Zero Limit

by Jeremy K. Brown

  “You warned me about all of this,” he said. “I see that now. And I never listened.”

  “No, you sure as hell didn’t,” Martha said. “I’ve been telling you from the first moment they discovered the asteroid that you had to handle this situation with kid gloves. But there’s no stopping you when you get the way you get.”

  The president was indignant. “And just how do I get?”

  “Like a damn dog in a hubcap factory,” Martha said, taking a sip of scotch. “Just barking your head off at every little thing you see, and nothing short of turning a hose on you will calm you down any. I warned you day in and day out, but you were so convinced that you were right that you wouldn’t hear it. You just kept telling me that you were going to stay the course and walked away. So let me ask you, Mr. President. Are we still on course?”

  The president was quiet a moment, thinking over all the roads he’d taken to get here. All the things he had said and done. As he recounted them all, shame began to radiate inside him, a coal being stoked. He wanted to offer his wife an explanation.

  “I just wanted to be strong for them,” he said. “I wanted to be a leader who would get things done. For years, I sat back and watched all those other politicians say the same things, make the same promises, and get nothing done. I wanted to cut through all of that. To be the kind of president who met the people on their level.”

  “Maybe ‘on their level’ isn’t where the president needs to be,” said Martha. “Maybe he should give the people an example of what they should be striving for. Not a reflection of where they are.”

  The president had no answer for this. He could only look at the flickering orange skyline and wonder what he could have done differently and what he could still do with the time he had left.

  “I wanted to be strong . . . ,” he said quietly.

  Martha took his hand and squeezed it. “There are other ways of being strong,” she told him. “You don’t just have to be right.”

  The president stood and walked to the railing again. He thought about Sundays in their hometown, of church services and picnics with potato salad. Of simpler times when the world seemed to make sense. In those days, all he could think about was how to get out. How much better he considered himself to be than everyone around him. Now all he wanted to do was to go back and never leave.

  “‘Immediately after the tribulation of those days the Sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,’” he said.

  Martha walked up behind him and slid her arms around his waist from behind, resting her chin on his shoulder.

  “‘And the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken,’” she said.

  “Matthew chapter 24, verse 29,” the president said.

  “You always remembered your verses.” She nodded.

  “If you’d been raised by my mama, you would too,” he said, chuckling slightly. He then thought a moment. “That verse talks about the end of days. When the son of man will return to judge us all. Could it be that day has come?”

  “Maybe so,” Martha said. “I guess the question is, if that’s the case, how do you want to meet him?”

  She kissed his cheek lightly and turned to go back inside, leaving him a moment to consider what she’d said.

  “They’ll hate me,” he said and was angry at how small the words sounded when they came out.

  “News flash, Commander in Chief,” said Martha, “they hate you already. But all’s not lost. I’m still here.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Hell yes,” she said. “You think I’m going to go back to Fairhope a disgraced, divorced ex–First Lady? Good Lord, my mother will self-destruct right on the pier.”

  The president chuckled, and it sounded as though it was coming from a stranger.

  “C’mon,” Martha said. “Come to bed with me. I don’t think the whole city’ll burn down in one night.”

  “I’ll be right there,” he told her.

  As she turned to go, the president called after her.

  “Martha?”

  “Yes?” she asked, turning in the doorway.

  “What reason did you ever have to marry me?”

  “I married you because I saw something in you,” she said. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll see it again sometime.”

  And with that, she was gone. The president watched her leave and wondered, If all the American people had been as unflinchingly honest as the former Martha Tomlin of Fairhope, Alabama, would he ever have even bothered running for office? Then he looked at what remained in his scotch glass and hurled the contents out onto the lawn, feeling resolve wash over him.

  He knew what he had to do.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The next morning, the president asked his assistant to clear his calendar and call a press conference. When she arrived at the White House, Karen was shocked to hear the news and, given the usual outcome when the president shifted gears, a little concerned.

  “What are you doing?” she asked when he finally strolled into the Oval Office. “We haven’t even had time to prepare a speech.”

  “Don’t worry, Karen,” the president said. He held up a stack of handwritten pages. “I’ve got it covered. Going to do this one from the heart.”

  He turned to walk out the door, then turned back to her.

  “And, for whatever it’s worth,” he said, “I’m, uh . . . I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you this last year. You’re a damn good press secretary. You always know what to say . . . and what not to say. I wish I’d taken the time to absorb some of that quality.”

  Karen stood for a moment as he turned to leave. She was trying to figure out what to say, and then blurted something out that the president could only assume was the first thing that popped into her head.

  “Senator Whitmore once called you a pontificating bag of gas,” she said, almost shouting the sentence out. “At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. And I didn’t disagree with him. I just sipped my drink and nodded.”

  The president stopped in the doorway, then looked back at Karen.

  “Like I said, you always know what not to say.”

  He walked out the door, whistling “Farther Along,” as he did.

