Michael Grant - Hero

Re: ASO-7

DoD, NASA, and university assessments suggest a likelihood that ASO-7 will impact in or near New York City. Likelihood 20 percent low estimate (Northwestern University), 40 percent highest estimate (Oxford University).

Potential Countermeasures:

THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense). THAAD uses KKV technology (Kinetic Kill Vehicle) and would be ineffective.

GMD (Ground-Based Midcourse Defense). No units are within range.

Aegis-capable ships. Aegis RIM-161 Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) uses KKV technology and would be ineffective.

DoD assesses likelihood of any of these systems being effective at zero percent.

The only option we have to present at this time is to launch one or more ICBMs armed with nuclear warheads to intercept and either divert or break up the ASO. Such an application is theoretical and untested.

Preliminary estimates of effective destruction of ASO-7 by a single warhead are 5 percent. Preliminary estimates show a 30 percent likelihood of altering the ASO’s course, with that new course being almost entirely unpredictable. The most likely result appears to be fracturing of ASO-7 resulting in multiple smaller meteorites with impact zones and damage impossible to predict.

Embassy of the People’s Republic of China—Washington

ALERT

Top Secret

Ambassador Gao has been informed by US State Department that two ICBMs (Type: LGM-30) enhanced by additional solid-fuel boosters and carrying single warheads (Type: W87) with yields estimated at 475 kilotons will be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on an intercept course with ASO-7.

US Defense Department liaisons have offered reassurance as to angle and flight time. Recommend People’s Army track but otherwise treat as nonhostile.

The Rachel Maddow Show—Interview Transcript.

RACHEL MADDOW:I want to thank you for joining us by Skype from Las Vegas. It has been a very intense few weeks, and an especially intense forty-eight hours for all of you. So thank you for agreeing to this interview.

SHADE DARBY: You’re welcome.

MADDOW:Would you mind . . . using Skype can be awkward . . . would you mind if we go around to each member of the group?

SHADE:No problem. Dekka?

DEKKA TALENT:I’m Dekka Talent.

MADDOW:You are a survivor of the Perdido Beach Anomaly—what you, I assume, call the FAYZ?

DEKKA:Yep.

MADDOW:How is this situation different from life in the PBA dome, in the FAYZ?

DEKKA:No dome. And the rock mutation is more physical. We change. Physically. Also we have food now, so that’s different.

MADDOW:Is that transformation, that morphing, is that painful?

DEKKA:No. More creepy and disturbing than painful.

MADDOW:Can you give us a sense of how that feels? It must be just . . . well, let me just ask: What is it like? How does it feel?

DEKKA:(Shrugs.) You should probably ask Cruz or Shade or . . . (pushes Cruz forward)

CRUZ:Hi.

MADDOW:Cruz, you have become the face of the Rockborn Gang. In fact, we’re going to put up the iconic photo of you carrying a baby away from the flames that engulfed hundreds of people in that just unspeakably awful moment in Las Vegas. I wonder if you see your new status as, well, like I said, the face of the Rockborn Gang, I wonder if you see this perhaps as an ironic twist, given that you are transgender and your ability, your superpower, is to alter your appearance at will.

CRUZ:I guess. I mean, yeah, it’s like, I don’t know. Like the rock has a weird sense of humor. Or else the media does. But I’m not the hero here. It wasn’t me that stopped Dillon Po

MADDOW:The so-called Charmer. Dillon Poe, who had the power to compel absolute obedience with just the sound of his voice.

CRUZ:Yeah, him. It wasn’t me that stopped him. It was Malik and Francs. I just happened to be in that picture.

MADDOW:The story is that you were recruited, in a way, by Shade Darby, who was your friend from school. Is that correct?

CRUZ:More or less. You should talk to Shade. Shade and Dekka are sort of the . . . I don’t know. I mean, I’m just this chameleon person. Or talk to Malik, he’s the one who . . .

MADDOW:Did you want to say something more about Malik?

CRUZ:Malik, come here, your turn.

MALIK:Good evening, Ms. Maddow.

MADDOW:Welcome to the show, and thanks for coming on. Your story is perhaps the most tragic. You were very badly burned in the battle that took place at the Port of Los Angeles.

MALIK:Yes.

MADDOW:Doctors did not expect you to survive. Is it true, as some reports have it, that the Malik you are now, the person we are seeing, is actually a morph?

MALIK:Yes, that’s true. I am in morph now. If I de-morph, I revert back to the condition I was in the hospital. Which, as you said, is . . . intolerable.

MADDOW:And the power you have is the ability to essentially project that pain onto others. That’s how you prepared the ground for the raid on the so-called Ranch, the Homeland Security facility people are comparing to Dr. Mengele’s Auschwitz.

MALIK:Yes. That is my power. The ability to project excruciating pain. It’s not . . . It’s not something I wanted.

MADDOW:Survivors from the Ranch, survivors—and there were very few—say the pain you projected was so awful that in some cases they attempted suicide rather than endure it.

MALIK:(Nods)

MADDOW:And Dillon Poe did in fact kill himself rather than endure it.

MALIK:Yes.

MADDOW:Does it concern you at all that this power is in the hands of . . . well, in your hands and in the hands of the others in the group? And then I wonder if you would talk about how you see all of this playing out.

MALIK:Does it concern me? (Laughs) Of course it concerns me. We have six people here who have extreme power. No one elected us. No one said, ‘Let’s give all this power to these kids.’ The problem is that the rock gives power to the good and the bad alike, people like Justin DeVeere—

MADDOW:Knightmare.

MALIK:Yeah, him. And Tom Peaks—

MADDOW:Napalm or Dragon, as people are calling him.

MALIK:And Dillon Poe, yeah. The only thing the people in charge could do to stop Poe was send a tank brigade into the city, and, I’m sorry, but that wasn’t going to stop him, either. Look, I don’t want to be doing this; none of us wants to be doing this. But Dillon Poe had to die; there’s no question about that. He had to die. He was a mass murderer. He killed—

MADDOW:The official death toll is currently 3,102 people. And may rise as more bodies are found.