Altered America (4 page)

             
For now, they had a celebration to attend—the first-ever reception honoring the recipients of the Cutler Foundation Patriot Grants. It was a small, private affair and a convenient excuse to gather the men who Nathan had helped bring to life.

             
Nathan had a right to be proud of them. Jefferson had actually been the first to make a name for himself. At the tender age of 15, he had written a strident response to the last of the Alphabet Soup Scandals. Americans and their foreign allies had learned of NSA spying when Jefferson was just 8. Those dirtied the remaining Obama term and were followed by new CIA revelations that planted the seeds for future conflicts, including the one in Mexico. The FBI scandal was the last and worst, as leakers showed that the FBI had begun a program to compile Internet dossiers on every American starting at birth.

             
Jefferson, formally Thomas J. Montopoli, had become the voice of his generation, the first ones targeted for the new surveillance. His piece, “I Wasn’t Born Free,” became a national sensation and helped doom the second Clinton administration’s reelection hopes.

             
George Washington Warner became an American hero a decade later. He won the Silver Star during the Second Mexican War. Then-Captain Warner had taken over after a suicide bomber had killed the rest of his regiment’s command during the Battle of Puerto Vallarta. The regiment had been landed to guard American tourists after border hostilities escalated. The unit soon was wildly outgunned.

             
Warner was besieged much like the original George Washington. Only this time, he held out for 11 days until relief broke through. The war itself had become a public relations disaster in both historically friendly nations. Warner was pretty much the only leader on either side to gain status. Remarkably, even Mexicans honored him for his courage in defending not just American non-combatants, but Mexicans, too. That had gone a long way toward smoothing over the short-lived and foolish conflict.

             
None of the others had that national stature, but each had earned his accomplishments. Franklin was a sought-after inventor, but mostly of apps for the iX, the holo assistant that was now all the rage. Madison and John Adams were once again lawyers. Instead of defending British soldiers in the Boston Massacre, John Adams Hayworth had taken on the less popular chore of defending members of Action America charged with treason for actively undermining the war effort with a global hacking campaign.

             
Samuel Adams Benton was a rising-star state senator in Oklahoma, and the only one to publicly embrace his full name. Oddly it wasn’t based on the popularity of his ancestor, but on the popularity of the beer. And both Paine and Henry were part of two of the more popular telecaster networks that had largely replaced blogging.

             
In short, they were the makings of everything Nathan wanted them to be. Tonight he’d find out if he was right. It was Dave’s job to make sure it all happened smoothly.

* * *

              The reception and dinner went off without a hitch. Wives and girlfriends were suitably impressed with the million-dollar award and Liberty Bell statuette—so much so that they didn’t put up a fuss when told that Nathan wanted to meet the awardees privately afterwards. It was almost expected that a man giving out such expensive prizes would be a tad secretive and eccentric.

             
The clones were seated comfortably, drinks in hand, when Nathan shuffled in. By all rights, he should have been in a wheelchair, but the man was stubborn to the end. He sat down in his favorite leather chair and began to speak.

             
“Gentlemen, it is my great honor to meet you all after so much time. But time is a luxury I no longer have and given the state of our country, I needed to speak with you.” His audience was paying attention but was clearly confused. As Nathan spoke, Dave handed out brown envelopes filled with documents proving everything he was about to say. In a largely paperless era, the gravitas of that act alone would be important.

             
“More than 30 years ago, Dave,” he said with a nod, “and I set about to do something that no one else had done before or since.  We decided America needed a rebirth and the only men capable of doing that were the very men who had done so before. It took four years and more money than you can imagine, but we were able to clone eight of the Founding Fathers.”

             
Nathan paused, letting that sink in and letting them look around the room as realizations occurred. They all had lived with the idiosyncrasy of having names honoring the Founders. It wasn’t much of a leap to realize what he was saying.

             
A couple of them started to speak, but Nathan cut them off. “Don’t bother objecting, the proof is in those envelopes, and in your hearts you already believe me. Yes, Tom, you are indeed Thomas Jefferson. And George, you weren’t just named after the first president, you are his duplicate in every way but experience.

