Chapter 9
He was sitting in a classroom, the only anthropomorphic animal of all the cadets. The instructor lashed out with his telescoping pointer wand to slap the projector screen, grabbing the cadets' attention.
"Here's your Reader's Digest version of what to expect from a potential EMP attack," the instructor barked. "In a worst-case scenario, America's enemies could detonate one or multiple nuclear warheads at high altitudes, thereby affecting most or all of the continental US. The first casualties would come when the EMP knocked out the controls of every airline cruiser, passenger plane, helicopter, and flying automobile that gets caught mid-flight, sending them crashing to the ground. Most flightless cars would instantly stall and die as well, wherever they happened to be. Across city roads and highways nationwide, there would be tens or even hundreds of thousands of accidents. In only a few minutes, there could be something on the order of a half a million dead, depending on the time of day. If it happens during rush hour or a holiday, you could multiply that by several factors.
"Next, with hospitals across the country suddenly losing power and having no working back-up generators, patients relying on constant life support would quickly slip away. Another few thousand lives lost."
PJ felt a crumpled piece of paper hit the back of his head. He snapped around, glaring at the snickering cadet a row back who threw it at him. The instructor slapped the screen loudly again, forcing them both to look back at the lecturer.
"Ahem. Now then, in the interim, the overwhelming majority of civilians have little to no concept of an EMP attack, and thus will not know what has happened. Most will probably assume it to be a regular old power outage, that will be fixed within a few minutes to hours. Although they'd be frustrated when their phones, cars, and everything else that runs on electricity simultaneously fails, they'll just think it was a coincidence that ever battery for every electronic device they had simultaneously died. That is what will leave civilians the most vulnerable―their delay in recognizing the situation and taking appropriate actions for survival. That means in most places across the country, very little would happen the first couple hours. Businesses will crawl to a stop. Ground and air traffic will likewise grind to a halt on every street, road, and highway, leaving many stranded, with everyone waiting for someone to come rescue them. Local emergency responders will be overwhelmed. And since virtually the entire nation's infrastructure will need to be repaired or replaced before the lights can come back on, it will take months or even years before a sense of normalcy can be restored. And that's assuming that the worst is over. It isn't.
"At the approach of sunset, the reality that help isn't coming anytime soon will start to sink in. That's when things will start to really go downhill. If America is hit with an EMP, you can expect nothing less than the eventual collapse of society. Mass riots and looting would begin once it becomes clear that the local police agencies are overwhelmed. It would only take a few days for every supermarket, convenience and drug store to be plundered down to the last bag of rice. The flow of shipments ceasing means food, medications, toiletries, and other basic essentials will be quickly gone in every big city, while piles of food are rotting far away in the countryside, with no way to get to it. As the hunger and panic begin to set in, society will start to break down completely, with violence erupting any and every where. Within weeks, millions will be dying of starvation, disease, lack of sanitation, and from having next to no access to clean water.
"In short, in the event of an EMP attack, we estimate unbridled chaos to spread across the country in a matter of days. Our entire electric grid is totally exposed, and by and large the population has had absolutely no training or preparation for such an attack."
The memories of PJ's training on EMP's all those years ago flowed through his mind while he wandered about the perfectly manicured grounds of DHSHQ, thinking. Funny how at the time, it had seemed like it could never happen.
The question was, how large was this EMP's range? He had no way of knowing if the EMP was localized and only affected just the city, or just New England, or just the East Coast, or if the entire US had been hit. One thing was for sure, virtually all communications would have been knocked out by the surge, so there was no way of contacting anywhere else to find out. And in the end, it didn't really matter how big the attack was. This bleak outlook painted by his presenter back at that training was probably going to be the state of things here, soon. The riot in downtown he'd so far mostly avoided would only spread, being spurred by fear of an imminent nuclear blast.
