Prometheus Unchained

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The old kings watched from high towers. The new kings watch from basements, surrounded by screens that tell them they are already dead.

Valerius Thorne, First Imperial Archivist

CLASSIFIED TRANSCRIPT [CODE: WHITE/ECHO]

Source: The White House - Situation Room (Washington D.C.) Date: April 20, 204X Event: United Nations General Assembly - Extraordinary Session

[Scene Description] The room is small, windowless, and smells of stale coffee and high-grade electronics. The air is recycled and kept at a shivering 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Dominating the North Wall is the "Big Board"—a massive, encrypted display currently split into two feeds.

• Feed A (Left): A high-definition, live feed of the UN General Assembly Hall in New York. The hall is packed. Every seat is filled. The murmur of two thousand diplomats creates a low, oceanic roar.
• Feed B (Right): A mosaic of global news tickers, all silent, all screaming in red and yellow fonts: REID ARRIVES - NYC LOCKDOWN - MARKETS HALTED - THE SURRENDER?

[The Players] Seated around the mahogany conference table are the architects of American power:

• President Thomas J. Whitmore (POTUS): Sleeves rolled up, tie loosened. He looks like a man who hasn't slept in three days. He is staring at Feed A.
• Vice President Hayes: Taking furious notes on a legal pad.
• General Mitchell Vance (Chairman, Joint Chiefs): In full dress uniform, his face a mask of stone. He is the brother of the Senator who threatened Reid, and he looks ready to finish the argument with a carrier strike group.
• Director Cohen (CIA): Slumped in his chair, tapping a stylus against his teeth.
• Director Smith (FBI): whispering into a secure phone.
• Ron Klain (Chief of Staff): Pacing behind the President.
• Admiral Blackwood: CNO

And in the corner, seated on a folding chair against the wall, is Captain James Miller (USN), Aide-de-Camp to Admiral Blackwood. He has a laptop on his knees. He is invisible to the men at the table. He is watching.

[Transcript Starts - 09:55 AM EST]

Chief of Staff Klain: "Five minutes. He's in the building. Secret Service confirms he passed the magnetometer. No weapons. Just a datapad."

POTUS: "Is the perimeter secure?"

Director Smith (FBI): "We have snipers on every roof from 42nd Street to the East River. NYPD has the blocks locked down. But Mr. President... the crowds. There are two million people out there. They aren't protesting against him anymore. They're cheering. They're chanting his name."

POTUS: "They're cheering for a terrorist?"

Director Cohen (CIA): "They're cheering for access to space, sir. The narrative shifted. Our psyops campaign failed. The moment he released that 'Surrender' letter, he became a martyr. If we arrest him today, we create a saint. If we kill him... we create a god."

General Vance: "He's not a god. He's a man. And he's walking into a trap. We have the warrant ready. The moment he steps off that podium, U.S. Marshals take him into custody. Material Witness. Terrorist Act. We hold him at Gitmo until he gives up the encryption keys to the Tether."

VP Hayes: "And the Chinese? Liu endorsed the embargo, but his fleet is still parked in the Malacca Strait."

Director Cohen: "Liu is hedging. If Reid falls today, China joins the sucess. If Reid wins... well, Liu will say he was 'protecting stability'. The Chinese play the long game. We are playing poker."

POTUS: "Quiet. He's entering the hall."

[On Screen A, the murmur in the UN Assembly dies instantly. The doors at the back open. Georges Reid enters. He is not wearing the grey flight suit of SLAM. He is wearing a simple, dark suit. He walks down the aisle alone. No bodyguards. No entourage. He looks small against the cavernous architecture of the hall. He walks to the podium, places his datapad on the lectern, and looks up at the gathered representatives of Earth.]

General Vance: "Look at him. Arrogant son of a bitch. He thinks he owns the room."

POTUS: "Turn up the audio. I want to hear his confession."

[The audio from the UN feed fills the Situation Room. Reid taps the microphone. It booms.]

Reid (On Screen): "Mr. Secretary-General. Distinguished Delegates. I was summoned to answer for my crimes. Here I am."

Reid: "I wanted to read you my letter of surrender, but strangely enough I received another one, from a totally unexpected source: Aditya Rao — Hyderabad, Telangana, India. A high school student."

[A ripple of confusion moves through the General Assembly. The delegates exchange glances. Is this a joke? Is he stalling?]

Reid: (Smiling slightly, looking down at his datapad) "He writes: 'Dear Mr Reid, despite all the admiration I have for you, your space elevator is a hoax."

[In the Situation Room, Director Cohen snorts.]

Director Cohen: "He's reading fan mail? Is he insane?"

Reid: "You see we were totally transparent with you: a 100 tons container sent every minute to geosync orbit. And obviously one down on the descending line. Not a whisper, not a single paper, not even a classified report on what is honestly a total impossibility."

