"Sure!" Eden said, happy again. ------ ((Collab Post between Letter Bee and Mass City)) George stormed off out of the room, clearly angry. Noticing Abernathy following him, he slowed down, then gave an implicit gesture for him to follow, leading the man back to his office, where he sat down on his simple wooden chair, then, still fuming, spoke: "Abernathy, I know we've had our differences, esecially as regards Metas, but I understand your view of the President now. Not cause Mass Panic? Giving the public the 'Mushroom Treatment' will not work in this case! We've been raided by [i]Aliens[/i], for goodness' sake; we have to at least [i]appear[/i] like we're doing something." "They are but..." Abernathy looked around. "... the President is worried about her reelection. She wants a second term. The issue is you want us all to work together." Abernathy led Maxwell to a small unused office in the White House Basement. "Humans in our history have never worked united for long. We may be united to fight this but we'll go back to the old ways after." Abernathy opened a cabinet and got out a bottle of whiskey. "Do you know about the Spike?" "Sounds ominous, Abernathy. Is it one of your Secret Projects?" George said. "I wish it was mine the thing is the same price as an aircraft carrier." Abernathy scoffed. "The Spike is the largest nuclear weapon in our arsenal. Also it has some Third Party tech on it." Abernathy produces a model of a rocket. "It is a highy moddified Atlas GX rocket with essential interplanetary reach. We got it based at Edwards in California. It's warhead is the largest we can make, one hundred megatons." Abernathy let what he told Maxell soak in. "So you're telling me that we had FTL...and we're using it on a [i]Goddamned Nuke[/i]?" George was now at a new level of irate. But a new fear came into his mind: did the Government want to launch it at the Aliens' homeworld just as the Metas were on it? And, of course, there was the fact that if they were dealing with an entire space-faring civilization, or even multiple ones... "You do realize that if we use that weapon, we could get multiple Alien Species ganging up on us, right? Unless we've got more copies of the Spike, enough to blow up every ET-populated planet in the Galaxy. One planet, one retaliation weapon...heck, we don't even know where the Alien Capital is!" he continued. "Not just that, but, if we have FTL, we could have used it to, you know, build a Colony Ship just in case we managed to destroy ourselves on Earth!" He then looked at Abernathy. "Please tell me that we [i]do[/i] have a Colony Ship." "We do not have anything other than an explorer ship." Abernathy was annoyed. "We have to do something you fool! You just don't take people without consquence. Also you'd think Congress would give us a 200 billion dollars for such a project to get ships into space? In all likelyhood George the rocket will sit on it's pad. The President will do the only thing she can. Nothing. It's that or destruction by forces that will never see us as equals." Abernathy pointed at a globe near the Maxwell. "They look at us as we look at rats. Anyways we'd have no defense that could defeat them! They'd just send a golf ball going 99 percent the speed of light and guess what? No more earth or worse hit the moon and kill billions." Abernathy coldly looked at Maxwell. "The only option we have is inaction, if we are to survive we must let this act go unpunished." Abernathy looked angry not at Maxwell though. "You're right..." spoke George, "that said, I have a few...speculations I have to share." He then went grave. "I have every suspicion that the Aliens are at war, though I don't know with who, and that's why they spread the Metahuman Virus to Earth in the first place; despite its effects on humans, it's obviously a bio-weapon of some sort. It's also why they abducted the Metahumans a while ago, and why they might come again." His voice then turned grave, as grave as a chill wind. "Wars and distrurbances among Great Powers have destroyed lesser ones, but it might, at times, also profit said lesser powers as well. It may yet be that, some time in the future, the Aliens' decision to take our people - people known for being volatile as much as they were powerful, might cause them to fall apart. We could have caused a Civil War on their side, or intensified one, by having Metas in the first place. If that's the case...things might not be as hopeless as you think." "After all, the Black Plague was spread by rodents, after all. Sorry for being optimistic." "We have no idea of the political structure of the Third Party but we know their genetic makeup is genetically unstable. Probably due to too much genetic modification. The hope is the metas can cause trouble for them. Then maybe it'll be too much trouble for them." Abernathy sighed. "That woman will be the death of me." Abernathy meant the President. George chuckled, and touched Abernathy's shoulder. "For once, we agree on something."