             
“And that, gentlemen, is no small matter. We did what we could to provide you with similar family backgrounds, to nudge you on your way in life. But the rest has been up to you. We did not meddle to make you love your country or to be good citizens. All of that came from your parents, your churches and, ultimately, from each of you.

             
“My time is ending. My doctor tells me I died about three months ago.” That was met with mild and uncomfortable laughter. “But before I truly go, I have a charge for you, and a gift.”

             
Nathan leaned forward, catching his breath. Each time he exhaled, it was obviously painful. “This nation I love—and I believe each of you love—has fallen far and fast. It no longer matters whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican running that swamp of D.C. Either way, they are seizing power, taking freedom and destroying the very liberty America was founded upon.

             
“My charge to you is simple: Fix it. I don’t care how you do it—peaceful means, agitation, or yes, revolution. But it must be done. I don’t own you. You are free to make your own choices, but I am fond of the Edmund Burke quote: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph
of
evil
is
for
good men to do nothing.’ You can choose to do nothing. Or you can choose to be the men you were born to be.”

             
It was Washington who was first to interrupt. “Even if we said yes, we are just eight men in a nation of 370 million. The Founders—I mean, if what you say is true, we’ve had it easy by comparison.  How are we ordinary men to accomplish this insurmountable task?”

             
Nathan smiled. “I said I also have a gift. I have no heirs. Dave here is authorized to manage my estate and it is given entirely to you eight men to use as you see fit, as long as it is used in the cause of freedom. At this morning’s tally, that’s worth roughly $27 billion, quite a tidy down payment to help buy freedom for 370 million people.”

             
There were many more questions that followed. Eventually, Nathan had to rest, but the clones stayed in the study, talking. After Dave made sure Nathan was hooked up to the machines, he came back and found they had already broken into groups.

             
Franklin, Paine, and Henry were discussing ways to reach people beyond government censors. The neural net was somewhat open, but heavily monitored, and extreme comments were often wiped. Franklin had the beginnings of an app sketched out in a holographic display that rotated in front of the trio.

             
Both Sam Adams and Washington sat separately, making lists of people. Dave glanced at Washington’s display and saw the names of a few dozen military officers. “Friends?” he asked.

             
Washington shook his head, no. “Patriots.” Then he went back to work.

             
Dave didn’t even try to conceal his smile. He wandered over near the fireplace where Madison, John Adams, and Jefferson were writing something on a shared display. Dave saw they had one text on one side of their individual holograms and were editing it on the other side. On the left, it began “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another...” 

             
Jefferson didn’t even look up, but could tell Dave was watching. “We figured it was the right place to start, but it needs some updating.”

             
Nathan had been right. These men weren’t cloned sheep, they were wolves indeed. Yes, they had a much bigger fight ahead of them, but they had new tools as well—the neural net, Apps, and a small fortune to fund them.

             
And they had one more ace in the hole—one last clone that even Nathan didn’t know about. He’d be revealed once the Old Man passed on. This time the Founding Fathers would have one more wolf—a young Nathan Hale Cutler.

             
And heaven help anyone who stands in their way.

A Single Decision

by Bruno Lombardi

              She knows that she is falling but it does not feel like she is falling.

             
It is a surreal experience; in another time or place, she would think that she was in the midst of a dream. Or a nightmare, certainly. But she knows that this is all too real.

             
And yet—it does not feel as so.

             
She is, strangely enough, relaxed. She is hurtling through the air and... and yet, she feels unencumbered.  She should be scared. Frightened. Terrified even. Those would all be understandable emotions to have at this moment.

             
But she feels none of those.

             
She is, in fact, feeling quite comfortable.  She should be intimated by gravity or by what her very imminent future holds. But it is not so.

             
She is face down, her arms spread eagle and both of her legs slightly bent at the knees. There is something almost rebellious in her posture, she feels.  As though faced with the inevitability of a very painful death, she has decided to just get it over with.

             
She is a spear, an arrow—nay!—a very missile bent on attaining the end.

