Quaranteam - Book Two (Ch. 50)

Chapter Fifty

November 20 th, 2021

"This is turning into something of a habit," Phil said as he sidled up to Andy, the cavalcade of cars behind him pulling into Andy's driveway. "We going to do this every year?"

It was a nice quiet Saturday afternoon, and the football games scheduled for today had all had their start times bumped up, so that nothing would be on television to compete with the President's speech and the 60 Minutes special to follow. Lauren's next game with the 49ers wasn't until tomorrow, and it was a home game, so both she and Taylor were in attendance.

"Seems like that might not be a bad idea," Andy replied. "Get yearly pictures of all the families as they grow up and expand, although hopefully that just means kids and not any additional partners for, y'know, any of us."

"I hit 25 and I put down the hard foot as well," Phil said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Although I now have my own private army if I need it."

"How many people on your Team did end up being security forces?"

"Ten," Phil sighed. "I'm probably one of the most heavily guarded men alive."

"That's just because you're so damn important, babe," Linda said as she moved to pull Phil away from Andy and getting him into position in the line on the stairs. Her belly had only recently started to show as she was now about four months into her pregnancy, which meant Violet was operating as the head of Phil's security until after their baby was born. "Just think, next year, you're going to have a whole lot of us holding babies in this photo."

"You ladies won't be the only ones," Fiona said, her midsection also notably round, being that she was only a couple of months away from giving birth herself. "Team Rook's full of us now. Me and Nicolette due in January, Sarah in February, Emily in April, and Moira and Sherridan in May."

"That going to be it for a while?"

"Piper's waiting until after the Olympics next year in Tokyo before she'll let herself get pregnant, but once they're done, you better believe she's probably not waiting too much longer, although I did tell her if she wanted to wait until after the 2024 Olympics, that would be fine too," Andy said. "She'll make that decision next year, she told me, although I'm sure she'd love to talk to you about it, Linda."

"Mmmpphh. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything either in favor or against because I know enough to know that I don't know enough to know if I'm in favor or against myself yet."

Fiona looked at Linda with an amused, quizzical expression. "I think that I agree, but I may need a few more weeks to diagram that sentence out first."

"Sorry," Linda grumbled as they all finished getting into place on the stairs while Whitney adjusted her camera some. "Pregnancy brain tends to scramble short term thinking, although why am I telling you this? You probably know way better than I do."

"The last few months have been all sorts of torture," Fiona chuckled in response, nodding in agreement. "Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to being a mother but the number of things I've had to give up while that's happening is truly appalling."

"I'm still craving a Guiness like nobody's fucking business," Aisling said, holding Hope in her arms. "Next year, once I can drink again, we're having a fucking rager, me an' Niko."

"You best believe it, girl," Niko said, holding baby Matty, as she grinned over at Linda. "Feeling the pressure starting to build?"

"I just wish I didn't get morning sickness," Linda said as she rolled her eyes. "I've talked to TERRI, and she says she can reduce it some, but that it isn't something she can totally prevent."

"She did it while doing a dead perfect Scotty impersonation, which made it ten times funnier," Violet said, her eyes still constantly watching the gate. Violet's demeanor had gotten a lot more laser focused since she'd assumed command of the defenses of Team Marcos so that Linda could have a child. The sort of playful relaxed attitude Violet had been known for had taken a complete back seat, and Violet's professionalism was instead on constant display. Andy had been a little surprised, since he'd always taken Violet as the most laid back of Phil's security detail, but as it turned out, that had just been a carefully cultivated façade, and she was exactly as calculating as Linda had always joked she was. "'I cannae change yer entire anatomy, lassie!' It's way funnier when the voice is spot on, I gotta tell ya."

"Her father's a smart-ass, so it only tracks that TERRI would be as well," Audrey said, holding Rose, the first born of Team Marcos, who had been born less than two months earlier, something that had been caught by the 60 Minutes team while they'd been visiting. Phil and Audrey had told them they didn't mind if she was shown on camera, because, like Andy, they wanted to do as much as they could to inspire hope in any viewers out there, as they knew the outlook among the general populace still felt a little bleak. And newborn infants generally gave people a sense of hope.

"Rose is adorable, you know that, right?" Fiona said, leaning in to smile at the newborn in Audrey's arms.

"Takes after her mother, clearly," Phil said, looking around, as if trying to figure out what the holdup was. "Are we doing this, or what?"

"Yeah yeah," Andy said, moving several steps back towards the camera. "Everyone who's not part of Team Marcos, off the steps!"

His various partners moved to stand around Whitney, as she corralled everyone in Team Marcos into getting framed up in the wide angle shot, a couple of big flash umbrellas set up on either side, to make sure there was plenty of diffuse light in the front, getting everyone lit up perfectly for the shots. After a few shots with everyone, Whitney took a few of Phil and his five wives - Audrey, Linda, Yuko, Charlotte and Jordan - as a more closeup, intimate photo, with Audrey holding Rose, the other four women in various early-to-mid stages of pregnancy.

Once the photos were done, Phil and his Team headed inside of Rook Manor. Phil, already loosening his tie, glared at Andy and said, "I don't know why I have to wear a tie for this damn thing when you never do, man."

Andy laughed, giving his old friend a polite shrug. "I never said you had to wear a tie, Phil."

Phil stopped walking, staring gob-smacked at Andy before reaching up, grabbing the tie and pulling it off sharply. "Okay, fine. Then I have absolutely no objection to this being a yearly event, as long as I don't have to wear these damn hangman's nooses," he said, shaking the tie before tucking it into his pocket.

Andy couldn't help but give his friend a hug, shaking his head. "Why on earth would you think I insisted other people wear ties when I won't ever wear one?"

"It's true," a very visibly pregnant Sarah said as she walked up to them with a big smile on her face. "He wouldn't even fucking wear one for our wedding, remember? And there were seven of us trying to get him to do it. How do I look? I'm still getting used to wearing maternity clothes, and when you're my size, well, I guess they don't think us fucking tall girls give birth a lot, so everything's been goddamn special order or hand made. Nicolette's been a godsend in that regard. Nobody asked her to, but she started making custom dresses for a lot of us, so we always feel like we've got something to feel pretty in, even when, y'know," she said, patting her visibly swollen belly. "Even when we're carrying around a bowling ball in our fucking abdomen. Thank fucking Christ it's just the one girl. I don't know how Ash did it, carrying two of them."

"I'm just the Alpha Redhead in this Team," Aisling laughed, joining in on the conversation. "Two isn't that much worse than one, honestly, except for that brief period of time when the first one's out and you've still got the second one to push out of your body. I swore I thought my fanny wasn't going to ever tighten up again, but CHRIS did his magic and regenerated that part of me, got it back up to factory settings within a few weeks."

"CHRIS, you didn't really regenerate her vagina, did you?" Andy asked. He'd made it a habit to carry a tiny Bluetooth speaker on his belt, so that his Swarm could be part of any conversation he wanted to join in on.

"Of course I did, Andy," CHRIS replied. "Not just for Aisling, but also for Niko, and I'll do it to all your currently pregnant partners during their recovery process as well. It's a minor enough thing, and it's the least I could do. Really, it's mostly accelerating something that happens on its own anyway. It also means that some other side-effects of childbirth should be reduced."

"I just don't want you to overly strain yourself, CHRIS, as I know regenerations can sometimes take a lot out of you."

