Virginia, March, 2078, Monday…

Caitlin slowly sipped her coffee and watched the scrolling newsnet, occasionally using her wand to select the "more info" button. Miss Boots sat on her lap nested in the downy softness of her bathrobe. The battles at the three DC monuments were no longer in the news. The nuclear holocaust in South America had been reduced to only a few line items instead of summaries; anything more required the "more info" button. The hot news today was the results of the first round of the NCAA tournament. The news service she had selected seemed to focus more on the cheerleaders than either the results or the players, at least for the "cover stories."

How soon we forget. The world has changed as radically as it did on September 11, 2001, and we pay little attention to it. Last week's news is fast becoming ancient history. By the time she reached work she was thoroughly depressed. All during the drive the images of the cheerleaders kept coming back to her.

Maybe to get a guy you have to have a body like that. And look and act dumb. She kept telling herself that couldn't be true, that somewhere there was a man like Asako's husband who would ignore all the desirable traits that pop culture said his woman had to have, a man who had different and more sophisticated criteria than your average frat boy.

Or am I just too picky? The first thing in her classified e-mail on her computer was a two hundred page rough draft of a preliminary report of their take-down of the Mundo Domini cells. The author was Dan Summers. The second was another e-mail from him announcing his resignation. She picked up the phone.

"So I make you write the report and you resign?"

Dan laughed heartily.

"No correlation. I'll get the report out, but I need you to check it. You'll have to write the one about the Frank Suarez chase. It was mostly your game anyway. And please leave out the part on how Jamie decked me."

As he was talking, she walked with her portable handset to his office.

"So, why the resignation?"

His back was turned, so he jumped at the question, hearing it both on his phone and at his back. He swung around.

"That was a dirty trick!"

"Well, I can't really see your face well enough on the phone to determine if you're lying to me. Why the resignation?"

"I've been meaning to do it for some time. I've been offered a job at UNSA. Head of security at the new spaceport they're building."