The ECC explosion on the other hand, caused tremendously more damage and a serious loss of life. The final death toll was still being determined but it was over four hundred. And I thought I was going to win a Nobel Prize! Hopefully, I won't be tarred and feathered, drawn and quartered, stoned, imprisoned, bludgeoned, and twenty other horrible things. Perhaps I will at least be allowed a burial in an undisclosed location so that my remains won't be desecrated.
Oh yeah, what happened to the Space Shuttle? Well, that is an interesting story. Apparently, the same meteorites that tore through the atmosphere destroyed the Shuttle. Colonel Ames and Dr. Anson Clemons were conducting an EVA when the meteor shower destroyed the Shuttle. They miraculously survived and were rescued by the International Space Station's CRV. The CRV landed at NASA Dryden yesterday. Dryden is across the runway from Edwards. Unfortunately, they were the only survivors. The two of them were injured during the disaster and are recuperating at the hospital near Edwards. No press has been able to see the two astronauts as of yet, but the NASA press release states that the two of them are in good condition. Also, doctors say that they may be able to hold a press conference later today. That explains that.
'Tabitha, why were we the only good guys able to make it to ground zero? I would've thought that the Strategic Air Command or the Space Command would have been all over an incoming projectile as destructive as the probe was. And Jim had to have told somebody that the phenomena in Florida was us,' I asked Tabitha rhetorically. I didn't realize she had an answer.
'Of course, SAC and Space Command and NASA knew that we caused the ruckus, Anson. Jim didn't have to say a word. Although we traveled way too fast for a telescope or radar to track us, it was obvious when one second we tell Mission Control that we're going to press a button, then the next second all hell breaks lose. Crisis teams and security protocol teams were dispatched immediately in three helicopters totaling seventeen men and women. All of them were killed by the violent weather and extreme wind shear patterns created by the probe.'
'That doesn't explain what happened after the storms settled. I mean, I feel horrible that all those people died,' I coughed a couple of times. Tabitha looked concerned until I showed her my hands, 'See no blood. My throat is still just a little scratchy from whatever they had stuck down it. Quacks!'
'Anson, those quacks saved your life. Three times!'
'Maybe I'll have to rethink my opinion. Be patient please, it is hard to change years of bad behavior and beliefs over night. Believe me, I'm far from ungrateful. I like the scratchy throat much better than the alternative.'
'Well, okay for now. But I don't want to hear you talking like that around the doctors. It would just be plain rude,' Tabitha scolded me with her best Mama-said-don't-do-that voice.
I nodded and asked again, 'Okay. So why was there no help from the good guys after the storms?'
'By the time the weather had settled down enough for aircraft to be sent in, we had managed to stumble along to the back gate at Eglin Air Force Base. Our communication filtered up the food chain much faster than you would believe. An order was sent out to stay out of the area until more was heard from us. Boy we sent a message in a big way didn't we?'
'Uh huh.' No words could describe how badly I felt for the people involved in this whole ordeal.
'I know Anson. I had no brighter ideas of how to save us either. But, we're here and alive—and we kept the probe out of the hands of the communists, or terrorists or whoever.'
'Johnny said the Communist Chinese, remember?' I corrected her.
'Sure he did. But why should we trust him? How do we know that he wasn't sending us down a blind alley? It could have been Usama Bin Laden as far as we know.'
'I thought he was dead?'
'Are you sure?'
'Good point.'
'One problem is that Johnny must have known everything about our program. Hell, he was our secretary and he had somehow managed a clearance. I guarantee that his customers have all of our blueprints, drawings, data sets, and everything else. Do you think they could rebuild an ECC or a warp probe?'
'I never thought about it. I don't see why they couldn't, if they were smart enough. If it's terrorists who were his customers, I would be more worried that small ECC bombs would be created and used. They just wouldn't have the bankroll to fund anything as large as a Warp Probe.'
'That sounds logical, maybe. Remember how bankrolled the terrorists back in '01 were. Uncle Usama was loaded.' Tabitha reminded me.
'That's why I just can't rule out the terrorist theory. Johnny was too well financed for it to be anything less than a large cell structure or a government. He had superfast fixed wing helicopters, surface to air anti-aircraft missiles, and he did mention that the Chinese were going to steal the probe on orbit. Didn't Mission Control tell us that the Chinese had a rocket on the pad but it wasn't ready for launch yet? We need some more intel on that.'
'That's right. And he must have had a top-notch crew to get into the Vehicle Assembly Building to plant the bomb on the Shuttle. I think you're right. It must have been a government or at least an organization as big.'
'We need to tell somebody this. These people or government could change the balance of power in the world!'
I was terrified. Much like I had been as a kid in the seventies and eighties during the Cold War. Now I was far more terrified by a warp missile than any intercontinental ballistic missile. The worst part is that I had invented the terror. Now I know how Einstein and Oppenheimer must have felt after the Rosenbergs. Or was Einstein already dead by then? For that matter, was Oppie?
'Relax Anson. After the press conference with the Vice President in New Mexico, we're flying back with him to D.C. to debrief the Joint Chiefs and the President.'
'Vice President?' I asked Tabitha. She told me to read the cup in my hand, the one that I had been sipping water from for more than thirty minutes. I did. The logo on the side explained that the cup was from the Office of the Vice President of the United States of America.
'Air Force Two?' I asked while studying the cup.
'Bright boy.' Tabitha smiled at me and patted my arm with her good hand. 'Buy 'em books and send 'em to college . . .' she hinted at the old joke. She kissed my cheek.