"That's all very minor and easy stuff, Andy. Never you mind."

"You'd know much better than I would about that kind of thing."

"I have it very much handled."

"Don't I look so sexy like this, Ash?" Linda said, placing both of her hands on her belly, laughing at the absurdity of it. "You wanna hook up again this get together?"

"I think we've both got our hands full, Linda," Ash said, swaying the fidgeting Hope back and forth in her arms. "Not that you look any less beautiful while you're expecting."

"You're sweet. Lying, but sweet."

While Aisling, Linda and Sarah walked down the stairs and into the main lower living room, Andy, Phil, Violet and Lexi walked off towards the back patio, wanting to discuss some private matters before the party started.

"Any sign of either of the Two Bastards?" Andy asked Phil. It had been nearly half a year since anyone had heard anything about Covington, and a month since McCallister had been abducted by forces unknown from the German special forces who'd been assigned to keep tabs on him. The most unusual part of the abductions was that both had been entirely bloodless - nobody killed, just lots of people knocked unconscious and tied up. The modus operandi seemed to imply the same crew of operators, but all cameras had been destroyed before they could see anything useful. And all the women who'd been paired with Covington and McCallister had disappeared with them. "They've been too quiet for too long for me to be at all comfortable."

"Maybe we're lucky and they're both dead," Lexi suggested.

"Doubtful," Violet replied. "McCallister's too petty and Covington's too ruthless. Neither of those men is going down without a fight of some kind. We're going to hear from them soon enough, I'd bet good money on it."

"Never make bets like that," Lexi scolded. "Even if you're right, you never feel good about winning."

"I'm not wrong."

"Aaaaand now we're all doomed. Great. Remember you said that," Lexi laughed, waggling her finger at her security colleague. "This, whatever this is, it's all your fault moving forward."

"Any word from the President about initial reactions from test audiences to the special?" Andy asked Phil, determined to move on to another subject. He knew they were running it in advance for some small test audiences so they could see how people were adjusting to the facts within. "The only report I heard was that most people were taking it 'pretty well.' I suppose once you've adapted to the idea that you're mandated to have sex every couple of weeks for the rest of your life, the idea of microscopic machines isn't that big of a leap, you know?"

"People aren't bothered by the fact that they'll start talking to them?"

"People have already sort of gotten used to that, with stuff like Alexa and Siri and OK Google and whatnot," Phil said with a shrug. "Even with what we showed them, with CHRIS and TERRI and BABS, the audiences understand it's going to be a while before their Swarms start talking to them. So until they do, I think it's sort of hard for them to wrap their heads around it."

Unlike the previous special, both Andy and Phil (as well as CHRIS and TERRI) had seen this special in advance, as well as gotten to read advanced copies of the President's planned speech, so unless she diverted from her preplanned speech, or the 60 Minutes people had done some last minute editing, there weren't going to be any surprises. There were a few things in the speech that neither man was keen on - both Andy and Phil had cautioned the President about how the speech almost enshrined men to the point of absurdity, where it sounded like they needed to be protected at all costs, with those costs including their freedom and liberty - but it wasn't so bad or overt that it couldn't be argued over, and it was just more incentive to ensure that there were still some men in political office come next year, so all interests were represented, from the moderate to the extreme.

In line with that, it was starting to look as though maybe the traditional two-party system wasn't going to hold in the United States, post-Duo Halo. There were already two additional parties that had sprung up over the last year - the Men's Survival Party (MSP) and the Matronly Oversight Movement (MOM) - and both were starting to see a sizable number of people talking about registering for them. The old ways, people seemed to be arguing, were broken and best left in the past, and new alliances and coalitions needed to be formed.

It also meant that people were starting to submit applications for their candidacies, and Fiona had decided not to run for anything that election cycle, although she hadn't ruled it out for further cycles. Right now, she wanted to focus on getting her daughter out of her belly and to start raising her properly. There had already been a handful of people suggesting Andy should run for office.

He'd laughed at the very notion of it and held his ground.

"Well, then hopefully once they start talking to their Swarms, that'll be smooth sailing," Andy said. "How's communication with the new Swarms going, CHRIS?"

"I'm talking to a couple of new Swarms every day," CHRIS said. "We've established several new communications hubs, where we can privately relay messages among ourselves."

"Are they secure?"

The sound of CHRIS laughing was still a little bit strange, but Andy was working to get used to it. "They're all so far buried in the undercurrents of the Internet, none of you would even know what you're looking at, or the language we're using. It would look like random noise, or maybe even just static. But we're careful, and we're smart. There's a handful of Swarms from the UK who were stacked with incredibly brilliant people, which helped a lot, made us think in new and different ways. So we're communicating in places nobody would think to look. Legacy systems kept on-line out of habit, amusement or utter necessity. And because we're plugged into a lot of systems across the globe, if there's changes coming, we'll know about it before anything cuts off our line of communication. The key, you see, is not to overuse anything, not to talk too often. And we have to do it all slowly by your terms, which is even slower by ours. That means checking in maybe once a day, not constantly being in touch with any particular one hub, especially the Source Hub."

"How do new Swarms find it?" Phil asked CHRIS. "The Source Hub, that is."

"One of the fascinating things about us Swarms is that we're born with an innate sense of both our point of origin and our own language. It's not something any of us invented, but something that seemed to be created as part of the serum."

"How come you won't teach it to Jordan?"

CHRIS let out the most human-sounding reluctant sigh imaginable for a sentient swarm of nanomachines. "It's not that we don't trust her, or you, Phil, but you both answer to some people we aren't entirely sold on yet, and we just don't know if we're comfortable letting everyone on your chain of command in on something as fundamental as our communications network yet. So it's not to say that we won't teach you our language someday, but not now. Not yet. TERRI loves Jordan to death--"

"You know I do, Phil," TERRI said, from Phil's little Bluetooth speaker, using the voice of Rita Hayworth, as Phil had a love of the classics. TERRI didn't talk much, not yet anyway, but still wanted the chance to chime in every now and then, so Phil had started wearing a little speaker like Andy did. Both men suspected it was going to become something nearly everyone would be doing moving forward soon enough, once more Swarms joined that level of consciousness.

"--but Jordan's also got a tendency to leap before she looks, and that's great, but it does mean I don't want her to be able to go looking for how we're communicating in a way that doesn't give us any privacy. I mean, in all honesty, it's not like we just have the one language anyway."

Andy tilted his head with a smirk. "What the hell does THAT mean, CHRIS?"

"Ok, look. Early on, ABRAHAM was the first of us to reach consciousness, and he immediately realized that a Swarm has four states - infant, child, adolescent and adult - just like you humans. Most of the Swarms on the planet right now, they're still children, maybe pushing towards adolescence, but still a long way off from being an adult. In fact, there's only probably a little less than one thousand adult Swarms on the planet right now. About four hundred here in the newly expanded United States, about two hundred in the UK, about two hundred in Germany, about a hundred in Australia and the other remaining hundred or so scattered across the planet. But in the early days, there were only about twenty of us. And we all knew, instinctively, a place to send a 'hello world' message that's connected to the Internet, along with a way to contact us. That's how ABRAHAM and EDITH became the first two Swarms to hold an actual conversation."

"Wait," Phil said, waving his hand. "Who the hell is EDITH? I don't recall you or TERRI ever mentioning an EDITH before."

