to accomplish? What is motivating people to join, to leave their country ostensibly? We are, as a nation, long past the time where we can kill anyone without knowing if his legions will turn him into a martyr.” 

The President gestured to his Vice President who passed a dossier across the table. 

“FBI Domestic Counter-Terror has arranged a special task force to go in. Although, that’s a bit of misnomer: it will be a single agent infiltration. Given the scope and scale of the town, multiple newcomers is bound to end in failure.” 

The President glanced at a photograph clipped to the front of the files and grunted, “We have selected for a background in deep undercover and nonviolent arrests.”

The Chairman scoffed, but the President was too cagey to ever outright agree with the man. Instead, he gave his acquiescence through a taste of power, “Chairman, how long does your intelligence suggest until Keeler and his contingent will have an operational device?”

The Chairman looked at his notes, “The most aggressive estimates we have are a month for a prototype, something to test. Assuming success, maybe another month for field-deployable. Those are aggressive, sir. Only our facilities and perhaps the Indians are capable of that type of production.” 

“Thank you, Chairman.”

 But a thought hung in the back of the President’s mind. Keeler had helped design the most recent U.S. facilities when he was Department of Energy. 

The President looked around the room, finding the eyes of his decision-makers, those he had to convince. And then he scanned all three tiers of the arena. 

“There will be no bigger moment in our careers than this. There will be no bigger moment for my Presidency, no bigger moment for our nation than the one we are living through.”

“This man used to be an American citizen. He is no longer one. We must treat him as an enemy that has taken one of our towns. He occupies an American town. For now, we presume that it is still one of ours, that the framework of America is still in place even through the machinations of a madman. 

But make no mistake: This is nothing less than an invasion, ladies and gentleman. And it is up to the people in this room to drive back this invasion, this incursion of evil. Do your best, give me your very best. That is all I can ask. And it will be enough, that I promise you.”

As the President adjourned, each official moved into an inefficient frenzy, each burdened with a flush of new tasks and no time to rest. 

Somewhere, the same faceless tech started playing music over the Situation Room’s speakers. Loud enough to be heard, not so loud as to be distracting. Modern English’s “I Melt with You”:

I'll stop the world and melt with you

You've seen the difference and it's getting better all the time

There's nothing you and I won't do

I'll stop the world and melt with you

He would be relieved of duty that afternoon for what they called his “little protest”. Officially, that was denoted as “gross insubordination”.