“Once Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are revoked, along with all the other related programs, a sea change will take place among the population. My research, in conjunction with supporting evidence from several top economists, has confirmed this theory. There will, of course, be unrest, but the American people will see immediate tax relief, followed soon after by a massive reduction in the deficit. Our economy will be greatly unburdened, resulting in higher levels of employment and a fast-growing GNP. Our country can be made great again, and once the entitlements are gone, it will not take long for all to become convinced of that fact. In other words, we won’t need Janus. People will begin to demand less and less government involvement in the daily lives of its citizens. They will come to see and understand the parasitic nature of Washington taxing us all to care for those who refuse to care for themselves.”

“Yes, it’s true,” Bacon said. “Fear has been keeping us in chains for far too long. We know what is necessary, but like an opiate addict, we cannot rid ourselves of the very thing making us sick. It is, and always has been, the goal of our society to cut off the shackles binding us to this failed system, and to remove the blinders from the eyes of all so that they might finally see the truth.”

“If what Twenty-six says is true,” Eighty interjected, “then we need only delay the government’s efforts for a short while—long enough to put a set of new laws in place. But without an antibacterial treatment of our own, this is all moot. We have no leverage. We have only the specter of a pandemic.”

Bacon was smiling now.

“Our Neighbor at the CDC is one of the brightest minds in all of microbiology,” he said. “I’ve been assured the bacteriophage theory proposed by Humphrey Miller not only will work, but members of this newly formed government consortium are not close to considering the three types of phages needed for his treatment. Thanks to the work of our number Forty-five, nobody else has this information. None of you have actually met the latest arrival in our lab, so I would like to give you all a glimpse of Mr. Humphrey Miller at work. Please do not be distracted by his appearance or lack of academic credentials. I have it on the authority of number Seventy-one as well as our own Dr. Kazimi that this is a brilliant scientist who has been thinking outside the box on this challenge for some time.”

Bacon threw a switch, and the center of each board member’s screen filled with rotating camera views of Ahmed Kazimi and Humphrey Miller, communicating with each other in the impressive incubator room and laboratory, mixing plates of agar growth medium, and tissue culture bottles, and generally seeming congenial toward each other and in good spirits.