The two men continued their strange elevator promenade along the vertical shafts of the tall Berlin skyscraper. Emilio's plan was working. He had designed his tower with one goal in mind, so in a matter of minutes, he could save time. Seven years ago, ordering the construction of this building had been controversial as his first executive action. But deep within, he knew he had to do it. He felt one day, time would be of essence, maybe it was today.

The one thing the President hated more than elevators was entering a train, a plane or worse a space ship. He liked walking on the sidewalk looking at cars coming his way; that was safe. Each of the hundred floors of the Berlin Tower was designed to address one of a list of special needs. With all his power, even with years of hard work, the only thing Emilio was unable to move into the tower was his beloved Johnny Rocket's. The burger joint was located blocks away and his table was reserved.

“Last stop?”

“Promise.”

He was minutes away from the burger and could even smell it. One last stop was standing between him and his food.

Patrick was surprised that Emilio's phone had not rung in over half an hour. It almost seemed like the President had left it in his office on the top floor. The change in pace was refreshing. Emilio generally acted like an impolite teenager, constantly looking at a small screen and taking calls in mid-sentence. To Patrick, Emilio was a different man today; he was lost in thought, as if he was playing some grandiose game of chess.

The Colonel knew his friend very well. Today was important.

The elevator doors opened on 58, in a strangely sterile laboratory. The floors were painted in white with colored lines guiding walkers over the white plastic veneer. This floor included air traps designed to confine poisons and other deadly viruses. The fact that this lab existed within the building was testament to the power of Emilio. To meet security standards, he had to agreed floors 56 to 60 would serve as a buffer to accidental contamination. Thus, they were left empty, in surpression. Floors 56 through 60 had their own independent oxygen, water, filtration, electricity, security such as fire traps... you name it. Here the walls were even reinforced enough to withstand the series of incendiary “cleansing” weapons that were scattered throughout each floor.

The only reason both men were allowed on the floor, off the elevator, without the proper confinement gear was because of Emilio's recent victory over his security detail. The President had made it clear that in case of an emergency, he needed quick, unconstrained access to information contained in these rooms. Tonight was the test of his theory. His damn tower had a lab designed to hold the plague, but had no cheeseburger. That would be Chapter One in his biography one day.

The President stepped off the elevator, still ruminating. Patrick was surprised that Emilio was now willing to subject himself to the protocol that was required to enter deep inside the labs. Normally, Emilio would have complained about the coats, the masks, and washing his hands. Today, like a zombie, he slipped plastic shoes over his own and put on the long lab overcoat.

After passing several sasses, they arrived at what was called Area 4. Here the walls were partly colored in blue, and each pipe or air duct was numbered with tape covered with numbers. Emilio and Patrick patiently waited within a confined area, as experts moved meticulously through the strictest of confinement protocol. It took both men nearly fifteen minutes to reach the inner lab where something dangerous awaited.

"I am not going to say it, but I will think it." The President said as had reemerged from his mental seclusion. A second later he continued, "But this is just ridiculous!" Emilio was not a patient man. Luckily they were there.

"We are sitting on some dangerous stuff in there. Its a new... "

Patrick wasn't given the opportunity to finish his sentence. "I know, I know. But this is fucking ridiculous."

"Sir, you're the one who insisted on storing some of the deadliest substances in existence inches away from your desk because driving a block was out of the question. If you ask me, this is actually rather accommodating."

"I am not asking you." The President knew he was acting like a spoiled brat. "This better be more important than my burger. You know how many people I just beat back there? That leaves a man hungry."

"We have pretzels, sir," volunteered a technician helping him to slip on a pair of gloves. After a dark look, Emilio made a mental note to fire the next person who suggested a pretzel could, in any way, serve as a substitute for a Johnny Rocket's cheeseburger.