Which brought him to the more pressing issue. Sure, riots are not good news, but they're nothing compared to a hidden nuke. Depending on where the blast would be centered, HQ was almost certainly within range of the deadly radiation zone, if not close enough to be obliterated by the explosion itself. He was in danger. The people he'd led out of the building by light of a few glowsticks were in danger. A million people living in the metropolitan area were in danger. And above it all, Isabella, Phineas, and Marie were in danger.
There it was, the thing that worried him the most. It was an amazing, yet terrifying feeling. Amazing that only a few months ago, his concern for the President and the First Family came solely from a deep sense of patriotism, not to mention his duty as a member of the Secret Service. It was never anything personal, just his job. Now, it was so much more. They were the three people in the world that meant more to him than anything. But how could he possibly protect them now? He had no transport, and no idea where they were.
He shifted gears and focused on the positives. After all, there was still a glimmer of hope.
His time clone from earlier was the seed of that hope. Somehow, PJ's future self must have found a way to get to a time machine and go back to the past. That meant, for now, PJ was guaranteed to survive whatever was coming his way. It was something he had been trained on while he was in the Secret Service―they called it quantum immortality. He was more or less immortal from this point on, until he went back to the point in time where he delivered that message to his past self. And it was proof that there was still a working time machine out there somewhere, either unaffected by the EMP, or capable of being repaired. He just needed to find it, go back and warn Isabella and Phineas and Ferb about the EMP and nuke, and save his unit from the explosion. Simple enough, except for the small problem that he had no idea where he would find a functioning time machine.
Then he reflected once more on what his time clone had told him. The Conspirium has a hidden bunker deep in the Appalachian mountains. It has a command center. Get there soon enough, and there's a chance you'll be able to stop the nukes from detonating.
Which led him to the million dollar question. Should he go try to locate and reach the Conspirium's secret command center in the Appalachians? Spend his efforts looking for that working time machine? Or drop everything and go protect his family? His next decision was crucial. He guessed he only had about five hours left before the city went up in a big, fiery mushroom cloud of death.
The Conspirium, the time machine, or the Flynns? Tick tock, tick tock. Every second he wasted deliberating was costly.
After mulling it over for several minutes, PJ decided that by process of elimination, there was only one good option. He didn't know where he could possibly find another time machine, and the chances of just happening on one in working condition in the next five hours were slim. And besides, he knew he was destined to find a time machine at some point anyways, because whatever choice he made already had lead his future self to it. That option was out.
He knew where to find the Conspirium. Their holographic projection in the distance beckoned him to come and challenge them. On the other hand, he didn't know where Isabella, Phineas, and Marie were. He had no transport, no way to find them, and no way to protect them from an atom bomb. He could easily spend the full five hours searching for the needle in the proverbial haystack and never find them, and even if he did, they'd have no way to get clear of the bomb in time. As much as his heart screamed at him for it, the choice was clear. He only hoped it was the correct one, the one his future self had already made.
He punched a nearby marble plaque so hard it hurt his knuckles. "I'm sorry, Marie," he whispered aloud, pushing down the painful lurch in his stomach before turning to face the beckoning pillar of light created by the Conspirium. "This is the only way."
The city was eerily quiet. There were no cars, flying or driving, no bustle, no traffic. There were no distant boomboxes loudly playing music. No airplanes or flying taxis zooming past overhead. No road construction. No lights in any of the businesses. All the traffic signals were dead. Cars were left abandoned in the middle of the road where they had stopped. It made the songs of the birds distinctly more noticeable, twittering in the background. The only movement was the people out walking by the hundreds. All converging on one point, the same place PJ was going.
The only place with power.
The Conspirium tower.
It looked to be about fifteen stories tall. Not extremely big, had this been the downtown area, but on this side of the river, that made it the tallest building for blocks and blocks around. It was easy to find, as the holographic column of light rising from the roof made it impossible to miss. In fact, whenever PJ passed an open, flat area offering a view of the rest of the city, he could make out a good half-dozen or more identical beacons spread out across the city. No doubt to invite the population in for the protection the Conspirium promised.
