Chapter 8

ConspiracyTheoristsOnline_org, 10:49, 09-22-2049

"The Conspirium"―Is there really an elite group of people running America from behind the scenes? We think so…

…
ConspiracyTheoristsOnline_org, 17:12, 09-25-2049

Is "The Conspirium" the New Illuminati? Or just another cult?

…
WFNnews_net, 9:26 EDT, 09-28-2049

An online petition calling for the impeachment of President Isabella Flynn has been signed by over 50 million people, WFN News reports. After the President was discovered to be a George Washington sympathizer and possible anti-palindromist this past weekend, she has lost the support of most of the nation. Other recent polls also reveal that the majority of Americans are currently highly dissatisfied with their government leadership. Jump to article: Can we get rid of the Constitution?

…
ConspiracyTheoristsOnline_org, 11:01, 09-28-2049

Rumors are spreading across the web that a series of government shutdowns are imminent due to the rising chaos in Washington, D.C. One of our members, who wishes to remain anonymous, claims that President Isabella Flynn evacuated the White House earlier this morning and is hiding in a top secret location somewhere outside the Capitol. The White House has refused to either confirm or deny these rumors. Update: Is this connected to the petition to impeach President Flynn, which recently reached 50 million signatures?

…
ConspiractyTheoristsOnline_org, 12:38, 09-28-2049

It has been confirmed that President Flynn is still at the White House, CTO reports. It seems the anonymous tip we received earlier was spurious. However, with notorious gangster Ezekiel Okeko claiming responsibility for the ongoing riots in downtown D.C., we wonder how long the President will choose to remain so close to the danger zone. It is unknown if Okeko is targeting the White House. Death tolls due to the riot have risen to 40, with dozens more confirmed injured or missing. Meanwhile, our booming chatrooms indicate that the majority of the American public are in favor of the riots and Okeko's actions. Update: Some of our readers have commented that the White House has underground bunkers the President can access rather than evacuate the D.C. Metropolitan area for safety. We again apologize for posting incorrect information.

United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM)
Offutt Air Force Base, Omaha

General Jeffrey H. Smith was just eating his daily tuna sandwich when he absentmindedly realized his throat was itchy. At first scratch, he thought nothing of it, but when it didn't go away, he immediately started to worry. He was deathly allergic to nuts, and had had this reaction too many times just from walking into supermarkets that sell peanut butter. Reaching into his pocket for his medication, he was already starting to feel difficulty breathing. Without delay, he popped a pill in his mouth and forced himself to swallow, despite the pain.

It was getting harder and harder for him to breathe, and he felt a rising pain in his chest. He buzzed the intercom for his aides, realizing he needed to get to the medical wing promptly. His aide entered his office, but ignored his gestures that he was choking. Instead, the aide wrested his hand away from his throat and placed it on a portable scanner. The son of a gun was stealing his prints!

There was nothing the General could do, as he was quickly becoming weak and lightheaded. He started to see stars popping up into his field of vision as he watched his aide shuffle through his desk, retrieving a special key that, combined with his fingerprints, granted access to the nuclear launch codes. General Smith's dying breath was spent swearing at the aide, but he did not have the strength to utter his curses at more than a whisper.

The USS Idaho
About 50 nautical miles off the coast of Nova Scotia

It was time. Captain Foster signaled for her XO to get ready. The XO was just a kid in Foster's eyes, but the Conspirium pulled some strings for his rank advancement and subsequent placement aboard her ship just for this mission. Nobody else in the crew were in on it. The last twinge of patriotism inside her perhaps secretly hoped they would pull a mutiny when they saw what she was about to do. She pushed those feelings aside when her XO shot her a stern look, indicating he was ready to go.

Just as they'd rehearsed, Captain Foster started the routine with a command. "Bring us to periscope depth," she ordered.

"Ascending to periscope depth," copied her XO, who flipped some switches and adjusted some dials, reorienting the rudders and expeditiously redistributing the ballast. After a few quiet minutes, he softly declared, "Captain, we have reached periscope depth."

