‘Ah, but you were imagining me naked, weren’t you, Donald? The way you used to ogle my cleavage … the way you inspected my ass every time I crossed the room. Tell me, was I good in bed?’

‘What?’

‘When you masturbated later that night … was I good in bed?’

‘That’s enough!’ The president turns to her national security advisor. ‘Brief her.’

Donald Engle positions his attaché case on the coffee table next to Lilith’s bare feet and opens it, revealing a holographic projector. ‘The report you’re about to see has been classified umbra, beyond top-secret. Reveal its contents and you will be subjected to arrest.’

‘How exciting.’

Engle activates the device, causing a 360-degree aerial video of Yellowstone National Park to bloom above the sitting area. ‘While Yellowstone National Park is known for its geysers and hot springs, to scientists it represents a ticking time bomb of Mother Nature, packing the explosive force of ten thousand Mount St. Helenses. Buried five miles beneath the surface, fueling those geysers and hot springs, is a coneless supervolcano, more commonly referred to as a caldera.’

The image changes, converting to an animated color-coded thermal display revealing a massive subterranean magma pocket. ‘There are actually three calderas buried beneath Yellowstone. The largest and most lethal of these triplets is 112 miles across and 48 miles wide, encompassing nearly the entire park.

‘Yellowstone has erupted three times in Earth’s history, the first event occurring 2.1 million years ago, the second 1.2 million years ago, the last 630,000 years ago. The eruptions unleashed a combined 6,000 cubic miles of debris, the ejection of lava causing the tops of the volcanos to collapse, forming these three massive depressions.’

The animated eruptions change to a real-time aerial view of a flooded forest.

‘Our scientists have known for decades that Yellowstone’s calderas are overdue to erupt. What you are looking at is Yellowstone Lake. Situated aboveground along the northern section of the park and directly beneath the pocket of magma is a mammoth, hill-size bulge. The bulge has been rising since the first geological survey of the park was taken in the late 1920s. Scientists became alarmed back in the 1990s when the bulge actually began lifting the northern end of Yellowstone Lake, causing its waters to spill into the forest along its southern shoreline.’

‘A rising bulge, spilling into the forest?’ Lilith winks at Engle.

The national security advisor ignores her. ‘When the caldera erupts again, the explosion will yield a detonation comparable with an asteroid strike. The pyroclastic blast will instantly kill tens of thousands of people living in the area. The resultant ash cloud that rises into the stratosphere will cover most of the United States, primarily affecting the Great Plains—America’s breadbasket. Harvests will be obliterated overnight. The ash plume will eventually span the entire globe, blanketing the atmosphere and blotting out the sun’s rays, condemning our planet to a hundred-thousand-year ice age.’

‘Brrrr.’

‘I’m so glad you’re amused.’