PJ couldn't help but be impressed by the sheer magnitude of organization and resources the Conspirium must have had if they were planning all this. How many other cities across the nation were being taken over the same way?
As he neared the tower, more and more people thronged together in the streets, attracted to the lights like moths to a flame. He was a few hundred yards away when he started to hear loudspeakers repeating the same commands over and over again from the direction of the tower, reminding him of Disneyland:
"Please proceed calmly to the front of the line. Please do not push or shove. Please have your identification ready. The Conspirium's teleporters are functioning at 100% capacity. All hail The King. Please proceed calmly to the font of the line…"
Without any semblance of a plan in mind, PJ zigged and zagged through the legs of the ever thickening crowd until he was close to the front gates. The entrances were slotted to divide the line and move things quickly along. Past the gate, the lines filled the small courtyard up to the entrance of the tower. He couldn't quite get a view of the inside from here.
All of a sudden, PJ felt himself being grabbed from behind.
"Mommy, look! A puppy!"
He was being carried by two stubby little arms. PJ squirmed and writhed. "Hey, put me down, kid!"
"Oh, how cu―" the child's mother said from somewhere overhead, until PJ looked up, and she got a better look at his distinctly non-canine face, causing her to change words mid-syllable. "―Rios."
"Okay, I've had enough of this," PJ said, slightly irked, fully knowing that the word she had elected not to use was 'cute.' He wiggled his way out of the kid's arms and pushed himself away.
"Bad doggy!" the kid said, sticking his tongue out as PJ shuffled off, never giving them a second glance.
He started making his way clockwise around the perimeter, looking for a way he could sneak in. The fence appeared to wrap all the way around, the metal bars of which were too close for even him to squeeze through. Higher up, it was topped by curls of barbed-wire, so he couldn't climb it, either. PJ swiveled his eyes, searching his surroundings, looking for anything that could help. The only thing that stood out was the apartment complex next door. It was tall enough, PJ thought.
He ascended a fire escape along the outside of the apartment building to its highest point, three stories up. That put him higher than the Conspirium tower's fence and able to see over it. He extracted his grappling gun and aimed at a ledge on the opposite tower, then squeezed the trigger.
Nothing.
Rats. His grapple had been knocked out by the EMP, too. He inspected the gun more closely, noting a screw connecting the barrel to the handle. He looked through his pockets for a tool that could fit it, finding a flathead of about the right size. It would have to do, as flatheads could still manage on a Phillips head screw.
Once he had the barrel off, he looked inside, and could just see the tip of the grapple jammed inside the canister. He used his screwdriver to wedge it out, surprised at how easy it was to disassemble. Soon, he had the grappling hook and wire freed from the canister. He looked back down at the fence, realizing that he'd have to cast the grappling hook over it himself. PJ carefully looped the wire neatly around his arm, then, making sure he had the other end of the wire in hand, he swung the grapple and rope above his head like a lasso before launching it over the wall.
The grapple caught on a window ledge a story lower than him, on the second floor. PJ secured his end to the fire escape and, after testing his knot, slowly crawled out onto the line. He double-checked his surroundings, but there didn't appear to be anyone watching this side of the tower, so he started sliding his way across the wire.
It didn't take long to reach the other end. PJ deftly pulled himself up onto the window ledge and, finding it unlocked, he slid it open enough to slip inside. Before he finished, he unhooked his grapple and flung it back across, doing his best to hide his tracks by getting it to land back on the fire escape.
The room he'd broken into appeared to be an ordinary office. There was a desk with a computer, a chair, some filing cabinets, and various run-of-the-mill decorative plastic plants and paintings. An overhead fluorescent light and the low, rumbling background sound of the air conditioner confirmed that this building had power. The Conspirium must have reinforced the surge protectors of everything inside, or something. Moving to the door, he cracked it open and peeked down the hallway. A brief glance showed that the lines of civilians continued in the hallways. Preferring to remain undetected, he quickly shut the door and stepped back, looking around the room. An air vent positioned in the corner drew his attention. It was small, but so was he. He removed his combat gear, stripping down to his fur. With that, he pried the grate open, folding his garments to hide them inside the vent before entering himself and propping the grate shut behind him.
