"Have the car park over there." Fareeha pointed at a spot marked by white lines on the edge of the street."
Angela tapped on her console and her car began moving towards the spot Fareeha had indicated. As it did so she looked out the window at their destination. The two story house had white walls and a peaked roof covered in weathered russett tiles. It had a green lawn split into two different levels with one of them standing half a meter above the other. There was a moderately long driveway with a sedan car tucked away in an open garage carport.
"What's wrong with parking in the driveway, Fareeha?"
Fareeha didn't answer right away, instead opting to get out of the car and pointed at a metal circle covered in orange paint that was beginning to chip off and a wooden backboard that had been bolted to the garage roof. "Jack is a die-hard basketball fan. You park in the driveway and there's a very good chance of your car getting hit by a basketball. Safer to park in the street."
Angela eyed the hoop for a second before looking down at herself. She had changed back into the wrinkled khaki pants and red shirt that she had worn on her flight back to Switzerland. "I should have stayed in the pencil skirt. This is too casual." She said while trying to brush some of the wrinkles in her shirt away.
"You're fine, Angela. This isn't a black tie event, it's just dinner with my mum and Jack. Come on."
That was easy for Fareeha to say since she had had the opportunity to change at home. The sweatpants and tye shirt were gone, replaced by a loose fitting forest green sweater and slim black pants. Fareeha started heading up the driveway and towards the front door. She pressed the bell and took a step back to wait. After several seconds the door opened and a person that could only be Jack was standing on the other side.
He was near two meters tall, leanly built and had spiky tufts of white hair covering up a receding hairline. His bright blue eyes peered out of a craggy face that had seen its fair share of decades. "You must be Doctor Ziegler." He held his hand out.
"Just Angela is fine. No need to be so formal." The doctor said as she took his hand and shook it.
"Well then you can call me Jack." He let go of her hand and turned towards the other woman present. "Hey 'Reeha, gonna give me a hug?"
Fareeha bit back a scowl as she hugged the other man then headed past him into the house. "It's Fareeha, Jack." She called back at them.
"Reeha?" Angela asked.
"It's what everyone called her when she was a kid. She started going by Fareeha when she was a teenager but I still call her Reeha every now and then to bug her." Jack said with a lopsided grin. "Come on in."
Angela slipped out of her shoes and left them next to the doorway as she headed in. Past the entryway the house opened up to a large and airy living room. A charcoal gray fabric sofa and black wing chairs sat in a semi circle around a television hanging on the wall. Behind the furniture was a row of portraits. Most of them featured Jack, Ana, and Fareeha in them but there were a couple of a man she didn't recognize. The TV was currently displaying an American news channel but the volume had been muted.
"Hello, Angela." Ana said from the kitchen doorway. She was holding a bowl full of a chocolately looking mix in one hand while the other was stirring it with a whisk. "Thanks for coming by. Jack made too much pork tenderloin so I'm glad there's another person here to eat it. I'll get fat if you don't take your share."
"There's no such thing as too much pork tenderloin." Jack answered. "If we don't eat it all then that just means we'll have leftovers."
"Pfaw, you always say whenever you make too much food." Ana said with a shake of her head but she sounded amused rather than annoyed. "Would you mind giving me a hand, Fareeha?"
"Sure." Fareeha said before making a beeline towards her mother. Once inside the kitchen she looked around for whatever it was she was supposed to be helping with. The oven was turned on but there was nothing inside yet. Used bowls, kitchen utensils and silverware had been loaded into the dishwasher and it had even had detergent in the dispenser. The one thing that looked incomplete was the bowl in Ana's arms. "Ummm what exactly do you need help with?"
"I don't." Ana stated as she began pouring the mix into a waiting pan. "I wanted to talk to you." She glanced past Fareeha towards the living room where Angela and Jack were. "I want to make sure you're doing all right." Ana said with a pensive look on her face as she returned her attention to her daughter.
"Why wouldn't I be?" Fareeha asked, baffled at her mother's sudden display of concern.
"You and I have never spoken very much about your job. It's not because I disapprove but because I don't want to know the details of what you're doing. However I do happen to recall you telling me that you've always kept a strict line with your clients to avoid things getting messy emotionally. From what I've been able to tell you've never had any issues but now I don't know want to think."
"I know, but it's not a problem. I wouldn't have brought her here if my feelings for her weren't genuine. I can tell the difference between emotions that are real and those that only happen because I top for her."
Ana rapped her whisk against the pan to get some of the mix off it before picking up a spatula and beginning to scrape the insides of the bowl. "I understand that and I'm not questioning you. I'm not sure about her. I mean – that's Angela Ziegler sitting in my living room. You're a wonderful woman but someone like her could be with just about anyone she chooses. I just want to know that she's with you because of who you are and not what you do for her is all." She set the bowl down and opened the oven up, sliding the pan inside then closed the door and set the timer. "That'll take about half an hour or so. Do you mind helping me set the table?"
