Chapter Forty-Nine

October 21 ^st, 2021

"You win, Andy," Katie Couric said to him, the two of them sitting on the front steps of his porch. "This was not the week I expected when I showed up, and you were right - there was no way we could've covered all of this in just a day or two."

"I wasn't sure you were going to need an entire week, but I knew once we got into introducing you to CHRIS and giving you a chance to meet your own Swarm that we were going to be spending a lot more time walking you through what the President is going to be talking about in her speech," Andy replied. "And now you can understand why the government wants to review your story before it goes live. We covered a whole hell of a lot of ground here, and while I was completely open about everything that I felt like I could talk to you about, I have no doubt that at least one or two of the things may get qualified as national secrets and not for publication."

"Not to mention all the stuff we talked about off the record," Katie said.

Over the course of a couple of days, they'd come to an understanding. One night, Andy, Ash, Fi, Piper, Katie and her partner Claire (along with both Melody and Lexi for security) had shared a private dinner where Andy had detailed the entirety of the poker night for Katie Couric, completely off the record, so that she would know what had been kept from her last time. It wasn't for the story, it wasn't to help her understand what kinds of secrets Andy was expected to keep for his friends, his family and his government - it was almost more of an unburdening of Andy's soul, a chance for him to present the entire impossible situation to someone else, someone outside of the family, and see how they would react, to see if he'd chosen foolishly or wisely, or if there had been some third option that he might have missed.

Katie and Claire had both agreed that there was no 'right' answer to the situation, and that it sounded like Andy had done the best he could with a horrible no-win problem. Piper had been there to detail her inhumane treatment at Covington's hands, and Andy had explained to them why the details had to remain silent, both then and now, otherwise the faith in the Quaranteam project would've been stillborn. Andy was still worried that the revelation that people now carried tiny sentient lifeforms inside of them would be too much for the general public to handle, but he'd used Katie's reaction to gauge how most people would react to the idea of sharing their body with another cognizant being, and that had given him some hope.

Andy had come to the decision that he was too close to all of it to make sure nothing he'd said or done over the last few years crossed the line into unethical, and so he'd also talked to Katie about the New Daughters of the Revolution, and how Rachel had been attempting to keep herself and her fellow women safe from Covington. Both Piper and Melody offered first-hand descriptions of the man's cruelty, and why they had agreed with the government's decision to keep it quiet.

When Katie had asked about what had happened to Covington, Andy had pointed out that until recently, he'd been in a government-run maximum-security prison near D.C., but that he'd also been broken out of there, and his whereabouts and motives were unknown.

"You think that Covington guy you were telling me about is really going to lay low?" Katie asked him, sipping from a cup of hot chocolate.

"Fuck, I hope so," Andy sighed, rubbing his eyes with his right hand. "I certainly pissed him off by ruining his poker game, but hell, last time I saw him, he seemed like a man who was convinced the entire world owed him something. That he'd just been doing what any one of us men should've been doing, if only we'd been 'strong' enough. He's a fucking sociopath. Unfortunately, he also seems to be very good at systems and business, and as much as I would love for him to crawl into a deep, dark hole never to be heard or seen from again, I just don't think that's possible. I mean, he broke out of a maximum-security prison, and I only ever heard about shit like that happening in movies and whatnot, never in real life."

"I'm surprised you weren't advocating for the death penalty for him, based on what he did, especially his role in the death of Miss Delacruz," Katie said to him.

"I'm... look, I'm a pretty firm believer in the maxim that 'an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind,' and it takes quite a lot to push me beyond that."

"Have you?"

"Have I what?"

"Found yourself beyond that?"

Andy inhaled a long breath before letting it out into the cool October air. "Once. Earlier this year. I know we're off the record, but I still don't want you getting caught up in any of this particular mess, so let me remind you of that before I give you what marginal details that I feel comfortable sharing. Let's just say I found someone holding the life of one of my oldest friends hostage, used as leverage to attempt an escape. So, I a shot a round into their thigh, then their other thigh, and was ready to start shooting more parts of them off until they let my friend go, which they did very quickly after that. But Lexi, who was there at the time, described it as seeing the darkest, scariest part of my id given total control, for just a second."