             
She is—at precisely 11 seconds past 10:03 a.m. EST, on September 11, 2001, and about forty thousand feet over Somerset County, Pennsylvania—in the clutches of pure unadulterated physics, accelerating at a rate of thirty-two feet per second squared.  She is traveling at upwards of 150 miles per hour and in just under 4 minutes she knows that she will impact the ground and die.

             
And yet, she feels free...

*
* *

             
“Daddy!”

             
Melissa Hand squealed with delight and ran as fast as her legs could go into the arms of her father. Her father had barely walked through the door and, indeed, was still in the process of taking off his coat when the small blonde tornado tackled his legs.

             
“Daddy! You came! You came back!”

             
Picking her up to eye level, Air Force Major Michael Hand smiled and looked her straight in the eyes. “Of course, sweetie!  Where else would I be for your sixth birthday?”

             
He may have intended to say more but he was cut off as two arms squeezed around his neck. Behind her, just at the very edge of her hearing, Melissa heard her dad and mom talking to one another.

             
“Almost didn’t make it.”

             
“Two minutes before midnight.”

             
There may have been more but Melissa fell asleep at that moment, feeling contented and peaceful for the first time in a week.

*
* *

             
The wind is quite pleasant, she notes.

             
There is a bizarre, almost clinical, detachment to her observations of her immediate surroundings. She feels that she is not really “here.” Instead, she finds herself feeling as if she is watching a rather odd and vaguely disturbing movie.

             
Oh, how very fascinating that she has stopped tumbling. Oh, how very unusual that her flight suit—despite the rather violent nature of her expulsion from her plane some thirty seconds earlier—is remarkably clean and intact. Oh, how interesting that only the front half of the Boeing 757 is still intact and the trail of the approximately fifty tons of debris from the jet is fanning out behind it, almost like the tail of some immense mechanical and surrealistic peacock.

             
Oh, how intriguing that she has now apparently hit terminal velocity.

             
She notes—with a short giggle of laughter—that she is heading straight towards a small lake.

             
Only an hour earlier, she had been complaining that she had been feeling a bit rank and was in dire need of a good long bath.

             
She is now only three minutes from impact…

* * *

              Andrews Air Force Base was a hive of activity, despite the fact that the sun had only risen an hour earlier.

             
The time was precisely 7:46 a.m. and 2nd Lieutenant Melissa “Cool” Hand had precisely four minutes to get to her briefing. Normally the three hundred yard run to the briefing room from her “coffee meditation” spot would have given her a full three minutes leeway time. But since her return from two weeks of air combat training in Nevada she had discovered, much to her chagrin, that she had forgotten all the little shortcuts she had discovered since being posted to the base three months earlier.

             
Now she had to do it the ‘long’ way—and she’ll have barely a minute to spare.

             
A part—a very small part—wondered why she bothered. It was, after all, merely the usual briefing; dry, dull, monotonous, and utterly lacking in any useful purpose. While all that was, indeed, true and not open to debate of any kind, to Melissa Hand it was all beside the point. She was fulfilling her dream and if her dream required the occasional boring meeting, so be it.

             
The
details
were what made the difference between success and failure. As her (sadly recently) late father used to say,
“Because ‘close enough’ rarely is.”

             
Reaching deep into her reserves, she put on an extra burst of speed.

             
“Hey—a plane just hit the World Trade Center,” said an airman as he jogged into the canteen.

             
“What?” said Melissa, sitting near the back.

             
“Happened about ten minutes ago. Isn’t there a TV somewhere around here?”

             
The eight people in the canteen were in the midst of a heated argument over precisely what kind of plane could do the damage they saw on the North Tower when the South Tower was hit at 9:03AM.  They were still arguing over what they should do when word came down thirty-four minutes later that the Pentagon had just been hit by a plane.

*
* *

             
She discovers that, oddly, falling from forty thousand feet lends oneself to a contemplative state of mind.

             
She never was one for overly abstract philosophical debate. Unlike many of her friends from school, she knew from an early age precisely what she was going to do with her life. So all the long pondering discussions over “what is the meaning of life” or “what is our purpose” or “what would happen if I had done...” were discussions that she, quite frankly, found both boring and confusing.

             
But now—now she finds herself pondering.

