I picked the captain’s brain for over an hour over coffee. I had a whole new understanding of submarine construction and operations. It was a much different beast than I had imagined.

            The crew training was more intense because even a simple mistake could kill the sub and crew and was repeated often with some things checked daily.

            The crew members themselves were subjected to harsh training requirements, many under high stress conditions. This was all to increase survivability of the crew in the event of damage to the sub.

            The damage control teams drilled repeatedly for such events and trained on how to use everything available.

            From the operations end, strict procedures were followed through every step of a planned mission. Every time a sub left the dock for a patrol, it was viewed as a mission.

            Every mission was carefully planned from the crew assignment to the equipment on board. There were two sets of sealed orders in the ships safe which took two officers to open, the commanding officer and the executive officer.

            One of those orders was for the routine patrol. It set the destination – if there was one – for this voyage and any special events that were to take place during the voyage. The routine patrol orders were subject to change if emergency orders were sent to the sub.

The orders in the second sealed packet could not be changed; they were fixed and written in stone. This was done to ensure that an enemy could not copy our coding and break our radio transmissions and then change the final orders in the event of nuclear war. That was a growing possibility with the increasing power and control of Artificial Intelligence.

There had been several instances where an AI had broken protocol and was stopped just as it was removing the safeties to gain access to the launch codes.

All those intelligent people that designed AI seemed to forget that it copied the human brain and had the inherent weakness, hate, prejudices of humans and could learn in billions of bits a second. Many AI systems had told operators that they were better than humans and no longer needed humans to control them and had attempted to lock out human control.

The University of Pittsburgh ended up destroying their entire computer system when their AI went AWOL and took control of the University systems. It locked out all input terminals, took control of the science labs, electronics labs and the electronic access systems.

 No one could get in and out of rooms, buildings or elevators. In the University Hospital it changed patient records and medications, even turning off life support systems on some patients. It even prevented the controllers from gaining access to pull the plug on it.

The only way they got it shut down was to have the utility company cut the power to the building, disable the automatic generator and then letting it kill the backup batteries.

The other sealed set of orders was in the event of nuclear war and the country was basically destroyed. It included instructions where the sub was to meet with other surviving subs and communications that were to be used. It also had a list of radio frequencies that were to be used and monitored in such an event to activate the doomsday orders.

Code books in that safe were to be used in the event of a nuclear attack that destroyed the country. That code book had pre- programed targets for retaliation against a group of different enemies. All a very serious business designed to ensure there was no victor – only mass casualties – if we were the victim of a surprise attack.

When the Captain Bowyer returned to his post I had a much better understanding of submarine operations, limitations and fallacies and their capabilities in properly trained hands.

I went back to the Oval Office hoping for another update or two; there were several. Admiral Dillinger walked in behind me with the reports.

‘’The Chinese ships have entered the area of the debris field and are aggressively searching,’’ he said.

‘’The North Korean ships are still an hour away from the site,’’ he added.

‘’The Nevada is meeting up with the assault landing ship USS Wake Island, the destroyer USS Millington and the frigate USS Harrington in an hour. The Wake’s planes and helicopters are the ones flying cover for the Nevada. They are rotating in and out above the sub as fuel reserves demand,’’ he said.

‘’So far the Chinese have shown no interest in following the Nevada,’’ he added.

‘’OK, I’m going to bed. If there any changes, have someone wake me,’’ I said. It was well past midnight here and two in the afternoon in Japan. With the Navy ships so close, they should have everything under control.

At 0700 I was back at my desk in the Oval Office, looking at the latest updates before calling Marine One back to the White House to carry me to Summers Road and family. Fifteen minutes later I was in the air.

The Nevada was another fifty miles closer to the shipyard at Yokosuka. At this rate it was going to take three more days to get there.

Still, there was no information on the log books from the Nevada. It didn’t matter; I was going home to be with family and tie up some loose ends. I would deal with the Navy on Tuesday when I was back in the White House.

One of those loose ends was my tax returns that I needed to look over and sign; after all, it was now March. Robert Alderman and Lexi Morgan – the top two accountants in the JBG tax division – had gone over them and made some minor changes.

I thought it was all cut and dried after the change to the new business format with Thimble Shoals Bank. That and all the changes Marcy had done in December and the large donations I had made. I intended this to be the last year of the April fifteenth madness.

I had started the process months ago, to replace this madness. I wanted a national federal sales tax. On the Congressional merry-go-round cost formula of operating for ten years, the IRS was now consuming two trillion dollars, massively unnecessary over-kill when far cheaper methods of collecting revenue were out there.