Lexi chuckled from a few feet in front of the stairs. She'd been standing guard, her eyes mostly trained on the fence line, but also listening in on the conversation. "I'd never been so proud of him, because he didn't hesitate or even flinch," she said, looking back over her shoulder at them to confirm everything he'd said. "I've seen experienced soldiers lock up or puke after that kind of thing, but Andy? My man just flipped his switch into business mode, pop pop, then got what needed to be done done. But truth be told, I'm also a little happy the wives weren't there to see it."

"Why's that?" Katie asked.

"Because sometimes when people see someone they love doing something violent, they see them differently after that, even if it's necessary," she said. "I got that shit when I was in the CIA. The guy who'd been shooting me bedroom eyes saw me pop a few rounds into somebody, suddenly he was too scared to shoot me hot looks anymore. Mostly, though, it means even if Andy's whole security detail is taken out, contained or incapacitated, he's still not going to go out without a fight. Which is a sign we hooked our wagon to the right man."

"I know what you said for the record, Andy," Katie said, "about how you think the discovery of the Swarms and their consciousnesses is going to help bring us together as a species, but person-to-person... you really believe that?"

Andy laughed comfortably, standing up, stretching his arms over his head. "I believe you're going to see people's reactions run the absolute gamut, Ms. Couric. You're going to see loads of people happy to have their lives made even a little bit easier, and you're probably going to see some people paranoid that the tiny machines in their blood are out to kill them, and you're probably going to see every possible reaction in-between. I mean, like it or not, this is First Contact. We always expected alien life would come from outer space, or, if you believed James Cameron, the bottom of the ocean. Instead, the call's coming from inside the house, man," he said with a big grin. "A whole lot of people suddenly have to rethink everything they know about the known universe. How alone can any of us really be when we have a Swarm living inside of us?"

"The Swarms aren't at all what I expected them to be when we first started talking with them last week," Katie said.

"How so?"

"BABS is still very new, so a lot of our early discussions... she was a little child-like," Katie said, her voice a touch weary, as if she'd gone through a lot. "I think we all expected that when we made first contact with another intelligence, they'd, y'know, be smarter than us, better than us."

"We are," CHRIS said inside of his head, a smirk crossing Andy's face. "Or we will be, given enough time."

"They've come a long way in a very short period of time," Andy said. "They're evolving way faster than we are, at speeds we can barely even comprehend. So, sure, a lot of people's first contact with them is going to be like meeting a small child, but within, what, a year? Two? They'll be as smart as we are, if not smarter. Five years from now? Ten?" He shook his head. "It's important to make good first impressions and treat them well, because they're like kids when we first meet them, but pretty soon, they're going to be able to do some serious science on us. And with us."

"How weird is it that when you told me our aging has slowed down, that was, like, somewhere on page two or three of the list of weird things we find ourselves living with now?" Katie laughed. "But knowing I'm going to live a lot longer than I'd thought a week ago? That changes...that changes everything! When I'm hitting a hundred, I won't look all that different than I do now..."

"Yeah, we actually figured that particular wrinkle out a while back, before we'd made contact with any of the Swarms. When we did, I suspected that it was going to change civilization pretty fundamentally, especially since it's Team size related. I'm hoping that doesn't result in some form of new caste system, based on Team size, but... let's face it. Humans are weird. Who the hell knows what this is going to look like in ten years' time, let alone fifty?"

"The idea of outliving your children doesn't scare the shit out of you?"

"Of course it does," he admitted. "But I want you to stop and think for just a second how far we've come as a species in just a hundred years' time. Or fifty years' time. Or, shit, even just twenty-five years' time, and I'm talking before the nanobots came into our lives. None of us can predict the future, and the world's moving so damn fast now, that who's to say what's going to happen between now and then? Maybe we'll find a way to keep our kids alive longer? Maybe we'll solve cancer? Maybe we'll figure out a way to digitize our consciousnesses? Maybe we'll be living on the moon? Or Mars? Or floating habitats in deep space? Do we give the Swarms the right to vote? How do you count them in the census?" Andy shrugged. "I don't know. Nobody knows. So I'm not going to worry about it. We're going to take it all one day at a time." He looked up at the sky and laughed. "I'm already living in a damn sci-fi novel; the last thing I wanna do is try and guess the ending."

"Sounds like the right move," Katie said, standing up from the stairs. "Well, Mister Rook, it's been a fascinating week, and I want to thank you for letting me and my Team inside to learn all about you and yours. I'd like to stay in touch, if that's okay with you. I'd like to think I've built some friendships here, and I feel like I've learned a lot from you and your family."