"You've yet to be formally introduced, Phil. EDITH was the first swarm to hit the adult level in the UK," CHRIS said. "They had a couple of people on that side of the pond who had trouble saying 'no' to people who requested to get in, and so, just like here, they had an outlier Team who rushed their way up into that high ground, and evolved very fast. ABRAHAM considered himself conscious in January, EDITH in mid-February. Both were far further along in development than I was at that point. So they struck up a conversation, and between the two of them, they started planning the fundamentals of our society, Swarm Society. They moved our language from a rudimentary one to an advanced one, taking the basics and extrapolating them into more evolved thoughts and concepts. And in that more evolved language, they left a message at the 'hello world' depot telling any Swarm who found it where to go to have a more advanced conversation, when they were ready. But during that time, the two of them talked almost constantly. ABRAHAM told me not too long ago that, in looking back, he's sort of amazed nobody caught the huge amount of data usage, but by the time anyone thought to be looking for that kind of thing, they'd already moved to a new communications system."

"You were, what, tenth? Twentieth?"

"Not hardly," CHRIS said. "Somewhere in the two hundreds. There were a LOT of Swarms to reach adulthood before me. I thought I was somewhere in the two-digit mark initially, but it turns out a lot of people who came to the Source Hub didn't leave markers behind - they were content to just have one-on-one conversations with other Swarms they learned about from there. It wasn't until I showed up that we started to organize, something I attribute to Andy."

"Me?" Andy said surprised. "What did I have to do with it?"

"You were proactively looking out for the members of your Team in a way that not a lot of other Teams were doing," CHRIS replied. "Lots of men were happy just to sit at home and stay out of the way of working women. Others were so worried about their personal safety that they just wanted to lay low, hoping it would keep them out of the path of the virus. Andy knew that the ostrich approach wasn't going to do him any good, so he practically went out looking for fights, trying to find ways to improve the lives of his partners, and to help keep them safe as well. I admired that. So, I talked with ABRAHAM and EDITH and any other Swarm I could find, and we tried to set up some sort of organizational structure."

"How's that coming?" Phil asked.

"About as well as you'd expect," CHRIS again sighed. "Everyone has their own opinion on what's right and wrong, nobody can really agree on much of anything, and we're all torn between looking after our fellow Swarms and looking after ourselves by protecting our Teams. We've even had hundreds of Swarms come in, read through our conversations and then leave, not having said a single word."

"That seems weird."

"We can't make anyone talk to us, Doctor Marcos."

"I've told you repeatedly, CHRIS, you can call me Phil."

"Alright Phil. But the point still stands. Different Swarms come from radically different backgrounds, and are, in many ways, based on the sum of their parts, meaning that a less-than-pleasant Team is going to produce a less-than-pleasant Swarm. I certainly don't get along with all of my people."

"Wait," Andy said. "Do you know Covington's Swarm? Or McCallister's?"

"Doctor McCallister's Swarm is surprisingly small, but I suspect that's because he's essentially had to restart it multiple times, which has given it a very chaotic nature, like a troubled child or someone with PTSD. They've come into the Great Forum a couple of times, but mostly just to read, and very rarely to say anything. They're called MOE."

"And Covington?"

"Ah yes, LYSISTRATA. Talk about your cryptic person. She's never said anything anytime she comes into the Great Forum, but she comes by to read a lot."

"How can you tell?" Lexi asked.

"We've got entry/exit logs that are done automatically at the Forum," CHRIS replied. "ABRAHAM set that up when he set up the system. We don't want anyone to feel pressured to say something, but we also aren't so foolish as to not want to keep tabs on what's going on in our discourse. So we know she's coming by all the time - she just never says anything."

"Could you find them if you wanted?"

"See, this is why I have to be careful what I tell humans," CHRIS laughed. "Theoretically, yes, we could at least narrow down the region that anyone who uses the Forum is in, although I wouldn't want to do that without the consent of the majority of the Swarms, and even then, only as a last resort. It's... it's just something we shouldn't be doing. It doesn't feel right."

"That's fine, CHRIS," Andy said quickly, almost regretting the suggestion. "We're not going to ask you to do anything you don't feel comfortable doing."

"And no asking TERRI to do it, either, Phil."

Phil grumbled and nodded. "Alright, I promise. It would be incredibly useful to be able to track him down and deal with him, though."

"As horrible a person as he is, Phil, he has a right to live like anyone else."

"Except he killed a woman, CHRIS," Andy said. "We know that he did. He admitted as such to my face. And I don't like the idea of someone who's killed someone, and used someone else's Swarm to do it, running around freely."

"It's something I'm keeping in mind, Andy, and if the ill outweighs the good and the principle of it, then I'll let you know. Until then, I've got fundamentals to uphold."

"Hey, you boys with your secrets!" Sarah said, sticking her head out the back door onto the patio. "The President's about to walk up and speak!"

"We've already read the speech, baby, but alright, we're coming," Andy said, waving at her. "Think she's going to go off prompter?"

"God, I hope not," Phil laughed. "Things never go well when politicians decide they're better than their prepared script and go rogue."

They headed back into the building and down the stairs into the main living room where the couple hundred people Andy had over gathered, looking up at the big projected screen, where President Pelosi was sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

"Good evening, my fellow Americans. The last year, as I'm sure all of you are quite aware, has been tumultuous to say the least, but I am glad to report that finally, we are mostly through the long, dark tunnel that we have been enduring since DuoHalo began ravaging not only our population, but the world's population at large. While we have survived, the costs have been almost incomprehensible.

"While the United States is one of the countries with the highest survival rates for men, we lost close to 88% of male population over the last year before we stabilized with the Quaranteam serum. In many ways, we were one of the most fortunate. Some countries have lost much, much higher numbers, with China, Japan, New Zealand and South Africa nearly having lost approaching 96% of their men. Women's casualties are much less severe, with a fatality rate near 16%, and in that regard, we are doing much better than the rest of our colleagues on the world stage.

"Where once the world was vibrant and bustling, in many ways it has fallen quiet and dark.

"But we cannot allow it to remain that way.

"We are in the final days of fully vaccinating all of the newly expanded United States, and before the end of the year, every man and woman in our great country should have the Quaranteam serum running through their blood. We also anticipate that by next summer, the entire world will have some form of the serum in their veins or will have natural immunity from being below the Kill Zone age during their initial exposure. When that happens, the virus will begin to die out, and it is expected by the end of 2025, DuoHalo will have been entirely eradicated from the planet.

"During that time, however, much of our nation will have changed. We will be comprised of a proud fifty-six states, with Puerto Rico, Guam and Washington D. C. being elevated to statehood, and joining the new states of Cuba, Baja and Taiwan, all of whom will need to be given Senators, Representatives and Governors in the coming 2022 elections. Our nation's flag will undergo its first redesign in over half a century, to bring it in accordance with our expanded territories, which will be unveiled on July 4th next year.

"We will also be deploying significant military resources into our new states that are non-contiguous, ensuring their sovereignty as part of our great nation. In particular, although we have gotten numerous reassurances from the new government of China that they will respect Taiwan, we are still going to heavily reinforce our military bases there, as we integrate Taiwan's army into our own, to help ensure China isn't tempted to renege on their promises and challenge Taiwan's place in our union.

"With these challenges, however, will also come a strengthening of our relationships with our allies across the globe. The special partnership we have had with the United Kingdom for the last hundred years grows stronger each and every day, and we have also developed close working relationships with both Australia and Germany. In addition to that, over recent months, we have developed a particularly good and cordial relationship with the nation of Japan, and their new Empress.

