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agent he wanted as a partner. The conversation descended
quickly into an argument when Elias told him he was going in alone. Elias had prevailed.
    The tech arrived with the communication device, gave Elias a quick lesson, and hastily departed,
clearly uncomfortable with the tension level in the room. The final disagreement arose, as it inevitably
did, over the subject of transportation to Arizona. Faulk was in a hurry, as he always was, and told Elias
that a jet was already standing by at Andrews Air Force Base. As Elias demurred, telling Faulk that a
perfectly good train traveled the route, Faulk exploded, his ranting interrupted by Marilyn, who tapped
twice on Faulk's door and entered.
    Acting as though she were oblivious to her boss's suspended tantrum, she handed an envelope to
Elias and said, "You're all set. You leave on the Crescent tonight at six-thirty."
    Hearing this, Faulk sputtered before saying, "Elias, it's going to take you three days to get there. I
can have you on the ground at Davis-Monthan in three hours!"
    Elias thanked Marilyn and turned to Faulk, a hint of a smile on his face. "So?"
    Marilyn winked at him and left.
    "This assignment was requested from the very top. I'm supposed to go tell him you hopped on a
slow-moving train to Arizona?"
    "Honestly, Richard, I don't give a damn what you tell him. You picked me. You know how I travel.
If you want someone there in three hours, send someone else."
    The images of the unpleasant discussion still lingered in his mind as Elias saw the first hints of the
lush swamp lands which would be his view for the balance of this leg of the journey. The club car was
nearly half full with passengers, mostly refugees from the coach cars: a group of four men placidly
sipping their drinks and playing cards, a family with several small children who were running up and
down the center aisle, whooping and shouting, the cacophony they raised no doubt dampening the
reverie of an elderly couple who were seated side by side, facing a window. Other than Elias, the couple
seemed to be the only occupants who were attempting to experience the minutiae of a train ride through
the bayou.
    He returned his gaze to the window and tried, once again, to visualize what he was going to
encounter inside Aegis. No one really knew how many people were in residence. Actually, Elias realized,
that was not completely true. With the existence of the entrance surveillance camera, which was divulged
to him only yesterday, he surmised that there probably was a head count, at least a tally of those who
had entered. That number was somewhere in the briefing papers he had yet to fully read. There were
two variables which would affect the reliability of that number as any sort of a basis for the current
population. The first, of course, would be deaths. The second, and this was one of the many things
William Walker never contemplated in his emotional rush to open Aegis, would be births.
    It seemed obvious, in retrospect, that if you put men and women together anywhere, offspring were
going to result. However, the enabling legislation creating the institution did not acknowledge this reality
and failed to address what to do with these children. It was presumed that the parents understood the
ramifications of what they were getting into when they checked in. They knew that one of the inviolable
terms of entrance was that it was a one-way ticket. But the children…were they to spend their entire
lives inside the walls of Aegis? They had no voice in the decision.
    This, along with a multitude of other issues, was grist for public debates, position papers, and
think-tank studies. The public was constantly reminded that the core concept of Aegis was that the net
effect of choosing to enter was, from the perspective of society, equivalent to death. There could be no
contact, no communication; in no way could anyone who was inside have even the slightest effect on
the external world.
    So, in the twisted logic of the