Chapter 8

Andrew Barkov had been to Washington only once, in his childhood, on a tour with his mother. His only recollection of the tour involved a small dog with long ears that ran around a fountain before the White House. Andrew had wanted to throw his ice cream into the water to see if the dog would swim after it. Mom had not allowed that, and he was upset. He even refused to finish eating the ice cream!

He recollected all of that while staring at the approaching satellite image of the city. From above, the world capital looked like a fanciful carpet. Parks and public gardens with flowerbeds and lawns, a rectangular grid of streets with diagonal avenues lined with trees and bushes, roofs of buildings covered with multi-colored solar panels…

The White House roof looked gray. It was not hard to discriminate it in the city – it stood separately in the center of a green park. There were two round fountains near it, on the north and south lawn. I wonder which of them the dog had been running around.

“I’ll take you in through the doors only six people in the world can enter,” Lorenzetti said in a ceremonial tone. “Those are the governors of North America, South America, Australia, Africa, Europe and Asia!”

“Can the President not enter the doors?” Emily inquired mockingly.

“I mean guests. The President is the chief of the White House, he can enter anywhere!”

Lippo made a sharp gesture; as a result, the northern entrance moved closer. To the right of the entrance stood a marine who seemed to be looking right in the hacker’s face.

“And now the most interesting thing,” Lorenzetti continued. “Computer! Turn on the 3D mode and full interactivity!”

He took a few steps on the spot lifting his knees high, and the building continued moving towards him so that he penetrated through the closed doors. The marine disappeared.

Now Lorenzetti was in the entrance hall and Andrew and Emily felt as if they stood right behing him. It was a rectangular spacious room decorated with columns, several marble sculptures and pictures in gilded frames. A portrait of the last President of the United States of America was hanging on the left wall and a portrait of the first President of the United States of the World on the right wall. An antique grand piano was standing before the left portrait. Its legs were made in the form of sitting eagles with spread wings. The keyboard lid was open.

Three men came out of a corridor adjoining this entrance hall and went to the exit. One of their shoulders caught on Lippo’s shoulder. Emily gasped as the hacker didn’t even stir as the man’s shoulder went through his.

Lorenzetti followed them with his eyes, spread his arms to both sides and smiled. “Isn’t it impressive? It’s me who made it all! Not the White House, of course, but the computer program to allow this penetration.”

Approaching the grand piano, he started fingering the keys.

“There’s no music,” Emily observed.

The hacker laughed as he went away from the instrument. “Certainly. All the objects are virtual here, I can’t affect them directly. They can’t affect me either. But we’ve no time to waste. Computer! Scan the White House and find the President! And one more thing: scan all the computers of the White House and find any notes on a refuge for the government. Display the retrieved information,” he looked around, “on the portrait of the President of the World!”

Holding his hands behind his back, he started to walk at an easy pace circle-wise, looking around him. “A beautiful interior, don’t you think so? To tell the truth, I’m here for the first time.”

“Are you sure we’ll stay undetected?” Andrew asked.

“Absolutely. My technology is unique. No one has ever made anything – ”

A melodious female voice announced, “Data has been retrieved.”

Instead of the portrait of the President, the layout of the White House appeared on the wall. A small red circle began to blink in the western wing marked as the “Oval Office’.

“Here he is, the mankind leader,” the hacker said. “This is done. What about the refuge?”

“Two hundred and fifty-six concordances found,” the female voice answered.

Instead of the layout, a long numbered list with extracts from texts appeared in the frame.

“Narrow the search,” Lorenzetti commanded. “Find the asylum intended for salvation of the government.”

The answer was prompt. “No concordances found.”

Lorenzetti shook his head, clicking his tongue. “You see? You’ve been misinformed. The President is not going to hide while others die!”

Andrew wanted to believe that, too. CHENG Wenming had fought for justice for all his life. He was one of the founders of the Nature Party that opposed corporations manufacturing GMO and trying to turn the whole population into zombies – insatiable consumers of their produce. He was at the head of the World Unification Movement. Thanks to people like him, governments of all countries signed the Agreement on Creation of the United States of the World. When separatists tried to take their revenge in different locations of the planet, CHENG Wenming entered into the struggle against them – not as an army general but as an ideological leader. During recent years, after becoming the President, he imposed a ban on using oil and gas as fuel. Fast implementation of ecologically safe technologies started as a result. Such man wouldn’t try to hide while the earth’s population was destroyed!