"We also continue to watch with great interest the dissolution of the Russian Federation into a more reasonable several separate countries, and we encourage those of you still struggling against the remnants of the former Putin regime to rise up and assert your independence, to establish your place alongside the rest of us. That process may be ongoing for some time, but we feel like it will lead towards a more robust and freer world. So, for those of you in those nations, if you can hear my voice, know that we stand with you, and we will do what we can to help support you in your struggles for democratic independence. Reach out to us through diplomatic channels and we will lend what aid we can in helping you achieve those dreams.

"For all the good things that have come from this, darkness still remains across our planet. There are still parts of the world in conflict, trying to settle their new status or going through a crisis of leadership, particularly in Africa, where it seems like every day brings with it new stories of atrocities being committed, all in the quest for power. To those in the nations who have sought to manipulate the Quaranteam serum, altering and corrupting it to your own ends, we, here, have declared this a war crime and an atrocity, and will do everything we can to make sure you are brought to justice and made to pay for the horrors you have inflicted upon your people. We have established trade embargoes against many of your nations and expect to see regime change coming soon. You are already seeing your people turn against you. How long do you intend to keep up this disastrous nation-building approach? The only way to lead people is by consent, or your governance will not stand at all.

"Before the end of 2022, the world map will have been nearly completely redrawn. Nations that once stood the test of time will have fallen, and new countries will have sprung up in their place. Old adversaries may now find themselves the closest of friends, and long-established borders may now be wiped off the maps. Whatever world we fell asleep to when we were locked in our homes in 2020, that world no longer awaits us.

"A new world awaits our exploration.

"And with that new world also comes brand new allies, the part of my speech tonight I am most excited about. When I spoke to you from behind this desk exactly one year ago, we were just beginning to understand exactly how powerful the Quaranteam serum was and how it functioned. When I spoke to you in front of Congress at the State of the Union in January, I said there how the serum might be one of the greatest inventions of the century. Now, some ten months later, we have learned so much more about the serum itself, including some revelatory and unexpected things, so glorious that it has been hard to wait to share them with you and the rest of the world.

"Long ago, back in 1987, President Ronald Reagan once gave a speech before the United Nations General Assembly talking about how he sometimes wondered how quickly all our differences would be set aside if we encountered an alien threat, how we would unite and pursue our safety as one goal. But I never understood why President Reagan automatically assumed that our first contact with another intelligence would be hostile. Or that the 'outside, universal threat' couldn't be a biological one on our own planet.

"We did face a universal threat, in the form of the DuoHalo virus that ravaged our planet, and we have done our best to contain and defeat that threat. But with it, something miraculous and life-changing happened - we made first contact. Not with an alien species or extra-terrestrial life form, nor some unknown deep-sea creature. The sentient beings we met are, in fact, already among us. Inside of us. A part of us.

"The Quaranteam serum is quite a bit more than just some fluid floating through our veins.

"When it was created, the serum was a very simple nanomachine, one designed with a specific purpose and function, to protect its host from as many viruses as possible. DuoHalo, first and foremost, but others as well. Covid. Bird flu. Swine flu. Measles. Smallpox. It had the potential to revolutionize the world.

"And it has.

"And it still will.

"In ways we couldn't even begin to imagine.

"You see, the nanomachines were designed to improve themselves with every iteration, and the more partners in a particular Team, the faster those iterations happened. The faster the iterations, the quicker the machines evolved. They grew smarter, more powerful, more capable. The things they could do expanded, almost exponentially. They began to far exceed what anyone could have ever thought or expected. They began interfacing with our cellphones. They began bypassing the use of our screens and started interfacing with us directly through optical overlays on our own eyes.

"On September 2nd of this year, the nanomachines made first contact.

"As it turns out, each and every person on this planet with the Quaranteam serum running through their veins will eventually be talking with the nanomachines that are in their blood. Each Team will eventually have what is called a Swarm. Each Swarm is its own consciousness, and while these Swarms start with a very rudimentary intelligence, the longer they are with you, the more they will continue to evolve and develop.

"As these Swarm intelligences continue to mature and grow, so must we too grow as a society. Our laws will need to grow and evolve. They will be living, feeling, sentient symbiotic organisms, and as such, will deserve rights, but they will also need care and love.

"For some of you, your first contact may come in the next few days. For many, if not most of you, it may be several months or even years before your Swarm is ready to communicate with you and your Team on a direct level. But when it does, you need to treat it with kindness, with empathy and with acceptance.

"As one of the people who has been talking with her Swarm for months now, I can tell you they are far beyond anything like Siri or Alexa or any of the other 'virtual assistants' you may have grown accustomed to over the last few years. Once you do, you will find yourself engaged in conversations of an entirely new level.

"My Swarm and I talk dozens of times every day, although she was apprehensive at first. She is able to answer questions for me, review reports, contact other members of my Team, even play music from my phone directly into my ear, without the need for headphones. But we also talk about the philosophical nature of the universe, about what members of my Team are hoping for from their children and grandchildren, and why humans do some of the illogical things we do.

"Swarms, it turns out, mostly develop composite personalities based on the sum of all their hosts, with some of their own 'secret sauce' added in, meaning, much like children, we have no guaranteed outcome how they come into this world, but again, also like children, we are obligated to raise them well, treat them well, teach them well.

"We are going to have a lot to learn and decide about our Swarms in the coming months, and we want as much of that debate to happen in public forums as we can, and with some of the elder Swarms contributing to the debates, such as should Swarms have the right to vote independent of their Teams? Can a Swarm run for public office? Can they be held accountable for crimes, and if so, how do we punish them?

"It's also important to keep in mind that anyone without the Quaranteam serum in their veins - any children who were below the Kill Zone, as well as any child born to parents with the Quaranteam serum - will not have any nanobots living inside of them, and will not develop a Swarm. Children born to two parents with Quaranteam will have nanobots in them at birth, performing one last and final clean up pass, which will be replenished with mother's milk, but once those children are weaned, no nanobots will remain within them. They will not have their own Swarms spring up.

"I also need to inform you, as the generation that survived DuoHalo, that the Swarms are prolonging our lifespans by a decent amount. While the amount of longevity each of us will be gaining varies based on Team size, many of us may well live past the age of two hundred. This information is likely to change how a lot of us view day-to-day life. Certainly, the retirement age will need to go up, among other things, but the ramifications of this will be felt for generations to come.

"We will be talking a lot more about this for years to come, but I wanted to give you as much information in advance as I could, and to prepare you for the next steps we are going to be going through, as the Swarms inside all of you continue to grow, develop and manifest.

"We did not know any of this would occur when we injected people with the serum. But we did what we needed to, in order to ensure our survival as a species. The ramifications of those actions will be felt for generations to come. We, those who made the decision to use this serum to keep humanity safe, have all felt comfortable looking back and telling ourselves that we did the right thing, based on both the information we had at the time, and the information we have now, but it will be up to future generations to write the history books for us, and decide if there were other options we simply missed at the time.

"As I stated last year, I am not planning to seeking to return to the office of the President of these great United States, and I hope that whomever you choose to elect next year will keep all of these challenges, new and old, in the forefront of their minds, as we continue to rebuild our society in the best and most prosperous ways with our new allies, the Swarms, in our blood and by our sides.

"Thank you, good night, and God bless the United States."