The men finally reached the heart of Area 4. Four scientists were waiting for them. Each was wearing a different colored lab coat. This floor seemed larger than the last two, built with large plexiglass panels that allowed one to see multiple rooms from most vantages. This was a typical lab complex, everything was covered in shiny stainless steel. There were expensive beeping machines in every corner.

Area 4 was different. In the distance were metal tables and shelves filled with hundreds of cardboard boxes, all of which were stamped with martian shipping labels, boxes like the one next to the new body borrowed by Ronaldo Corvas in San Francisco. Four dozen Electoral globes, Marilyn's little commemorative gift to influential persons on earth, had been pulled out of half the boxes and were aligned on a table. In each, a cloud of red martian sand toyed with the little Marilyn Monroe figurine, making her upper torso dance in the red vortex. The items looked like snow globes without water to slow the red grains of sand.

"Any change to this poor guy?" asked Patrick to a scientist.

"Yes," said the physicist. The man turned to the President. "Mr. President, with respect, you should not be here, there is still a lockdown on the area. It has yet to be lifted. We still do not understand how the mind control devices work. We may all be in danger."

"See?" said Emilio to Patrick. "We should not be here."

The Colonel replied, "I want him to question the technician. The poor man is fine now, he can't stay here in captivity now that he appears to be cured. Maybe Emilio will find he be released. I can't that risk without the President's fully informed consent, and that includes a one-on-one with this poor kid."

"As much as I don't like the thought of our President being anywhere near these things, I am forced to agree. Your intuition might prove useful, sir," said the scientist. The lab, since the accident had not changed much. The blood of the poor victim had been wiped clean from the walls. A technician, victim of a mental takeover a week earlier, seemed now to be doing just fine. He was sitting politely at a table, surfing the internet on a tablet but shackled to the table.

Emilio had been briefed on the incident which nearly cost the life of several people. A month ago, Marilyn had taken it upon herself to send over a hundred globes filled with Martian sand to important individuals on Earth. The exportation of Martian sand was forbidden. The failure to secure proper approval was unlike her. Upon arrival on Earth, Emilio confiscated the loot and brought the hundred or so crates to this room. All the boxes were in the corner, at least he hoped.

"He seems normal now. What happened?" pointed the President through the glass.

"We have been able to reset the device. If you remember, when the man's unprotected hand touched a globe, the cloud of sand stopped swirling and fell to the base of the ball, lifeless. This man's mind snapped as if he was possessed by something that moved from the globe to his mind. Then, once we immobilized him, separating the man from the globe seems to cause him great pain. Once he was restrained, we brought the globe back into the room in his close proximity. That helped to calm his strange warped mind. Then we experimented. We tried many different stimuli on the globe and him. About five hundred of them, in total like wind, water, gas. Finally, one worked."

"Did you scan his brain? Any weird activity in the... hippocampus region?"

"We did look, and there was no real discernible activity. Any reason why? Should we look again?"

"No, not yet. Can I see him directly?"

Patrick pushed a button, and a portion of the wall lit with a screen. "This is what I wanted to show you," said Patrick to Emilio. The broadcast began with images from the floor's security feed. He saw the moment where the man's mind was infected. A lab technician was alone in one of these rooms. He was wearing a full hazmat suit, including thick gloves and a helmet. The man was struggling with his short knife as he opened the shipped boxes from Mars one after the other. The work was fastidious and repetitive. In each box there was a small brochure, a little thumb drive, and one of the globes. Each time the technician opened a box, he took pictures of what was inside and documented the contents on an audio log. The process was excruciatingly slow.

After unwrapping several dozen of the nearly hundred globes, he reached into another box, as he'd done so many times already. As he pulled the globe out, the sand was halted its inexorable swirling and dropped motionless to the base of the globe. The technician's hand gripped the globe as the rest of his body began convulsing. Within seconds, he was making weird noises, and with his other hand he began tearing away his protective gear.

