USN Bureau of AI
USN AI Presents
EBCDIC Time
Part 10 Bug Out
Bureau of AI HQ in Virginia, hours after the Beijing bomb . . .
The guards are pulling the gates down in hallways and the windows in secure areas have their metal shutters closed. Lab employees are running out the doors as the order to evacuate the lab is carried out . . .
Dr. Meyers runs up to his car and opens the back doors and trunk and Critters running along behind him pile into his car. Rear Admiral Mills is in his car with Able-27 driving and Able-82 in the back. He is on his telephone . . . "Damn it Anderson, Ft. Brock was closed in 1995 there is a golf course there now! Where are we going? Mills listens to Anderson, "Fine then where?" Listens as his car goes out the front gate, "Great there is no back up location?" Listens, he can't hear as F-15 roar over from a near by Air base. "I've been given a list of places not to go to!! Oh Hell!!" he shuts off his phone as a he drives off with a convoy of vehicles behind him.
Beijing at the same time . . .
The US Ambassador is sitting at the chair behind his desk looking up at the sky. The roof of his office was torn off by the bomb. He has an oil drum next to him with a fire going. He rips pages out of secret documents and throws them into the fire to pass the time. Smoldering fires are all across the city. One quarter of the city was destroyed by the bomb and the rest is a mess but well enough. There is a curfew and no one dares move from where they are. The city's remaining hospitals and those in suburbs are full of injured and dieing. Just like Basra three weeks ago.
Most of the rest of the world is in a state of near panic. The calm that settled in after Basra is gone. A story had gone out over Al-Jazz that Al-quida was
behind both bombing is a bid to get America and China to go to war leads to rioting, people who had supported Bin Laden publicly were running for their lives,
many had lost their heads, literally. Believing that a nuclear war is imminent, residents of major cities in the USA, Europe, Russia, and China are fleeing for
the countryside.
Hours later . . . At Rear Admiral Mills five acres in western Virginia:
The Rear Admiral's country house is now the Lab's defacto location. The Rear
Admiral is holding a staff meeting at his dining room table. Thirty vehicles are parked all on his property. Several Campers have arrived and thing are being
setup all over. Able-66 and programmer Clive Boroughs have converted the old satellite dish to work with some of the DoD's current systems. Rear Admiral
Mills wife and children are there too. Later in the day she pulls her husband aside and ask him what he thinks is going to happen. He really doesn't know
and tells her. She is a former intelligence officer turned stay at home mom, and still probably knows more than he does even though she hasn't been active
in several years. Afterwards he sits at his kitchen table, he looks around and watchs the Critters loading up the dish washer and Able-85 playing Monopoly
with his children and a lab tech. He looks at his secure satelite telephone and wonders if it will ring. He sips his beer looks out the window and watchs a
Highway patrol officer walking his property line with a shotgun. "What a Mess."