"Up periscope."

Captain Foster rose from her chair and pressed her face against the viewpiece. Protocol dictates that no noise ought to be made by anyone in the sub until the surface is confirmed to be clear of any unwanted contacts. The control deck waited in silence while the Captain swiveled to and fro, scoping out the surface. "All clear," she finally announced. "Radio Strategic Command. Tell them we're awaiting our orders."

Some small part of her hoped the order would never come.

It didn't take long for the navigator to confirm her fears. "Sir, Strategic Command is on the line, waiting."

Sighing, Captain Foster doomed herself to her role. "This is Captain Foster of the USS Idaho," she said, after snatching the communicator. A dark shadow crossed the faces of every crewman in the tiny room as the dispatch gave them their orders.

"Understood," she hesitantly said after the dispatch finished. She looked around the compartment. Everyone was staring at her. "Well, you heard our orders! Combat control, plug in the coordinates; armaments, prepare the Trident missile!"

"But Captain, those coordinates, they're―they're over American soil!"

"StratCom knows that!" The air in the room turned heavy.

The XO spoke up. "Men, we've been given our orders, we must follow protocol." His voice was deadly cold.

Every man somberly turned to face his station. "Aye, Captain, entering the coordinates now," declared the crewman. The sole armed Trident missile―fitted with six nuclear warheads―was ready to fire momentarily. Captain Foster had to admit, her crew was well-trained.

The Captain and her XO extracted their keyrings from their pockets and moved to opposite sides of the control room. Looking across and nodding at her first mate, Captain Foster inserted her key into the nuclear codebox in sync with him as he inserted his, bypassing the failsafe. They typed in the numeric code they had received with the radio transmission. There was a beep, and a light blazed green. The code had worked.

"Fire on my mark," the Captain said. "Three. Two. One."

Everyone in the room gulped; or tried to, if they didn't have the necessary saliva in their mouths to swallow.

"Fire." Together, the Conspirium collaborators turned their keys to the right. The submarine hull shuddered as the 130,000 pound rocket blasted itself out of its eight foot wide hatch, aft of the dorsal atop the sub's torpedo-shaped body.

In less than fifteen minutes, the world as they knew it was going to end, and nothing could stop it.

Washington, D.C.

PJ the platypus groaned as he opened his eyes and tried to focus. His ears were ringing, and it was difficult to see past the blurry, fuzzy haze his brain was in. The pounding at the back of his head forced him to sit up slowly and rub the goose egg he found at the pain's source. Bringing his hand back into sight at least confirmed to him that he wasn't bleeding. He pushed himself up to stand, wincing at the pain in his tailbone as he did so. He must have landed on his tail wrong.

Then, when he saw the collapsed building and column of smoke rising overhead, he remembered.

"Oh no."

What remained of the restaurant Suzy had been hiding in was reduced to nothing but a charred pile of smoking rubble. The roof had collapsed, all the front windows were shattered, and although the outer walls still stood, they looked feeble and shoddy compared to the proud, tall-standing businesses surrounding the block.

Unable to move faster than a hobble, PJ approached the wreckage. "Hello? Is anyone there?" He called out. "Tui? Willy? Eliot? Make a sound if you can hear me!" He coughed as he hit a wall of smoke, ducking to get through the debris that partially blocked what remained of the entrance. Inside, the air was thick with smoke. PJ had to squint and cover his bill to breathe. The smoldering heaps he could make out looked vastly different from the quaint little arrangement of tables and chairs that had occupied the room earlier, making the pit of his stomach drop. He finally detected the charred-black stump of a human body and crawled closer, fighting more coughs.

The mangled carcase was burned to a crisp. He couldn't even tell whose face it was when he pulled off the combat helmet and visor to gaze at his fallen soldier. The combination of smoke and pain for his loss made PJ's eyes glaze over with moisture. Wordlessly, he laid his teammate's helmet back in their lifeless arms and scurried back the way he came, as he was starting to cough uncontrollably.