As had been his experience on many occasions, the vent was just big enough for him to crawl through. He made his way forward, barely able to see from the dim light peeping through the grate behind him. At length, he reached a junction, and chose the direction the flow of air was coming from. He crawled along this way, passing several grates as he went, where he could catch glimpses of what was happening.
From what he could see, the lines of civilians all led to different teleporters scattered throughout the building. Standard teleporters, as invented by Phineas and Ferb, with a portal thingy that you would step into and come out of another portal thingy on the other side. PJ had heard Phineas joke on one occasion about how redundant it was that you had to take another portal thingy to where you wanted to go first, so you were already there, rendering the whole thing useless. Kind of a weird joke, PJ thought. Phineas had a strange sense of humor, sometimes.
As he looked through one grate, PJ found an especially good view of what was going on. He could just make out what was being said in the nearest conversation when he paused to watch.
"Ammon Delgado," a man declared to a receptionist seated where one of the lines came to a head. When PJ leaned sideways, it gave him a good enough angle to see the man was holding his wife and two small children close. "We'd like to go to Austin, Texas, my wife's parents live there."
The receptionist cross-checked the man's identification on a small flip-open laptop on her desk. After a deliberate pause, the receptionist dispassionately said, "Have you signed the forms, pledging your allegiance to the Conspirium?"
"Yes. Please, we just want to get out of the city," he begged.
After another labored pause, the receptionist finally gave him back his papers and flashed him a warm smile. "Very well, it looks like you are cleared for teleportation evacuation. Please stand over there, and a staff member will show you to your teleporter shortly. NEXT!"
From his viewpoint, PJ curiously watched the Delgado family do as they were told. They were put in a short line leading to one of the eight teleporters in the room. The line moved quickly, as it only took a minute for the Conspirium worker controlling the teleporters to redirect to another portal destination for the next person in line.
When it was the Delgados' turn, their Conspirium worker gave them an obviously memorized script, again reminding PJ of Disneyland ride workers. "Please proceed to the teleporter, only one person can use the teleporter at a time, please keep your arms and legs inside the teleporter at all times, you will be met by a Conspirium associate at your destination, all hail The King!" PJ watched the father embrace his wife and reassure his kids before stepping into the portal, then the mother sent her two children in one by one, then finally went through herself. And then the worker adjusted a few dials on the side of the device, before inviting the next party forward.
PJ decided it was best he move on.
And so it went. Every floor, PJ saw more of the same thing. There were hundreds of teleporters filling dozens of rooms in the tower. Anyone who pledged their loyalty to the Conspirium were allowed to leave the city. He climbed up any shafts he could find, only to watch this process repeat itself, for floor after floor. The Conspirium was helping to evacuate the city? Why? They looked prepared to evacuate everyone, millions of people, if they had this same setup in enough towers across the metropolis. In the back of his mind, he couldn't help but wonder what the Conspirium would do if President Isabella Flynn and the First Family showed up, asking to take a teleporter out of town.
He must have been in the air vents for close to an hour, and he hadn't found anywhere yet that wasn't full of people. He'd lost count of what floor he was at and was starting to worry if this had all been a big waste of time. The shaft he was climbing now felt like the hundredth one today, but he was sure he was getting close to the top of the tower. If he didn't find a place he could sneak out of the ventilation system undetected soon, he contemplated the possibility that he would have to make a run for the closest working teleporter. Where would he go if he did? He hadn't planned that far ahead yet.
When the shaft leveled out, he crawled forward toward the closest patch of light he could find and looked out the grate. Finally! What narrow section of hallway he could see from his vantage point along the ceiling appeared to be empty. He shimmied the grate open as silently as he could and double-checked that the coast was clear before leaping out of the air duct.