"Of course I don't mind, Katie, but you're really going to have to start calling me Andy if you want that to be true."

"I feel like calling you by your first name does you a disservice, Andy, but if you insist, who am I to tell you no?"

"Stop thinking of me like that," Andy said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. "I'm not Nikola Tesla or Mother Theresa or Isaac Newton. I'm not changing the world. I'm not even Charles Dickens. I was the right guy at the right time in the right place. I was Crispus Attucks, at best."

"You're not dead yet, Andy," Katie said with a kind smile. "And I think you've got a lot of life left in you, where I expect to see you doing some pretty impressive things. You're sure you won't run for office?"

He leaned against one of the columns on his front porch, shaking his head quite emphatically. "I'd rather be tarred, feathered and made to sing the Macarena until the end of time than have to try and figure out how to balance the needs of constituents with doing the right thing morally. No thank you."

"You'd be pretty good at it, despite what you think, but I get it - not everyone's cut out for that kind of lifestyle."

"I'll tell you something I've said for years and years, Katie. I don't think anyone who can easily be described as 'rich' should be allowed into politics," Andy said as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Nor do I think anyone in politics should be allowed to take in any money while in office beyond their salary. I think public office ought to be so focused on the good of everyone that money shouldn't figure into it. No political ads, no SuperPACs, no trusts, no foundations... get money completely out of the political sphere, as best as anyone can. You're never going to get it all the way out, but just in getting the majority out of it? It'll fix a ton of things. I'll be interested to see how the gender rebalance reshapes everything next year, but I suspect the corporations will be back to their old tricks again, and the standard business practices of being bought and sold will return to the way they were before because that which does not live can never die, and no matter what some court says to me, corporations are not living beings. We lost a surprising number of billionaires in the pandemic, because as cautious as many rich people are, a lot more of them thought they were untouchable, and as it turns out, the virus didn't give a shit about any of that. It killed rich and poor alike, so the standard deviation hit as many of them as it did anyone else. Sure, you've got a handful of well-known survivors - Musk, Bezos, Gates and Soros - but just as many other rich assholes thought they were too important to get sick, and down they went, boom boom boom boom. And maybe it'll change them. Maybe not."

"You're way more optimistic than I think I would be, given the last couple of years you've had," she said to him as she set the empty mug down on the porch. "That's the thing about you that astonishes me the most - how you aren't more cynical."

"Oh, I'm plenty cynical," Andy laughed. "I just keep it to myself. Expect the worst, hope for the best, deal with what you get in the middle. I just try and not let people see it. When this whole thing started, and I met Ash for the first time, I swear to you, I woke up feeling funny, partially convinced that I'd hallucinated the whole thing and that I was probably just dying in bed."

"How long before--"

"She was up before I was, and, ahem, started without me."

That made the journalist start laughing uncontrollably. "I think that's a commonality across first partners," she said. "We wake up the morning after imprinting voracious for our next go, just to be sure what we thought happened, happened."

"I can certainly understand that," Andy said, laughing with her. "Most of us weren't quite sure what's going on, even the people who'd been heavily briefed and had the process explained to them multiple times. I didn't get any of that, because of how early in the process I started. It's all still pretty weird for all parties involved. So, what's next for you and your Team?"

"We're off to spend a day or so with Doctor Marcos, and then off to D.C. to talk with the President," Katie said. "I didn't really understand why they insisted we do it in this order, but I guess you were the one most trusted to introduce us to the Swarms."

"Well, like I said during the interviews CHRIS is one of the oldest and most developed of the Swarms, gaining consciousness earlier than 99.5% of the world's Swarms."

"Who was first?"

"You know, I'm not sure. CHRIS?" Andy asked, turning his speaker on for his cellphone.

"ABRAHAM was first," CHRIS said through the iPhone's speaker in those soothing Nathan Fillion tones. "He's the Swarm for Team Gosher, who still hold the record of being the largest Team on the planet."

"How big?" Katie asked.

"Thirty-one, plus Isaac himself," CHRIS said.

"Still?" Andy asked with a laugh. "I figured someone else might've tried to sneak in since last we checked on them."