PJ clambered his way through the debris and back out onto the pavement, collapsing onto all fours when he was free of the smoke. Still hacking some, a few rare tears managed to escape him and splat against the ground. He had failed his team. Now that they were gone, PJ realized he barely even knew them. The only time he had ever spent with them outside of work had been that one time they went out for drinks, when he got thrown out of the diner. Come to think of it, he had never served with a finer team of agents. They deserved better than this. Even Eliot, for as annoying as he could get. They had never pranked or teased or bullied him like the cadets did back at the academy―and while that was partially because he outranked them, there was something else. It had always been different. His team had respected him in a way nobody else he'd worked with had; not OWCA, not the Secret Service.

And now he'd led them straight to their deaths.

Picking himself up to turn and look at the collapsed structure, PJ wiped his eyes and saluted. It was the only thing he could think of to do.

Was Suzy even in there? he wondered morosely. Something told him she wasn't the type that would go and blow herself up.

Dropping his salute, PJ perceived out of the corner of his eye that the extraction car his squad had arrived in was idling nearby. He made his way for it, climbed into the vehicle, and punched the thrusters. Overriding the self-driving feature, he climbed into the sky and sped straight for HQ and his nearest time machine. There was still a chance to fix everything.

A plan was quickly formulating. He'd go back and stop himself from sending his unit into that restaurant. No dilly-dallying, no vague predictions about how everyone was about to die, like his time clone had given him. Why couldn't he be more specific? That fool, PJ ironically thought, knowing that he was only name-calling himself. It would have taken all of two seconds to say, 'hey, don't go in that building, it's wired to blow and kill your whole unit.' How easy would that have been? But no, his time clone had to equivocate. PJ shook his head angrily. He wasn't going to make the same mistake again. As soon as he got to the time machine, he'd go back and wait for himself to run past that alley, grab himself, and tell him specifically and in great detail what was going to happen, he'd prevent all of this.

His car sped through the air, high above the Anacostia River. He could see the building headquarters not far ahead. PJ began his descent as he approached his destination.

The powerful, solid-fueled propellants forced the warheads higher and higher, up into the outer reaches of the Earth's atmosphere. The six missiles had separated and spread out; some of them began heading west. Now over 100 miles above the surface of the Earth, the North American continent took up most of the scope of the pale blue sphere far below.

New York. South Carolina. South Dakota. Oklahoma. Oregon. California.

Six targets. That would be all it took to bring the whole nation to its knees.

The East Coast warheads reached their target airspaces first. They climbed higher and higher into the stratosphere, peaking at an elevation of about 120 miles. Once at that altitude, the thrusters shut off, and the warheads arced in space, still bound by gravity to fall back to the Earth―but it was not to be. There, at the peak of their flight paths, they detonated.

Explosions thousands of times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki briefly lit the sky above the East Coast, but against the glare of the daytime sun, the difference was unnoticeable. In the first 100 microseconds, a massive burst of gamma rays radiated out in all directions, most of them passing harmlessly out into space. The rest of the radiation came streaming down, colliding with the air particles in the upper atmosphere, ionizing the gasses by stripping the air molecules of their electrons. This energy burst, known as an "electromagnetic pulse," forced this cascade of charged particles to rain down to the planet's surface at near lightspeed, where the real damage would begin.

In less than four minutes, the same would happen above the midwest, and three minutes after that, it would happen again on the West Coast.

The downfall had begun.

Headquarters, Department of Homeland Security
Washington, D.C.
Moments before...

James was busy working on the task all interns spend most of their time doing. No, not fetching coffee; the other task all interns spend most of their time doing. That's right―unjamming the copy machine again. He had no earthly idea how there were still so many paper jams in an era when everything was supposed to be sent electronically.

It was a semi-regular occurrence around the office that, when some big news story came on, someone would shout about it, and everyone who didn't have a personal device to catch it on would gather round the breakroom flatscreen to see. Well, the call rang out just then, and James abandoned the copy machine to assume his usual spot in the back of the crowd assembled around the TV set, having to stand on tiptoe to watch.

