above, lifeless tentacles looked like a plate of giant red spaghetti on the water ’s surface. He didn’t want to end up trapped between tentacles and the hydrogen sac base. As the airwar ’s breathing tube descended to fifteen feet above the water, John saw an opening between the tentacles and dropped through. The drop plunged him several feet under water, then he began swimming.
As he looked toward the surface, it was obvious the mass of tentacles was blocking his exit. John swam at least twenty meters, then began to see flickers of light between tentacles. He aimed at a sliver of light and dolphin-kicked hard, forcing two tentacles to the side and passed through the interface to air. After several breaths, he re-submerged, swam fifteen more meters underwater and popped out to a tentacle-free surface.
As it was, he ended up only ten meters from shore. Although airwars were visible in the distance, the attack was over and they appeared to have moved on. General mayhem was occurring around the lake, which was typical following an airwar attack, but the developing crowd in front of him seemed unusual. As he stepped from the water, the crowd cheered.
For a moment, he didn’t understand the reason for cheers, then he looked back at the floating airwar carcass. He suddenly realized he single-handedly killed an airwar. The sac was deflated, but intact, and not one solitary juvenile was released.
Not knowing how to respond, he waved to the crowd and shrugged. The cheers heightened. He noticed several cameras, phones, and video cameras aimed his way. He thought, I’ll be on the Internet shortly if I’m not live now. I guess I’m the next Ube. Five armed marines pushing through the crowd immediately broke that thought.
“Sir, you must come with us!” ordered the largest, a sergeant with a chiseled body who was sporting a blond flat-top haircut.
A marine on either side grabbed his arms firmly, while the other two created a path in the crowd with pointed rifles. The sergeant, pistol drawn, ran point directly in front of him. The crowd began to boo. The marines walked, half-carrying John to a large gray-colored military van with side doors that slid open at his approach. John hesitated entering for a moment, but found himself lifted and shoved through the opening as the doors slid shut behind him.
CHAPTER 9
ADMIRAL BECKWOURTH
Admiral J.P. Beckwourth ran one of the Navy’s most successful recruiting campaigns. Perhaps this wasn’t too surprising because his family owned one of the largest public relations firms in the Los Angeles area. As a public relations prodigy as a young man, he delivered two multimillion-dollar accounts to the family business at the age of eighteen.
His parents were devastated when he left the firm to join the Navy. His namesake, a relative several generations removed, never received deserved recognition for serving his country. This remained a sore point with the family. However, Beckwourth made good use of his PR talents and rose rapidly up the ranks. Now, after nearly thirty years in the Navy, they were proud of “our son, the Admiral.” In the public relations arena of swaying opinion, he followed one rule—find what people want and deliver it.
Admiral Beckwourth had a problem. Only a few days previous, he was recruited to the directorship of ASC public relations. His duties now included curing all accumulated headaches of ASC.
Previously as a non-ASC naval officer, he ran some successful propaganda campaigns for the High Council. During the same period, internally produced ASC propaganda efforts were failures. His vocal criticisms of those programs, coupled with his successes, earned him an offer to become an ASC member.
He was now privy to all behind-the-scenes machinations, and only then were his eyes opened. The added knowledge was horrifying. When ASC High Council members approached him, they were concerned with his reaction, or perhaps, loyalty.
Other public relations leaders had declined recruitment and ASC extremely desired the Admiral’s expertise. The recruiters needed not worry. The Admiral was a master at grasping the big picture. As the ASC master plan was unveiled, he easily made his choice. He realized he’d be required to do disturbing, morally reprehensible activities while accomplishing his goal. ASC made clear his only option was to succeed, and in this goal, he was in total agreement.
New information made him realize he’d have to revamp all of his original opinions and strategies. Ignorance, or even willful ignorance, allows for rejection of responsibility. Knowledge obliges burden of duty. It was clear the task was to be borne on his shoulders alone.
The High Council members who brought him onboard said, “These are our goals. This is what’s not happening; now fix it. Our survival, and now yours, depends on it!”
Admiral Beckwourth had little respect for politicians. The current situation cemented his views. However, this was a world crisis of a singular nature. He guessed in an odd way he should be grateful he was chosen because no one else inside ASC was capable of performing the responsibility he accepted on himself.
The government’s Run, Hide, Do No Harm campaign was a miserable failure. Even though ASC completely controlled the press and their propaganda fund made presidential campaign budgets appear to be pocket change, only fifteen percent of the population embraced it. Seventy percent remained undecided, but could be swayed. Using the incessantly played ASC chant, “Save our children, don’t assault airwars,” he maintained shaky support. The problem was the remaining fifteen percent were strong individualists. Not only were they opposed to centralized world government, nearly all militias’ ranks came from this group. Furthermore, the militias were responsible for ninety-nine percent of attacks on airwars. Thanks to the Internet, militias organized quickly after the first airwar appearance.
The hastily formed ASC wisely decided not to call their leadership a “world government,” although essentially it served as such. Their biggest challenge was their inability to rein in the militias. Countries like North Korea and China, which controlled Internet locally, didn’t have an issue. However, in free countries, ASC couldn’t censor the Internet as they did radio and television.
Before the crisis, the Admiral considered governmental interference with the Internet a direct attack on freedom. He always feared the general public wouldn’t fully recognize the Internet’s importance as a pillar of liberty and would lackadaisically cede control to pernicious government regulations. Ironically, with the admiral assuming his current position, the Internet had become a giant pain in the ass for him.
ASC clearly wanted him to reduce militias’ attacks on airwars. This was currently their top priority. The admiral smiled to himself. The extraordinary ability of militias to avoid ASC-controlled military campaigns served to make ASC more dependent on a public relations alternative.
The admiral sat at his computer doing data crunching. He needed something militias wanted, supplementary to what he could provide now. He was looking for a bargaining chip to influence their behavior, but he wasn’t sure what militias craved.
As columns of data streamed across the screen, he noticed a couple of aberrations on the hourly attack on airwar numbers. There were two significant drops in militia attacks on airwars, each for a few hours. It was a worldwide effect. Why was that? He tried to correlate this to releases of different ASC propaganda ads, but there were no causal relationships to dips.
Oddly, he found a direct correlation to the media account of Ube Watabee’s capture and exposure of his immunity hoax. He knew the account was an outright lie because he wrote the report himself. However, the dip in militia activity didn’t make sense. Why would this particular headline make militias less likely to attack? The admiral reasoned it must be something else. He double-checked his data, but it remained the