  After a long walk down the corridor past the Cabinet Room, the president turned right and entered the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. The press corps stood to greet him as cameras whined and flashes popped. Quietly, he walked up to the podium and spoke.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I appreciate your all meeting me here at such short notice, and I promise that I will keep my remarks brief.”

  The president paused, like a pitcher winding up on the hill. Almost in unison, the corps leaned in, waiting to hear what he was going to say. He shuffled the papers on the podium and looked up, folding the papers and tucking them back into his jacket pocket.

  “Let’s do this the old-fashioned way, shall we?” he said. “While I was jotting all this down, I was thinking of other people who’d held this office, and my mind turned to Lyndon B. Johnson. He inherited one hell of a mess from Jack Kennedy, and the public roasted him for it pretty much every chance they got. And he once said, ‘A president’s hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.’ That stuck with me. Now, I used to think that I did both pretty well. How about you?”

  A nervous titter came from the room, but they were warming up. This wasn’t the president they were used to. He held up his hand to quiet the reporters down.

  “On second thought, don’t answer that,” he said. “I hear enough mean things about me on the TV. I don’t need to hear it in my own house. But Johnson’s words . . . they’ve been resonating with me as of late. Because, really, how can you know what’s right in times such as these? How can you know what to believe, when your beliefs can get you killed? How can you know who to be when everyone is telling you who you are is an offense? And . . . how can you put your faith in your fellow man when he’s willi
ng to burn down everything you hold dear?”

  The room was strangely quiet in the wake of the president’s words. Even the cameras had fallen silent.

  “You know,” he went on in a convivial tone, as though he were speaking at a Lions Club dinner back home instead of addressing the most influential group of journalists in the free world, “there are people outside this very house holding up signs that say this asteroid is a sign from God. And who knows? Maybe it is. Then again, depending on what you believe, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just dumb luck, or the universe simply correcting itself. Restoring the balance somehow. Or maybe it’s one of a million random acts that have happened over the course of history to shape the cosmic events that have led us here. But, let me ask you, whatever you believe, can it be a sign? From God or the universe or whomever you choose? Can it be a reminder that, despite our perceived mastery of all that we survey, the truth is that we are at the mercy of forces that we can’t combat or even comprehend? And if that is the case, then shouldn’t it be a reminder that we need to be turning toward each other instead of pushing each other away? That we should be extending our hands in friendship rather than curling our fists in anger?”

  Here he paused and looked down at the podium, seemingly centering himself. He was keenly aware that he had spent the better part of his political career acting in stark opposition to the words he had just uttered. And he would be a fool to try to pretend otherwise.

  “Of course,” he said, “I’m not one to talk. I helped ignite the very fires that are burning across our once-great nation. I fanned them with my hatred and called it strength. I fanned them with fear and called it courage. I fanned them with ignorance and called it enlightenment. And where did it lead me? Rome is literally burning, and this good old boy is reaching for his fiddle. Well, no more. It ends today. There are going to be some big changes, and they start now. Effective immediately, I am putting in motion plans to rescind the travel ban to and from the Moon.”

  A clamor erupted. He held up his hands and raised his voice slightly.

  “All Earth-generated travel visas will once again be valid,” he continued. “And all travel to and from the Moon, whether it be commercial or private, will again be legal once this crisis has passed. I have also opened a dialogue with the lunar ambassador, and with a little luck and maybe a few mea culpas, I hope we can put this whole ugly situation to rest once and for all.”

  He paused a moment to let his announcement take hold. He was sure that his cabinet was having a collective panic attack and that many of his constituents were tearing his signs off their lawns at that very minute. But the speech wasn’t over yet. He held up his hand again to quiet the press corps down.

  “There’s more,” he said. “And it won’t be easy to hear. As you know, we are working very hard to figure out how we can stop this asteroid from striking our planet. But we also have to face the reality that we might not be able to. We must plan for the survival of our species. Therefore, effective immediately, I will be implementing a program that has been in place for more than a century, Operation Ark.”

  The president went on to explain the particulars of the Ark City plan to the press, many of whom looked shocked and mystified that such a place could have existed under their feet for their entire lives, as well as the lives of their ancestors, without them ever knowing about it. Perhaps even more shocked were the members of the intelligence community who had not been briefed on the president’s announcement and were now going to have to scramble to figure out a plausible explanation as to why the plan had been kept secret for generations.

  “I want everyone across the country to know that I did not come to this decision lightly,” the president said, “which I know may come as a shock to most of you. But I have seen where rash thinking leads, and the time has come for cooler heads to dictate the courses of action we all must take. So, with that in mind, let me proceed. I started this off with a quote from LBJ, and I’m going to wrap it up with a little wisdom from the Chinese. There’s an old proverb that says that, of all the stratagems, the best one is knowing when to quit. Now, I’ve never quit at anything in my life, and I don’t believe that’s what I’m doing now. But this country needs to be led, not told what to do. As such, when this crisis has passed, I will be resigning as your president and appointing Vice President Keating as my successor.”

