“Oh fuck you too, Caroline. Uptight bitch.”
“I know this is a lot to spring on you, Mister Rook,” the General said, interrupting the two bickering politicians, “but how difficult a sell do you think this is going to be to your family?”
“I would say the decision will be entirely in the hands of Piper,” Andy admitted. “If she’s okay with it, then the rest of us can make it work. And I suspect if she’s deadset against us taking anyone from House Covington, we can probably work to find someone in House Vikovic or Jacobson that’ll be a decent enough fit for the family to satisfy the demands of the NDR. Melody Park might be a bridge too far, but maybe not… There’s probably somebody in that mix I can make work if it’s that important to this whole thing,” he sighed. “I know Lisa and Ash were at least familiar with each other, so I would’ve said that would’ve been fine, but I can understand Lisa wanting to get as far away from here as possible.”
“Can we consider that a ‘yes,’ Mister Rook?” the Senator asked him.
“Get me a short profile on everyone in each of the three houses and I’ll have an answer-”
“You mean ‘a selection,’ don’t you?” the Representative corrected.
He frowned, dropping his eyebrows as he scowled at her. “Yes, I’ll have a selection within 24 hours of you dropping off profiles on all those I need to consider. That will give me time to run it by everyone in my family and ensure I don’t get any conflicts or personality mismatches. I’m not adding anyone to my Team without clearing it with the rest of the Team.”
“What kind of sissy man are you?” the Representative sneered.
“The kind who gives a shit what people are partnered to him think,” he said. “I don’t know why you’d be the kind of woman who just blindly accepts what her partner is doing without knowing about it, but that’s between you and him, and I’ll thank you to keep your antiquated bullshit out of my life. Are we done here?”
“Just a few final things, Mister Rook,” the General said. “We’ve got some paperwork we need you to sign – an NDA regarding everything we’ve talked about today and another one to extend you Top Secret clearance regarding any and all things involving the DuoHalo virus and the Quaranteam serum.” One of the soldiers brought over a couple of small stacks of paper, laying them down in front of him. “You’ve been operating under it long enough that we figured we might as well make it official, and we’ve done a full background investigation into your last 10 years, so you’ll be able to come and go around the base at will moving forward. With that, however, comes an actual title – officer of civilian oversight for the Quaranteam project. The president has mandated that a handful of civilians will be given carte blanche access to the entire process, so that we can ensure that all questionable decisions have at least been reviewed by qualified members of the public. You’ll be working in conjunction with the Air Force and the CDC, but there will be a number of people like yourself distributed into all aspects of this system, to make sure we aren’t engaging in any unethical or questionable behavior, like Major General Fielder was. It isn’t just going to be a pro forma gig, either. You’ll need to go to Washington once every three months to file a report, both with the manager of civilian oversight and with the President herself.”
He felt the movie line leaping to his lips and just couldn’t help himself. “Not to be the materialistic weasel of the group, but do you think we’ll get hazard pay out of this?”
“You’ll do the job and you’ll like it, egghead, or we’ll ship you off to Guantanamo and disappear your ass,” the Representative said to him, which felt to Andy like an empty threat at best, a gross overreach more likely.
“Do the people of Idaho know they have someone representing them who can’t even spell the name of their state, or are they just grading on a really wide curve?” he countered.
“Stow it!” the General said, slamming her fist down on top of the desk. “You two don’t have to like each other, but you’re damn well going to have to learn how to work with one another, and if you’re constantly acting like the cast of Mean Girls, you’re never going to get shit done, and you’re also never going to be able to remove my boots from your asses. Clear?”
“The Commie started it,” the Representative said, and Andy chose to let it lie.
“Anything else,” Andy asked, as he signed the two documents in front of him in several places, all of which were helpfully marked with stick on tabs. “Or are we done here?”
“One more thing, Mister Rook,” the General said, while the Representative and the Senator turned their attention to their tablets in front of them. “You haven’t been informed of this yet, but early next year, sometime in the early spring, 60 Minutes is going to come by to do a follow-up story on you, see how you and your family are getting along months later. We’ve told them not to report on the NDR, but they’re probably going to ask you all about it anyway. So, we need you to talk to them about that off the record, let them know that we’ve addressed the issue, if not to your satisfaction, at least to your tolerance. For what it’s worth, I happen to agree with all of the NDR’s grievances but airing all that dirty laundry out in public is just going to be throwing even more fuel onto an already difficult-to-control fire that we’re dealing with day to day. At this point, we’ve all just got to get on with getting on with it.”
