"Don't worry about that. I'll put a team of acquisition experts on it. We'll have it if we need it," she stated in a rather matter-of-fact manner that I was learning to be characteristic of Colonel Ames. If Tabitha said she would get something done, then by God it got done. I bet she was a bear to deal with in her teenage hormone years.
A few minutes later, she returned and promised me that we would have all of the components on our list by morning after next at the latest, plus a few more techs to help assemble them. Then she kissed me again.
This time I pulled her to me and kissed her long and deep and slow. I brushed a lock of her red hair out of her face revealing the pink new skin of the healing scratches from the plane crash. I had never thought of her as vulnerable to anything until now. I realized that she must be a little self-conscious of the scratches and bruises. I hoped they wouldn't leave a scar, for her sake; she was beautiful to me no matter what. "Tabitha, have you thought about a date yet?"
"Anson, sweetie, I haven't had time to think of anything personal. In fact, this is one of the first minutes I have taken for myself since we left the hospital. I will get around to it."
"Yeah yeah, Annie said you would be hard-pressed to pick a date. She suggested that I hog tie you and drive you off to the justice of the peace and get it over with." I goosed her ribs. She winced slightly in pain. Her ribs weren't quite well yet, either.
"She did, did she?" Tabitha looked as though she were already plotting vengeance against her daughter. "That little traitor. I'll have to fix her wagon." Tabitha laughed and goosed me back. I winced a bit, as my bullet wounds were just now healing. I swallowed back the pain and smiled. Then we kissed again and again. We decided that we should take a little while for ourselves and covertly made it to our room.
Most of the equipment arrived as planned. The rest arrived the next day, but that's another story. I overheard Colonel Ames dressing down an acquisition sergeant. He was at least a foot taller than her and more than a hundred pounds bigger, and she was scaring the living hell out of him. Me too!
"Ma'am," he said, "that piece of equipment will have to be manufactured. It's a onesy." He told the colonel.
"Did I ask for an excuse?"
"Uh, no, ma'am!"
"Well then. I don't care if you have to find a goddamned rainbow, trek to the end of it, capture a leprechaun, whup his ass and steal his pot of gold, take that pot of gold and buy a magic lamp, and use all three wishes to get that equipment here now. I don't care how, just get it here! I won't take no for an answer. Got it? Get it here!" The latter part was screamed at the top of her lungs into the man's face while she poked a finger in his chest. Although he was a giant of a man, he was shaking like a leaf on a tree in a thunderstorm.
"Ma'am, yes ma'am!"
The rest of the equipment arrived the next day. It took about four more days for us to assemble and test the nanotech factory and then another week and a half for Jim and me to build the first "flubell hugger." Once we adjusted the prototype to map directly opposite to the electromagnetic signature of the sialic acid receptors of the flubell virus, we then began tweaking of the automated manufacturing process. The process went fast. Our new facility was more efficient than the one that had evolved in our old Huntsville lab. It took some getting used to.
The flubell huggers were much easier to make than the Clemons Dumbbells because there were no moving parts. We were able to manufacture about twenty-three point eight grams per day. That added up to about forty-two days until we had one kilogram. I laughed at that. Perhaps this was the "ultimate question" to Douglas Adams's "ultimate answer." How many days does it take to produce enough flubell huggers to cure 'Becca's disease? The answer: forty-two. I just hoped that 'Becca would hold out that long. Of course, the doctor pointed out that we could start the suppression therapy with the flubell huggers as soon as we had a few tens of grams. So, we gave her the first dose of them at the end of the second day of automated manufacturing. For the first couple of weeks no dramatic changes in her condition were noticed. In fact, I was beginning to lose faith.
"Maybe it's not working," I told Tabitha one night while we were getting ready for bed.
"Don't give up, Anson. And don't you dare say that to anybody else, especially Jim. Everyone is sitting on pins and needles as it is."
"I would never do that. I just feel like there is something else I should be doing," I told her.
"We all feel that way," she said as she turned out the light and crawled into bed next to me.
"Tabitha."
"Yes Anson?"
"I . . . I was thinking about the wedding. Have you considered a date yet?"
"Yeah. How about as soon as 'Becca is well enough to be one of my bridesmaids?"
"Good idea."
CHAPTER 16
Three weeks into the therapy, Rebecca regained consciousness. I spent some time sitting with her. We all did. I explained to her what had happened to her. She was as amazed as all of us, and get a real kick out of the flubell huggers.
"I bet no physicians ever thought of building a cure from the atom up. Or if they did they had no idea how to do it," she said.
"Pretty cool, huh?" We both felt pretty sure of ourselves.
After the fourth week of the therapy she was up and walking around. Oh, by the way, throughout the treatment process we had to capture all of her excreted body materials and dispose of them safely. That included mucus, urine, feces, sweat, body hair, sloughed skin, and even her toenails. We didn't want to take chances. We placed all of these in the destroyed lower floor and electrocuted the hell out of them. Then we incinerated them.
The thirty-eighth day of the therapy I was chatting with Jim and 'Becca about the wedding plans for me and Tabitha.
"I don't know if I prefer an indoor or outdoor wedding. What do you think?" I asked them.
"What does Tabitha want?" 'Becca said diplomatically.
"I think she wants a big church thing, but she won't come out and say it."
"I've always been fond of those. Of course, the cruise idea was pretty cool also." Jim smiled as 'Becca elbowed him in the ribs.
Tabitha always seemed to have a knack of entering a room when you were talking about her. She looked troubled.
"What is it, Colonel?" I poked at her. She didn't snap back with her usual wit and repartee. Something wasn't right.
"It . . . it's terrible," she said. "Colorado has been destroyed."
"What?" resounded uniformly from the three of us.
"Which part?" I asked.
"All of it! Turn on the TV," Tabitha said.
We turned on the idiot box and on all the channels was the catastrophe. Some of the talking heads were calling it an extinction level event like the one that had caused the demise of the dinosaurs. Eyewitnesses had claimed that—there were no eyewitnesses. They were all dead. Roughly fifty million people were estimated dead. The President was to make a statement soon. In the meantime, various astronomers were suggesting that the recent meteor strike in Florida was a precursor to the Colorado Catastrophe.
Tabitha, Jim, 'Becca, and I all knew that this theory must be right on the money, but not at all what the astronomers had in mind.
Obviously it was a warp weapon. The warp weapon struck somewhere near Boulder, Colorado. The total destruct radius was several hundred miles. The satellite photos could only look at the dust and smoke plume, it was too thick for even infrared to see through. Centroiding on the plume put the center of impact at Boulder. Strategically this was a well-placed hit. Multiple military and civilian infrastructures were eradicated, literally wiped from the face of the Earth. Cheyenne, Wyoming, just north of the Colorado-Wyoming border was well within the total destruct zone. Military bases further south of Denver were also taken out. Strategic Space Command had taken a deadly blow. Even further out than the total destruction zone there was still tremendous damage. The plume would wreak havoc on communications with the Midwest for weeks to come. Who knew what it would do to the global weather patterns? And on top of that, how do you mourn for so many people. You can't initially—all you can do is watch and be in shock for a while. Unless, you can do something about it—then you focus and act! There might be other states out there in great danger and we had to think about them, instead of Colorado.