The channel, as always, was set to WFN News. Instead of the usual attractive news anchor, James recognized the face of the gang leader behind the riots, Ezekiel Okeko, addressing the camera. The WFN News logo was missing from its usual place in the corner of the screen, and the resolution was poor and grainy. It didn't seem like official WFN footage.

"Where is this being broadcast from?" James' boss demanded from somewhere up front, closer to the screen.

"I don't know, sir," someone else said. "The channel is being hijacked, pinging from multiple locations across the Eastern Seaboard. It's playing on all frequencies!"

"Can't you hack the signal and find out where it's coming from?"

"I'm trying!"

"Come on, Sorensen! You're a hacker! What are we paying you for?"

"SHH!" A collective of bystanders hushed, trying to listen to the broadcast. Finally, the volume was turned up loud enough for James to hear from his less than ideal spot, clear in the back.

"―Today is only a taste of what is coming," Okeko said. "My brothers and sisters, if you agree with me, then it is time for you to be properly introduced to my new family. You may have heard about them from the President recently, because we are the only thing the government is afraid of. The people I am talking about, who you may have been brainwashed to believe are a terrorist syndicate, is an organization called the Conspirium."

Okeko's personage faded out, to be replaced by an image of the American flag. The image caught fire and burned away, revealing beneath it a new flag emblazoned with a strange symbol in front of a blood-tinted background. The symbol had the appearance of two touching white circles that overlapped slightly, but had their overlapping lines cut out so that it was one continuous shape, making it in appearance somewhere between an infinity sign and a dumbell. "But we are not terrorists. We only want to take back the power the United States government has claimed for itself, and give that power back to the people. Allow me to introduce a man who can explain everything better than me. You may call him, 'The King.'"

Okeko stepped aside, and the camera cut away to a different location. Now, it was in a small, well lit room with a golden throne, and a man was seated there upon the throne. Its image resolution increased to HD. The man rose as it zoomed in close to his face, where the lights captured and accentuated the sparkle of his mesmerizing emerald green eyes, drawing the viewer in.

"My fellow Americans," The King began...

PJ marched through the maze of corridors and hallways, taking himself deeper into the belly of the building, toward the lab and the time machine. As he passed the offices along the way, he noticed a group gathering around the TV set, riveted on the news. He was in a hurry, so he almost blew past them, until the face that was speaking on the screen made him stop and do a double take. It was what he said, though, that really caught the platypus' attention.

"Allow me to introduce a man who can explain everything better than me," Ezekiel Okeko said. "You may call him, 'The King.'"

Rooted to the floor, PJ watched, stunned, as he recognized the face of Kyle Konig, revealing himself as The King of the Conspirium.

"My fellow Americans," Konig began. "Do not be afraid of us. The President has told you that we are your enemy, but what does she know? She didn't even know George Washington was actually an anti-palindromist! How can she be trusted? How can anybody working for a government conceived by wicked and conspiring men to institutionalize evils such as poverty, inequality, and yes, even anti-palindromism, be believed? A government whose founding fathers were themselves a band of hypocrites! No, nothing good can come from such a government, it must be wholly destroyed! And the Conspirium is here to take its place."

"Sorensen! Have you isolated the transmission source?" a gruff voice barked.

"Working on it, sir!"

"Where's our intern? James, go help him out!"

"I'm on it, sir!" PJ saw a young looking fellow with glasses and a nasally voice extrude from the back of the group and pass him on his way to the nearest computer to begin rapping furiously at the keyboard.

"The purging of the United States will come soon," Konig was saying from the TV screen. "Starting with Washington D.C. My compatriot, Ezekiel Okeko, has hidden a weapon of nuclear capability somewhere inside the Capitol."

A chorus of gasps escaped from everyone in the room, including PJ, who felt a shiver of fear tingle down his spine.

