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Kennedy would die on November 22, 1963. He had four days to work out a succession plan smooth enough to steady a shaken world.
    But there were bigger geopolitical treasures to mine. Outcomes could not be altered but large events that included fatalities could be predicted. If you could predict large events you could plan around them, budget for them, set policy, perhaps soften their blow or exploit their outcome. Ever-more-powerful computers processed data around the clock, searching for worldwide patterns. Area 51 analysts predicted the Korean War, the Chinese purges under Mao, the Vietnam War, Pol Pot in Cambodia, the Gulf Wars, September 11, famines in Africa, natural disasters like floods and tsunamis. When Pakistan and India each launched a single nuclear missile against each other on March 25, 2023 resulting in over half a million casualties, the US government was as prepared for the disaster as humanly possible.
    And from the moment the Library was discovered, the secrecy and integrity of the database was paramount. Because of that, the watchers were supreme. Their prime job was assuring that the existence of the database was never leaked and that the United States never lost its first-mover advantage. Furthermore, they were charged with keeping a tight lid on individual pieces of data. There were enormous concerns about what might occur if the public had access to any of it. Would society become altered or even paralyzed if people knew the day they were going to die—or their wife, or their parents or children or friends? Would whole segments of the population succumb to a predeterminist funk and drop out of their productive routines thinking, what’s the point, everything’s already been decided? Would criminals commit more crimes if they knew they weren’t going to be killed on the day. All manner of unpleasant scenarios were on the table.
    Over the years, the watchers kept the drum sealed. Yes, there were isolated incidents of an analyst here, a research assistant there, violating confidentiality and looking up the name of a family member or an enemy—and these incidents were dealt with in the most draconian ways, including, it was rumored, assassination, but there had never been anything like the Shackleton affair.
    Post-Shackleton, there had been a shake-up—more of a purge, really—among the ranks of the watchers. Even more layers of security were added. Shackleton had been a high-level programmer, an expert in database security, a fox very much inside the chicken coop. The hole he exploited to purloin the database was plugged. But the US database was already out of their control, in the hands of
The Washington Post
’s lawyers. For that reason the government conductedthe largest cyberinvestigation in its history to ascertain that the
Post
’s copy from Will Piper was the only one in existence. When the copy was returned following the Supreme Court ruling in the government’s favor, Area 51 was confident the situation had been contained. And in the years that followed, Kenney lived up to the potential that Malcolm Frazier had recognized in him and steadily rose through the ranks of the watchers until he got the promotion that put him behind Frazier’s old desk.
    Sage’s secretary answered her phone. “The admiral will see you now,” she told Kenney.
    Admiral Sage had a full beard. He was a portly throwback to the naval officers of a bygone era and seemed better suited to a nineteenth-century world of sailing the bounding main in brass buttons and gold braid than being a technocrat in the modern military.
    He told Kenney to sit and grumbled at him, “You don’t want my job, Kenney. Believe me, you don’t want it.”
    “No, sir, I don’t.”
    “I mean, I come here with the expectation it’s going to be a plum assignment: I preside over the last few years of database functionality, I mothball the base, send the Library packing to the Smithsonian, pick up my second star, and if the goddamned