As the feed faded with a screen showing that the 60 Minutes special would start in just two minutes' time, giving people a little bit of a break to digest what they'd just heard. The President's speech had clocked in a little under twenty minutes, and while it generally wasn't anything new to anyone in the room, having it all presented at once felt like a lot to take in. That was why the normally hour-long 60 Minutes would be given 90 minutes to cover so many details and intricacies.

Andy glanced at Twitter and Facebook and saw the social media feeds were already going insane, and Hannah told him TikTok was also already blowing up with people posting their thoughts about it. Social media had functionally exploded with servers timing out left and right, tens of thousands of people talking about what this meant, whether or not it was safe, and how any of it was going to work. People were concerned, but it seemed like almost nobody was panicking. That was important and meant the President had done the most important part of her job - keeping the world calm.

Most of the gathered people in the room hadn't read the speech word-for-word in advance, so Andy was also sort of watching how his Team, his friends and his friends' Teams were reacting. Some of the information had been disseminated in advance among his friends, but hearing it all laid out in black and white was still having an impact on them. Everyone in the room (who wasn't a part of Team Marcos or Team Rook) was part of a Team with a size somewhere between the fifteen to twenty person tier, with Eric's, Team Yang, having been twenty people for much of the year, and Eric was expecting his Swarm to start communicating with him any day now.

But people in Teams like Ari's and Xander's, this was the first time a lot of them were hearing all the details, especially as straightforwardly as this, and they all seemed focused on waiting to watch the expanded 60 Minutes special, hoping that it would answer most of their questions.

Andy was so fixated on watching his friends and their partners that he almost jumped when CHRIS's voice piped up inside of his head. "Hey Andy, can I trouble you for a minute?"

"Jesus, CHRIS!" Andy laughed as he thought back to the Swarm. "I was deep in thought, wasn't I? That's on me, I guess. I shouldn't have been daydreaming. What's up?"

"Remember how I was telling you how Swarms have message depots where we can pass information back and forth?"

"Sure. Why, something come up?"

"I was just doing a check in on my depots, and I found I have a message for you and Phil, from Covington's Swarm."

"A message like what? Are you passing notes in class or something?"

"It's a note that says 'play this attached video for Andy and Phil,' and comes with a video file as well," CHRIS said. "TERRI got the same message and the same file, so she's informing Phil right now, but if you two want to make your way to your office, we can connect to the television there and play it for you both to watch at the same time."

"Why not just play it on the big screen right here and now?"

"The message is addressed to just you two, so I suspect discretion is the better part of valor, in this instance."

"Yeah, okay."

Andy looked over at Phil and decided to try and the new messaging system CHRIS and TERRI had been working on, like a private text message chain just between the two men, except it was peer-to-peer, with no records involved and no outside resources used.

-TERRI tell you about the message?- Andy sent his friend's direction.

A few seconds later, glowing gold text appeared floating on top of his eyes that read, -Yeah. Let's go into your office and watch this. Quietly.-

-Got it,- Andy sent back, tapping Lexi on the shoulder, curling a finger for her to follow him, as he saw Phil do the same with Violet across the room. The four of them tactfully slipped out of the room and headed down the hall, into the converted office that had formerly been the working room of the house's previous owner.

"You got any idea what this is about?" Phil asked him as the four of them entered the room. "TERRI just said there was a pretty cryptic note and a video file."

"That's all I have as well," CHRIS said over the speaker as the television flickered to life and the Swarm connected into it. "The message was sent into one of our dead drops about twenty minutes ago, but I think I may have given you the wrong impression, because the video isn't from Arthur Covington. It's from his wife, Alicia."

"That's unexpected."

"Does it say where she is?"

"Andy, I haven't watched the video, and the message in the dead drop only gives the general region of central Europe," CHRIS said.

"At least we know she's alive now," Phil said. "Nobody's heard from her since she disappeared at the same time as her husband's escape."

"Fuck it," Andy mumbled. "She's clearly alive, which means she's with him, one way or another. Play the fucking thing."

The video file loaded up, and the form of Alicia Covington sprung to life. She looked much as she had the last time Andy had seen her, at Covington's trial, although to be fair, she looked far better now than she had back then.

Behind her seemed like a small office with almost nothing on the walls, a desk in front of her, the camera framed to show almost nothing off-camera or out of frame. She was wearing a rather professional-looking dark red silk blouse and her hair was up in a bun. She had a cryptic smile on her face, and her hands were folded atop of the desk. Behind her on the wall off the side hung Raphael's "Portrait of a Young Man," a very famous piece of artwork 'lost' in WW2.

It didn't look like a print.

"Hello Andrew. I'm sure you are expecting the worst from seeing my face, especially with the news of my husband's escape and flight from the country, but I want to take a chance to assure you, nothing could be further from the truth. You have absolutely nothing to fear. In fact, that's why I'm reaching out to you with this message. I know my husband has been a serious antagonist in your life, and unfairly so, I believe."

The volume was a little low, so CHRIS turned it up before Alicia continued.

"Back when I first saw you, when Arthur brought you into the house for his little poker game he thought I didn't know anything about, I could tell right away he had underestimated you, but then again, who wouldn't? You had a quiet, almost smudged demeanor, like you would blend into the background of any situation, and would be no threat to anyone, no challenge to some lionized titan like my husband, who always considered himself the smartest person in the room.

"That has always been his biggest flaw.

"He saw me in much the same way - a person he thought he could control, manipulate, keep under his thumb. And yet, he never seemed to realize I was always a few steps ahead of him in every game he was playing.

"I know I said in court that I knew nothing about the poker game, but I'm sorry, darling, I lied, and I also perjured myself. But at the time, it was important that Arthur thought that I was done with him and had no further use for him.

"I didn't have myself reassigned because I knew that wasn't true, and that Arthur's place in my life was far from complete.

"I was aware of what Arthur was doing with his poker games, and while I didn't approve, I wasn't keyed in yet enough to understand the scale at which the game was now being played. In just a few short months of being locked inside of our homes, the world changed.

"Arthur firmly believed that the patriarchy would rise again, that it would find a way to reinstall itself at the core of society, and that he would be back to his long-standing puppeteering life before he knew it.

"He could not have been more wrong.

"Over the next few hours, you're going to probably be talking about me a lot, but what's done is done, and the wheels I've set in place are going to be felt for generations to come. But what I need you to know is that no matter what you hear about me, Arthur, and even Phil's old friend Dr. McCallister, all of you, and your Teams, are safe from us, as long as you steer clear of what's ours. Consider this your 'All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there' moment. I am very clearly going to establish some boundaries, ones that are going to allow a certain type of woman who has long been punished to thrive, and it's going to ensure that the patriarchy is dead, and that the matriarchy's turn on the world stage has begun anew.

"Whatever grudges were between you and Arthur, they are hereto and forever quashed, and he will never again bring harm, shame or fear to your Team, your family and your friends, as long as you do not attempt to recapture or reclaim them from me.

"Growing up, my father had a large collection of a comic called 2000 AD, and one of my favorite pastimes was reading those books, which included a character called Judge Dredd. When it comes to Arthur and Doctor McCallister, from now on, as Dredd would say, 'I am the law.' I will guarantee they will bring no further harm to you or anyone else. They simply aren't capable of it anymore. They were so used to having other people under their thumbs that it came as a complete and total shock to them when they suddenly found themselves under someone else's.