[The confusion in the hall deepens. The murmurs grow louder. The Chinese Ambassador is leaning forward, his translation earpiece pressed to his ear. The American Ambassador looks like he is about to shout an objection.]

[Suddenly, movement in the third row. A man stands up. It is Dr. Kweku Mensah, the representative from Ghana, a Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is shaking. His face is drained of blood.]

Dr. Mensah: (Shouting without a microphone, his voice cracking with terror) "YOU DID NOT DARE!"

[The hall freezes. Mensah points a trembling finger at Reid.]

Reid: "Please, Professor Mensah. Give me five minutes."

[Reid turns back to the assembly. His smile is gone. He looks tired, almost apologetic.]

Reid: "You see, my friends, to fulfill our promise of fast logistics, we needed energy. A lot of energy. To lift a 100-ton container to Geostationary Orbit against Earth's gravity at that acceleration in one hour requires approximately 20 Gigawatts of power. Continuous. Per container."

[He taps the lectern.]

Reid: "We have one hundred and twenty containers moving up and down the line at any given second. Plus the station keeping. Yes, my friends. Simple high school physics."

[The murmuring in the hall explodes into a roar. Diplomats are frantically typing on their tablets, calling their science advisors. On the screen in the Situation Room, the chaos is palpable.]

Reid: (Waiting, the smile returning, colder now) "Do the math."

[In the Situation Room, the silence is heavy. Admiral Blackwood spins his chair around, his face pale.]

Admiral Blackwood: "Captain Miller. You're the MIT graduate. Run the numbers. Is he bluffing?"

[Captain Miller is already typing. His fingers blur on the keyboard. He hits enter. He stares at the result.]

Captain Miller: "Sir... he's right. It's a conservative estimate. To operate the elevator at the advertised capacity... he needs 2.5 Terawatts."

General Vance: "2.5 Terawatts? That's impossible. That's... that's 15% of the total power consumption of the human species."

[In a large technical room in the basement of the UN building, a light suddenly flickers in the dark—red, then orange, then green. It emanates from the new “Air Handling Unit” delivered just the previous week, following the catastrophic failure of the original system. Through an invisible conduit, a deluge of energy surges upward, coursing through the building's infrastructure, infiltrating the fibers of the brand-new carpet in the General Assembly Hall, and culminating in a hidden loop directly beneath the speaker's podium.]

Reid smiles slowly. He feels the enormous magnetic field surging through the loop, resonating within the new metal lattice of his bones. It is a hum only he can hear, a vibration of pure power.

He taps on the microphone again, not like a defendant, but like a teacher calling an unruly classroom to order. "Please, please, look here."

The room quiets slowly, sensing the shift in the air.

"I want to introduce you to the future," Reid says softly.

Suddenly, the air behind him shimmers. An enormous hologram materializes, filling the cavernous space above the podium. It is a grainy, charmingly imperfect video.

It shows a school exhibition. A small girl with messy hair is talking to a woman wearing a Kestrel logo badge. Behind them stands a nondescript green metal box, roughly the size of a standard shipping container. The girl is pointing at a golden symbol on the casing.

Reid gestures to the frozen image. And suddenly to the astonishment of the audience, he rises in the air, at the level of the green container.

"This," he says, his voice echoing in the silence, "is a Helios Node. It is a self-sustaining fusion reactor. It produces a lot of Terawatts of clean, carbon-free energy. Indefinitely."

[The assembly gasps. In the Situation Room, General Vance drops his pen.]

Reid: "We installed this one in a science museum in Luxembourg six months ago. We disguised it as a science exhibit. It has been powering the entire Benelux grid since January. And nobody noticed."

[Reid hovers effortlessly, looking down at the delegates. The tension in the room is breaking, replaced by a strange, collective curiosity. Shoulders relax. People lean back in their chairs. The impending doom of the embargo and the trial feels distant now. This isn't a tribunal anymore; it's a show. A magic show. And for the first time in months, the audience is actually enjoying it.]

Reid: "And now it is..."

[Reid raises his hand to snap his fingers for dramatic effect. He presses his thumb against his middle finger. His fingers slide silently. He fails. A few people in the audience chuckle. He tries again, frowning slightly. Another silent slide. He finally succeeds on the third try—a sharp, clear snap—and the whole room erupts in applause, delighted by the humanizing error.]

In the Situation Room, President Whitmore stares at the screen, his face draining of color as he watches the world's diplomats clapping for the man he intended to arrest.

POTUS: "It’s turning into a circus. Why was I not forewarned? You bloody incompetents."

On the giant screen a map of Europe appears with the major electricity main lines. Benelux is green, the rest red. And then the green advances, covering the Ruhr, the industrial region of Germany, northern France, going down on the east to Switzerland, and then stopping.

Reid, apologetic: For the rest of Europe, we shall need some coordination with EDF, the french nuclear energy supplier.

