Read Collapse for Free Online Page B

in the next room.  Elizabeth knew from the day she met Maxwell that he was an addict; she had seen it before with her brother-in-law after his back surgery.  While Max functioned well in his job; the pills never affected his performance. In fact, the chief was the smartest man Elizabeth had ever met.  He was brilliant, resourceful, and had an encyclopedic knowledge of just about everything.  It was a shame, though, that he was also lazy and had no ambition to do anything more with his life.  Max was only forty-three, but the way the grumpy bastard acted he might as well have been thirty years older.
     
    Elizabeth obeyed her boss, heading home for some much needed rest. After changing into her pajamas, Elizabeth plopped down on the couch with her frisky little cat, Callie, and grabbed the remote to check out what was going on in the world. She flipped the channels until she found the latest update on Hurricane Maxine.  What she saw made her push the cat off her lap and get dressed.
     
    "Sorry kitty." Elizabeth pushed the brown and orange cat off her lap.  "Momma's gotta go back to work.  Something tells me the boss ain't gonna be happy.”
     

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    President Malcolm Powers sat at his desk in the Oval Office deep in thought.  He was facing the most important decision of his second term.  He knew that whatever he decided to do, many would consider it the wrong choice.  His actions in the next twenty-four hours would have lasting repercussions that would be studied in the history books for centuries to come.  One choice would make him hated by his own country, the other hated by the entire world.  There was no middle ground.  To help him arrive at his decision, he had done a lot of research on the end of the Second World War.  More specifically, he studied President Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Malcolm truly believed that no president in the nation’s history had ever had to make a tougher choice.  If Truman had not dropped the atomic bombs, the only remaining option was an invasion into the heart of the Empire of Japan along the shores of the island of Honshu.  Such an invasion would result in catastrophic losses.  Having the means to prevent it, Truman could not allow countless American lives to be lost. On the other hand, saving American lives came at the cost of taking Japanese lives and ushering the world into the Atomic Age.  Malcolm wondered if Truman had any idea that his decision would result in the terrifying stalemate that would be the Cold War.
     
    The president felt he could give Truman a run for his money when it came to making a tough call.
     
    “Sir, the attendants of your next meeting are waiting for you in the Clinton Room,” a smooth talking female voice spoke from the ceiling.
     
    “Thank you,” the president replied.  The A.I. program installed by his longtime friend, Howard Beck, was probably the first controversy of his short political career.  The press had a field day with it.  The American public blew the entire thing out of proportion.  Many feared the A.I. would somehow overthrow the president and attack mankind like Skynet did in  The Terminator .  Others demanded it be removed for fear of it being hacked by Iran or North Korea.  The experts knew just how impossible it was to hack into one of Beck Enterprises’ world-famous A.I.s.  Tech giants all over the world tried every day to understand how the system worked, and none were even close.   The technology was decades ahead of its time.  The A.I.s gave the appearance of sentience; attempting to hack into one was like putting a knife to a person’s throat. It was hardly something that could be done without the A.I. realizing what was going on. The industry had predicted that true interactive A.I. was at least a decade away.  Howard Beck proved them wrong.  The final criticism about the White House A.I. was the only one that had any