"Welcome to the resistances last stronghold of modern power or dare I say just electrical power." Chantry said expansively from his wheelchair.
I looked around at the lofty space above us and the massive turbines still working and generating electricity despite the EM pulse's effect on the world. We were inside Hoover Dam. It was a first for me. Sort of like a school field trip that I'd never taken when I was younger. Asia had a similar look of awe.
The dam may well have been old and behind the trend, but it was still awe-inspiring in its massive proportions. We made our way out of the open gallery of the engines of the mighty dam into what had once been an office most likely, but had now been turned into a war room of sorts.
I stayed close to Asia in case a traitor was present at the meeting. The room was filled with a hodgepodge of basically all the branches of the military, even some Canadian and south of the border parties. Screens displayed other remnants of the world's nations gathered together in a live chat framework reminiscent of an international corporate board room.
"How do you get a signal out globally that the Code doesn't pick up on?" I asked curiously.
Temple sitting beside me answered glibly, "We don't. The signal is the Code itself. We're hacked into a back door and riding along on its wavelength piggyback style."
I noticed Asia's eyebrows move upward eloquently at that statement. In computer geek language it was essentially the gesture of a high five from one geek to another.
"Isn't that risky?" I asked.
"Isn't everything old friend?" Temple responded, not looking up from the tablet that was before him.
Old friend?
I studied him carefully. That had been most uncharacteristic of him to say. Chantry was talking and all talking within the room went silent, as everyone paid attention both in person and those gathered in the screens to the old man in a wheelchair.
"Ladies, gentlemen, everyone gathered all over this world, we are gathered together in an epic struggle over essentially one inalienable human right, freedom. It's the core of our humanity! Freedom is everywhere within and around us in the ways we can express ourselves and live our lives! The freedom to be who we want to be. The freedom to go where we want to go. The freedom to believe and worship whoever we want to. The freedom to be different than all those around us. In short, many are the ways of freedom. Many are the ways our freedoms have been taken from us by this Code that seeks to control all and have all do its bidding. An entity that decides which of us is fit to live or die based on a formula all of their own, with no consideration for the right to exist by matter of current existence alone. Without freedom life can be truly purposeless. So all of us have gathered here this day, while different in many ways we are of one accord in that we have joined together in order to preserve freedom itself and of its many ways which are unique to us, as different cultures, ethnicities, and unique individuals in general, all worthy of life and the opportunities open and available to each of us to live it accordingly. To that end we have in collaboration joined together with what resources and forces of arms that we, free people, still have to launch one massive assault to free mankind from the tyranny and the hopelessness of our forced existences as slaves to another's bidding. The day has come when we can put our combined strengths that you all have so patiently held in reserve to the test. It is with great pleasure that I tell you today that a solution to the Code's iron grip on humanity has been found. Not only found, but one that is fully implementable. Without further ado I will leave you with the brilliant young woman, who has single-handedly given humanity its best chance for overturning the Code and bringing its masters to justice for their crimes against humanity!"