BLACK PRESIDENT-Chapter 98. Fran understands that John now has TWO wives. Henry K. keeps refining his plans. And there's babies coming!

CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT

“So now we are a normal family again,” expressed Fran, “which is the happiest possibility I can imagine…after everything.”

Well...not exactly, thought John, but didn’t say aloud. He knew he must continue to get everything out on the table. “You know I must keep living with Cissy, in the White House”

“Of...of course.” Fran answered, haltingly. She had to admit to herself that ,for a second, she had actually forgotten that particular little detail. Regrouping, she continued, “I know it would be too dangerous for you to stop doing anything that people expect from you, as President.”

From the tone of Fran’s voice, John could tell she was trying to come to grips with her husband living, even loving, another woman.

“I love Cissy too, so we two women will continue to share you as best we can.”

John had watched Cissy watching Fran. The two women had somehow managed to come to an accord, sharing his affections. Polygamy. That’s what was actually happening. John’s head spun around at the thought.

Cissy embraced Fran before they all moved toward the front door.

After they left, Fran became more aware of the tingling. It had been like a dream. And actually nothing was normal. She was happy to have a few more hours with the kids gone, so she could get it together. Setting some more water to boil, watching the blue flames lick the bottom of the pot, she remembered an odd article she’d seen once in The National Enquirer. “HEAVEN IS FULL” shouted the bold headline. She read how Heaven had reached its quota, how there was just no more room for additional souls up there. The article suggested that there was then no sense being good anymore, because it just didn’t make any difference. That’s where her life had led. She was now involved in a menage a trois!

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“That went better than expected,” began Cissy, when she had her imposter-husband back in their private 2nd floor White House living quarters. “Fran seemed to pretty quickly adjust to your true identity. Of course, she now has her husband back, and can rest assured that her child will have a real father. She was getting what she could only have hoped for in her wildest dreams. So we were certainly the bearers of good tidings! I’m just glad that part is over.”

“I must say that the whole thing made me look more closely at human dynamics,” said John, almost to himself. His mind was still grappling with Fran’s response, and beyond that, Kissinger’s doomsday scenario kept rearing its head. He looked forward to sharing the MIC information with Cissy just as soon as the results of visiting Fran was put to rest.

“Two women together in the same room, both having experienced love affairs with the same twin brothers. And both twins having been President. What could be more convoluted!” said Cissy “You’ve been forgiven for a lot in the last 24 hours, haven’t you?”

As Cissy entered the bathroom for a shower, John returned to Presidential duties. The daily briefing on the Middle East restated the log-jam. Sunnis and Shiites continued their feud, while U.S. lawmakers hemmed and hawed over the Little Foreign Food Stamp Program (FFSP). Nothing ever seemed to move quickly enough in Washington.

When Cissy emerged in a towel she was holding what at first looked like a disconnected toothbrush handle. But when she approached closer to where John was sitting, near the West windows, it was clearly something else. Before he got a chance to speak, she presented a short, blue plastic wand for him to examine. The colored bar read-out brought John his last and biggest shock of the week.

“Here, darling. One more small guest, I’m afraid, to accompany us on our Presidential adventure.”

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Kissinger had what he believed was the full list of central armament players in MIC, defense contractors worldwide, and wanted his Presidential pal to understand the full picture. He and John had returned to the White House’s second floor while Cissy was out on a rare shopping expedition in Georgetown. After the normal pleasantries and ordering lunch, Kissinger had the first words.

“If I may – he pointed to the laptop inches away on the table – I’d like to suggest you use Google search to access a list I’ve found of armaments factories. It gives you a chance to see our MIC compared to other countries, although there is certainly a lot of overlap. Just type in ‘List of Modern Armament Manufacturers’ and see what you get.”

“OK,” said John, as he grabbed the screen and pulled it into position. After he entered the phrase and hit enter he saw the familiar Wikipedia logo for the free encyclopedia and a blue-and-red-highlighted list of companies in the left column, with corresponding blue list of countries in the right. Starting with the top-listed Argentina, he began scrolling down, bringing countries that followed alphabetically: Australia, Austria came into view with their multiple entries. Next came the B’s and one single company for Bahrain. Since the little blue slider at top-right had barely moved, it was evident that the list was very long, and that the U.S. companies would take a lot of scrolling. Kissinger spoke before John had time to just bypass the entire world’s entries.

“Please play this little game slowly, for me. Just let the visuals of all these companies speak for themselves. Run them by your eye before we closely inspect just our U.S. friends and all their corresponding links to websites.” Kissinger got a nod from the President.

“I want you to get the fullest picture of what our world is doing in regard not only to self-defense, but downright offensive military operations.” With his right arm outstretched toward the Apple laptop, Kissinger added a remark. “Please keep in mind that this is said by Wikipedia itself to be an incomplete list.”

John did as instructed, and began the long journey of scrolling. The pattern that emerged was that large countries had the longest lists. France, Italy, Canada, Germany, Japan, India, Russia and the UK filled several pages each, with South Korea also claiming a surprisingly long bunch of entries. China listed only a few. Of course they had no problem purchasing weapon systems from all others listed there. As Kissinger had expected, the experience was a sobering one for John.

“My god, I’d never thought about how top-heavy this planet was, armament-wise. We really are dead-set on obliterating ourselves, aren’t we?”

Kissinger chuckled at Little’s reaction. Yes, he thought to himself, the world is completely mad.

