Richard Stephenson - Collapse

Max’s wife returned to find her home destroyed, which confused her since the rest of the neighborhood was just as it was when she left. Max had tried to dream up some elaborate lie, but just didn’t give a damn and told her the truth. To make things worse, the insurance agent would later laugh out loud in front of Mr. and Mrs. Harris when she understood that the hurricane had nothing to do with the damage, but rather Max’s laughable mistake. Max’s marriage was already on the rocks when his wife returned home. It took over a year to repair their home and Darlene made sure that Max knew how disgusted she was with him. She was pregnant at the time and only stayed with Max because she didn’t want to raise a baby on her own. Max had never been so humiliated in his life. His home survived a hurricane and was instead destroyed by his own stupidity.

Max really hated hurricanes.

Max was thankful that the Category 5 hurricane sitting in the Gulf of Mexico would do little to him other than bring some heavy rain. The first one took his childhood; the second almost ruined his marriage. He could not imagine what a third would do to him. He just wouldn’t be able to deal with it, not with the constant pain he was in.

He had managed to secure a nice comfortable job at a small local police department and quickly worked his way up to chief, which wasn’t hard to do with only twelve officers in the department, the previous chief’s pending retirement, and Max’s overqualified sixteen years of law enforcement. He was an hour away from the busy city of Houston, but the little town he managed to settle in might as well have been Mayberry. He was happy to play the role of Andy Griffith and not have to worry about much of anything outside of minor traffic accidents and a domestic squabble from time to time. The hardest work the department had to do was keep the town clear of the waves of homeless people who tried to set up hobo camps around town on their way out of Houston. As long as the 6,447 citizens of his town didn’t have to actually look at the dirty bums, they were content to leave Max and his department alone. Chief Harris was actually kind of surprised the city police department even existed; the county sheriff’s office did most of the real work. When their quiet little town did actually fall victim to a major crime, the county boys would always swoop in, wanting to take over. They relished the excitement and Max was more than happy to oblige; the last thing he wanted to do was real work. After all, the Internet didn’t surf itself; someone had to look at strange porn, might as well be Max. The chief of police wanted as little responsibility as possible. He ran from trouble and had managed to hide from it quite well in his dream job.

An hour later the pain was only a little better, and Max realized he wasn’t getting back to sleep. He played Modern Warfare 7 for about an hour then decided to shower and eat breakfast. He got to the station an hour early and relieved Elizabeth, the graveyard shift desk sergeant.

“Morning, Chief.”

“Morning, Elizabeth, anything happen last night?”

“Not a thing. The phone didn’t ring, not one time.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

Elizabeth handed her keys over to the chief. “You see the news on Maxine? Looks like your sister doesn’t like you very much. What did you do to hurt her feelings and make her stay away?”

Max just stared at her, frowned, and rolled his eyes. He turned and limped off towards his office.

“Oh, come on! Don’t be like that! It was a little funny! Get it? Max, Maxine? Your sister?”

“Go home, Elizabeth,” Max said over his shoulder.

Elizabeth Reed had known the chief for years and still had no idea why he was in so much. When things got really bad for him, he even used a cane. People knew to keep their distance when the chief pulled out that cane; it was when he was in the worst of all possible moods. She even knew that he constantly popped pills, a secret the chief had managed to keep from everyone except her. He actually did his “I’m eating Skittles so no one will notice me taking pills” trick when he collapsed into his office chair in the next room. Elizabeth knew from the day she met Maxwell that he was an addict; she had seen it before with her brother-in-law after his back surgery. While Max functioned well in his job; the pills never affected his performance. In fact, the chief was the smartest man Elizabeth had ever met. He was brilliant, resourceful, and had an encyclopedic knowledge of just about everything. It was a shame, though, that he was also lazy and had no ambition to do anything more with his life. Max was only forty-three, but the way the grumpy bastard acted he might as well have been thirty years older.

Elizabeth obeyed her boss, heading home for some much needed rest. After changing into her pajamas, Elizabeth plopped down on the couch with her frisky little cat, Callie, and grabbed the remote to check out what was going on in the world. She flipped the channels until she found the latest update on Hurricane Maxine. What she saw made her push the cat off her lap and get dressed.

“Sorry kitty.” Elizabeth pushed the brown and orange cat off her lap. “Momma’s gotta go back to work. Something tells me the boss ain’t gonna be happy.”

President Malcolm Powers sat at his desk in the Oval Office deep in thought. He was facing the most important decision of his second term. He knew that whatever he decided to do, many would consider it the wrong choice. His actions in the next twenty-four hours would have lasting repercussions that would be studied in the history books for centuries to come. One choice would make him hated by his own country, the other hated by the entire world. There was no middle ground. To help him arrive at his decision, he had done a lot of research on the end of the Second World War. More specifically, he studied President Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Malcolm truly believed that no president in the nation’s history had ever had to make a tougher choice. If Truman had not dropped the atomic bombs, the only remaining option was an invasion into the heart of the Empire of Japan along the shores of the island of Honshu. Such an invasion would result in catastrophic losses. Having the means to prevent it, Truman could not allow countless American lives to be lost. On the other hand, saving American lives came at the cost of taking Japanese lives and ushering the world into the Atomic Age. Malcolm wondered if Truman had any idea that his decision would result in the terrifying stalemate that would be the Cold War.

The president felt he could give Truman a run for his money when it came to making a tough call.

“Sir, the attendants of your next meeting are waiting for you in the Clinton Room,” a smooth talking female voice spoke from the ceiling.

“Thank you,” the president replied. The A.I. program installed by his longtime friend, Howard Beck, was probably the first controversy of his short political career. The press had a field day with it. The American public blew the entire thing out of proportion. Many feared the A.I. would somehow overthrow the president and attack mankind like Skynet did in The Terminator . Others demanded it be removed for fear of it being hacked by Iran or North Korea. The experts knew just how impossible it was to hack into one of Beck Enterprises’ world-famous A.I.s. Tech giants all over the world tried every day to understand how the system worked, and none were even close. The technology was decades ahead of its time. The A.I.s gave the appearance of sentience; attempting to hack into one was like putting a knife to a person’s throat. It was hardly something that could be done without the A.I. realizing what was going on. The industry had predicted that true interactive A.I. was at least a decade away. Howard Beck proved them wrong. The final criticism about the White House A.I. was the only one that had any merit. The president’s critics in the Democratic Party despised Howard Beck for buying the presidency. They felt that Beck was somehow controlling the A.I. from his fortress in the Rocky Mountains and was Malcolm Powers’ puppet master. If the American public wanted Howard Beck running the country, he should have run for president himself. Malcolm often joked with his friend that he should have just put him on the ticket as his vice president just to shut them up. Finding humor to be a waste of time, Howard got the joke but didn’t laugh. Malcolm knew his friend wouldn’t last a day in politics; the billionaire recluse hated being around people.