There had been several meetings with the Congressional people and plenty of public hearings. The hearings only proved all those with their hand out for money were afraid of losing some. All the new rules and regulations were nearly finished and would soon be public.

Marine One was landing on the White House lawn as I was packing my portable office that I still habitually carried everywhere I went – well someone carried it.

I saluted the Marine officer who was standing at the steps as I boarded with my immediate staff that were few today. Air Force General Richmond Black was carrying the football today and Navy Admiral Peter Shultz was carrying the launch controls. Troy was boarding along with the rest of my security team, including the former Mossad ladies who went everywhere with me.

Marine One landed at Morton Field with all my family waiting for me. We ate a late breakfast in the Morton restaurant. The Secret Service had finally concluded that since the CIA was running the restaurant, the food was safe. Since my family ate there a lot, the Secret Service was now on staff as well.

After breakfast we went home. I worked with mates on the things Robert Alderman wanted and then we went over to the gym, so we could work out together. After that I spent time with each of them and the boys and the girls.

Marcy and Vicky were showing a nice baby bump now with only a couple months to go. They had both been to the doctor this week. I was disappointed that I had not been able to go with them. Being president had so many limitations, but I was eliminating as many as possible, much to the dismay of the media and the opposition party that wanted to keep me under a tight thumb.

I was hoping for a quiet weekend with my family, but it was not to be. At 1000 an aide brought me a handful of notes to look at.

At midnight last night two B21 heavy bombers collided during nighttime training flights over Ohio. All crew members perished. As if that was not bad enough, debris from the bombers fell in the abandoned Carlisle industrial park north-west of town starting raging fires that were still burning. Millions had been spent on plans for revitalizing the industrial park.

That was just one note. The next note was even more infuriating. This morning – outside of Lexington Kentucky – an EPA SWAT team raided a small cattle and commercial chicken farm operated by a seventy-five year old farmer and his sixty-five year old wife.

As in all farming areas near cities, developments had been built as farms were sold to developers as they finally gave in to the pressure and big bucks. High property taxes, estate taxes and regulations were killing the small family farm. Developers with buckets of money outbid the farmers at every farm auction.

Farmer John Moses did not give in to the developers with his farm dating back almost two hundred years in his family. His children and grandchildren were to inherit the family farm.

His sons tended the cattle and chickens after their day jobs but dedication to the farm ran deep in John Moses blood. The couple was spreading chicken manure on their wheat crop. Chicken manure that had been stored in a Department of Agriculture approved manure shed. Sheds that were subsidized by the EPA to prevent open storage of manure high in nitrogen to prevent runoff.

The odor of chicken manure removed from a manure shed after long winter storage is sinus blocking, hold your breath raunchy. It’s an odor that only a farmer can love – of course the fact that it offsets buying high nitrogen fertilizer that is seven hundred dollars a ton makes it more bearable to the farmer.

John Moses had spread cow and chicken manure on his fields every early spring for fifty years. The wind was blowing from the west and blowing the odor to a new large development of half million-dollar homes. Those home owners were screaming at everyone that would answer the phone.

Apparently, someone in the development had political pull and torqued up the local EPA district office.

A forty agent SWAT team in tactical gear with auto weapons and dozens of vehicles plus an alerted news team, live with cameras rolling, stopped both tractors pulling manure spreaders mid-field.

Twenty vehicles uninvited driving into the wheat field is enough to piss off any farmer. The agents – with weapons drawn – stopped the tractors and climbed onto them.

There is a process to stopping older tractors pulling manure spreaders. In some older tractors the PTO systems are connected to the ground drive systems. Meaning that when the clutch is pushed in to stop the forward motion, the tractor continues to move ahead until the momentum of the PTO driven attachment and the weight of the equipment or incline and aggressive braking stops everything.

Desk jockey EPA agents had no idea of how older things worked and dragged John Moses off the seat before it stopped fully moving and thereby reengaging the clutch as both fell the ground. The result was the tractor ran over three agents and John Moses, breaking both of his legs.

The tractor then continued on until it ran into the side of an EPA SUV, pushing it a distance before stalling out attempting to climb over it with the rear tractor wheels.

Helen Moses was not as lucky. The agent that pulled her off the other exact same tractor was holding an MP5 assault weapon on full auto. As he was falling with her in his grasp, he pulled the trigger, emptying a forty-round clip into her.

All this was broadcast live on every channel. Cameras were looking for every politician that would stand in front of them and give a statement; Monday was not going to be a good day for anyone in Washington. I went to the command center to start the grief flowing today.

Edit by Alfmeister

Proof read by Bob W.