Like a Fox on the Run, стр. 14
“Never know, there’s a first time for everything,” Tiger acted like the good-natured ribbing didn’t bother him, that it hadn’t hit a sensitive spot. But deep down … eh, the old fart was right. Got nobody to blame but myself. Madison’s face flitted before him, and he felt that familiar stab of guilt. She’d deserved better. Android or not, she’d deserved better. He picked up his flight bag and started out the door.
He knew he had to get off a parting shot. “If you worried about your waistline as much as you did my personal life, you might stay outta that cardiologist’s office!” he fired off.
Rip gave him a wave of dismissal, as he climbed up in his chair and settled in to take in a Braves game on the shop’s vidscreen. “I’ve done all I wanted to do and then some. If I go out, beer in hand, eatin’ a juicy T-bone, you can say I died fulfilled!” He chuckled and patted his hefty gut, “Get it? Full? And filled? Fulfilled!”
“Yeah, I get it.” Tiger shook his head, seeing little humor in the bad joke. “You ain’t right, Old Man! Don’t quit your day job. You’ll definitely starve as a comedian.”
Outside in the main concourse, he punched in an activation code on the keypad of his PDC. Ten miles away, in a vacuum-sealed storage vault, a legendary piece of machinery began waking up. Its onboard computer came alive first, running routine checks, and as everything came back OK, it began the process of bringing other systems online.
***
The VertiGo Rocket Works had built the Pegasus AeroTruck in another era. A time years ago, when climbing into a steel projectile with two oversized rocket engines strapped to either side was as dangerous as it was exhilarating. And yet, it had been built exactly for such; it had been built for manly adventure.
VertiGo Rocket Works and the mighty Pegasus were born some fifty years earlier, in a marvelous time of great imaginings and conceiving. Led by the charismatic, young President Barrett Lanson, a man many would come to call “our millennium’s Kennedy,” America was daring to dream again. An entrepreneurial spirit not seen since the end of the twentieth century was sweeping the nation, and most of it could be attributed to the president’s new space initiative.
The Breakout, the initial expansion into space, which would open the door to the Great Rush two decades later, was under way. After centuries of floundering around in LOE (low earth orbit), Lanson had inspired the country, as well as the rest of the world. He had convinced world leaders, industrialists, academia, and common people the world over that the human race could no longer afford to sit in a lawn chair in its own polluted, crowded backyard. To do so was not only foolish but also self-destructive. It was time to rekindle the pioneering spirit that had once driven this nation and set an example for the rest of the world to follow. After century upon century of floods and famines, wars and pollution, the whole world was looking for that something. Anything.
In the history of humankind, we can always point to specific men and women and agree they were obviously people of destiny. Without a doubt, they were meant to be at a certain juncture in time and space. No one else could ever have accomplished what those people were able to do. President Brandon Lanson was just such a man. He came along at just the right point in the nation’s history. He was neither too soon nor too late, but exactly the man called for at the precise time needed. A born leader, he was the first president in almost two hundred years that came into office without an agenda set by special interests of some kind. He ran simply on a platform that he would change things and he had a plan. People would just have to trust him. After all the bullshit slung by the lying, thieving bastards before him, it was a refreshing change of pace. He won in a landslide over a do-nothing incumbent backed by ‘the establishment’ and he wasted no time in getting to work.
Lanson knew his discouraged, frustrated, and stagnated country was in desperate need of a spark. While the rich grew richer from their overseas exploitations and domestic automations, the rest of the country floundered in a sea of discouragement, unemployment, and lack of opportunity. He knew the current model would not sustain much longer. It was a powder keg with the fuse lit.
Like all great leaders, he understood the power of vision and purpose. He understood how hope could sustain. His vision to return America to greatness was to turn it to the skies. In space, he saw opportunity. He saw jobs. He saw factories building rockets. He saw colonists going to the Moon, Mars and even beyond. If there wasn’t a job here, there would be jobs out there. He envisioned an America back to work, dedicated and united in a common cause, maybe for the first time since World War II. He saw his version of another “New Deal” for America.
Lanson’s most valuable talent was bringing people together and finding common ground. For the first time in centuries, a president brought together business and labor leaders, the educated and scientific, and the civic and community minded. He was able to convince them that there was something in his beautiful, broad dream for all of them. He convinced them to invest and believe. It wasn’t long before the rest of America bought in as well. Eventually, the world would follow suit. The young president’s enthusiasm was contagious.
It was just the beginning. Once again, people had something to cheer