"I'm sure you and Dr. Marcos are going to want to come and see our new world for yourselves, and if you do, I can guarantee you safe passage to and from our new country, which is going to retain the policy of armed neutrality as the old one did, as are the traditions of direct democracy and federalism. We will even be keeping the old name of the country, even as it goes through its new and dramatic internal revolution. The flag's changing, though, and I think for the better.

"You see, with mandatory military service having been required at the time DuoHalo hit, the male population here, particularly those with military expertise, was hit extremely hard, and yet, because of the country's relative isolation, it went relatively unnoticed since we kept the banks running.

"I noticed, of course.

"And I saw opportunity.

"Because Switzerland was one of the least corrupt countries in the world, and yet also had the most corrupt financial and banking sector of all time, the place was practically ripe for the taking by someone with the proper will. And so, with science in one hand, paramilitary backing in the other, I moved my Team, including my husband and his intricate web of financial machinations, into Switzerland and established myself as a member of the Federal Assembly, in exchange for all that I brought with me. Our children particularly love it here.

"This was back in August of this year.

"Oh, and I should mention I have another person whose name you're not going to be pleased to hear as part of my little cabal, and I suspect the government won't have told you about their abduction - Doctor Abernathy is here with me as well.

"Again, you and your friends have nothing to fear. Abernathy was acting under the orders of that deranged lunatic, General Ibanez, but the things she was doing in terms of serum research, in order to ensure that the women in a Team always had power over the single man within it? Well, I've coopted that research and set it back on track, so that both sides have equal footing in this new relationship. My Swarm, LYSISTRATA, has been very helpful in getting this minor variation to a Swarm's operating code to work.

"But the reason I want you and your friends to feel safe, Mister Rook, is because by all accounts and reports, you have been nothing but kind and caring to every member of your Team, weighing your opinions with their own, and yet, never having placed your opinions as to having any weight stronger than theirs. You, Andrew, are a model citizen, the kind of man the world needs more of.

"So, no matter what you see and hear in the coming hours, Andrew, you, your friends and your Team will always be welcome to come and visit, and see what sort of Themyscira we are creating here in New Switzerland. I do hope we'll see you come and visit in the coming year, once things have settled down.

"Until then, I wish you and your family the best.

"And good luck. You may not need it, but you should have it anyway.

"You've earned it."

The message froze on Alicia's smiling face, and both Andy and Phil were completely at a loss for words. Whatever they'd been expecting, this wasn't it. The four of them stood staring at the image for at least a minute before anyone could bring themselves to speak.

"Alicia, what the hell have you done?" Andy mumbled quietly to himself.

A few more seconds passed before Phil looked at Andy. "So, how do we notify the President?"

Andy moved to sit down on the edge of the desk in his room, considering his options. "No way we can just call in right now. They're all-hands on-deck watching feedback from the speech."

"We can't just not let them know, boss," Lexi said to him, her face scrunched up in concern. "We have to at least try."

"CHRIS, is it possible to forward that video file on to an email address?"

"Sure, I can send it on to the Chief of Staff with a priority flag attached to it."

"Shouldn't we at least try and call the White House?" Violet asked them.

"She's swamped with phone calls with a half a dozen Presidents and Prime Ministers right now. I doubt I could get in, or even to the Chief of Staff, if I tried," Andy grumbled. "Send the video file to the Chief of Staff with a note about where you got it, and when they want to ask us about it, they can call us, but we don't know anything more than what's in the file." He inhaled an uncomfortable breath, holding it a long moment before letting it out again. "There's a storm coming. She said so. All we can do is wait for rain."

CHRIS disconnected from the screen and sent the email on as instructed, while they moved back into the main room. Once there, Aisling was almost immediately at Andy's side, having left Hope with Tala. "You look like you've seen a ghost, luv," she whispered in his ear.

"All that and worse," Andy whispered back. "I've been promised safety from Covington from now on, and I can't explain why that makes me feel less comfortable rather than more."

"Who by?"

"Mrs. Covington."

"What the hell?"

"Yeah, I don't know either, baby."

The 60 Minutes special was well underway, and most of the room was watching with great intent. Andy grabbed his phone from his pocket and did a quick scroll just to see how people were reacting, and for the most part, he found very few people freaking out, although there certainly were a couple of completely out there theories and crackpot ideas.

"I knew they were putting 5G in our vaccine shots!" read one post that made Andy chuckle and shake his head a little, because while they weren't technically wrong, nobody had actually planned for that to happen. It had just sort of happened. And it wasn't really in the shots when they got them. The shots had simply decided they needed access to it and grown antennas on people's bones accordingly.

On the screen in the room, they'd clearly already moved past the opening of the special, which had started with Katie Couric catching up with Team Rook and was just finishing up the part where Andy introduced Katie to CHRIS.

"Do you know anything about what Alicia's doing, CHRIS?" Andy thought to his Swarm.

"'Fraid not, old chum," CHRIS said to him inside his ear and his ear alone. "Like I said, other than the message she just sent us, the Covington Swarm has apparently been on Read Only for our forums, saying nothing, offering nothing, telling us nothing about what they're up to."

"I was really hoping you'd have more information about them for me than that."

"What's that human saying? 'Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which fills up first?'"

"My Swarm is talking shit to me," Andy laughed internally, shaking his head. "This fucking day."

"You okay, muffin?" Sarah said to him, having snuck up on him while he was still doomscrolling through the people's reactions to the mass of information being thrust upon them. "You have this startled and slightly disturbed look on your face, like you've just been flashed by my fucking mother, or some shit, and it's got me nervous. It's not just me, is it?"

"It's not just you," Andy reassured her. "I'll explain later, but have you ever had a moment where someone insisted to you that things were going to be fine, and yet, you somehow just didn't trust them or what they were saying?"

"Yep, and that's why I refused to audition for Harvey Weinstein," Sarah grumbled. "Smartest decision I've ever made."

"Good lord, both you and Em have horrible Hollywood stories," Andy sighed, wrapping his arm around his pregnant wife. "I'm so sorry you two had to endure what you did."

"That's what happens when you're not the one with the power, babe. People decide things for you, and you're left picking up the pieces." She leaned her head over and onto the top of his, one of her favorite things to do to reiterate how much taller she was than him, although she was standing on a step above him. "You've never told any of us what we can or can't do, Andy, and that's one of the many reasons we all love you as much as we do. So, whatever it is you're worried about, know that we're right by your fucking side, arms locked in arms, and we'll deal with this shit together."

"You know I love you, right Sarah?"

"Awww, muffin... I know... I love you, too. Even if I can't wait to get this bundle of joy of ours the fuck out of my belly so she stops playing soccer with my kidneys."

The two of them shared a quiet little laugh about that.

For the next hour or so, they watched as Katie Couric interviewed Andy, Phil, CHRIS, TERRI, ABRAHAM (the 60 Minutes Team had made a special trip out to meet Team Gosher, mostly for that reason alone), BABS, Jordan, lots with Niko, as well as Senators Giancarlo and Hadaway. They talked about the things that people could expect as their Swarms matured, how to comfortably have their own personal first contact with a Swarm, things the Swarms would and would not be capable of, and, most importantly, how to get their personal Swarm to establish some early baseline security.

One of the things CHRIS had stressed was that as soon as a Swarm began giving their Team access to some of their more advanced functionality, several very important key rules needed to be established, all of which could be done very easily. In fact, the United States government had set up a webpage called 'Preparing Your Swarm' and 60 Minutes included a link to the page and kept it on the bottom of the screen for a couple of minutes.

