Langley, Virginia
“Oh baby baby…. la lala… blow me baby… one more time…” Jim Borland was down to his underwear, dancing and voicing Britney songs.
Something beeped and something else chimed.
Sarah McAllister read the thing that had chimed.
“300… Jim, 300 ICBMs launched.”
“Oh baby, baby… whose?”
“Russian.”
“Cool… blow me babe one more time…”
Something pinged and chimed again.
Sarah sat down on the floor and re-read her super secure Blackberry.
“Blow me baby one more time…blow me baby…So what was that?”
“We just unloaded our arsenal… emptied our vaults… the entire allied arsenal… 11,781 ICBMs.”
Chapter 39
Earth, Milky Way
“Hey I am earth. I am like part of the Milky Way… and I lie in a neglected corner… just like Nicaragua. For some reason I haven’t been able to stop my head from spinning. At this point it’s beyond irritating. I read somewhere that high pressure leads to this kind of spinning. Maybe all that molten lava and magnetic shit in my belly is unhealthy. So I like tried to work out… sometimes real hard, but then I used to get bored and slowed a few revolutions… but then I also realized that a good revolution gave me a high… you know what I mean? So I guess I am sort of addicted to the revolutions now. Over the past 4 billion years, there is literally not a method I haven’t tried. I have tried expelling gases, breaking of chunks of myself, sweating out shit, jumping… wobbling… zilch. Nada. Nothing seems to stop the darn spinning. Old Marsy told me I needed more balance in life… like I needed to settle down. So I got myself a moon. A freakin moon… what was I thinking? And guess what? Zilch again. The bloody thing just spins with me and around me now. And then she has the balls to say, ‘ever since the day I met you I haven’t been able to stop spinning.’ I am not even going to start with the trolling and photobombing that the moon does to me. Then I was like ‘fuck it’ for a long, long time… But the spinning just wouldn’t stop… So I get back to working out… you know pulling heavenly objects that sort of thing… so I tried to pull in a bunch of meteors… maybe the momentums would cancel out each other… but sadly, so far no such luck… ahhh… somebody… stop me…”
Chapter 40
Kremlin, Moscow
Missiles fired by all parties were well beyond their half way points. It was time for Mueller to implement Stalin’s dream. The ultimate weapon… Project Catie, was about to go off…
“Mueller. Let’s go,” ordered Primakov.
Mueller turned around and threw an array of ancient circuit breakers.
The Russian Federation plunged into darkness.
And so did Belarus, Crimea, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan and Abkhazia.
Chapter 41
Russia
When Mueller threw his switch, two things occurred. First the entire power generated within the Russian Federation got sidetracked and fed into the Trans-Siberian Railway tracks. The anticipated shortage of 20% was bridged through voluntary contributions of energy rich Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.
Also a 10 Gigawatt atom splitter, located deep under Yakutsk fed into Mueller’s secret Underground Trans-Siberian rail lines.
All in all, they had about 100,000Km of super-electrified track on the surface and another 250,000Km of uber-hyper-super-electrified track under the surface.
Fully electrified, the two sets of rail tracks formed a powerful magnetic field.
“Electrification Successful,” announced Otto. This was followed by a round of stuttering applause by his fellow engineers.
Up in the Kremlin, fluorescent light bathed the situation room as the Kremlin power boys struggled to figure out the backup mechanism.
“Are you sure this is fine?” asked President Petrova.
“The monitors and controls have a separate battery powered backup. We are fine Madam,” assured Korlov.
“And the rockets?”
General Antipin was ready, “Absolutely. Same goes for our rocket forces. Never relied on the Russian grid… my rockets are still on target.”
The first Minuteman to Moscow was 7 minutes away. The next wave consisting the bulk of the 11,000 allied missiles were about 13 minutes away.
Mueller turned to an illuminated model of a globe on his desk. “Madam President, I present to you the new globe.”
Chapter 42
Earth, Milky Way
More than 10 Gigawatts of power surged through the railway tracks. The power surge and the associated magnetic fields began their assault on the earthen core made of molten lava. The powerful magnetic fields battered the large quantities of ferrous metals in the core. The sustained assault on the core soon resulted in a realignment of its composition. This manipulation of the core’s composition led to a change in the earth’s gravitational pull.
The change in the gravitational field wrt the sun, led to a change in the alignment of the earth’s vertical axis.
On the surface, the earthen populace felt a jolt. Despite its best efforts, USGS was unable to pin point the location of the sliding plates.
Mueller and Otto furiously fed the pre-programmed coordinates — coordinates of the new North Pole and the new South Pole.
The earth continued its tilting. At the appropriate moment, Muller hit lock on the vertical axis. The newly aligned earth looked different.
The North American continent was at the North Pole.
And Russia was in the Mediterranean.
Kennedy Space Center, NASA
“Sir we just lost contact with our Mars Rover, Saturn Sipper and Jupiter Junker…”
National Security Agency (NSA)
“Yo something’s wrong with our satellites…”
“Whats up?”
“I just lost contact with all of our satellites…”
“All 116?”
“Everything just went dark…”
Chapter 43
Earth, Milky Way
The Minuteman to Moscow’s onboard computer was confused. One second it had been homing into the Kremlin Wall Necropolis and the next, it found itself halfway to Shanghai. It reprocessed the inputs from its accelerometer, gyroscopes and GPS systems. They all said the same thing — 02:16 to Shanghai. After fiddling with itself the Minuteman did what every good control system did… it panicked and blue screened itself.
Eventually the Minuteman cooked up the courage and checked in with NORTHCOM at Colorado Springs… sadly, the only response it got was from a French base in Suriname — and like all French bases, the Suriname base suggested the Minuteman to un-arm, un-deploy and return to base.
Just when the Minuteman was about to French-it-up, it received a soulful message from something… something calling itself the Albatross.
After conversing with this Albatross, the Minuteman felt light… and relieved… a heavy weight had been lifted…
With a new purpose in life, the Minuteman headed to Siberia.
Krasnoyarsk, Siberia
“Boom, bitches! 1 down” Pulikesi mooned the cameras, “I told you guys not to panic…”