“No concordances found?” Emily said to the hacker. “Is that all you can do? You promised that we’d listen to the President!”

“Fine. But bear in mind that it is not only illegal, but also unethical. He might be in a bathroom or with a secret lover.”

“He doesn’t have a secret lover!”

“Do you think so? Maybe, maybe. Computer! Depict the situation to me. Is the President still in the Oval Office? What is he doing?”

The text was replaced by the White House layout. The blinking red circle was moving. The female voice replied, “The President has just gone downstairs. The President is walking to the Situation Room. There are sixteen people in the Situation Room. The President is opening the door. The sixteen people are getting up…”

Lorenzetti interrupted it, “That’s enough. Meetings are held in this room only in crisis situations. We must hurry!”

He ran in place while Andrew and Emily still stood but watching, as if they were in the middle of a movie and the scene moved in front of them.

He’s in a good physical form, Barkov noted to himself.

The building moved towards the hacker, and he came to a stop on the red carpet in the corridor. Raising his arms over his head with his palms turned up, Lippo “fell’ through the floor into the basement. Emily gave a slight gasp again as she and Andrew felt they, too, had fallen. They stopped on the floor below where there were no windows. The massive arched walls created an impression that it was a bunker hidden deep underground.

Lorenzetti continued to run in place. Some doors and gold yellow statues flashed past. Then there was a turn, and the hacker entered a small hall lit by sunrays. A rose garden was seen behind the glass doors. One more turn, and the hacker rushed along a lighted corridor to the western wing of the White House.

Having penetrated into the closed doors, Lorenzetti went down the stairs and stopped before the door with the inscription “Situation Room”. In a second, he entered.

“Sit down, please,” CHENG Wenming pronounced loudly.

Andrew jerked at the words, but those words were not addressed to the hacker, of course.

The central part of the room was occupied by a long table. Men and women standing along it began to sit into armchairs. The President of the United States of the World, a short lean man, sat down in the far end of the table.

Lorenzetti went around the table and, folding his arms on his chest, stopped behind the President of the World.

Barkov knew by sight almost all the people who were in the room as they had often spoken on e-vision. There was the Secret Service Director Radomir Novak and several ministers – of transport, construction, communication, public health, agriculture… Obviously, the whole ruling top had gathered there.

“I’ve invited you to listen to the report from the professor of physics, the president of the International Academy of Science Sam Goodman,” CHENG Wenming said. “Sam, please!”

A gray-haired man wearing a light gray suit sitting to the right of the President stood up unhurriedly and surveyed all those present with a heavy look. Then he looked at the control panel installed in front of him on the table for the laser e-vision.

“I can see two scenarios,” he said in the distinct voice of a professional teacher. “Bad and very bad. Which one to start with?”

“With the bad one,” CHENG Wenming said.

“Okay. Now I’m going to show you the Earth.” Over the middle of the table, an image of a globe appeared and started rotating slowly. “The Earth is a sphere, isn’t it?”

“Certainly,” the Minister of Health, a dark-haired woman of about forty answered.

“The answer is incorrect!” Goodman retorted. “A sphere is a perfectly round geometrical object in three-dimensional space.”

“Are we having a geometry lesson?” the minister inquired.

A snicker spread over the room.

“I’m just reminding you of the ABCs from the school curriculum so you can understand the problem properly,” the professor objected. “And the problem is that the Earth is not perfectly round. It is flattened on its poles!” He made a gesture, and the image compressed vertically a little. “Waters of the World Ocean are retained on the equator thanks to the planet’s rotation. Now, as the rotation is slowing down, their outflow to the poles has started. For instance, the Canadian Arctic Islands have submerged almost entirely. The bad scenario is as follows: in a couple of weeks the Earth’s rotation will decelerate a few times. All the territories to the north of 50 degrees will be flooded.”

“It can’t be true!” the Minister of Agriculture, a bald-headed man with a light golden moustache resembling an ear of wheat, said.