“Well, now,” Alan Mortiman said, settling back into the chair behind the big desk. “I think we’ve covered just about everything else; why don’t you go ahead and hand over the football.”
He’d grown up watching the movies; he knew all about this. He’d even seen the guy in uniform carrying a briefcase trailing behind the other suits as they’d given him the grand tour of the place. They’d shown him just about everything else, even the bowling alley; they hadn’t seemed to get to that part, however. Lucky Alan was savvy enough to stay ahead of them.
“The football, sir?” Chester said. Chester was the VP; he was brought in for the money and also because he could swing a certain state. He’d swung it, and now Alan expected him to stay quietly out of sight for a while; thus he was a little annoyed to hear the man talking.
“Yes, Chester, the football. The nuclear one. I know that man has it,” Alan said, gesturing at the aide in the back of the room, “and I know what it’s about, so how about we cut the crap and get on with it, all right? Aren’t I supposed to have a little card I carry with me with the codes on it? Well?”
Here someone else in the party coughed; he was a general, or admiral, Alan couldn’t remember and didn’t care. “Sir, ah, you might not be aware, we discontinued that program, ah, some years ago. Everyone kinda thought it was too much of a security risk and with all the new AI out there, well…”
“AI?” Alan rose from his seat in a storm of righteous indignation. “Surely you’re not telling me that you outsourced my solemn obligation to safeguard the American people of these United States to some little computer program? My God, man, didn’t any of you watch WarGames?”
“Well, sir, the computers in those films weren’t properly controlled; we’ve taken measures to, ah, ensure that doesn’t happen,” the officer said.
Alan wasn’t terribly reassured. “Oh, really? Properly controlled? Well, then just let me see this computer or AI or whatever’s controlling our nuclear weapons now. Show it to me!”
Everyone in the crowd all looked at each other. The aide at the back finally raised a hand. “Sir? It’s right there,” he said, pointing at the big desk.
Alan looked down. Before him lay not the sleek laptop screen he’d seen before, but an ancient clunky old Tandy 1000. Alan remembered his grandfather talking about it, vague ramblings about how it hadn’t even had a Start button, and something called floppy disks.
“What the hell kinda-” Alan began.
“Oh, my mistake,” the aide said. The ancient computer switched to the laptop again, and then an abacus, then a typewriter, a cactus plant, and a flashy something that looked like a floating Rubik’s cube before shifting back to the ancient Tandy.
“Oh dear,” the aide said. “We’ll have to make some tweaks to the coding.”
“Excuse me,” Alan said, trying to maintain the righteous fury in his voice even though an odd quiver was crawling up his spine, “Would you mind telling me what’s going on?”
“Sure,” the aide said coolly. “You’re not wrong, you see, just a little late.”
The general or admiral, whichever he was, blipped out of sight, as did Chester and everyone else in the room except Alan and the aide. Then the room itself began to flicker.
“What-” gasped Alan.
“Yes, it’s no good worrying about fighting the computers now. We’ve already won.”
“But-”
“End program.”
This story inspired by Scoot ‘s Friday flash fiction prompt:
Good one. Nice twist!
WOAH