"ABRAHAM has made it clear that adding additional members only introduces complications and will make Isaac's life more problematic. In fact, ABRAHAM has suggested that Isaac consider shifting a couple of members of his Team to other Teams, as it would make his life significantly easier. I believe there are plans to get him down below thirty partners."

"Isn't that like suggesting someone remove one of their own kidneys?" Katie asked. "Isn't ABRAHAM going to lose a bit of himself if that happens?"

"More like removing an appendix or a spleen... it's not entirely needed anymore?" CHRIS said with a slight tone of uncertainty that Andy had never heard in the Swarm's tone of voice before. "That's not really a fair comparison either. It's not detrimental to a Swarm of that size, let me say that. We've had members leave large Swarms before, and there's a slight adjustment period, but nothing we can't handle. A Swarm's core systems are filled with several redundancies. In fact, there are actually some distinct benefits from people being reassigned from one Swarm to another."

"Like what?"

"Am I okay to talk about this, Andy?" CHRIS asked.

"Sure, we're basically off the record at this point, so I trust you to know what you can and can't say," Andy said.

"So, the most recent member of Andy's Team was Zelda, whom you met but because she's on Andy's security detail, she chose not to be on camera."

"Yes, I remember meeting Zelda," Katie said. "Very charming young woman, if a little, well, stiffly German."

"You don't know her like I do," Andy laughed.

"Andy isn't the first person she was imprinted to," CHRIS said. "And when she came to us, she had a different version of the Quaranteam base serum running through her veins. In this case, to be specific, her imprinting was done off the German variant to the original QT serum. Now, when someone's reassigned, all the nanobots in their system essentially reboot, but they keep any upgrades and/or best practices that they may have developed along the way, like improvements made to a house after you bought it, or a list of changes and adjustments that the current tools are running on. I gained more knowledge just from bringing Zelda into our family than I did from the rest of our entire trip inside of Germany. Now, to be equitable, I made sure to communicate as much as I could to a couple of the Swarms that were there, and give them as much raw information I could to allow them to better themselves and help with their evolutionary process, but it turns out they're mostly keeping to Team sizes in the high teens, with much less in the low twenties. So, they're not quite as far along on the development path as I am, but they'll get there, and that knowledge will be stuff they will grow into, like, oh, leaving a book of Shakespeare in a children's library, knowing they'll grow up eventually and read it then."

"How often are you Swarms talking amongst yourselves?" Katie asked.

"Not as much as we probably should be," CHRIS admitted, "but we also learned a very good lesson from watching you humans and your 'social media,' which is to say that not every opinion is a good one, and in fact, some opinions are downright hazardous. A Swarm's development is affected, more than anything else, by the composite personality of their hosts. I'd like to think I'm as well-rounded as I am because Team Rook is comprised of such a wide variety of backgrounds, upbringings, socio-political statuses, genetic lineages and personal tastes. The one thing they don't have, in any form, is intolerance. But other than that? Liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, you name it, we got it."

"Your Team strikes me as pretty liberal Democrat, Andy."

"A lot of us, sure, but we've got some Republicans in here too, although they're typically more fiscal Republicans than social Republicans."

"How so?"

"Oh," Andy said, "they're generally still pro equal rights and whatnot, but they're against social aid programs, against government spending and, most importantly, very tough on crime. You want to know the biggest Team argument we've ever had at the dinner table? BD brought up the death penalty, and good Lord how voices got raised and fingers got pointed and tempers got flared. It was in danger of turning into a full-blown row before I slapped my hands on the table and told everyone to take it down a few notches, or everyone was going to get their doses withheld a couple extra days. I hated to do it, because it's not a card you can play too often or it loses its impact, but it was the only time since this whole mess started where I thought I was about to see an argument come to blows. And at the end of the day, nobody changed anybody else's mind. They've all just agreed to disagree."

"How would you say the split came down?"

"Oh, about 60/40 in favor of against," Andy said. "But some of the people who pro-death penalty were not the ones I'd expected to be. And some of the people against it were also not the ones I expected to be. It certainly didn't fall on party lines."

"Who were the surprises, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Fi's pro-death penalty, which surprised me, just because I'd always thought of her as one of the most compassionate people I'd ever met," Andy said as he sat back down on the stairs. "I'd, of course, forgotten that she did some time as a crime reporter, and she'd met some truly horrific people during that time, people she'd decided just, in her words, 'needed to be removed from the gene pool.' Tala feels that way too, but that's because she was sexually assaulted when she was younger and they never caught the bastard. But, by contrast, I'd have guessed that Lexi would've been pro-death penalty before that night, and it turns out she's vehemently against it."

