The Age Atomic

EPILOGUE

REGIME CHANGE



The men, near to thirty of them, sat around the circular table so large it occupied the entire room, a great ring of polished wood that circled two desks in a central arena. At these desks – themselves large, expensive, and tax-payer funded – sat two clerks, both female; one was checking through a vast stack of paper while the other prepped her stenotype for the second half of the meeting, due to commence in just a few minutes. Around the room, portraits of the great and good looked down upon the senate subcommittee: Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and a dozen other presidents – some famous, effective; some less so.

The recess was nearly at its end, the committee members slowly returning to their seats, sipping from their fresh coffee and laughing about their poor games of golf that weekend, the episode of I Love Lucy from TV the previous night, and the chances of the New York Giants against the Cleveland Indians in the forthcoming World Series. The Giants were going to get their asses handed to them was the general consensus.

The double doors of the committee room opened and a man walked in, leading three others; behind them, two walking machines, hulking silver men nearly seven feet tall, their features a rough parody of human faces, their chests lit with spinning discs the same glowing red as their eyes.

The man in front wore a brown suit that was most definitely bottom rack, while the three behind wore matching black suits of a quality cut with black hats to match. All four were holding guns, and they strode into the room quietly and at speed, stepping through the gap in the circular table that allowed entry into the central space. In just a few seconds the three black-suited men spaced themselves out around the table, each covering enough of the committee members to ensure nobody did anything they might regret later. The two robots stood by the doors, still except for their eyes, which scanned the room back and forth, back and forth.

The clerks seated at the desk made to stand, but the man in the brown suit shook his head and motioned with his pistol for them to sit tight.

The committee members began to mutter, quietly at first but with gathering volume. Most seemed canny enough to keep still. All except the committee chair, a tall man wrapped in immaculate blue pinstripe, his hair snow white and perfectly parted. The Secretary of Defense.

“Who are you?” asked the Secretary. “What do you want?”

The man in the brown suit raised an eyebrow.

“You can call me Mr Grieves,” he said, before turning back to the clerks. He clicked his fingers at one of them. After a moment the young woman realized what he wanted and picked up the phone, offering it to him. Mr Grieves nodded at her. “Dial for me.”

The clerk put the receiver to her ear. “Um… what number?” she said, almost adding “sir” to the end of the question.

Mr Grieves smiled.

“The Oval Office. Get me the President.”



The phone rang twice. The man sitting in the chair behind the big desk ignored it, his attention instead on the gun pointed at him, unmoving.

The phone rang four more times. Nimrod glanced at the black-suited agent and the robot standing by the door, and then picked it up.

“Oval Office,” said Nimrod, a happy lilt in his voice. Behind the desk, Dwight D Eisenhower scowled at his former special aide, but he didn’t speak, his lips tight, his left eyelid twitching. Nimrod kept his eyes on him and kept the gun perfectly level.

“Ah, Mr Grieves,” he said into the phone. “I take it everything is in order? Yes? Good. What? Ah, the Secretary of Defense wishes to speak to the President? I’m afraid he will have to speak to me.”

Nimrod smiled at Eisenhower as he waited on the phone. There was a movement in his ear, muffled, as the phone was passed over.

Nimrod raised the gun, stretching his arm out straight, pointing the barrel directly at the center of Eisenhower’s expansive forehead.

“Ah, Mr Secretary? How charming to speak to you again.”

Nimrod pulled his thumb back, cocking the revolver.

“Now, listen very carefully. These are my terms.”




EPILOGUE

THE CLOUD CLUB



She took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and sipped it, enjoying the tickle of bubbles against her nose. Glass half-drained, she kept it high, and peered over the rim at the man on the other side of the room. The man raised an eyebrow, his mouth twitching into a smirk. Then he turned away.

The band struck up again, and soon people were back on the dance floor.

“You’ve been looking at him all night.”

She lowered the glass and turned her back on the room and her attention to the vast window that formed nearly the whole of the wall. She took a step forward and pressed one gloved hand to the glass. Manhattan stretched out before her, the lights of the city kissing the invisible horizon in every direction. If she squinted, just a little, the lights fuzzed and spun, turning into the whirly stars of the Milky Way, bathing her in their magical blue light, the light of…

“Seriously,” said her friend, sipping from her own champagne. “You can’t keep this up all night.”

She smiled. “I can keep this up forever.”

“If you don’t do something soon, I’ll do it for you.”

She blinked, and the city returned. She turned away from the window and watched the patrons of the Cloud Club drink and talk and dance.

“He looks nice.”

“Yes, he does,” she said. Then she frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

She shrugged. “I’ve seen him somewhere before, that’s all.” She searched the room. “Where is he?”

Her friend smiled and slid sideways, back towards the window.

“Excuse me.”

She turned. He was there, smiling at her, his eyes big and brown. His hair was dark, slicked back, one escaped lick flicking across his forehead. She decided she liked that.

The man bowed and glanced at her friend, who smiled before burying her face in her glass. “May I have this dance?”

She laughed, glancing at her friend, who nodded furiously. She turned back to the man and held out her arm.

“I’m charmed, Mr…”

“Fortuna. Kane Fortuna.”

“Evelyn McHale.” She took his arm.

“Ms McHale,” he said, “the night is ours.”

The pair weaved their way to the middle of the room, joining the mass of dancing couples.

Outside, New York sparkled, the lights of the city like jewels on velvet, like the stars in the sky, their light the light of the gap between the universes, the light of the end of the world.

And in the Cloud Club, the music played on and the couples danced, and danced, and danced.