The Cure, стр. 6
The President put one hand to his head. ‘Anyone?’ he lamented. ‘Can anyone please give me some good news. I am due to send out a communication into the cities today and I need to give them something to stop the murder, stop the crime, stop the suicides. We need to give them hope, because without hope they will give up and giving up is the one thing we cannot allow’.
Most of the delegates tried not to make eye contact by looking at their notes, but one man sat up straight in his chair tapping his finger against his nose. His pinstripe suit made him look like a second-hand car salesman, but in this room it made him look like the one person who wasn’t scared of what was coming. Everything about this man said power play. ‘Nathanial’ he said calmly and slowly getting to his feet. He stepped out behind his chair, flanked by his security detail, following him around to the opposite side of the table. ‘There may be an option available to us.
Joshua Goldsmith was the right-hand man to the former President and rumors were that he was present when the suicide occurred. He was ambitious and had hoped to take Nathanial’s place, but fate had meant he had fallen into a much lower position than he would have liked as he was untrustworthy and loathed by his own party. He oozed repugnance and by his own admission he traded on it, looking like the villain of the piece he had absolutely no problem making the decisions many others shied away from. He may have been untrustworthy, but he was good at what he did, which was doing things that made problems go away, whether it be ethical or not. He never went anywhere without his shadow McGregor, an ex-marine, for fear of confrontation.
‘So, Nathanial,’ he said refusing to address him as President for the second time ‘We have a problem and we’ve been looking at it the wrong way. We’ve always maintained that we don’t have enough food to feed the population. Right? Well, what we should be thinking is that we have too many people for the food that we do have. Are you with me?’
‘No, not really Goldsmith, elaborate.’ The President was already having doubts of where this conversation was going.
‘Well, let me bring in Professor Wanikiy. He may be able to explain a little better,’ as he gestured to a soldier by the door of the room.
Wanikiy came in wearing his white protective clothing, stooped over with papers in his hand. He was the only American Indian on the base and everyone knew him. He was a genius and in charge of overseeing every scientific project that was in progress. Nathanial had put him in charge early into his presidency and Wanikiy had been at the forefront of every breakthrough they had had so far. He was the Presidents go to man and seeing him walk into the room put him at ease and put a smile on his face, holding out a hand to shake, whilst firmly gripping his arm.
‘It’s been too long Ethan,’ said the President. ‘You need to get out that laboratory from time to time. You’ll be consumed if you don’t. I don’t know how your daughter puts up with my eldest.’ He smiled again giving a backwards glance to Logan, who remained stoic and to attention.
‘Nathanial,’ replied Wanikiy, nodding graciously.
‘Please Professor, explain what we have discussed,’ Goldsmith interjected.
‘So,’ Wanikiy started ‘As we already know, in 2021 the population of the United States was approximately 353 million, which over the next five years grew significantly to 459 million, before dropping over a further five-year period to 235 million. We can now, from satellite imaging and our best-case guesses, put the entire population somewhere in the region of just under 98 million.’ He paused, whilst the room composed themselves taking in the fact that the reason for the large-scale deaths was mostly through murder or suicides. ‘Now, 98 million people is still a massive population by the standards of many other countries but given the size of our country there is still untapped resources out there which are dwindling fast. However, if the population was for example around the 37 million mark within say a month from now, maybe two, we could stand a good chance of using those resources to help replenish part, if not all the country again. It wouldn’t be easy, and we would need to go state to state recruiting more military and using our own resources to bring them on board. This is not an exact science, but we’ve been over and over the figures and the potential to start building sustainable food supplies and we feel this is our only chance of survival. If we continue on the current path and population then we fully expect to be as good as dead in under a year.’
The president waited, and the room fell silent. ‘Ethan, thank you. But the problem is that we are still overpopulated and have absolutely no way to reduce the population in time. I don’t see how this is even a plan.’
Wanikiy looked to Goldsmith waiting to see if he was ready to take the question. Goldsmith nodded to him to continue. ‘Mr President, for the past year we have realized that there is no way to reverse The Cure and besides which we did not think it was ethical to allow people to die slow agonizing deaths through illness or now through starvation, so we have been working on something else, something different. We knew early on that the issue was population to food ratio and have been working on a method to carry a toxin through the water supply to the cities to reduce the population.’
‘Wait,’ the President raised his hand. ‘You’re talking