Prolog Wichita Kansas November 2037 Tuesday

“The President has been shot!”

            Sheila Remington looked like she was sleeping. Only a small pool of blood beneath her right cheek signaled the nation’s loss of a great leader. Bob Nash hung his head. He had failed her.

            The news appeared on the diverse information nets almost as soon as it happened. Text messages began scrolling with the details. Live video cam streamed onto the screens of TVs, computers, and cell phones everywhere. The marquee in Times Square announced it to astonished New Yorkers. Mid-afternoon talk shows were interrupted with the news and video shots from the scene.

            The Secret Service agent picked himself up from the stage and hurried to the President. Even with the wind knocked out of him, he rushed to give assistance. As he knelt down beside her and tested for a pulse, he soon realized that there was nothing that he could do. He looked back at the other dignitaries who had sought cover. Only the President’s Chief of Staff was injured.

Bob Nash’s day had started badly. He nearly missed the plane at Andrews and the President kidded him about it. Then, as Air Force One taxied, he received a cell phone call from his girl friend telling him that she was dumping him. Finally, just before the plane landed in Wichita, he saw a report on the CNN investment info net that told him he had just lost a ton of money on some stock that he had just put in a buy order for the previous evening. With all that bad news, he fully expected the day to not be one of his better ones. He never imagined it could be so bad. Career ending bad.

            The good news was that the advance detail report said that the city and the university campus were quiet, exceptionally so considering that by contrast the rest of the Midwest was a mess. St. Louis had been under martial law for three months. Chicago had just quieted down after gangs of young hoodlums rioted four days earlier when the local pro soccer team lost the national championship to Houston. Kansas City was in the fifth week of a sanitation workers’ strike that had left it smelling like fermenting human waste.