"The nuke will detonate at precisely 8 pm Eastern time tonight, giving plenty of time for the innocent people of the city to evacuate. Do not worry, though; the guilty ones―the politicians who claim the reins of power in this corrupt nation, will have no advantage or privilege in escaping first, the Conspirium has seen to that. For the first time in over two-and-a-half centuries, every man, woman, and child will finally stand on equal ground. Those who are strong enough will survive―only the weak will perish.

"That means the great people of this great country have nothing to fear. The pampered senators and legislators―and yes, even our President―who are weak and fattened from living off of your hard work, they will probably not make it."

PJ had heard enough. He broke himself free of his paralyzed state and rushed for the lab, which was just down the hall. This had to stop, now.

Konig's voice followed him from every computer screen and monitor in every cubicle he passed. "However, the Conspirium stands ready to help all who will come and join us. When the Apocalypse arrives, come and find us. We will provide safety. We will provide protection. We will give you everything you deserve. To both those unable to escape the Capitol on their own, and to all the citizens of this nation in the coming crisis: our centers will be set up in every city and county across this once great land, from sea to shining sea, standing ready to assist you. I promise you'll be able to find us."

PJ reached the lab, entered the security code, and wrenched the door open, wasting no time in approaching the time machine at the center of the right-hand side wall. Behind him, the door swung shut, cutting off Konig's voice. The Department of Homeland Security's full-size time machine looked much sleeker and more advanced than the one back at the Danville Museum, which Suzy had used earlier that summer to go back in time. It was more spherical in shape, being closed off by a large windshield, rather than having an open cockpit.

Back out in the office suite, Konig extended his hands from his sides towards the camera, palm up, and concluded his speech. "In the new world that is about to emerge, I am The King. I will see to it that you will be fed, protected and provided for. All I ask in return is your allegiance. The Conspirium has a place for you, as long as you bow down to me. We are ready to receive you with open arms." For those who were still watching, The King pointed a ringed finger heavenword. "The revolution starts now!"

PJ opened the pod door and entered, immediately sitting at the control panel and punching in a few instructions. Nodding to himself when he had the desired input blinking back from the display cursor, he extended a hand to the big, circular button that would start the device.

Everything went dark just before he pressed it, followed by the sound of the engine fizzling out.

"What just happened?" he asked, unable to pierce through the blackness that was pulled over his eyes like a heavy shroud. He hadn't moved; something was wrong. Instead of the familiar pop and undulating sensation that accompanied the psychedelic change in scenery customary to slipping into the timestream, he heard and felt nothing. He moved his hands, feeling around―tried adjusting some dials, flicking switches, hitting buttons. The clicking sounds of their physical mechanisms were all he got in response.

"No! No! NO!" He pounded on the dashboard in frustration. "This can't be happening! I need you to work, dang it! Work!" He punched the power button. "Work!" He hammered it again. "Work!" This time, he kicked it so hard, it caused a fleeting pain to shoot up his ankle.

He cursed, uttering a string of choice words he would not have wanted Marie to hear him use, grasping his shin while he waited for the pain to subside. After taking a deep breath, he felt for the button that opened the automated door, and upon pressing it, nothing happened. He punched the button again, same result.

"This stupid thing must have an emergency release somewhere," he muttered, rubbing his hands around the outline. He found something like a crank and pulled on it, which made a sound like a popped soda tab. He tried the door again, and it swayed open at his touch. However, there was still oppressive blackness. No light was coming from the lab's overhead bulbs. No light was coming from anything, anywhere.

PJ extracted his communicator. It's display didn't instantly activate like it should. He flipped it open and tried accessing the touchscreen, but the device didn't respond in the slightest.

Still unable to even see his own hand in front of his face, PJ stumbled through the pod door and around the workbenches, feeling around for a possible flashlight. He found his way to the far wall and oriented himself, knowing the door was somewhere to his left. He put out a hand and started feeling his way that direction.

When he reached a solid surface, he slid his hand up, feeling for a light switch, and immediately located it. Out of habit, he flicked it a few times, but nothing happened. From there, he found the door, and pried it open to let himself back into the hallway.