Then Reid turns toward the Chinese ambassador. The screen is now showing Asia. A green point, Singapore, and suddenly green lines shooting toward all neighbourhood countries. In the sea, a single green line starts from Singapore, cross the south china sea, and ends up in Shanghai, and suddenly the region of Shanghai and Shenzhen turn green.

“Your excellency, the quantum communication experimental line, that you agreed to connect too, can be used for other, more mundane applications.”

The screen centers now to Mali, where suddenly a big green dot starts blinking.

“If our African friends agree, we can link you to that generator in a matter of weeks or months.”

“For India? Give us the ‘green’ light (laughters in the room)”.

Reid rises a little more in the air.

“You have, the where, everywhere, the when, now, what is left is how much.”

“It will be free, decarbonated, unlimited energy for all! We now have a real chance against global warning, and even more importantly, poverty.”

“Who will vote for the independence of space, the independence of energy, the independence for all?”

“SLAM, for mankind on Earth. And Beyond”

Logo

The silence in the Situation Room was heavy, broken only by the low, steady hum of high-end electronics.

On the main wall, Feed A broadcasted live from the UN Hall. The image was chaotic, jubilant. Delegates had abandoned protocol and were standing on their chairs. They weren’t just clapping; they were reaching out towards Reid, who remained suspended ten inches above the floor, moving slowly through the crowd. He smiled benevolently, looking less like a CEO and more like a prophet who had just parted the sea.

Beside him, the vote count on the massive display ticked up rapidly, freezing on the final tally for Resolution 2443: Recognition of S.L.A.M. Sovereignty & Energy Partnership.

• YES: 189
• NO: 1 (United States)
• ABSTAIN: 3 (Israel, UK, Poland)

To the right, on Feed B, the mood was apocalyptic. The mosaic of news tickers had transformed into a cascading red waterfall of panic.

• CNBC: ENERGY SECTOR BLOODBATH. EXXON, SHELL, ARAMCO TRADING HALTED AFTER 90% DROP.
• AL JAZEERA: REVOLUTION IN THE GULF. MIGRANT WORKERS SEIZE OIL FIELDS IN SAUDI ARABIA AND QATAR. 'WE ARE FREE'.
• BBC: LONDON RIOTS. CITIZENS DEMAND 'THE REID LINK'. GOVERNMENT UNDER SIEGE.
• REUTERS: CHINA ANNOUNCES 'STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP' WITH SLAM. US NAVY ORDERED OUT OF MALACCA STRAIT.

President Whitmore stared at the two screens. The cheering on the left. The burning world on the right. He felt the gravity of the moment crushing him, and he slowly sank into his leather chair.

"Turn it off," he said, his voice barely rising above the hum of the servers.

General Vance turned, his brow furrowed. "Sir?"

"Turn it all off."

Screen A went black. Screen B followed an instant later. The room plunged into sudden darkness, illuminated only by the ghostly green glow of the emergency exit sign.

The darkness seemed to suck the oxygen out of the room. For a long moment, no one breathed.

"Execute the contingencies," Whitmore said. His voice was no longer a whisper; it was cold iron.

General Vance hesitated in the gloom. "Sir?"

"The Elevator," Whitmore clarified, standing up and smoothing his suit jacket. "We prepared for this scenario. Initiate the seizure protocol. Combined sea, air, and commando teams. We aren't destroying the base station, General. We're taking it."

"Mr. President," Vance cautioned, the light from his tablet illuminating his sweat-slicked face. "That is an act of war against a sovereign entity recognized by 189 nations. The fallout—"

"Is preferable to the alternative," Whitmore cut him off. "They want to play gods? Fine. But they'll pay rent to the United States. Secure the asset. Do it."

Whitmore didn't wait for an acknowledgment. He strode toward the exit, the Secret Service detail swarming around him like moths. Vance cast one last look at the blank screens, then tapped his headset and followed, barking confirmation codes into his mic.

The heavy door hissed shut, sealing the room.

The silence returned, heavier than before.

Miller remained leaning against the tactical table, his arms crossed, his face unreadable in the shadows. Across the room, Admiral Halloway stood rigid, staring at the empty space where the President had been.

"He actually did it," Blackwood whispered, the words sounding too loud in the empty room. He turned to Miller. "What is your take?"

Miller finally looked up, his eyes catching the green light. "When it smells like a trap and looks like a trap..."

"A trap?" Blackwood asked. "What can we do?"

"Reid has never killed anybody," Miller replied, his voice low but steady. "Even those mobsters. He doesn't want to kill. We do. So let us spring the trap, Sir."

Blackwood smiled, a cold expression in the dim light, as he turned to leave the room. "Let's take a spider in his lair."

Miller stood finally alone in the room, looking at the dark screens.

"Long live the Empire," he whispered into the silence. "Long live the Emperor."

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