Herbert P. Garrick stepped through his office door and stopped in the hallway. “Good. Two Sentinoids. Stay alert, men.”
“Yessir, Mr. Garrick,” they chorused.
He turned to face the open office door and thumbed a small remote. “Anti-teleportation field. Right.” A shimmering grey-white field lined the floor, walls and ceiling of his Executive Schedule II-level office.
He thumbed another button. “Kah-THOOM” resounded down the hallway as adamantium/titanium shutters crashed down on all sides of the empty office, hermetically sealing it from the outside. “Blast shutters, check,” Washington”s wiliest bureaucrat intoned. He thumbed the remote again and the shutters slid upwards. He strode back into his office with the smug assurance that this time no one was going to invade his realm and get away with it.
As he eased himself back into his leather-covered (black, of course), tilt-a-whirl, senior executive recliner, he toggled the remote yet again. A spotlight shined at the autographed photo of the President on the center of his “ego wall,” the photograph”s frame illuminated, and an a capella recording of “The Eyes of Texas Are upon You” played softly.
Oops, wrong button, he thought. His thumb moved yet again to cut the performance off -- and then stopped. Better not get in the habit of turning that one off. Instead, his forefinger crept gingerly up the face of the remote until it reached a magenta stud. Triggering it caused a transparent aluminum shield to slide down from the ceiling along the front of his desk, separating him from the rest of the room. The blast shutters clanged down again. High capacity blowers instantly replaced the entire volume of air on his side of the barrier with fresh, filtered air. Laser beams began sweeping the other side of the room, ranging for the hidden stun beams and electric arc projectors hidden in the walls. The computer on his desk had already been withdrawn into a secure, EMP and Tempest-shielded cabinet, automatically disconnected from all external links and the NEUTERR device activated. Finally, a silencer field activated, ensuring privacy. All this had been achieved before the first verse of “Eyes of Texas” had finished.
“Finally,” he sighed. “Total secur -- naaah, better not say it.”
“Good thinking, Herb,” came a low, female voice from right beside him.
Herbert P. Garrick leaped from his comfy chair. “Gaaah!”
“No, Zemo.”
Bad News Herb frantically looked around the room, seeing nothing. Lower lip trembling, he flicked yet another switch on the remote. A loud pinging began, ending a few seconds with a synthesized voice message. “Ultrasonar scan indicates no unauthorized presences in secured space.”
“Then I must be authorized,” came the contralto voice again.
“Show yourself!” Garrick's voice had gone quavery.
“If you wish. Hello, Herb, we haven't talked for awhile.” There were two metallic shimmers next to the Assistant to the President for Metahuman Affairs, revealing Baroness Elizabeth Zemo in full purple uniform and Silicone Sally in translucent rubber.
“Yiiii!”
“No, not ‘Yiiii’. I said, I’m Zemo.”
“You’re supposed to be gone. Gone!”
“Of course I was. Gstaad is so lovely this time of year. My skiing is so much better. And I had a marvelous time in Davos at the World Economic Forum. The Vice President actually remembered your name.”
“He did? What did he say?”
“He said that if there was ever anybody he should invite on his next hunting trip it should be you.”
”Really?” Garrick preened. Then he paused. “Hunting trip?”
“Yes, you know, with shotguns. Now, isn't it time for you to try to shoot us before we compromise your security?”
“Er, yes. Thanks.” He reached into his desk and withdrew an ominous looking black gun with entirely too many antennas, rangefinders and red LED's on it. “Hands up!” he demanded, and flicked the panic button on his remote. Nothing happened. Leveling the gun at Elizabeth, he reached under the desk for the other panic button and pressed it. Still nothing.
He groaned. “O.K., I know when I’m beaten. Do I have to fire this at you and have your force field or whatever prove that this is completely futile?”
“No, Herb. Save it for the Lair Legion. Sally, please step over there by the computer cabinet, would you?”
“You have no chance of breaking into that computer,” Garrick sneered. “It”s NEUTERR protected.”