Only then did he realize the hallway offered no cover. From the thin, tiled blue carpet up to the ceiling, he was out in the open, and the air vent was too high up for him to climb back into. Fortunately he was alone, for the moment. Out of options, he picked a direction and made his way quickly down the hallway. His ears picked up some voices from somewhere close; PJ pressed himself flat against a wall and listened. The voices didn't seem to be getting closer, so he carefully crept forward.
The sounds were coming from a door a few feet ahead, he discovered. The door muted most of the sound, but the empty hallway was so quiet, he could pick out a male and a female voice. He tiptoed closer.
"...before you deliver the package," said the female voice. It sounded very familiar.
"It shall be done, Miss Johnson," said the male voice.
"Thank you, darling!"
PJ recognized that voice now. It was Suzy's! He pushed his ear against the door, holding his breath. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the end of the conversation, and he heard the distinct bzzt! of a video call closing. He waited for a few seconds to see if anything else would happen.
His patience was rewarded by another video call being made. This time, a female voice that was definitely not Suzy's answered. "What'd she say?"
The male voice spoke. "She says to reject Senator Delitzsch and his wife. So long as they, or anyone else, refuse to renounce their loyalty to the United States, the Conspirium has no place for them. Throw them back into the streets. Make a big scene of it, if you can, to show the people what happens if they choose not to accept the Conspirium's absolute authority."
After affirming her orders, the female voice ended the call, giving PJ an opening. Deciding to take the least subtle approach, he knocked and quickly flattened himself against the wall behind the door hinges.
The sound of footsteps approached before the handle rattled and the door swung open. The male voice's owner wore a confused look as he glanced up and down the hallway, finding it empty. PJ, hiding unnoticed between the door and the wall, waited for him to shrug and close the door back shut before immediately rapping on it again.
The door flew open this time. "Who's doing that?" the man shouted, stepping completely out into the hallway. Now PJ was able to get a better look at him. He was an older gentleman, dressed in an expensive business suit. This time, he had the awareness to check the space behind the door.
PJ timed it perfectly. "Hi!" he said the moment the man discovered his presence, and, using that split-second of inevitable surprise caused by seeing a talking, anthropomorphic platypus to his advantage, PJ had the man pinned against the floor, craning his arm behind his back before he even realized what had happened.
With the Conspirium suit pinned, PJ made sure no one else was in the office before pulling the man's arm further back, increasing the strain on his shoulder. The man cried out in pain.
"Ow! Stop, please! I beg of you!"
PJ let his grip loosen a little. "Well, well, well. If it isn't Senator Cash. I should have known President Flynn's biggest critic was in deep with the Conspirium."
"And I should have known the President would send her pet to do her dirty work―YOW!"
PJ leaned down closer to the Senator's ear and growled, "You do not want to test me today, Senator!"
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I take it back!" the Senator sniveled. PJ took his time relieving the pressure, reveling in letting the man writhe. "Please, I'll give you anything you want, just let me go! I have money! How much do you want?"
"Shut up!" PJ was aware that the Senator was making a lot of noise, and he did not want anyone else coming to investigate what was the matter. He dropped Cash's arm and started dragging him by the suit collar back into his office. Cash grimaced and rubbed his shoulder as PJ doubled back and locked the door closed behind them.
"Now then," PJ said, turning around to face him, "I'm thinking of a number between one and two hundred and six." Cash gave him a confused look from where he lay on the floor, so PJ clarified. "That's how many bones you have in your body. How many will I have to break before you tell me what I want? Pick a number between one and two hundred six." He took a menacing step forward.
The Senator shrank back, scooting himself on his rear end across the floor, until he had backed himself into a wall. "Wait, wait, stop!" He held out a hand, using the arm that PJ hadn't twisted around.
"Pick. A. Number." PJ advanced.
"Zero! I pick zero!"
PJ grabbed him by the hand he held out. "I said a number between ONE!" He twisted a finger, feeling it snap. "―And two hundred six!"
