Smallville: Annual

Chapter 33

4/17/05 - 6:00PM  - Conference Room  - Fort Riley, KS

"... and that is pretty much it sir." said Diana.

        The whole room inside the conference room was terribly quiet as the room which included General Sam Lane, General Michaels, Colonel Ironsides, a recovered Colonel Napier, Major Hardy, Major Charles, Steve Trevor and herself had just finished reporting to the White House briefing room shown on a monitor at the far end of the room.

        Present in the briefing room where several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including General Wilson, General Swanwick, the present-day General Hardcastle and Chief-of-Staff General Blankenship.  They were seated alongside the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States.

"Well darlin,'"  said the President in a slow drawl. "I think we can pretty much say that several of the men here and over there with you have made some seriously bad judgment calls in regards to what has happened these past couple of days.  Least of all me.  I gave the go ahead believing in the possibility of a threat. I all but allowed it to happen.

I can't say how sorry we are for what has happened and can only hope that poor kid recovers."

        Diana looked pleased hearing the words of the president.  She looked around the table in the room she was in as she noticed how certain men were looking particularly humbled.  The most humbled was General Lane as he sat nursing a bullet in his knee.  Despite the no smoking rule the president acquiesced to Diana's request to allow General Lane to smoke.  He took a very calm puff of his cigar as he seemed to exhale some of his pain.  But none of the pain from what he had seen from Diana's computer had done any better to realize how terrible he had reacted to the futuristic version of his best friend. 

"So what happens now miss." said the President.

"Right now I activate this computer that identifies through a pulse a sound that keys into your position.  The previous Hardcastle used this to identify himself and transmit the histories of Kal-El's family.  When the tone has set it will key them back toward my computer. 

Within this gold ring that I carry right now I will be able to selectively remove the memories you have seen concerning the future General Hardcastle as well as Kal-El and myself."

"So basically you'd be eliminating all our memories of the events."

"Exactly. Along with every single digital message, search and history."

Both rooms were quiet for a while until back at the White House the President spoke up again.

"And exactly what will I or any of us be doing for the rest of the day to explain what we did with that knowledge."

"Have any of you met anyone with Alzheimer's or any form of dementia? Eventually you'll move forward with the rest of your day without being the wiser.  Once done you'll fill the blank with other memories that didn't consume the rest of your day.  You'll concentrate working on the budget or military related activity, the men on this base will completely believe the story about having electrical problems and you will all continue to move on without being the wiser."

As soon as Diana finished she then saw the Secretary of Defense speak up. 

"Now wait a minute miss.  You just can't make us to forget this.  We have every right to know about stuff like this.  Just because.."

"Wow!"  Diana feigned surprise.  "You arguing about the merits of not keeping secrets, how ironic!"

The secretary ignored her sarcasm and tried to continue.  "What gives you the right to tell us what we can or can't know?! How will we be able to defend ourselves if something like this happens again?"