It was just as dark out here as it had been in the lab. From where he stood, he could hear incessant chatter coming from the direction of where everyone had been gathered.

"Hello?" he called.

"Hello?" somebody unexpectedly close echoed back. PJ did not recognize the voice, since he did not work directly with anybody in this floor's department.

"What's happening?" PJ asked.

"I don't know. Must be a power outage?"

"My watch would still be working if this was a power outage," another, rather nasally voice said. "This has got to be an EMP attack."

"A what?" said the first voice.

Even though his eyelids felt like they were already strained as wide as they could go for trying to see in the dark, PJ felt them widen even further. An EMP, that explains everything. He silently cursed again.

"Does anyone have some matches?" he yelled, trying to be heard by more people further back in the office. "Or glowsticks? Something nonelectric?"

"There should be some glowsticks in the lab," said the nasally voice, "but if the electricity is out, there's no way to get inside the magnetic lock."

"Then it's a good thing I'm propping open the door to the lab right now," PJ said, just barely catching the door by his tail before it swung back shut behind him.

"Okay, I'm coming to you. Stay there."

The first voice strained helplessly. "Wait, what's an EM-thing or whatever you called it?"

"An EMP―electromagnetic pulse. It's a huge surge of charged particles that wipes out everything that runs on electricity. Everything." The nasally voice was slowly inching closer to PJ from somewhere around his ten o'clock.

"Yeah," added PJ, "and most likely, it's at least city-wide, if not worse." As he contemplated everything the Conspirium had done today, he calculated that chances were high it was worse.

There was a training PJ had attended a few years ago where he learned about EMP's, one of the most potentially devastating strikes America's enemies could inflict upon the country. As one threat-assessment paper had put it, in a worst-case scenario, '...Adversaries may aptly consider [a] nuclear EMP attack a weapon that can gravely damage the U.S. by striking at its technological Achilles Heel, without having to confront the U.S. military.*' He'd even heard talk that there were now some nuclear weapons built specifically to amplify the power of the EMP they released, creating a so-called super-EMP that had improved range and strength. They were supposed to be so powerful they could even wipe out all the backup supplies and replacement parts stored by the military in an underground bunker at Peterson Air Force Base, located under Cheyenne Mountain, the headquarters of NORAD.

PJ prayed that wasn't the Conspirium's plan.

"How close am I to the door?" the voice asked.

"Almost there," PJ answered. "Follow the sound of my voice."

"Your voice sounds like it's coming from the ground…" the voice pointed out. A pair of eyeballs floating in the darkness cartoonishly appeared a few feet above PJ's head.

"I'm Agent PJ, the platypus."

The eyeballs directed downward. "Oh, nice to meet you. I'm James. The―uh, intern. Ah, found it."

PJ felt something like a hand applying pressure to the door, then sensed James the intern's movement as he entered the lab. After listening to him rummage about for a minute or so, James gave an "Aha!" and PJ heard some cracking noises; apparently he was activating the glowstick.

"Oops, no, that was just a pen. And now I think my hands are covered in ink. Maybe this drawer, then?" he said, accompanied by the sound of more cracks. "Yes, here they are! We'll have some light in a minute."

PJ could already see a faint pink glow peering through the darkness. It was joined by two more dim pink blobs, agonizingly weak, yet growing slowly brighter with each passing second. The intern must have found several glowsticks. James tossed PJ one, who caught it easily.

"So now what do we do?" asked the third voice, which had found them by what little light they had.

"We need to evacuate the building." PJ took charge in a commanding voice. "Follow me, let's get all these people out of here."

With that, he led the way towards the growing murmur in the office. The glowstick gave him just enough light to see where he was going and avoid bumping into objects. PJ inserted two fingers into his mouth and whistled shrilly, holding his fledgling light high to get everyone's attention.

"Hey people, people!"

The room went silent quick, and PJ felt more than saw all eyes fall on him.

"We found a couple of glowsticks, let's quit the bickering and get out of here, huh?" he said in a loud voice.