“How it is it looking across the country, General?”
“We’ve still got plenty of holdouts insisting the Quaranteam process is a sin against God or a Democratic plot to inject them with microscopic tracking devices. There’s some debate about whether or not we simply inject these people for their own good or not, but that’s way above my paygrade. There’s lots of international developments, but all of those are currently being kept between the President’s team and the countries involved. I expect we’ll start hearing all about them in the next few months, though. I understand you’re going to be doing your mass wedding in January?”
He nodded. “End of January, yeah. The ceremony’ll be on the 30th, but we’re basically making a whole week out of it, what with all the people we need to get to know. It’s been tricky organizing all the families to come out for it, but now that pretty much all of them are either imprinted or next in line to be imprinted, we’re setting down a day for the ceremony and a weekend for everyone to come and visit. We’re already looking into booking out most of the hotels down in Pleasanton and Dublin, and we’re already worried that spillover might have to go to Oakland, but we’ll make it work as best we can. And it will be a great chance for everyone to get to know everyone else’s families.”
“How many of your partners are you going to be marrying at the ceremony?”
“Seven. Aisling, Niko, Sarah, Emily, Fiona, Moira and Piper, so just their family and friends are going to be quite the collection of people, not to mention all of Sarah and Em’s Hollywood friends on top of that,” he laughed. “And, of course, most of my other partners are inviting out some of their friends and families as well, so the whole thing is going to basically be our own little private convention. I genuinely considered renting out something like Moscone or the San Jose Convention Center, but none of us wanted to constantly be driving there and back.”
“I imagine the budget for nametags alone is already quite sizable,” the General chuckled.
“Absolutely,” Andy agreed. “And I’m already a nightmare with names. We’re basically printing the nametags ourselves, with a bunch of information on them. Name, who they’re partnered with, who they’re related to and where they currently live. No one’s going to remember all of that, so we’re just doing the best we can to manage it.”
The General got up and walked down from the elevated section, rubbing the back of her neck with a weary hand. “Okay, Mister Rook. I think we’re done with you. Again, I apologize for all the theatrics, but we had to make sure you are who everyone seemed to think you are, especially with the demands from the NDR being so strangely specific in regards to you. Apparently, you’re the only man they’re convinced has no malice in his heart.”
“Mmm. They should’ve seen me when your truck rolled up to pull me here four hours ago. I have a rather important dinner date tonight,” he frowned before glancing at his watch. “But if we’re done here, maybe I can still make it home in time to salvage that without too much fuss.”
“I won’t keep you any longer then. We’ll have the profiles emailed to you within the next few hours, and we’ll expect a response from you tomorrow night on whom you’re willing to add to your family. Once that’s done, they’re going to let us come in and take the hostages out, and you’ll have about five or six days before you need to have the person reassigned to you. We’ll do that here at the base. Part of the terms of their surrender is that they all get reassigned quickly, so if you can do it sooner than that, even, that would be better.”
“Let me figure out who it’s going to be before we figure out the when,” Andy chuckled. “I know that at this point, you’re thinking what’s one more to add to the man’s tally, but it’s still a bit of a logistics problem to be taken care of.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out, Mister Rook.” The General paused and then offered her hand out for him to shake. “I wasn’t sure I’d be saying this, but it’s been nice talking with someone else who’s kept relatively grounded during all of this madness. I hope you’ll stay that way moving forward.”
He reached out and shook the General’s hand with his own. “Let’s hope that makes two of us. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date to get to.”
Andy and Niko walked out of the room, and for the first time, Andy realized he could go anywhere and see any part of the base, something his innate sense of curiosity couldn’t wait to delve into, but for the time being he needed to get home. He glanced at his watch, frowning, as one of the six soldiers who had brought him here moved over, offering a sad smile. “Sorry about all that hassle, sir, but we had our orders. Can I give you a lift back to your house?”
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