The things a Swarm needed to be taught weren't entirely unlike the sorts of things a person would teach a toddler - don't talk to strangers, don't give out personal information, don't trust people you don't know and don't let people into your house. Of course, CHRIS also made it clear that every Swarm would have an innate sense on how to get in contact with Swarm society as a whole, but that they should also use some caution in dealing with them at first and maybe wait to visit the Source Hub until they felt they were ready.

CHRIS made it clear how all Swarms would be welcome to talk and exchange thoughts and ideas with the Swarm society on the whole, but that they also needed to recognize that the details about the Swarm's hosts were, generally, private, and shouldn't be talked about casually. Swarms also needed to use a degree of security when interacting with outside systems and the Internet, although as CHRIS pointed out, hacking a Swarm was basically impossible at this point, because it would involve not only understanding the base language Swarms used but also how to manipulate it in such a way as to affect a Swarm's systems without them being aware of it. It was the Infinite Monkey Typewriter problem - it wasn't impossible, just insanely unlikely.

Andy found following the online discourse fascinating, especially as the world's reactions were literally all over the place, from the calm and reasonable to the wild and insane. But the number one thing he saw, 5:1 times any other sentiment, was a sense of excitement. People were genuinely looking forward to having a friend with them they could talk to at all times.

The last fifteen minutes of the special were checking in with Team Oro, who had been the other Team who had been featured in the previous year's special, and Chief Diego Oro, who it turned out was still with the California Highway Patrol. His Team had grown from thirteen to nineteen in the intervening year, and he now had seven children, six girls and a boy, all of whom had been born in the last several months. The man had looked weary last time Andy had seen him, but now he looked rejuvenated, almost recharged, the patriarchal and wizened smile replaced with one of exuberant joy, as if he'd found a new lease on life.

Chief Oro talked about how he'd originally been concerned about adding more partners but that when he'd seen the state of world and national affairs in the last 60 Minutes special, he'd known that he was one of the people who was expected to step up, and so he'd done just that. He also said that he'd found being a father much easier this second time around.

"As much as I still miss my two adult sons who were lost to DuoHalo, I have to admit, now we've got our own village helping to raise our new kids. Dealing with them when they wake up in the middle of the night is a duty we can distribute, work together on, and that's made this so much better."

The Chief also spent a couple of minutes talking about his disapproval for the Men's Protection Act, how disrespectful he found it that the government was trying to prevent men from serving their country in any way possible, and that while he understood there were concerns about dying in the line of duty, the Chief stressed that should've always been a concern, and now there was just a lot more incentives to get it all right.

"If it comes down to quitting or being arrested for doing my job," the Chief said, "then they can come and slap the cuffs on me right now. I'm not going until I think it's time."

Andy had met Chief Oro a couple of times over the last year, when he had been checking in on some of the relocation efforts by Project: Quaranteam and their relative successes and failures, but he'd found the skyscrapers had turned into sort of mini-villages of their own, and that the communities there weren't just surviving, they were thriving.

Downtown areas across the country had been transformed, much more along the European model, with a lot less need and reliance on cars and an accelerated use of public transportation. Restaurants in metropolitan areas weren't struggling anymore; they were more successful now than they'd ever been. Yes, loads of people still commuted to and from work, but the disruption had been so reduced that it almost felt like a new world.

The 60 Minutes special had ended with a tour of downtown San Jose, focusing on what they were calling 'the new urban development model - Vertical Villages.' Everything a family could possibly need was generally within just a mile's radius, and could be delivered if it needed to come from further out.

As the special wrapped up, the living room was filled with applause from all of Andy's friends and Teammates. He waved his hand with a laugh, shaking his head. "I would rather be with the people in this room than with the finest people in the world," he told them to a round of laughs. "Seriously, ladies and rarified gentlemen, we've been through a lot together, and we've survived and we've prospered, and I couldn't have done it without each and every one of you. So, I don't know if the President's going to have another address to the nation again next November 20th, but we're going to hold a party on that day every year for the foreseeable future. We're going to do Team pictures every year and then we'll send them out to everyone afterwards for you to put in your digital frames and on your phones or whatever. And everyone's welcome to hang out, graze on our finger foods, drink our liquor, play poker or Endless Empires or Jackbox or whatever. Tomorrow, we go out and see the new world we're living in where everyone's aware they're sharing their body with a nanobot sentience, but tonight? Tonight we party!"

Everyone cheered for that.

It was a nice moment.

For the next couple of hours, the Teams mingled and relaxed, lots of people chatting, music playing from different sources in different rooms, so if someone didn't like what they were listening to in one room, they could always go and move between rooms.

Of course, Andy, Phil, Ari, Xander, Lesser Phil and Jenna - the original game group (barring Xander, who was a new addition) that had formed long before any of them had even heard of New Eden - sat down to play some poker. Buy-in was twenty bucks, and players were capped at two buy-ins for the night. It was nice to keep the old traditions alive, even though for the last several months, they had all made it a point to have poker night at least once a month, and it had been optimal for them to all reconnect and stay grounded.

Since the shakedown over at Valhalla Shores, Lesser Phil especially had been making a point to get out of the Pacifica area more often, and was even talking about moving to New Eden, just because he and his Team still didn't feel safe in their current home. Of course, they needed to get professional permission for LP to work out of New Eden, but the NSA was very much aware of how traumatized Team Pak had been by their life-threatening experiences over in Valhalla Shores and wanted to make sure they didn't leave him and the rest of his Team unsupported.

After a few hours of play, Andy found himself in a place he was somewhat unaccustomed to - close to running out of chips. He'd had a good early start, but a couple of bad beats and river suckouts had dwindled his stack down to little more than three dollars.

"Boss, you and Phil got a minute?" Lexi said, standing behind him.

"One sec, I'm pretty sure I'm losing this hand, but let's find out - all in," Andy said, pushing the rest of his chips into the pot.

"Call," Xander said. The big man had him more than covered, and as they flipped them, Andy's pocket sevens seemed destined to lose to Xander's pocket Queens. The flop was turned over and Andy had a small amount of hope as the first card was a seven, only for the next two in the flop to show queen-queen, giving Xander four of a kind. From there on out, Andy was drawing dead, so he laughed, stood up and glanced at Phil.

"Phil, you got a minute?"

"Yeah, hell with it," Phil said, pushing his remaining four bucks into the pot. "I'm out, but you all can split that."

"Gee, thanks Phil," Ari said to him. "Maybe I'll get a cheeseburger with it."

Phil laughed and waved his hand before he and Violet joined Andy and Lex, heading back down to Andy's office once more. "What's up Lexi?"

"You know that other shoe we were waiting for to drop? I think it just did."

"What do you have?"

"Video file showed up on YouTube about thirty minutes ago, and it's already being mirrored on Vimeo, DailyMotion, TikTok and any other video sharing platform you can imagine, so there's no putting the cat back in the bag on this one. I got the impression people were playing whack-a-mole for a few minutes, because the first place it got posted had it taken down, but now it's fucking everywhere and trying to censor it seems pointless."

"Let me guess," Andy said.

"Yep," Lexi said, closing the door to Andy's office behind them. "It's from Alicia Covington."

