The Big Ones

Chapter Three: Fallout

Main Conference Room, Treasury Building, Washington D.C.

It was the worst day of Paul H. O'Neill's life. For 24 hours since the National Security Council emergency meeting, he had remained in the Treasury Building with the rest of the full-time staff of the Department of Treasury. He spent most of the time responding to frantic calls from government officials and titans of industry alike.

He had to coordinate with State to discuss emergency funding for the millions of tourists, foreign workers, and foreign residents who effectively were left penniless or took a severe buzzcut as their overseas bank accounts disappeared over an hour. He held a conference call with the nation's major hotel chains to mandate the extension of stays of any non-American guests at their minimum service levels to prevent mass homelessness on America's streets with an assurance that reimbursement would be included in the rapidly growing economic omnibus package due to be presented in the House by Thursday.

Massive amounts of money would be shuffled from the Central Bank into the financial system to prevent a run as panicked investors saw their foreign currency holdings devalue into oblivion and the stock indexes crash to their maximum before the emergency breaks cut off trading.

Another conference call was made with America's premier technology giants to get estimations of how long they could continue to manufacture their products with their input supply chain being cut off: two months was the answer as that was how much material was either on the containers floating just off the coast or in warehouses right now.

For the automotive industry, the lines of their new electric cars would also have to shut down after two months and be sadly slowly converted back to making regular combustion models. General Motors and Tata Motors North America had both called to ask for his input on a proposed absorption of Tata, which had been previously steadily increasing both market share and local manufacturing, by GM to secure access to American suppliers to replace the Indian components of many Tata models.

Pretty much the only industry that was thriving now was the personal firearms industry, as people went in droves to buy their first guns.

He had barely slept for about 2 hours before waking up to sign off on one of many stacks of paper piled up on the conference room table. He walked over to the fridge and grabbed what he realized was the last can of Coke in the mini-fridge. The price of each can of Coke was about to skyrocket, and at the rate of the Treasury's spending, Secretary O'Neill realized that soon everyone in the department would be drinking Pepsi.

The Oval Office, White House, Washington D.C.

Bush watched as one of the many White House staff members restocked up the mini-fridge.

"I humbly thank you for taking some of your precious time to meet with me in person, Mister President," said Edward Neville Isdell, CEO of The Coca-Cola Company.

"It's my pleasure to help out one of our most iconic companies, Mister Isdell."

"Please call me Edward if you would like, Mister President."

Bush wondered if he was not being too impulsive when he decided to accept the request for a relatively short meeting with the businessman. An entire truck full of Coca-Cola had arrived at the White House with the man, and he briefly considered the faint and ridiculous possibility of being the first politician to be charged with corruption over being bribed by soft drinks now selling at five dollars per can. "Well then, Edward, what was this about the need to modify Coca-Cola's exclusive license over something? I'll admit, despite my assistant Naamah's best earlier explanations, I've simply been too exhausted to remember everything."

"Well, Mister President, The Coca-Cola Company maintains the exclusive license to import coca leaves into the United States. As you know, with all the media reports hyping it up, we can no longer fulfill our supply demands to make Co... Coca-Cola by sourcing the leaves from South America. I'll be honest with you, Mister President. We have failed to make a viable alternative without using the leaf extracts. They all tasted off and too much like... Well, you get the point. Without the plant, Coca-Cola will never taste the same. Recently, I became aware that a mid-west federal-funded agricultural research center is growing coca plants in greenhouses. The Coca-Cola Company wishes to expand our license from importing to growing coca plants using some specimens from the research center. While it won't help us in the short term, it will at least ensure our long-term recovery. Of course, we'll take great care in ensuring security and preventing the abuse of such an exemption to federal law."