The Cure, стр. 44

feed those additional people and decided to focus more on the cost of keeping those people. For example, housing and pension provisions. So, they set up The Census Project. There were hundreds of us at first, keeping tabs on the increase of the population, and then the subsequent decline when supplies ran out. Now there is just me working in a windowless room underground with limited but very accurate technology. This tells me almost within a thousand as to how many people are left in the United States.’

‘Thank you, Martin, take a minute please,’ said The President, still stood by Goldsmith. ‘Martin, do you recognize these files on the table?’

‘Yes Sir. I recognize them very much Sir. In fact, I put together those files over the past year.’

‘What does it say in those papers Martin?’ the President said narrowing down to his point.

‘Sir, they state exactly how many people, at this point in time are still alive in our country. It also indicates the rate at which the population is dying and cross references with your geographical team, economics team and food security team on this here base.’

‘So essentially this is the information that we used to base our decision to start poisoning our fellow man out there above ground?’ said The President.

‘Well yes and no Sir,’ said Miller.

‘How so Martin? Surely it is cut and dry that in order to survive these people must die.’

‘Well, it’s certainly a possibility,’ he paused ‘but in all honesty I’ve spent years and years working on this very scenario with a number of the best scientific brains across all of the government teams at our disposal and I can without doubt say that if one thing is true about what you’ve just said it’s that the data is inconclusive,’ Miller took a deep breath.

‘Inconclusive?’

‘Yes Sir. I mean, it might help, but who the Hell really knows?’ said Miller looking around the room.

‘So, us,’ The President pointed around the room ‘The government. The people in charge. The people voted into a position of trust to do what is best for the country. We, decided to dispose of human beings, based on a lie and didn’t even think twice to question why,’ he held his hands up. ‘Guilty as charged. Treason? Hell yes. I sentenced people to death, and I did it within 10 minutes,’ he shook his head. ‘But,’ he held up a finger ‘but it didn’t sit right with me. I saw my son sitting in his room alone that night thinking. He didn’t see me, but I stood there looking at him and I knew something was wrong, that we had made a grave error of judgement. I was voted into this Presidency to try and clean up the mistakes made by my predecessor and here I was making one bad decision after another. So, I looked deeper, I found Martin,’ he nodded. ‘Wanikiy and I came up with the plan to use a placebo instead of a deadly toxin.’

‘Why use any kind of plan? Why not just bring us back to the table and let us meet Mr. Miller? Surely based on his findings we all would have agreed that the plan was misguided,’ said Pitkin.

‘Well, this brings me to my next point. Having spoken to Martin we realized that despite the inconclusive nature of his research that there was a faction within this room that wanted the plan to go ahead regardless of the results. Martin had provided this information directly to someone within this room who had doctored the paperwork for their own agenda. Someone who believed that murder was the only option available regardless of the impact to men, women, children who had suffered already.’ The President now had both hands-on Goldsmith’s shoulders and Goldsmith was sweating profusely through his suit.

‘Martin, one last question, who did you give your findings too?’

’Sir, that would be the Commander General.’

The General jumped up from his chair, but two soldiers had already pinned him back down into it.

‘This is absurd,’ he stammered.

‘General Roderick. We’ve known for some time that you had the data and that you and a few members of your close team of military support, which are now also in custody, had this agenda planned. We knew that you would manipulate the weakest member of the board, with the most influence, to put forward the plan to poison the population. Sorry Goldsmith, they used you too I’m afraid. Had it come from the General himself he knew it wouldn’t get passed without an enquiry due to his position on the military fleet. However, coming from a man of figures and on the board of directors with Wanikiy’s backing there was only ever one outcome. Thankfully Wanikiy doesn’t have very much good to speak of you and therefore when I put it to him to question the plan he didn’t have to think too hard about it. We only let the plan go on for as long as it did because we needed to pick out everyone involved.’ said The President. ‘General, one question though. Why? When Martin gave you the information you must have known then that it was inconclusive and that by killing half the population it could have absolutely no impact on the current situation.’

‘Are you really that stupid?’ said the Commander General. ‘It was a power play. You were getting nowhere. You are leading us all to our deaths down here. You’re weak. The plan was meant to put the people down here at ease and give them hope. Something they’ve never seen before under you as leader,’ he hissed.

‘Hope’ said the President perplexed. ‘Hope is something we have always had down here. Now hope is something we can have up there too. Take him away.’ The soldiers picked the Commander General out of his chair and marched him in handcuffs out of the room. ‘Let’s bring