The mien of the New Roswellian ready room ebbed and flowed with Autun from terseness to relief then back to quiet fearfulness. Apollo tried to blink past the confusion the creature always left him with, and through his nonplussed processing of the situation the nudist had disappeared. He took a couple dumbstruck moments to search his generals for answers for which, of course, they had none. Scanning the right hand side of the table, he found someone to pick on: a thirty-something year old man with brown hair, wearing a black suit, and sitting halfway down the table. The man, whose name and role continually escaped the president, had spent most of the meeting awkwardly fidgeting but would finally serve a purpose.
“You,” Apollo pointed at the man breaking the stupefied silence like a thunderbolt from Olympus, “you heard him? Get on Wikipedia and find out what the hell a Ximbic is.”
“The rest of you,” throwing up his hands up, exasperated “go do your jobs!”
Apollo stormed from ready room to the angular hallway, where a pair of graying colonels stood in eager anticipation, each with a dossier tucked away in their arms, and looking to the president with eyes pleading silently for a moment of time. The saluting officers were left befuddled and disappointed as the president breezed by them. Forcing the two into an unbecoming jog to catch up to the president where they were joined in his wake by a harried female aide who frantically and unhelpfully buzzed the disrupted state of his schedule, a stylist who Apollo continually swatted away, a drone that flared with multiple reports—including Tartalo’s report of scant findings from an uncooperative cat creature—to which he reiterated his desire for results, and the media liaison whom the kindest response he could give was a curt “not now.”
“Which room.” he demanded to the aide who promptly responded with the location.
The Discorporate Productions CEO would address any pressing issues including firing the aide, but first he had poignant, perhaps even personal, matters to attend to. He threw open the reinforced steel door, and stonewalled it in the face of his ravenous entourage. Sighing to the uniformly spartan, comparatively quiet interior room. An awkward moment which he treated nearly as if he were the only one there. The room, a steel cube with little in the way of ventilation much less decor, bore technology that one would not catch at first or any glance. Lined with nearly invisible sensors, nanotube nozzles, hard light projectors, and a host of other technological wonders imperceptible behind austere panes.
The only furnishings in the room were two steel chairs, with two individuals seated in them, a man who likely knew of their situation and a woman who did not. One probably even knew the purpose of the room—perhaps even used it once or twice for interrogations. The two were both likely ripped right out of combat, and though they were given a few hours to decompress, journey by New Roswell teleportation was always jarring to those unprepared or unaccustomed.
It appeared the three were completely alone, even though with Apollo this was never the truth. President Amon always had a team assigned to his surveillance, and at this current moment there was a team of 63 individual operatives—psychologists, sociologists, and hostage negotiators trained to predict behaviour based on nonverbal cues. These interpersonal experts were joined by software engineers and programmers who helped design much of the automated New Roswellian defenses, some of the best and brightest scientists who had spent the past thirty years studying, reverse engineering, and improving upon Red Technocracy technology, and designing this particular system specifically for the protection of President Amon. And finally, they were all overseen by the Operative, a cybernetic entity whom executed much of the satellite array defenses, beacon and teleportation technology, and a host of other cybernated responses the general public was not aware of.
There was no third chair. Apollo generally preferred to stand when addressing his subordinates in cases like these. Pausing, he allowed a few minutes for discomforting silence to take over. Yielding nothing to the two but an impassive, yet intense stare towards Thomas. It was a stoicism that was used many times to hide a rancor reserved for many of his disappeared political enemies. And without warning, the facade broke and the commander-in-chief’s visage altered to the affability of speaking with an old friend.
“A hectic day for both of us.” he said with a soft smile. As he approached the two the soles of his salvatore ferragamo’s clacked in empty space. “A lot has happened in the past twenty-four hours. We have much to discuss, but unfortunately little time to speak, so I’ll try to be direct.”
He splayed his hands out palms towards the two guilelessly. “I just want to know what happened.”
“Thomas, let's start with a personal debriefing on the ground-zero situation in Allure city, from dispatch to recall.”
“You,” Apollo pointed at the man breaking the stupefied silence like a thunderbolt from Olympus, “you heard him? Get on Wikipedia and find out what the hell a Ximbic is.”
“The rest of you,” throwing up his hands up, exasperated “go do your jobs!”
Apollo stormed from ready room to the angular hallway, where a pair of graying colonels stood in eager anticipation, each with a dossier tucked away in their arms, and looking to the president with eyes pleading silently for a moment of time. The saluting officers were left befuddled and disappointed as the president breezed by them. Forcing the two into an unbecoming jog to catch up to the president where they were joined in his wake by a harried female aide who frantically and unhelpfully buzzed the disrupted state of his schedule, a stylist who Apollo continually swatted away, a drone that flared with multiple reports—including Tartalo’s report of scant findings from an uncooperative cat creature—to which he reiterated his desire for results, and the media liaison whom the kindest response he could give was a curt “not now.”
“Which room.” he demanded to the aide who promptly responded with the location.
The Discorporate Productions CEO would address any pressing issues including firing the aide, but first he had poignant, perhaps even personal, matters to attend to. He threw open the reinforced steel door, and stonewalled it in the face of his ravenous entourage. Sighing to the uniformly spartan, comparatively quiet interior room. An awkward moment which he treated nearly as if he were the only one there. The room, a steel cube with little in the way of ventilation much less decor, bore technology that one would not catch at first or any glance. Lined with nearly invisible sensors, nanotube nozzles, hard light projectors, and a host of other technological wonders imperceptible behind austere panes.
The only furnishings in the room were two steel chairs, with two individuals seated in them, a man who likely knew of their situation and a woman who did not. One probably even knew the purpose of the room—perhaps even used it once or twice for interrogations. The two were both likely ripped right out of combat, and though they were given a few hours to decompress, journey by New Roswell teleportation was always jarring to those unprepared or unaccustomed.
It appeared the three were completely alone, even though with Apollo this was never the truth. President Amon always had a team assigned to his surveillance, and at this current moment there was a team of 63 individual operatives—psychologists, sociologists, and hostage negotiators trained to predict behaviour based on nonverbal cues. These interpersonal experts were joined by software engineers and programmers who helped design much of the automated New Roswellian defenses, some of the best and brightest scientists who had spent the past thirty years studying, reverse engineering, and improving upon Red Technocracy technology, and designing this particular system specifically for the protection of President Amon. And finally, they were all overseen by the Operative, a cybernetic entity whom executed much of the satellite array defenses, beacon and teleportation technology, and a host of other cybernated responses the general public was not aware of.
There was no third chair. Apollo generally preferred to stand when addressing his subordinates in cases like these. Pausing, he allowed a few minutes for discomforting silence to take over. Yielding nothing to the two but an impassive, yet intense stare towards Thomas. It was a stoicism that was used many times to hide a rancor reserved for many of his disappeared political enemies. And without warning, the facade broke and the commander-in-chief’s visage altered to the affability of speaking with an old friend.
“A hectic day for both of us.” he said with a soft smile. As he approached the two the soles of his salvatore ferragamo’s clacked in empty space. “A lot has happened in the past twenty-four hours. We have much to discuss, but unfortunately little time to speak, so I’ll try to be direct.”
He splayed his hands out palms towards the two guilelessly. “I just want to know what happened.”
“Thomas, let's start with a personal debriefing on the ground-zero situation in Allure city, from dispatch to recall.”