"What's going on?" someone asked. "Why aren't our phones working?"

"We believe the Conspirium has targeted us with an EMP," PJ explained. "So no electronics will work. No phones, no flashlights, nothing. If anyone has matches or a lighter, those could help, just please try not to burn the whole building down."

A few small flames from lighters flickered into view after he said that. PJ cleared his throat.

"All right, listen up. The Conspirium claimed there is a nuke hidden somewhere in the city. We need to evacuate this building and get everyone to safety. Let's all proceed to the exit in a calm and orderly fashion. Those who have lights, hold them up so others can follow you."

"Where are we going to be safe if a nuclear bomb is about to go off?" someone whined. "And how are we getting there? If there really was an EMP, all transportation is down."

"Are your legs broken?" PJ asked rhetorically.

"Who put you in charge?" someone else asked. "Who are you, anyways?"

Losing his patience, PJ was almost ready to say screw it, take his glowstick, and leave them all behind, when the intern spoke up.

"C'mon, guys, do what he says," James implored. "It's just until we all get out of here."

Somehow, that was enough to get everyone moving. Or at least, PJ could hear a lot of shuffling and movement. The glowstick was getting bright enough to show him a lot of faces, but they all looked the same: confused, afraid, scared.

"James, you go stand in the middle over there, so people have light into the hallway," PJ ordered.

The intern nodded and did as he was told. PJ watched the faces file past him, some giving him curious looks once they were close enough to see he was a platypus, others seemingly just glad to be moving towards a goal. They moved slowly, with arms out, feeling their way ahead of them, except when they were close enough to one of the glowsticks to see by.

When he could see the last few people passing, PJ called out, "Is that everyone?" Once he was satisfied that everyone on this floor was accounted for, he brought up the rear, using his light so they could see out ahead.

And so the group proceeded slowly toward the exit. As they progressed, a bend in the hallway ahead projected a dim but encouraging amount of sunlight shining through some windows. Eventually it was enough light to see by, and they made it to the staircase, only to be slightly delayed when James absentmindedly tried calling the elevator before remembering there was no power.

The staircase was windowless and dark, but by now everyone knew the drill, and the group quietly descended to the ground floor. The main lobby was quite populated by windows, and allowed lots of sunlight in, so the group easily made their way out the front doors from there.

PJ called for the intern as they approached the exit. "James!"

"Yes?" James held up and waited for him to catch up.

"There's got to be more people stuck on other floors. Use these to look for others." PJ handed him back his glowstick. "Take some volunteers out of our group here, and get the building completely evacuated."

James accepted. "Okay." The two of them were the last to reach the main entrance and make it outside. The front courtyard looked like it always had, sunny and wide open, with lots of space. In the crowd, there was a tangible mood of relief and joy at making it this far.

"What about you?" James asked, turning to the platypus.

"I―" PJ started, not sure what he was supposed to do now.

Then he saw it.

Others had seen it, too. They were pointing at it, talking about it. James noticed their stares, and turned to see what it was.

Somewhere, behind the dead and lifeless shells of buildings and the stalled vehicles on the road, there was a light, a beacon, that nobody had ever seen before. Bright, pulsing rings of light rode a pale blue photonic column upwards into the heavens, and clearly visible from every direction inside the holographic projection was the image of the Conspirium's flag.

WFNnews_net, 14:02 EDT, 09-28-2049

Breaking news! EMP attack strikes East coast! Millions are without power! The only way to protect yourself and your loved ones is to join the Conspirium!

…
European News Outlet

At approximately 14:09 EDT, communications with the American West Coast went dark, just as they did in the Midwest and Eastern Seaboard minutes before, due to multiple confirmed high-altitude nuclear EMP bursts. We can only assume these attacks are related. An unconfirmed conspiracy group known as 'The Conspirium' has claimed responsibility for the EMP's. Millions of casualties are expected, but with no communication, there is no way to know what is going on now inside the United States.

*As quoted from the "Commission To Assess The Threat To The United States From Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack," July 2017