CHAPTER 9
ADMIRAL BECKWOURTH
Admiral J.P. Beckwourth ran one of the Navy’s most successful recruiting campaigns. Perhaps this wasn’t too surprising because his family owned one of the largest public relations firms in the Los Angeles area. As a public relations prodigy as a young man, he delivered two multimillion-dollar accounts to the family business at the age of eighteen.
His parents were devastated when he left the firm to join the Navy. His namesake, a relative several generations removed, never received deserved recognition for serving his country. This remained a sore point with the family. However, Beckwourth made good use of his PR talents and rose rapidly up the ranks. Now, after nearly thirty years in the Navy, they were proud of “our son, the Admiral.” In the public relations arena of swaying opinion, he followed one rule—find what people want and deliver it.
Admiral Beckwourth had a problem. Only a few days previous, he was recruited to the directorship of ASC public relations. His duties now included curing all accumulated headaches of ASC.
Previously as a non-ASC naval officer, he ran some successful propaganda campaigns for the High Council. During the same period, internally produced ASC propaganda efforts were failures. His vocal criticisms of those programs, coupled with his successes, earned him an offer to become an ASC member.
He was now privy to all behind-the-scenes machinations, and only then were his eyes opened. The added knowledge was horrifying. When ASC High Council members approached him, they were concerned with his reaction, or perhaps, loyalty.
Other public relations leaders had declined recruitment and ASC extremely desired the Admiral’s expertise. The recruiters needed not worry. The Admiral was a master at grasping the big picture. As the ASC master plan was unveiled, he easily made his choice. He realized he’d be required to do disturbing, morally reprehensible activities while accomplishing his goal. ASC made clear his only option was to succeed, and in this goal, he was in total agreement.
New information made him realize he’d have to revamp all of his original opinions and strategies. Ignorance, or even willful ignorance, allows for rejection of responsibility. Knowledge obliges burden of duty. It was clear the task was to be borne on his shoulders alone.
The High Council members who brought him onboard said, “These are our goals. This is what’s not happening; now fix it. Our survival, and now yours, depends on it!”
Admiral Beckwourth had little respect for politicians. The current situation cemented his views. However, this was a world crisis of a singular nature. He guessed in an odd way he should be grateful he was chosen because no one else inside ASC was capable of performing the responsibility he accepted on himself.
The government’s Run, Hide, Do No Harm campaign was a miserable failure. Even though ASC completely controlled the press and their propaganda fund made presidential campaign budgets appear to be pocket change, only fifteen percent of the population embraced it. Seventy percent remained undecided, but could be swayed. Using the incessantly played ASC chant, “Save our children, don’t assault airwars,” he maintained shaky support. The problem was the remaining fifteen percent were strong individualists. Not only were they opposed to centralized world government, nearly all militias’ ranks came from this group. Furthermore, the militias were responsible for ninety-nine percent of attacks on airwars. Thanks to the Internet, militias organized quickly after the first airwar appearance.
The hastily formed ASC wisely decided not to call their leadership a “world government,” although essentially it served as such. Their biggest challenge was their inability to rein in the militias. Countries like North Korea and China, which controlled Internet locally, didn’t have an issue. However, in free countries, ASC couldn’t censor the Internet as they did radio and television.
Before the crisis, the Admiral considered governmental interference with the Internet a direct attack on freedom. He always feared the general public wouldn’t fully recognize the Internet’s importance as a pillar of liberty and would lackadaisically cede control to pernicious government regulations. Ironically, with the admiral assuming his current position, the Internet had become a giant pain in the ass for him.
ASC clearly wanted him to reduce militias’ attacks on airwars. This was currently their top priority. The admiral smiled to himself. The extraordinary ability of militias to avoid ASC-controlled military campaigns served to make ASC more dependent on a public relations alternative.
The admiral sat at his computer doing data crunching. He needed something militias wanted, supplementary to what he could provide now. He was looking for a bargaining chip to influence their behavior, but he wasn’t sure what militias craved.
As columns of data streamed across the screen, he noticed a couple of aberrations on the hourly attack on airwar numbers. There were two significant drops in militia attacks on airwars, each for a few hours. It was a worldwide effect. Why was that? He tried to correlate this to releases of different ASC propaganda ads, but there were no causal relationships to dips.
Oddly, he found a direct correlation to the media account of Ube Watabee’s capture and exposure of his immunity hoax. He knew the account was an outright lie because he wrote the report himself. However, the dip in militia activity didn’t make sense. Why would this particular headline make militias less likely to attack? The admiral reasoned it must be something else. He double-checked his data, but it remained the only event correlating to the drop.
He paged Captain Howe in the data room. The data room had fifty staff members continuously crunching numbers for any trends the admiral might need. “Howe, get me the most commonly searched word on the Internet during dips on airwar attacks.”
Only moments later, Captain Howe’s voice came over the phone with a one-word response, “Ube.”
The admiral frowned. The answer was clearly Ube and he kept trying to reframe the question to understand the answer. Coming up blank, he did a routine check of ongoing stats. He was shocked. Current attacks on airwars had suddenly bottomed out. Worldwide, it was the lowest hourly attack count yet.
He was exhilarated. He knew he’d get credit for the drop even though it wasn’t his doing, nor had he a clue to the cause.
He checked the news; no breaking stories and nothing on Ube. Plus, anything new would have crossed his desk long before airing. He looked again at the Ube numbers. He noticed the Ube report release time was at the nadir of the second dip. The plunge in attacks started hours before. He then had a thought; if it’s not our media, it must be the Internet.
Admiral Beckwourth logged onto a highly visited, but “illegal” anti-airwar blog. He selected the most recently posted video. A man was emerging from the water, and a collapsed airwar floated in the background.
While he was viewing the video, Colonel Vickers entered the admiral’s office. Colonel Vickers, assigned by the Air Force to aid Beckwourth during the crisis, was a no-nonsense military type. He wasn’t an ASC member, nor was anyone else under Admiral Beckwourth’s command. The colonel rarely spoke and never smiled, but he followed orders with military precision.
The colonel looked to be in his mid-forties. He maintained a short-cropped military haircut with beginnings of gray showing in the temples. He kept himself in good shape, and appeared not the type one would want to pick a fight with in a bar.
The admiral motioned to Vickers to join him watching the video, but before he could walk around the desk, the admiral’s phone rang. Beckwourth checked the caller ID, then answered.
“Yeah, I’m watching the video now. Did he actually kill it?”
Colonel Vickers, privy to only the admiral’s side of the conversation, stood silently.
“Any word on how he did it?”
“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch! If we’d all known that in the beginning, maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
Colonel Vickers began to move to the door, but the admiral held up a finger, indicating he wanted him