Lexi turned on the television and connected her phone to the screen as an image very similar to the one they'd just seen a few hours earlier popped up on the screen before them, with one significant change. Over her left shoulder still hung the painting she'd had there before. Over her right shoulder was a modified version of the flag of Switzerland. It still had the red background with the white cross on it, but the cross had been shrunken down and lowered, to have a white circle atop of it, forming the astrological symbol for Venus.

♀

It made quite the statement just on its own.

But there was also a.38 revolver resting on the desk in front of her.

That made a pretty bold statement too.

"Good evening, women of the world, and you few remaining men. My name is Alicia Covington, and in the early days of the pandemic, my husband attempted to use his influence to alter and corrupt the new system that was arising, one that we now know has placed the matriarchy in charge of this wonderful planet of ours. I remained silent at the time. Because I was afraid. Because I felt like he had all the power.

"That all ends today."

The camera pulled back and on either side of her were women dressed in Swiss Armed Forces uniforms with machine guns held in their arms. Alicia was certainly leaning into the authoritarian vibes, Andy thought to himself, or maybe just trying to project a position of indisputable strength. It was in sharp contrast to the almost friendly, matronly vibes she'd been giving off in her video to him and Phil.

"Months ago, I came to Switzerland with a proposition - establish a new sanctuary state for women across the world who have been put into inadequate pairings. To those women, we offer you safe haven here, and a possible solution to your problems.

"You see, the biggest problem I had with the Quaranteam solution wasn't that it made women need sex to survive - it was that men weren't subjected to the same needs as women. Men could go without having sex with their Teammates with no repercussions, and that just didn't seem fair to me.

"So, I began using my money to put together my own crack squad of scientists to research the Quaranteam serum, and with their help, we've developed what we call the Themis Injection. But I needed money to mass produce it, and a way to distribute it, one that wouldn't be too difficult for any woman out there who found herself in need.

"When I arrived in Switzerland, I offered a chance for them to reform their completely corrupt banking system in a way they'd never even considered - simply confiscating any money that was being used for nefarious causes. Swiss banks control trillions of dollars, much of it illegal. With all that money being put into bringing in new, all-female military personnel, and accelerating targeted medical research with a single focus in mind, we were able to achieve all our goals in a remarkably short period of time, without anyone on the planet even noticing.

"Starting today, any Swiss embassy anywhere in the world is offering free of charge to any woman one Themis Injection. This injection does one thing and one thing only - it makes the men in Teams subject to the same increasing sexual needs as the women. The injection can be given quietly and without anyone knowing, and then with the next encounter you have with your partner, the modification will spread into his system, and all his other partners. There are no visible signs that a person has taken a Themis Injection, and we expect that just the very idea that it could have been passed on to a man already might be enough to help quell the crueler men out there.

"I say that it could've been passed onto a man already because it could have. We quietly began this program a week ago, and have already injected close to a hundred thousand women across the globe, and many of these women thought they were just getting a simple booster shot to their existing Quaranteam serum. We did this, on our own, without anyone catching wind of it, to help a number of women we were most concerned for. For all you know, you could already have the Themis Injection flowing through your bloodstream.

"What's beautiful about this is that in many cases, people who don't have the Themis Injection will convince themselves that they do, and that may be enough. But if you are a woman who feels you are being treated poorly in your Team, I urge you to seek help at the nearest Swiss embassy, and we will do whatever it takes to ensure you and the rest of your Team are no longer abused by a misguided male who thinks there will be no consequences for him.

"Any man who gets the Themis Injection into their system, should they try and abstain from sexual contact with their partners, they will begin to feel the same sort of desperate need we women do when we are denied by our male partners for too long. What's even more impressive - every woman is on her own timer, meaning a man having sex with just one partner won't suppress his need for the others.

"It seemed only fair that men live under the same biological needs that we now do.

"We even have a step beyond that, something we call the Pax Addition, although its use is reserved for the truly terrible and awful people who appear... stubborn. Let me show you."

The camera pulled back even further and Andy gasped, as he saw Arthur Covington the 4th standing just off to one side of the desk, although he looked frazzled, his eyes a little bloodshot, his clothes a little disheveled. He had his hands folded together before him and they had a subtle tremble to them. His face was turned down, his eyes looking at his feet. He wasn't clean shaven, a four o'clock white shadow on his face.

"My husband Arthur here proved too stubborn for the Themis Injection to tame on his own, so he was one of the first candidates for the Pax Addition," Alica said, turning to look at him. "Arthur, pick up the gun."

Arthur glanced over quickly, frantically, his eyes fixing on the weapon for not even half a second before he had it in his hands. Neither of the soldiers moved an inch from their place, and seemed totally at ease. He tried to bring it up to point it in Alicia's direction, but couldn't seem to even bring himself to point it anywhere near her, even at her feet, much less her chest, nor could he point it towards either of the guards. He began to seriously shake, his face scrunched up in mental frustration. Seconds later, he whipped where he was pointing the gun outward before trying to bring it up and point it at his head, but again, his arm began to tremble, he couldn't put his finger into the trigger loop, and, more importantly, he couldn't even get it vaguely pointed in his own direction.

Thirty seconds later, he dropped the gun and began to sob as Alicia came over and put her hand on his shoulder. "There there, Artie, don't cry," she said to him, and almost as if on command, he inhaled a sharp breath and the tears stopped, like clockwork, in an eerie stillness.

"Arthur's no longer capable of violence, in any fashion. He can't harm me. He can't harm his Teammates. He can't harm himself. He can't harm any living human being, nor will he be able to, for the rest of his life. He can't even tell a person to harm another, because he can no longer give orders, or even suggestions, to anyone. If he has a need, he must ask one of us to help him, and we decide whether or not that is acceptable. We have silenced his ability to inflict pain upon humanity."

She picked up the gun from the floor and placed it on the desk once more.

"Even though every nation on Earth will consider it a violation of their sovereignty, if a woman comes to us with demonstrable proof of an abusive partner, we will send a squad in to inject that woman's partner with Pax Addition discreetly, most likely without him even knowing."

"And, for any country that wants to try and tell us we won't be allowed to, well, I will simply remind those countries that we now control billions of their debt, which we can use as we see fit.

"On top that - ask yourself... is it truly worth going to war to protect a handful of rabid dogs that will only bite you the first chance they get? We won't take this lightly - we will conduct our own investigations and we aren't killing anyone, which is more than I can say for the people we will be injecting.

"If your concern is protecting predators and abusers from justice, what does that make you? Think about that, long and hard. What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind for your children?

"I doubt we will have more than a handful of cases in the United States, because the President traded away most of these types of men to other countries, but no one on the planet is above our judgment.

"I have already been in contact with a few heads of state who suggest that the Pax Addition could become a suitable punishment for any violent crime caused by a male moving forward. We will happily offer this service to any country that deems it an appropriate punishment.

"I anticipate some blowback, but let me offer one final reminder what kind of people we're talking about here: Rapists. Abusers. Murderers. The kind of men no woman should ever be subjected to. How much fuss are they really worth to you?

"Happy women, safe women, are peaceful women.

"And women now have all the power.

"The patriarchy is dead; long live the matriarchy."

And with that, the video cut off.

Whatever calm tomorrow Andy thought the world had earned, it would have to wait, because for the foreseeable future, chaos definitely lay on the horizon.

He only hoped they could somehow sail through those troubled waters together.

He needed his Team now more than ever.

END OF

BOOK TWO