Bacon approved of the way the head of AP-Janus was going about his explanation. Unfortunately, the director knew what was coming next.

“But the situation has changed,” he said, completing Eighty’s thread. “Our treatment is no longer effective.”

Taking another sip of Scotch, Bacon worked to keep his emotions in check. After years of probing and experimenting, of whittling away at obstacles and taking baby steps toward the ultimate goal—specifically a threat Congress and the president could not dismiss—they finally had the technology to complete the mission, to fulfill the dream. There had to be a way to overcome this setback.

“Precisely,” Eighty said. “The challenge, as you so aptly put it, is that the Janus strain is simply too good.”

“Too good?” Forty-four asked.

Forty-four was a highly decorated retired admiral, now a U.S. senator from Rhode Island. His responsibility was to keep his identity a secret, while brokering the bargain with the government that was at the heart of the Janus project. Nine was assisting him, and until this unexpected development, they had been close—extremely close—to pulling it off. The spawn of Roosevelt’s New Deal was on the verge of being erased, and Lancaster Hill’s vision was about to become reality.

America would no longer be held hostage by its government, and the country would begin to flourish, freed at last from the financial shackles of entitlements. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would become anachronistic symbols of America’s parasitic, destructive social welfare policies. The staggering national debt would shrink like a bank of spring snow. Only those who could afford it would ever be admitted to a hospital.

“First of all,” Eighty said, “the spread of infection has gone beyond our predications. Then, when we tried to pull back while the powers in Washington were considering our offer, we discovered that Janus had become resistant to our treatment.”

“Explain yourself,” Forty-four said.

“Nine is keeping track of all of the reported cases of infection.”

“I’ll patch it onto the screen,” the head of strategy and logistics said.

A map of America appeared on the screen. There were red dots in most of the states—each dot, according to the map’s key, representing an infection with the media-dubbed Doomsday Germ.

“This map is from twenty months ago,” Nine said. “Every one of these infections were placed by one of the people we enlisted to assist us with this aspect of AP-Janus. They are all reliable, and fully support our philosophy and goals. Now, here is a map from nine months ago. We expected some contagion, and that is what we are seeing here. At this point, Health and Human Services Secretary Goodings asked us to pull back and have our people treat the infection with our system of antibiotics until she could meet with the president. That’s when the trouble began.”