  Now the tumult in the room was impossible to keep quiet. Every reporter present stood and began shouting. Initially, he had planned not to take any questions but changed his mind. He was interested in hearing their assessment of everything he’d just laid at their feet. Rubbing his hands together in anticipation, the president pointed to Jenny Lewis, a young reporter from CNN.

  “I’m going to be bold here,” he said, “and see what CNN has to say about me.”

  “Mr. President,” Jenny said, “you’ve announced that you would resign after the crisis has passed. Why after? Why not step down now?”

  The president laughed, a genuine and uncharacteristically self-deprecating sound.

  “For those of you who might not have read between the lines on that one,” he said, “Ms. Lewis basically asked me why don’t I just leave and try not to let the door hit my ass on the way out?”

  Now the pressroom was laughing too, and everyone appeared to be in shock.

  “Well,” the president continued, “I’ll tell you why. Because for all my shortcomings, I am a man who believes in finishing the job and taking responsibility for his own mess. Now, as you have heard, there are three miners trapped on that asteroid. So I am not going to walk out of the Oval Office until we bring them home.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  An hour after the president’s press conference, he met with Alex and Sara in the Situation Room to go over the new laser ablation proposal. They had both been dreading the meeting, especially given Alex’s play-by-play description of his last visit to the Oval Office. However, the two found themselves talking to a very different president.

  “Which of the three spirits do you think we have to thank for this?” Alex whispered to Sara as they watched the president cordially greet everyone upon walking into the room, a far cry from the grunts and churlish stares that kicked off most meetings.

  “My guess is the wife had something to do with it,” said Sara.

  “That’s usually the case.” Alex nodded.

  “Good morning,” said the president, addressing Alex and Sara. “I understand you have some news for me. Some kind of breakthrough?”

  “We hope so, sir,” said Alex. “In researching potential solutions to the Thresher crisis, our team stumbled across an abandoned Russian program, Firelight, which may provide a solution. Joining us via videoconference is Valentin Kuznetsov and Dominka Lebedev of the Russian Space Research Institute in Moscow. Also with us is President Yaroslav Visiliev. Doctors, Mr. President.”

  The two Russian scientists returned the greeting enthusiastically, but President Visiliev, still no doubt stinging from his last encounter with the American president, merely offered a taciturn nod. Alex went on.

  “Now, to give you some background, Firelight was an orbital platform designed for defense during the Second Cold War. It was completed but never activated. However, it is still fully functional, and we believe it represents our best chance for deflecting the Thresher asteroid without any residual damage to the people of Earth.”

  “All right, folks, you’ve got my attention,” said the president. “How’s the damn thing work?”

  “For the technical details, Mr. President,” said Sara, “we would like to turn you over to Drs. Kuznetsov and Lebedev. Doctors, if you please?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Lebedev in clear, heavily accented English. “As you no doubt know by now, there are many different proposed methods for deflecting an asteroid and preventing it from hitting our planet. These range from kinetic impactors to gravity tractors to nuclear missiles. However, a laser ablation is the most promising option currently available t
o us. The laser strike will not result in fragmentation of the asteroid, and the laser itself is powered by plutonium, ensuring a pulse powerful enough to effectively redirect the Thresher. Additionally, a laser ablation can be conducted with a relatively short preparation time as opposed to the hours, days, or even years needed for other deflection methods.”

  “For the uninitiated in the room,” asked Vice President Keating, “can you explain to us how this process works in layman’s terms?”

  “Yes, Mr. Vice President,” said Kuznetsov. “In essence, the light from the laser irradiates the surface of the asteroid. The heat then causes the surface to sublimate, essentially turning it from a solid into a gas. Once this happens, the ablated material ejects from the surface and provides a controlled thrust, pushing the asteroid out of the way of Earth. A simple interpretation of Newton’s equation of equal and opposite reactions.”

  “Sounds promising,” Keating replied. “But I want to go back to the president’s original question. How does it work?”

  “Firelight was designed to target multiple areas at once,” said Dr. Lebedev. “Upon activation, the platform will release a series of small, plutonium-powered robotic craft, which we call ‘lightning bugs.’ Each of the bugs is equipped with a fifteen-hundred-watt laser. The plutonium stores the laser’s energy and then releases it in a short but incredibly powerful energy pulse. We will send the bugs to the Thresher, where they will effectively swarm around the asteroid in a strategic array. Once they are in position, they will fire their lasers in a concentrated pattern. If all goes well, their combined heat and energy should successfully ablate the asteroid’s surface, diverting it to the point where it will skip off Earth’s atmosphere like a stone.”

  “It should be noted,” Alex interjected, “that the design of the Firelight platform is based on a project proposed sometime in the last century by the Planetary Society called Laser Bees. Their primary objective, as it happens, was the deflection of asteroids.”