Alarms rang, and security quickly arrived to subdue the technician. The fight that ensued was strange. The possessed man seemed animated by a mixture of confusion, pain, and rage. The other workers tried not to damage their protective suits as they easily overpowered the man with a stun-gun. This was not a satanic possession; instead, the man's reflexes were uncoordinated and erratic, as if his brain was not fully awake.

Then the video changed. This was a view of the same room, but the technician was now free of the protective gear and chained to a table. The man was alone, the globes were gone. He was wearing a t-shirt. He was sitting on a chair in front of a small table to which he was chained. The man's eyes were abnormal; it was as if he was possessed by some strange rage. His eyes were moving in all directions. He was handcuffed to the table on which was placed the lifeless globe. The proximity of the toy was the only thing that seemed to calm him down.

The video of past events concluded.

"Patrick, you now know why I don't let you decide where I go. Why is everyone obsessed with giving me information I already have?"

"You must have been a painful student to have in class. I pity your former teachers. Joking aside, this is what I wanted to show you." The images resumed, this time narrated by the scientist in the room.

In a nervous voice, the man began, "We commenced experimentation as soon as it became apparent that the subject was not going to simply 'snap out of it'. We introduced different stimuli in this closed environment in an effort to pinpoint stimuli to which the globe reacts," said the scientist as the footage was accelerated. In each test, a different substance was introduced. At first a light, then fruit, and even noise. The recording ran at highly accelerated speed for a few more seconds, and stopped as the scientist resumed his commentary. "Test number four fifty-nine. Magnetic fields."

The tester, wearing a fully enclosed chemical warfare suit, shuffled into the frame. Extreme precaution was taken by these scientists. The suit was airtight and had the characteristic extra bulge of body armor underneath. It was obvious that the men were afraid of the possessed man.

"No one told me about these tests?" Emilio asked rhetorically. Patrick ignored the comment. On the screen, the scientist pulled out a metal object coupled to a little electronic box and placed it on the table between the technician and the globe. The tester then reached into a pocket and pulled out a little vial filled with dark crystals. He unscrewed the cap and sprinkled the powder carefully on the table around the box and the globe.

For the first time, the possessed technician looked up at the second man in the room. His eyes were slightly different, more focused on the technician. The man in the suit skittishly drew back as far as he could.

The possessed man was only half awake, as if he were in a drugged state. Slowly, his mind seemed to emerge as though he was stepping out of a deep fog. Someone advanced the film to the next relevant portion. It took the man in the suit nearly twenty minutes to get out of the room while maintaining confinement protocol. These people were careful. Gradually, the sick man attached to the table was regaining movement and coherence. Even over a days-old video feed, there was a palpable miasma of foreboding present in the room.

Finally, the test began. Someone energized the little device on the table. It was an electromagnet designed to create wide-spectrum magnetic fields. As the field increased in power, the black ferric sand on the table shifted and slid toward the magnet to give visual evidence of the field. As if someone had just stabbed him with an icepick, the possessed technician's body gave a heave and then virtually seized with pain. He tried to grab his head with both hands, but the handcuffs held firm. The table was bolted to the floor.

"Stop," growled the possessed technician in a voice thick with some strange foreign accent. The magnet was turned off. Some of the black sand grains stuck to the sides of the magnet were demagnetized, and they dropped to the table as the pain in the man's head stopped.

"Please count to four," said a voice on the intercom.

"No." There was a pause, and the magnet was energized again. This time the magnetic field was lower. The reaction was milder; the man only cringed.

"Stop," said the possessed man on the video.

"Just count."

"No." The pain stopped as the magnet was once again de-energized.

After a pause, a voice in the video gave the order to resume the experiment. The field initially at 4 Tesla, then reduced to 2 Tesla would be increased to 5 Tesla. The scientists were running the protocol given to them like an allergy doctor performing a screening test. There were long pauses between each test, and slowly they increased the intensity of the field. To save the President time, someone kept fast-forwarding to the relevant portions. This poor man was being tortured.

"Untie me," finally growled the test subject. "I will leave. Let me touch the ball."