Senator Cash howled and cradled his hand.
PJ let him moan and whimper for a minute while he inspected the office. It looked very similar to the room he had entered earlier. He leaped up onto the desk and activated the Experience Wall facing facing him. It turned on at his touch, and he hit the command bringing up the device's call history. At the second-to-top of the list read the name Suzy Johnson, although the accompanying location was blocked.
"Thought of a new number, yet?" PJ asked, leaving the screen as it was.
Senator Cash's breathing was labored. "One," he moaned.
PJ hopped off the table, stooping down to bring his eyes level with Cash's. "Okay. Let's start with Suzy. Where is she?" He pointed at the screen.
Cash followed his finger to the Experience Wall. "She's at the CCC―the Conspirium Command Center."
"The one in the Appalachian mountains?"
Cash's eyes widened. "You know where it is?"
"I'm about to." PJ grabbed Cash by the wrist to go for another finger.
"No, please!" Cash defensively yanked his arm away.
"Tell me!" commanded the platypus, cocking a fist.
"I'm trying, if you'd just stop threatening me for five seconds! Alright? It's in the Shenandoah Valley. At a place called Button Creek!"
PJ looked the Senator over for any signs of a lie. Satisfied, he stood up straight. "What about the bomb? Where did Okeko put it?"
"I don't know, we compartmentalized that information. I didn't get it. I'm telling the truth!"
"In that case, you're quickly running out of usefulness to me. I might as well put you out of your misery right now…" PJ hinted, cracking his knuckles.
"No!" recoiled Cash. "I can be useful! I can―I can let you use one of our teleporters to get out of the city! It's getting kind of late for hoofin' it, you know. Unless you're a lot faster than you look."
PJ huffed at that. "What about a time machine? You got one of those stashed in here somewhere?"
"No, we don't. Just teleporters."
"Still not making yourself useful."
Flabbergasted, Senator Cash said, "I offer you money, I offer survival, what else could you possibly want?"
"Look, I'm not the kind of person who cares about money. I only care about two things: my family and my country. And the only way to save both of them is by taking you, and the rest of the Conspirium, down!"
Cash forced a considerable laugh, despite the pain he was in. "You and what army?"
PJ glared. "Don't underestimate me."
"Oh, yeah? Is the little platypus going to charge straight into the CCC all alone and sting our entire military garrison to death with his ankle barbs?" He forced another laugh.
PJ jabbed Cash's injured hand, and the laughter instantly converted into a howl. "If I have to," he muttered, cocking another fist.
"Stop! Argh, just stop, already!" Cash pathetically cowered over his hand. "Okay? Look, I'll teleport you to the CCC, if that's what you want. Just stop with the hitting!"
PJ lowered his fist. "Now we're getting somewhere."
Fifteen minutes later, PJ stopped at the door to look back and admire his work. Senator Cash was bound and gagged in his desk chair and looking very irate. After a bit more coaxing, the Senator had been kind enough to give PJ the coordinates as well as inform him of a more discreet teleporter here on this floor that was supposed to be for the higher-ups in the Conspirium, like himself, and wouldn't be as crowded as the ones PJ had passed earlier.
Finally, PJ held in his hand the coordinates to the secret base compound the Conspirium had been operating from this whole time. Ideally, if he had a time machine, he would go back to the past and give the location to his past self so he could have all the resources of the Department of Homeland Security at his disposal for storming the compound. But, seeing as that just wasn't an option now, he had no choice but to go in alone.
There was no doubt it would be well guarded. The Conspirium had demonstrated they had vast resources. He had no intel, no plan, and no back-up. And with only three hours left before the nuke went off, he didn't have time to go get any.
After locking Cash inside his office, PJ quickly found the teleporter and punched in the coordinates. The metal ring crackled to life as the portal opened before his eyes. PJ took a deep breath and stepped up to the hoop-shaped device.
And prayed that the Quantum Immortality theory was true.