             
How did she get here? Was her twenty-five years of existence and memories and joys and disappointments and struggles all meant for today... this moment... this action? What would have happened if she had not been here today? What if someone else had taken her place when she had signed up? What if... what if... what if...

             
And, most importantly, did she do the right thing?

             
She is now two minutes from impact...

* * *

              Somebody somewhere at some point—Melissa never did discover who—was quicker on the uptake than usual. Everyone knew—
knew—
that this was an attack, of course. But
knowing
it was an attack and
reacting
to the attack were two entirely different things.

             
So it came to be that the dust had not even settled from the ruins of the Pentagon when the order came in: “Go!”

             
Incredibly, remarkably, impossibly, there were no armed aircraft standing by and no system in place to scramble them over Washington. Why would there be? Even now, in the dawn of the 21st century, the only war that was still fought was the Cold War, a war now seemingly relegated to the dustbin of history.

             
There were, however, two aircraft available. They could, quite easily, be armed and ready to fly within the hour but they didn’t
have
that hour. They needed to have at least one plane up
now
, armed or not.

             
“Melissa, you’re coming with me,” barked Colonel Matthew Andersson, as he rushed towards the pre-flight life-support area, Melissa following him a moment later.

             
Normally, the pre-flight was a half-hour or so of methodical checks but both Matthew and Melissa disregarded them all. Screaming at her ground crew to pull the chocks, she had the engines powered up while in the process of strapping herself in. The crew chief still had his headphones plugged into the fuselage as she nudged the throttle forward. The last image she saw of him was him running along, pulling safety pins from the jet as it moved forward.

             
And with a final thrust of power, Melissa “Cool” Hand’s F-16 flew into the air.

             
Neither she nor Andersson had spoken during the mad rush to suit up and get to their planes. But both of them knew what was going to happen within the next half hour.

             
Neither one of their planes had any live ammunition—or missiles, for that matter. Nothing at all to throw at a hostile plane even now detected heading for Washington.

             
Nothing except their own planes. So that was the plan.

             
“I’m going to go for the cockpit,” said Andersson.

             
Melissa replied without hesitating. “I’ll take the tail.”

             
It was a plan. A promise. A pact. A decision.

             
A goal...

* * *

              Amazingly, despite her predicament, she realizes that she still has one goal left in her extremely short lifespan; she’s going to glide towards the lake, rather than crash face-first into it.

             
It’s important to have a goal in life, even when so near the end of it, she feels.

             
Adjusting her arms and legs, she begins the slow process of accomplishing this goal.

             
Meanwhile, her thoughts run back to the decision she made just three minutes earlier...

* * *

              “Goddamn it! God-damn it to hell!” came Andersson’s voice over her radio.

             
Melissa almost dropped her jaw in shock. In the last fifteen minutes, Andersson had not sworn a single time. Not when they flew over the smouldering remains of the Pentagon. Not when they heard a status report on the damage to the Towers. Not when they heard just how close the fourth hijacked plane was to Washington. Not once.

             
So when he began swearing
now
, when they were just a few minutes away from intercept...

             
“What is it?”

             
“My engine... tango uniform, Melissa. I’ve got red lights on my panel. Knew it was a mistake taking off Rapid City Freestyle.”

             
Melissa gasped. “Punch out! Punch out now!”

             
“But you’ll be on your own -”

             
“Punch out!”

             
Andersson appeared to want to argue the point further—and then, reluctantly, seemed to concede. “Sorry.”

             
There was an explosion and then a falling plane and then a brief flash of a parachute. And then they were gone from view.

             
And then Melissa was alone.

             
Two minutes later, Melissa saw the Boeing 757, and made her decision.

* * *

              There’s a lot on her mind at the moment, she realizes.

             
Precisely how she survived the impact, oddly enough, isn’t one of them, despite the near impossibility of such an occurrence.

             
A
near
impossibility implies, by definition, a
small
probability, after all. In an infinite number of poker games, one could get a royal flush in the first hand, so why should surviving a mid-air collision be any different? In an infinite number of collisions, any number of results could have occurred. In this one scenario, on today of all days, instead of dying instantly she would have a few minutes of contemplation before death.