by Jim Wurst
Like the White House and every other house in the country, the Cranston household was seeing the same thing. “Shut It Down. Shut It Down. Shut It Down.”
Elena mulled it over. “Shut it down... S-I-D... SID!”
“Shut what down?” Nancy asked.
“The government! The election! The fraud!”
Sean agreed. “Exactly, the data on the Senate was a warning shot. SID is telling Ailes it has the true vote count, daring him to put out the fixed numbers. Shut down the fake vote count.”
Maggie was trembling. “George, we have to use this.”
“Someone is breaking the law.” Lilly countered, “What do you propose we do?”
“Grab this gift with both hands.”
“And do what?”
Cranston jumped up, barely able to control his excitement as he uttered his favorite word: “Win.”
CHAPTER 85
The cozy atmosphere of the private quarters were long behind them. Ailes, Hayden, the Chief and a clutch of 360s had dashed to the Situation Room, leaving spouses and other aides behind. A table usually occupied by military personnel was now occupied by civilian computer experts. The screens that would normally show the planet and plots of troop movements and the paths of ships and planes were now showing the electoral map and a shell-shocked elderly man. Arthur DuPont had been given the plum job of Executive Director of the Federal Election Commission. His official responsibilities were to oversee national elections, prepare the ballots, maintain the integrity of the computer system against hacking, verify the results from each district, and certify the winners of the presidential election. In reality, his job was to do what Ailes said. It was a plum job, usually the last post before a comfortable retirement. That changed 20 minutes ago, and DuPont was not ready for it.
“Is the network secure?” the President demanded.
“Here, sir?” DuPont asked. He was still having trouble grasping the reality that he now had a real job to do.
“Of course, with you! I’m in the Situation Room, for God’s sake!”
“Oh, absolutely. Absolutely secure, absolutely foolproof.” DuPont immediately regretted using that word. Fortunately, Ailes was occupied elsewhere.
“You’ve seen this crap coming across from SID?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“We have reason to believe it they are trying to hack the vote count.”
“Yes, sir, we have come to the same conclusion. We are secure. Our people have set up extra defenses and we are trying to track the source.”
“So are we.” Ignoring the sweaty man for the moment, the President turned to Rampour, his senior 360. “Anything?”
“No, sir, decoy after decoy. We just traced it to a UN satellite, the De Marco.”
“The UN is screwing with us?” Hayden asked, still a beat behind. Ailes was beginning to regret his choice.
“The De Marco went out of commission three years ago. It’s a dead hunk. SID is bouncing the signal off of it. It’s using any number of sites to cover its tracks, including the Golden Gate Bridge and General Hayden’s house.”
“We’re coming up with the same thing,” DuPont interjected before realizing that keeping his mouth shut was his strongest position.
Ailes whipped back around to DuPont. “Forget about SID,” he warned, “We’ll handle this. Your only priority is to keep control of the vote count.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
CHAPTER 86
Cranston’s exuberance was not contagious. Lilly sat, brooding behind a desk in a side office. No monitors, no phones. Only Elena sitting silently across the desk, knowing that whatever she said would be wrong. Without ceremony, Cranston walked in and headed straight for the desk. Elena sprang to her feet while Lilly barely raised her eyes.
“Elena, a moment, please.” A classic you-don’t-have-to-ask-twice moment. Elena looked a final time at Lilly for no good reason and left, making sure they both could hear the door shutting solidly.
“Well?”
“I’m not even sure if this is legal.”
“I am a candidate for President of the United States. For all we know, I could have just won the presidency. ‘I’m not sure’ is not an option.”
“Aren’t you worried that we will be damaging democracy? That we could be destroying what we are trying to preserve?”
“Damaging democracy? Have you been asleep for 30 years? Do you think Ailes and the Doctrinists have been acting like tender, mother hens, gently cradling fragile democracy in a nice warm nest? Do you think we’re foxes sneaking in the dead of the night? Do you think if we do nothing, precious democracy is saved?”
“We can’t prove anything.”
“There is nothing to prove. I’m not going to charge anyone with anything. All I want to do is ask Americans to act like Americans. Are you going to stand with me for that?” She said nothing, and Cranston couldn’t resist a poke. “You know you weren’t my first choice as a running mate. I didn’t select you for your political acumen, because God knows you don’t have any. You do understand my reasoning, don’t you?”
Repeating a phrase, she has heard many, many times, she said, “Because I appeal to key demographics.”
“Because you appeal to the future. We’re the same age, but I’m today yesterday and you are tomorrow. I didn’t know you when you were in college, but I thought maybe that Lilly McDowell was still in there. That Lilly McDowell would help reinvent America one more time. We’re lifting ourselves out of the worst catastrophe in human history. We are finally reaching out to the stars. That destiny is now in your hands. You choose to sit on your hands and bow your head, fine. Do it. Go back to teaching see what they will allow you to teach. Go back to lecturing see where you will be allowed to speak. Write to see who will publish you. That is your choice. When you said yes to me, you said yes to a course of action. It’s nothing less than reclaiming American democracy. You want to say no now, fine, but don’t you dare weep for democracy.”