“I hope so,” Elizabeth Zemo responded. “You know, those bozos actually came to me first. The best security possible, they said. Any attempt to break into the computer, electronic or physical, causes the NEUTERR device to purge the memory, incinerate the hard drive and wipe all networked storage within three seconds. Quintuple failsafes. Of course, that means that any kid with a screwdriver can wipe out your entire operation just by trying to open the case. Not to mention how it would react to an intrusion by a silicone rubber meta. Ready, Sally?”
“Urk.” Herbert Garrick”s thought processes weren”t working well.
“Wait, Sally. So, Herb, are you going to listen to me, or are you going to let me wipe your entire agency”s files? “
“I suppose I’ve got to listen. Everybody else has been barging in here to lecture me. Have a seat.” He sank back into his chair and fiddled with the remote yet again, causing the partition to lift.
Elizabeth and Sally stepped over to the armchairs and also sat down. “And of course, I’ve deactivated your recording devices, your real-time scans, and the other security devices.”
“Of course. You’d think that the $18.6 million we just spent on this office could do more than keep out the press, but apparently not. Now let me guess. You don’t want me and the U.S. Government to give in to the Parody Master, right?”
“Whatever gave you that idea? In fact, we want to help you help him,” Elizabeth Zemo replied.
“Since when does a Zemo help someone else take over the world?”
“I know when to be on the winning side, Herb. And all I’m asking for is a little trade. Nothing that could get anyone in trouble.”
I've heard that one before. “No deal, Zemo. The U.S. Government doesn’t talk to terrorists -- or villains."
“O.K., Sally, stretch away.”
“You’ll just slow us down for a few weeks, Zemo. And when we get all of the metas and perhaps some nuisances like you Obedience Branded, those computer files won”t make a bit of difference anyway.”
“Stubborn, aren’t you, Herbie? Let’s try Plan B, Sally. Show him the pictures.”
Silicone Sally duly stretched over to a briefcase and retrieved a sheaf of 8 x 10 color glossies. Snapping back to normal size, she laid them on the bureaucrat’s desk.
“Now who’d have thought that you had a thing for six foot tall blonde bodybuilders, Herbie? That’s a great pic there in the middle, with her putting a grapevine on you.”
“How did you get those pictures? That was a shielded location!”
”Remember the prime contractor on that meta surveillance system, Herbie-poo? Who was it?”
“Ezmo Technologies LLC, of course. Owned by Moze Holdings -- oh, no . . . . We knew all that, of course. Absolutely. We decided to exploit your technology.” Herbert Garrick had not got to his current position by not being able to recover quickly. “In fact, we knew you were using it to surveill us too -- excellent testing of operational procedures.”
“So you deliberately intended for me to get shots of you and the Secretary of State doing the horizontal mambo with some foreign agents -- not to mention the Secretary of Homeland Security and that mud bath?”
Garrick”s mind raced. Public humiliation. Fooled again. Cabinet members. CABINET MEMBERS -- and I KNOW. “Hey, if it worked for J. Edgar Hoover, it’ll work for me. Of course, you could try to embarrass me by publicizing those pictures, but then you’d lose a lot of leverage over the other guys.”
"You'd never make it to Schedule I, Herbert."
Ouch. I want that car! "The Parody Master can offer bigger rewards."
“Very cool, Herbert. Very cool. But I don”t have to publicize the pictures. I was just thinking of showing them to one special person.”
“The President? He’d never see you.”
“I was thinking about somebody outside the Beltway. Way outside. In a small town in a small place with a funny name -- what was it, Sally?”
“Twilight Pastures, I think.”
Herbert P. Garrick blanched. “Not my mother,” he murmured.
“Yes, Herbie. Your mother. That surveillance system was very complete. Right down to the call you made about 10 minutes ago asking her how the bingo game went. Now tell me what I want to know, and I”ll leave you alone. For now. “
Bad News Herb gulped, and leaned forward to listen.
Notes:
Executive Schedule I is a cabinet-level position. Executive Schedule II is Deputy Secretary level -- without the right to a government chauffeured car.
In early 2002, a computer security company actually proposed the NEUTERR device (name changed to protect the inane) to several U.S. intelligence agencies, who were impressed with it until one analyst pointed out that it was the functional equivalent of putting a big, red, obvious, “Building Self-Destruct” button on every computer.
anime.mangacool.com
(10.0.255.1)
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6/Windows 2000 (0 points)
