President Renner and his top military brass are inside the secure communications interception floatilla under the White House. He is being briefed.
MADDEN: Sir, what you are about to hear is part of our Operation Emerald Cap. We will be briefing you on various details over the coming weeks.
On Friday, an array of drone satellites dispersed across much of the Eastern United States a pathogenic substrate containing sophisticated nanoparticle agents, capable of attaching to humans’ limbic systems, and inducing something akin to psychopathy. The effect varies from individual to individual, but the game-tested outcome is rioting, spontaneous murder and criminal behavior, and in higher intelligence individuals, formation of small .. syndicates shall we say —
RENNER: You lost me. What is a drone satellite? What has this all got to do with me?
MADDEN: Sir, please hear the entire briefing, and then we can answer any and all questions you may have.
The SCIF stenographer pauses over the disposable typewriter, waiting.
MADDEN: Most media outlets are reporting power outages and blackouts, or in a few cities, anti-establishment protests getting out of hand. We anticipate within a few weeks, death tolls per capita may be in the high 30- or 40- percent, not accounting for collateral fallout from the next phase, where we introduce dirty bombs.
RENNER: Oh, dirty bombs, yes. People are saying they are —
MADDEN: Sir. Please.
MADDEN: I also am to brief you on Operation Crowns. DARPA has been working for some years on the ability to send coherently entangled qubits forwards and backwards within the 4th and 5th dimensional … timelines, if you will. The program advances further every… where.. well… We have created a video game, that is no ordinary game. The participants are unwittingly altering actual avatars, some in the past, others in the future, which subsequently adjust the … continuum.
RENNER: What? Speak English, professor!
MADDEN: Sir, we have about 10,000 beta players, playing a game available on the XBOX platform, and that game itself is connected to our temporal servers such that the players are actually traveling to other eras in our past and future history. The live game is editing events and thereby shifting the… collective… into one or more alternate universes. To be honest, Mr. President, I don’t fully understand the project myself, but we decided you ought to be brought in the loop on this one, since, it… we’re not sure we are all sharing the same actual histories at this… point…
RENNER: Is that safe? Who are the players? Which branch?
MADDEN: Well, sir, they are.. They’re just gamers, mostly teens. They are not witting participants as I said, just kids who like getting special early access–
RENNER: Hold on a second. Are you telling me you built a time machine? Out of a video game?
MADDEN: [stonefaced] Well, technically, the aliens… built it. Or will build it. We’re trying to get a handle on when this project actually starts.
We pan up to see a row of screens showing different in-game views: the antebellum South, a war scene with heavily armored vehicles and people shooting laser-assisted rifles in an urban area, and a crazy shoot ’em up scene that looks like maybe Fortnite.
RENNER: Score! Did you see that? That was awesome.
Director Madden looks at Admiral Akbar and says nothing.
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