"Ummm... sure." Fareeha hesitantly said, still trying to process the anvil her mother had just dumped on her. Ana pushed four plates into her hands and Fareeha slowly turned to head towards the table sitting between the kitchen door and the living room. As she was setting the plates down she could hear Jack's voice from the living room.
"North Carolina, Duke, Kentucky, UCLA, Kansas and Indiana. Those are the blue bloods, but Indiana is the best of course."
"But why do you call them blue bloods? Why not purple? It's the color most often associated with purple going all the way back to the Roman Empire." Angela asked.
"I don't know, actually. Alliteration maybe?" Jack said with a shrug. As he started to open his mouth again the television changed from an anchor talking into the camera to the clip that Angela had recorded at the airport earlier that day. "How's that for timing? You're on my TV and couch at the same time." Jack started to look around for something before yelling towards the kitchen. "Hey, Ana. Where's the remote?"
"How should I know? You were the last one to touch it."
Jack started digging between the cushions next to him before his hand came up with remote in hand. His thumb pressed down on it and Angela's voice came out of the television. "We are currently exploring our options at this time."
Jack's head turned towards the doctor as the version of her on the TV finished speaking. "What's that about?"
"Uhm..."
Before Angela could say anything further the anchor from before began speaking once again. "There's been no official statement from Senator Brown and Senator Miller, but an anonymous source online claiming to be from Senator Miller's office has stated that approval of nano-biotics for use in the US was contingent on Doctor Ziegler agreeing to the weaponization of her invention. The doctor's statement indicated nothing of the sort, but would explain why she returned to Switzerland."
Angela shifted uneasily on the couch as the announcer spoke. Well that cat was out of the bag now but it hadn't come from her. It was possible Brown's office had been the source of the leak but there had been another person in that meeting besides her and the Senators. Schiff certainly had a reason to want nano-biotics to be approved and a leak of this nature was sure to put pressure on the US government.
"Is that true?" Jack asked as he muted the TV.
"I can't answer that." Angela replied as she avoided meeting his eyes. "I signed an NDA before the meeting."
Jack snorted at that. "I'll take that as a 'yes' then. I'm not surprised they would try but they definitely went about it all wrong. They should have accepted your application and used that to get their hands on nano-bots to work with."
"Wait, wait, wait." Angela couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You... approve of this? I invented nano-biotics to save lives and they wanted to turn it into a weapon! How could you possibly think this is a good idea?"
"It's no different than MAD and nukes. Eventually everyone will have nano-biotic bombs or some such and things will balance themselves out. Don't use them on us and we won't use them on you. Keeps the nuclear powers from getting into a real war with each other."
Angela rubbed at one of her temples, vainly hoping to avert the headache she knew was already on its way. "Nuclear weapons, another thing that never should have been invented. Every time I think about those I want to go back so I can slap Oppenheimer and Truman in the face."
"Why?"
"Why? Why?" Angela sputtered. "Because they invented and used the most horrific weapon ever invented? Twice! That's a pretty good reason to me."
"You're right. We used the bomb twice. but doing so saved more lives then it took."
"What?" Angela started to laugh at what Jack had said. "How-, what? Okay fine explain this to me." She said disdainfully. "How did dropping two nuclear bombs on Japan save lives?"
"I know it sounds strange at first, but you have to consider the circumstances the Allies were encountering in its war with Imperial Japan. The Japanese Army didn't believe in surrendering and their troops would fight to the death or kill themselves to avoid being captured. Some of those Pacific islands would have garrisons of ten or twenty thousand troops and the Allies would take maybe a hundred prisoners after a month of fighting. When the Japanese began to lose the air battle they started having some of their pilots crash their planes into American ships to try and kill as many people as possible. Those were the people we were fighting."
"So how does that justify using atomic bombs?" Angela said,
"Because the Japanese didn't believe in surrender. They would rather die than be shamed in that manner. Japan had millions of soldiers and conscripts ready to fight any invasion the Allies could mount. There would have been a lot more deaths if an invasion had taken place instead of using the atomic bomb to try and end the war."
"Are you a historian or something?" Angela asked with a raised eyebrow. "You seem to know an awful lot about World War Two."
"No, I'm not. I learned about this when I was training at a military academy. It was covered as part of our ethics education." Jack explained.
"You were a soldier?"
"I was. Special Forces, actually. It's how I met Ana as a matter of fact."
Angela turned to look towards the kitchen only to see Fareeha and Ana standing there watching in silence. "So... you were Special Forces too, Ana?"
"I was, dear but not in the US Military. I served in the Egyptian Army."
"I'm starting to sense a story-" Angela began but Ana shook her head as she cut the doctor off.
"There is dear, but... let's just say that you're not the only one with secrets here." Ana said with a kindly smile that somehow failed to make Angela feel any better.
"Ummm... okay... you know what, I think this evening got off the wrong foot. I wasn't expecting... this." She turned back towards Jack. "Let's start over. Hi, I'm Angela Ziegler."
"I'm Jack Morrison. Do you like basketball?"
"... yes." Angela said in a small voice, knowing she was likely going to learn more about the sport than she had ever wanted to know.