The door
opened and they got onto the elevator. Doctor Chase pushed a button and they elevator
rushed upwards. "So what's it like working with president?" The door
opened and they entered a similar corridor.
"It’s
a job."
"I
hear he's going senile."
"The president
undergoes regular physical and mental evaluation. I assure you, he is perfectly
healthy."
"Not
loosing his mind at all, huh?"
"Of course
not."
"You've
never caught him in walking naked around the White House with a confused look
on his face?"
"No."
"Does
he always change the subject of conversation from something really important
like education or the economy to something trivial like Christmas or Tom and
Jerry? Or is that some sort of public relations strategy?"
"He's
a story teller. That's how he expresses himself."
Doctor
Chase thought about that for a moment, "Good answer! He's like a wise old
grandfatherly character who speaks wonders in his rocking chair beside the
fire. I guess that's how the people of this great country want to feel about
the man that they elected.
My
grandfather lost it big time. He was sharp as a tack until two months before he
was eighty three. Suddenly he couldn't remember where he was or why he was
there. He was scared at first, but he eventually he even forgot about fear. He
was actually pretty happy most of the time, babbling away to himself and
laughing. Sometimes at dinner, without any warning, he would spit out his
whatever he was drinking and just start laughing his ass off. Sometimes he'd
laugh so suddenly that he start choking and we'd have to do the Heimlich and
then he'd start barfing all over the place, and then he might start swearing
and go into a violent fit, throwing stuff and spitting. Eventually we just
couldn't take him to a restaurant without clearing the place out. One day when
he was eighty five he wandered off took a nap on some train tracks, lost his
legs." They stopped in front of a door marked RECREATION.
"Oh my
god!"
"Yeah.
That slowed him down for a while, but he forgot about his legs almost immediately
and he learned to walk on his hands."
"Really?"
"Oh
yeah. It was unbelievable. He still had to be kept under constant supervision
or he could wander off and get into trouble." Doctor Chase opened the
door. They walked into a room with a large plasma TV mounted on the far wall
with several video game consoles on a shelf below. There were three couches
with a total of five people on them. There was a pool table and a foosball
table. There were computers and a kitchen.
"Stock
car racing?!" Doctor Chase protested. "You fucken' rednecks."
"Get
the fuck back in your cage lab rat!" A man with thick southern accent
responded. The room was filled the sound of a race.
"It’s
so fucked that your into you're into this shit when you work on aircraft that
the general public is not going to know about for ten years. I mean, you worked
on the. For fuck's sake, you predicted
the Challenger disaster when we were working for NASA."
"Look
man, people who don't love stock cars can eat my fucken' shit and go to
hell!"
"Amen!"
said the person sitting next to him. The two of them touched their beer bottles
together.
"Anyway,
this is Agent Johnson, secret service. This is Steve Watson, perhaps the best
Engineer in
"Nice
to meet you."
"There's
beer in the fridge." Steve responded.
"You
want a beer?" Doctor Chase asked as he opened the refrigerator.
"Sure."
"We've
got beer and we've got lite beer."
"Beer."
"If it
wasn't for me, there'd be nothing but this lite beer horse piss. I'm worried
about
"Could
we play a game of pool?"
"Oh
sure. Rack 'em up." The man that the president's aide had sent set the
balls into a plastic triangle which he then removed. Doctor Chase handed him a
que. "You break." He aimed and scattered the balls; the ten fell into
a side pocket and the two and the three stopped last. The serious, dull man then
half circled the table and aimed again and banked the 12 into a side pocket.
"Uh-oh" said Doctor Chase after a combo shot, "You're supposed
to loose and then play me for money. Don't you know anything?"
"My
father did that sometimes."
"How
about we quit our jobs and head to Vegas."
"I
don't think so."
"It's
only eighty miles away."
"No
thank-you."
"Oh,
you're no fun."
"That
is an important aspect of being in the secret service."
"I
think is also something that they had in mind when they invented Stockcar racing!"
"Sit
on it, Lab Rat!" Shouted Steve.
The man
from the secret service played serious and focused. The first game was over
with only three of Doctor Chase's balls in pockets. His opponent immediately
began emptying the pockets into the plastic triangle.
"Want
another beer?" Doctor Chase asked.
"Yes
please."
"Red
necks? Another pseudo-beer?"
Two of them
responded with thumbs up, the other was too absorbed in the race. Doctor Chase
walked over to him and waved a hand in front of his eyes. "Another pseudo-beer?"
"Uh,
yes sir, thank-you."
Doctor
Chase pulled three lite beers from the refrigerator and opened them on the
kitchen counter. He then brought them to the men on the couches. He returned to
refrigerator and removed two regular beers and opened those and returned to the
pool table where the triangle was being removed. The man from the secret
service moved into position and aimed and loudly scattered the balls.
The men
watching TV were suddenly agitated as the race they watched became littered
with smoke, debris and flipping, disintegrating cars. "Oh shit!"
shouted Steve, "Oh shit who's that? That's McBane and who else?"
"That's
Watters in the Home Depot car and
"Hey
look!" Shouted Doctor Chase, "Something's happening. Wow. This must
be real exiting after watching them just go around and around and around."
Steve pointed the remote control and laughed as he turned up the volume briefly
to an uncomfortable level. "They shouldn't drive so fast." He added,
"If they slowed down, I bet they wouldn't crash like that. Either that or
they should stop driving like a bunch of spaced-out Prozac bitches."
"Come
to
"I'm
not going to
"It's
your turn." Said the man from the secret service.
Doctor
Chase looked at the table and there were only two striped balls left,
"Jesus Christ, you're cheating!"
"I
Swear..."
"No
just joking. You just play too fast. You need to slow down like them good ol'
boys on the television there, so that you don't crash." He found a shot
and aimed his que. He paused, thinking. "What if it slows down?" He
said under his breath.
There was a
slow motion replay on the television of the speeding race cars moving steadily
along until two of them bumped. A wisp of smoke came from the leading car's
tires as it began to fish-tail before sliding sideways and beginning to roll
like a log after causing three other cars to begin loosing control.
"I
think we should check the simulation. Chug your beer."
"Don't
you want to finish the game?"
"No.
Chug your beer. I want to check something."
They
excused themselves and went back down to the meeting room where they left the
computer.
"What’s
the problem?" Asked the man from the secret service.
"I got
a feeling that it's not going to crash into the ocean." He paused the
simulation which showed in false colour the 500x500x500 metre pyramid plunging
into the ocean. "This is where a bigger computer comes in handy; checking
other calculations after a few beers gets your thinking about things. I'm going
to look at its trajectory again and factor in a contingency for deceleration. I
want to see what happens if it decides to put the breaks on. Had anybody talked
about this possibility before?"
"Not
that I know of."
"Well,
were you in the briefing?"
"Well,
No."
"Why
would they assume that it is just going to plunge into the ocean?"
Doctor
Chase typed quickly at the keyboard and pointed and clicked with the touch pad.
"So,
we'll assume that at some point at