Another perk of permanent Washington was that the elites had their own home studios this way it was harder to pull the plug and easier to block interference. The small studio contained only the essentials: one camera, enough lighting, a few microphones, a director and minimum crew. The “stage” was a projection screen that would show a detail from a slowly waving US flag Cranston’s team had spent a week settling on just slow the flag should wave. Two minimalist lecterns were set up. The set had been ready all day. The plan was that Cranston would make his concession or victory announcement here. Keeping with the solidifying tradition of presidential candidates minimizing their public appearances, Cranston would only attend the public rally if he won. If he lost, he would make his concession speech and turn out the lights. The only change in the set was that a second lectern had just been added for Lilly.
“We’re live in four minutes. Should I remove the other lectern?” the director asked.
“No,” Cranston said.
“I don’t think she’s coming,” Maggie said.
“She’s not coming,” Mei corrected her.
“She’s coming.” Cranston corrected both of them.
“Even if she does, what is she going to say?”
“I don’t care.”
“What? How can you say that? She could destroy us,” Mei said.
The director broke in. “Three minutes.”
“The election ends in four minutes, no matter what she says. Or what I say for that matter.”
“George…” Maggie began.
“No. No second thoughts. SID or whatever has handed us the last, absolutely last, opportunity. I’m taking it with both hands.”
“Two minutes.”
With that, the door opened, and Lilly entered, followed by Elena. Lilly acknowledged no one but Cranston as she headed straight for her lectern. A make-up artist blotted t
he sweat and applied a bit of powder. There was no time for anything else, and it was unlikely Lilly would have allowed anything more. Once again Team George was out gunning Team Lilly. Elena looked at Maggie and Mei and the wall they had put up against her, so she discreetly found a spot off to the side. Sean came over and held her hand.
“One minute.”
Lilly turned to Cranston as if she was going to say something. Cranston looked back but waited for her. She said nothing, but instead looked down at the lectern. Neither of them had notes or a monitor.
“Twenty seconds! Quiet on the set!”
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five.
Cranston looked up, directly into the camera. It was his classic “are you sure you want to cross me?” look. If it wasn’t a camera, it would have blinked.
Four, three.
Then Lilly looked up. She couldn’t have copied Cranston’s stare if she tried.
Two… The camera light went on.
“My fellow Americans. I am Senator George Cranston, the Federalist candidate for the President of the United States. As we all know, some extraordinary things have been happening this evening. We have seen proof that President Ailes has violated the most private lives of all the United States Senators. Think, if he can and will do this to the Senate, what has he done to you? Add to this the events of the past few weeks the Chinese Device, the scandal at the Pentagon, the near disaster with the Roosevelt how can we, as thinking, reasoning beings, ignore what we are being told. How can we not see what is directly in front of us?”
Lilly didn’t see Cranston look at her, but she knew.
“I’m Dr. Lilly McDowell, the Federalist candidate for Vice President of the United States. Please listen to Senator Cranston. We stand at a unique moment in the life of our country. You all know the story of the Expendables,” she held back a gag as she said the word “Ours is an American story, the American story. America’s greatest strength from the start has been its people. We invented our country and we re-invent our country, and our country repays us by being as strong and dynamic and as good as we are. This is my country. I owe my life to my parents and my country. In other countries, I would be nothing, maybe even dead. I am alive because of my country, and I stand here tonight to fight to repay that gift. If we are weak and cowardly, our country is as well. If we stand up as a united people, our strength is insurmountable.”
Cranston resumed. “Here is what I’m asking of you, my fellow Americans. The Doctrinists want to steal your vote. You’ve voted, but we cannot be sure your vote will be counted. We’ve seen enough for years, right up to tonight, to doubt the count will be honest. So, we are asking you to vote again, not to the polls that would be impossible and illegal. We want you to vote not by doing something, you can be stopped from doing something. We want you to vote by doing nothing. Stop. Just stop. Turn off all your electricity lights, phone, computers, cars, everything. For ten minutes. Let them monitor the power grid and watch the usage fall. They know what is in my bank account; they know when you are using electricity. Show them what you think by doing nothing for ten minutes. Starting in one minute. Stop for ten minutes and let the White House see what you think.”
The pair were on the screen in the Situation Room. Hayden had an opinion. “Sedition.”
“Can you monitor the power grid of the whole country?” he asked Rampour.
“Yes, sir, we have that protocol. Programming the computer now.” Then began a very long two minutes. “Mr. President, we are getting reports of the power grids all around the country powering down.”
“Show me.”
“Yes, sir.” The electoral map was replaced on the main screen with a blank map of the United States. A new set of colors began to blink in, slowly filling in the map. “I’m calibrating now. The white areas show current power usage or rather usage five minutes ago now as I enter data…” As he spoke, some of the white lights turned yellow, a few orange. “… the yellow indicates a ten percent or less drop in usage, orange up to 20 percent decrease.” Most of the map was still white.
