In Days Gone By Chapter Eight

Day: Friday
Date: 14 September 1984
Time: 5:00pm
Location: The Chamber Bedroom
Time Remaining: 39 hours until launch

“The year is 1984, Jake.  Geoffrey Cooper, the President of the United States of America, has been in power for two years.  Had been in power for two years.  You see, there was an explosion on Sunday 9th September in the White House.  Cooper was there. He had just arrived for a meeting with the Secretary of Defense, Daniel Jones.  There was a supposed bomb threat in Miami and the situation needed diffusing.  Pardon the pun.  Anyway, I am going to take you back two years, back to when Cooper first became President.”
         “In 1982, the governor of California, actor Geoffrey Cooper, became the fortieth President of the United States.  He was loved by all the American people and he is still loved today.  However, he did have some rather… optimistic ideas, to say the least.  In early 1983, Cooper proposed a seemingly impossible defense system, known as the SDI, which later became dubbed as Star Wars.  SDI stands for Strategic Defense Initiative, Jake.  The original proposal was to use ground and space based systems to protect the US from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles.  However, what Cooper was unaware of was that among him walked a traitor; one pretending to honor the States but had every intention to see it fall.  This traitor stole the plans for the SDI program one evening and delivered them to Gregorovich Bronstone, the new General Secretary of the Communist Party of Soviet Russia.  The Russians used the plans and spent seven months and seven billion US dollars creating the program.  Against all odds, it seemingly succeeded and, due to the war that we are on the brink of, the Russians are testing the program in six hours.  If it works, then America will lose the war and the world will fall to Communism.  If it doesn’t work, then America can force USSR to realize that MAD is still operational and that, if Russia fires a missile at America, they will fire one back and neither country will have a system to stop the missiles.”
         “And that is where you come into the equation, Jake.  You were at the White House the day the bomb was detonated.  You saw the President, you heard him and you must have seen who blew the bomb up.  It doesn’t matter who did, anymore, only that they did.  It is now up to you to remember where the SDI program is run from and to disarm it.  If the SDI program is non-operational, then, perhaps, the USA can force the USSR to see sense.  You need to remember where the program runs from.  And you must disarm it.”
         “The missiles are primed to launch, on both sides, in just under thirty-nine hours and, believe me, unless you can disarm Star Wars, they will launch.  And America will fall.  I have never seen a country facing so much desperation and hopelessness.  And, now, Jake, it all depends on you.  The survival of mankind depends on you.  The freedom of the Western world now depends on you.  I know that you do not want to be so – believe me when I say that none of us want it to be so – but it is and so we have to accept that and we have to help you remember.”
         “Jake; about the bomb in the White House.  Your body was found just outside the window of the Oval Office.  You were unscathed but unconscious.  You have severe brain damage; the worst case I have seen in my entire career, and I have had bad cases, Jake.  The entire American army is putting pressure on me to have you killed.  They think you did it.  Don’t argue with me.  I don’t think you did but you must know something.  We, I, you need you to remember.  Jake, if you can remember and help us, then you may escape the US Army alive.  You’d be a hero.  My warning for you, Jake, is to be careful.  Don’t do anything stupid; you will be killed without hesitation.  The US Army have twitchy trigger fingers without some brain damaged lunatic causing chaos throughout America.  Try and get some rest, Jake.  Look through the images.  Try to remember. You must.”