“I’ve sat with the people who write the checks for this, John, and I’ve heard the argument, The end justifies the means, from most of them, including their CIA advisors. The end means that after the smoke clears, and the dead are counted, you want to come out ahead of the others. That’s all. I’m sure you know about the 20 million dead that Russia lost in WWII. Those links represent their determination to avoid such a disaster again. The next World War will be determined by what these companies produce. And that means what they invent”

John simply listened.

“I pointed out Lockheed Martin to you a while back. But we didn’t really take a close look at their developing nano-technology. Please click on their link and I’ll show you some interesting developments.”

“Sure,” said John, as he clicked on Lockheed. The screen filled with another Wikipedia page for the company and its time-line of products, decade by decade.

“Let’s come back to this Lockheed history later,” Kissinger suggested. “For now, select the link to the actual company’s website, down at the bottom.”

As soon as John clicked on LockheedMartin.com the screen filled with jet fighters, switching every few seconds to new images: glossy new-car ads for armored ground vehicles tearing up the desert, pretty young women in lab setting, sensors reading their hands, futuristic images complete with space travel landscapes, then actor Tom Cruise and wall-sized touch-screens. While an obvious recruitment poster, the shingle also provided information on their new systems and directions.

“We want to check their nano-tech pages, under “What We Do,” was all Kissinger said.

“OK.” Under “Emerging Technologies.” John found the nano link and clicked.

“Scroll down to Wanted, Clean Drinking Water. Kissinger took a drink from his water glass, to punctuate. “Just click the image.”

John, of course, knew to do that. In any case, up came a bright blue and watery graphic, of a crystal clear and bubbly wave, the text below it stating how the Earth was covered with 70% water, but with only 3% available for drinking. Shockingly, the company was claiming that they had invented a nano membrane, called ‘Perforene,’ with holes 1-billionth of a meter in diameter, that could strain out sodium, chlorine, other bad ions, to make the oceans drinkable. The membrane, 1-atom thick, of pure carbon, supposedly let salt water flow 100 times faster through their filtering system. It wasn’t clear, though, who would get to use the product, or at what cost. But it did have a link to their desalination patent information.

After letting his President absorb the information, Kissinger spoke. “Nano-technology is something that will almost supersede whatever you currently are concerned with regarding MIC. Can you see the ramifications of this little invention?”

“Well, I’m not sure I’ve digested it completely yet.”

“Let me help,” offered Kissinger. “This one nano-product can turn the most backwards seacoast town, at the driest most desolate location on the planet, into a livable city, a place for future manufacturing of weapons of war. By reclaiming water from the ocean, they can grow places like that, with one overall purpose in mind.

“This one little link on a website – 47 billion in net sales per annum – is probably just a 10,000th of your MIC problem. How do we combat all this? I can tell you that posting this link on Facebook, as a cute little offering to your ‘friends’ online, may bring you a handful of ‘likes,’ but that knowledge – spreading the word through that avenue of various ideas being exchanged – will do nothin to alter various countries march toward world-domination through technology.”

John Little just looked pensive, saying nothing. Kissinger continued to paint the broadest picture, as accurately as he could. Understanding the enemy, was his motive.

“Imagine the economics tied up to each link, each factory. They have to pay employees, purchase the raw materials – steel, plastic, iron and various alloys – and invest in the metal stamping and pressing machines. They have to produce products that are in demand, then cover costs of their sales team, who must successfully promote and market those items. Last but not least, after each order is packaged by shipping/receiving they depend on various methods of delivering to customers. And there’s some cost related to taxes, however minimal. In other words, they have the same business template as any other enterprise. If their assets aren’t consistently earning more than their inherent cost, they’ll go bankrupt.

“If we had no more wars – no terrorism – the market for such military hardware and software would dry up, disappear overnight.”

“A nice thought,” exclaimed John, “but we can’t really hope for that, can we?”

“All it would take is sub-atomic, metal-devouring nano-bugs, released in each and every armament factory. That would make the whole thing kaput.”

John gave out a short snort. “You’re kidding, right? Testing me to see if I’m actually listening, aren’t you?”

Henry gave a chuckle too, but then collected himself. “Yes, that was just fun and games, playing with elements of science fiction. But here’s the kicker. I read about a company that plates steel with a nano-thick substance that makes steel ten times stronger. They use a liquid bath and electrical current, to re-combine various ions in a plating that resists cracking and normal wear. The applications are for extending the life of bridges, but applications will be much more far-reaching in the field of defense. My thinking is, why couldn’t a coating do the opposite – weakening steel? If every plant was deceived into using a destructive coating and then discovered two years hence that their products were compromised, then the entire field would be defunct.”

With all the jibber-jabbing Kissinger had finally wound himself down. He reached for his nearby coffee cup and found just the coffee grains and residue from the honey. He wondered if the lesson hadn't been wasted, fallen on deft ears, until he got a nice response from his imposter-President.

“Quite a spin, Henry,” exclaimed John, adding, “Nice thinking. But, again, it seems impossible to approach the military problem with a ‘physical disruption’ approach. There are just way too many companies, too many employees, too much money involved, too big a need for defense spending. Still thinking about that increase in taxes and how it could lessen their potential spending”

“You’re right. Just an old fool and his Presidential colleague, playing cops and robbers with wooden guns. I didn’t mean to deflate our objectives with my overly-creative thinking.” Pulling a last vestige of energy from somewhere, Kissinger tried to finalize his thoughts.

“I do know I’m not wrong when I say that the military monster can somehow be destroyed from the inside. We just need to get it to feed on itself somehow, make it implode.”

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