“So, anything in white means people are, not, listening to Cranston,” Hayden noted optimistically.
“Most likely, yes. Minor fluctuations are normal, but I’ve programed the computers to ignore that and focus on steady drops as of six minutes ago.” The white continued to be replaced by yellow, yellow replaced by orange. Maybe a third of the country was yellow with a few specks of orange in metropolitan areas.
“Any idea of how many people we are talking about?” the President asked.
“No, sir. I just made these calculations, I haven’t had time to sort out the differences between private, business and public usage. A large drop could be half an apartment building shutting off or a business powering down their building for the night.”
“What about red?” Hayden asked. Ailes looked up. There hadn’t been any red lights before, but now there were a few scattered around the country: New York, Seattle, Austin, Huntsville, Chapel Hill, Chicago, Minneapolis, Albuquerque.
“Up to 50 percent power drop.”
“Hmmph, fly specks,” Hayden said dismissively. As if to taunt him, fields of red popped up all around the country.
“And there’s no way of knowing how many people could be involved in this?” asked the President.
“No, sir. We’re always collecting data, but it would take a while to sort out that specific information and analyze it. Obviously, a red light in the middle of Kansas doesn’t represent as many people as one in New York.”
“Chicago just went red!” Hayden cried.
“And Seattle, Buffalo, looks like the countries southeast of Denver,” said Rampour.
“Good Lord, look at California,” Hayden said. There was no white left in the state it was brilliant orange with freckles of red throughout.
There was no good time to say this, so Rampour simply forged ahead. “Mr. President, I’ve tried to calculate the number of people this could represent. It’s very imprecise, many variables…”
“Tell me,” he ordered.
Sixty-five percent of the people of the United States have cut their power.” They all stared at the map. They were only six minutes into the ten and orange was still turning red.
“Is DuPont still on the line?”
“Yes, sir.”
Ailes had very few moves left. “Tell him to stand by.”
The candidates were back in the Cranston study. Lilly’s husband, Worth and a few others were now present. No one dared speak. Only Sean was sitting. He was working on a map of the US as well. Their map was color coded as well, but less sophisticated than the one in the Situation Room. Instead of white/yellow/orange/red lighting, there were red dots of varying size across the country, roughly corresponding with the orange and red areas on the Situation Room map.
“Chicago is on our side…” Sean detailed, “New York of course. Not doing well in Washington…”
“They don’t like that we’re disturbing their slumber,” Maggie snarled.
“Most of Colorado except Colorado Springs as well… Albuquerque…” He stole a smile at Elena. “Texas Gulf coast… nearly all of Oregon…”
“Is there any way of knowing how many people that represents?” Cranston asked.
“No, sir. You’d have to know which buildings are cutting power, how many people in each building… more data than we have.”
“More than half the population,” Mei said without looking up from her computer.
“How do you figure that?” Cranston snapped.
“I’ve overlaid Maggie’s congressional map onto mine. Sean, give me the controls.” As Sean complied, Maggie’s congressional map with its green and purple patchwork appeared. “Ignore cities, towns, whatever, focus on congressional districts they all have roughly the same population.” With that, she superimposed her new map. Now the red swallowed up thei
r electoral green and a considerable chunk of purple as well. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that maybe sixty percent of the people in the United States did what you asked.”
Maggie had been doing her own calculations. “She’s right, I’ve got the same thing.” Then she flashed the biggest smile of the night. “Looks like you’ve got your mandate.”
DuPont was desperate to give the President some good news. “There have been no further attempts to penetrate our systems, sir.”
“Are you thick?” the President roared, “Do you think I care about that now? You saw what happened just now across the country? You saw what those damned hackers just did? You think I care if your systems haven’t been penetrated? They penetrated my god-damn systems! And Cranston just pulled a coup.” Finally, after nearly 12 years, Ailes was out of moves. “Call it.”
“What? What? Call what?” the almost president asked.
“Release all the votes. There’s too much out there we can’t control. Call it.”
“You can’t…”
“You’re the soldier. Do you attack if you lose control of the battlefield?” Hayden didn’t answer, but Ailes didn’t care. “DuPont, I said call it.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
CHAPTER 87
The ten minutes had ended three minutes ago, and the country was scrabbling to catch up and see if their doing nothing had changed history. People were madly searching for news. O’Brien and America’s Network were trending water, they had no idea what they should do. Other sources were collisions of confusion and rapture. The Andersons had kept their power off for three extra minutes, just in case, so now they were behind the rest of the country. The Lopez family was nervous and feeling a bit guilty. Obviously, they couldn’t cut all the power in their house, Papi’s room couldn’t do without. So, the couple dashed around the house, unplugging everything individually. Was it enough?
Cranston’s team was essentially standing at attention when Sean told them the ten minutes were up and they saw the map lose all its red.