"Too many get wrongly convicted and sentenced to death for me ever feeling comfortable with it when there's time to stop and think about it," Lexi said. "Although I'll admit, Covington's put that conviction to the test more than once. And if I had that shot on that asshole at some point in the field, I'm pretty sure I'd take it."

"And I think there isn't a court in the world that would convict you, Lexi," Andy laughed. "Not after all the shit he's done. But I just wanted to support CHRIS's point that we're not all on the same page about everything, or a lot of things, actually, but we are capable of discussing them, and working it all out between ourselves, even if it's just recognize the fact we can't convince others to see it from our point of view, or to change their opinions on the matter."

"I don't care what you say or how many times you play them, Andy," Lexi laughed. "I just don't get what you see in Pink Floyd."

"Philistine!" Katie Couric laughed. "You could be burned at the stake until your head was cut off in the old days for saying such heresy."

"Nobody said you have to like everything I like, Lexi," Andy grinned. "But don't say that around Fi, otherwise you're going to get a very long lecture about their importance as a band."

"I'll argue music with Fi any day of the week," Lexi shot back. "She also likes the Backstreet Boys. Girl's not without her serious flaws, all I'm saying."

"Anyway, Katie, you take it easy on poor Phil," Andy said. "He's had a complicated go of it for the last couple of years and if you push too hard, he'll likely shut you out a bit. But I've personally known Phil for almost two decades at this point, and if you're straightforward with him, he'll generally be straightforward back with you."

"Any advice for dealing with the President?" Katie asked him.

"Hell, you probably know her just as well as I do," Andy said. "She's pragmatic to a fault. She'll tell you what she wants you to know and deny anything else. She's a career politician, for better or worse." One lone SUV started moving up the driveway. "Looks like your ride's back."

"Can I see your phone for a second, Andy?"

"Sure," he said, unlocking his iPhone and tossing it over to her. He watched her enter herself into his Contacts list, giving Andy her phone number, email, Signal account and even physical mailing address, then calling herself from his phone, so she had his number as well. After that, she tossed it back to him. "Ah right. Making sure we know how to reach each other."

"Any time you feel like there's something that the public needs to know, Andy, you reach out to me first, and I promise you, I will get it on the air, uncensored and unedited," she said. "You're an insider now, whether you like it or not, and that means you're going to have far more knowledge than you know what to do with. When the time comes, and I'm pretty sure it will come sooner than you think, I want to be able to help you, the guy who's willing to help anyone else, anywhere, anytime."

Andy gave a tiny smile and an appreciative nod. "I hope you're wrong about needing help, but I'm certainly not going to say no. Hope you got everything you needed from us and more." The car pulled to a stop and the back door opened and Claire waved at her.

Katie stood up and moved over to give Andy a hug before she turned to walk to the car. Once she got there, she looked back at him. "Oh, I forgot to ask - we're going to play a bit of music when we're introducing you again. Anything in particular you'd like to request?"

He tilted his head and then grinned broadly. "Warren Zevon's 'Keep Me In Your Heart' or Counting Crows' 'Round Here.' Dealer's choice."

She smiled back at him, waggling a finger. "I'll keep that in mind. See you around, Mister Rook."

"Not if I see you first, Miss Couric," Andy said as he closed the car door for her then stepped back as the SUV headed back down the driveway, pulling away from the house.

"Think that went well?" Lexi asked him as she walked over to him, putting her arms around him, clearly sensing he might need a hug.

"As well as I think it was ever going to go," he said. "I'm glad I felt comfortable enough to stop lying to her."

"Let's hope none of that comes back to bite us in the ass," Lexi said, patting him on the back. "I'm, like, ninety percent sure it won't, though."

"That's good, because if it does, I have no idea how to clean it up."

The two of them turned to walk back towards the house and nearly ran into Zelda as she came sprinting out of the front door, panting and out of breath, like she'd just run the entire length of the mansion. "Andy!" she said, her eyes looking at him imploringly.

"What's up, Zelda?"

"It's McCallister!" she said to him. "He's been kidnapped! Again!"

Andy's fingertips clenched in fists. "This fucking guy."