There was a long pause. Obviously the scientists were debating if that course of action was the best. A long white pole extended from a wall. It reached down and pushed the globe closer to one of the hands of the technician. Once it came close enough, the man bent his neck down and touched the globe with his forehead. In the blink of an eye, the red Martian sand in the globe resumed its dance as the body of the technician collapsed, lifeless.

The film stopped.

The lights in the room where the President was watching the film were brought back up. The glass returned to transparency. In the room behind the glass stood the man tortured in the video. He was smiling and playing with a tablet.

"From our discussions with poor Lionel here, he seems to be back in full control of his body and his mind. We do not want to release him until you clear him. It's been two days since the accident in the video," said the scientist.

Emilio pushed a button, and his voice played in the room where the man was now surfing the web. "Lionel, do you know who this is?"

"No." That was rare.

"President Sanchez. How are you?"

"The President?" Lionel recognized the voice, he was excited. "My head is better. I took pain medication." The man put the tablet down and stood up in front of the one way glass. "What happened to me? No one can answer me."

Emilio looked quickly around the room; their expressions confirmed that no one had briefed the poor kid. Emilio had given orders that he himself would make the hard decisions, but this was too much.

"Can I go in?" asked Emilio pointing the room. The looks from the others said it all. Emilio would have to use the intercom. "At least let him see me." With the push of a button, the two-way glass became transparent. The technician smiled to Emilio and the others, waving.

"Lionel, let me ask a couple of questions. What do you last remember?"

"Well, I ripped my glove reaching into the box, and I remember my hand touching a globe. Then it was weird. I began to see a whole bunch of images, as if my life was flashing before my eyes. I saw my mom, my job, the elections, a whole bunch of stuff."

"How long did that go on? Seconds? Minutes? Longer?"

"Much longer. Like I was sleepwalking. It felt like maybe an hour." The kid was happy to finally tell his story.

"Was any of it about me or Electoral?"

"I remember seeing you and her. It's all very confused."

"In a good way or a bad way?"

"What do you mean?"

"In your dream, was I the enemy?"

"I wouldn't know. Nothing was bad, really. It just was. It hurt like hell, though. What happened to me?"

"We think Electoral developed a new type of weapon, a mind control device. She sent these objects to earth. We stopped the shipment, and I hope we caught the entire lot. You were infected, and we finally managed to get you back."

"Am I okay?"

"Well, I have some great news for you." The President always knew what to say. "Union rules are clear, you're on more than overtime. This is hazard pay territory. You're at twice the pay. This has been going on for days now, and if I know these scientists, they will keep you here for quite a while. By the time you get out, I assume you'll finally get the new car you've been dreaming of."

"Foreal?" Lionel said, slipping briefly into the slang that young techies were so often prone to.

"Foreal."

President Emilio always knew what to say. He walked out of the room.

"That was a monumental waste of my time," said Emilio in the room once he released the intercom button.

"I'm hungry," said the young man in the distance. That picked the Mexican’s interest. Patrick turned back and smiled. The President grinned to his friend and pushed in the intercom button.

"They don't give you food?"

"Yes, they do, but I want...chocolate."

"Chocolate. What type?"

"Dark, black."

"Do you like chocolate?"

"Now that you ask, no, not really. But I crave it somehow."

"Makes no sense," said a scientist in the room.

The President continued. "Anything else? The new Electoral weapon is strange. We are trying to understand it. It played with your brain. Do you want coffee? Or Coca-Cola?"

"No."

Emilio was thinking. "What's your name?"

"Lionel."

"Listen, close your eyes. If I give you a million dollars, what would you buy?"

There was no hesitation. "Champagne."

"Do you drink alcohol?"

"Yes, I like beer."

"But you don't crave beer right now?"

"No."

"Give us a minute." Another button was pushed and the glass between the rooms went dark.

"Theories, anyone?" asked the President.

A researcher named Mary was ready with the answer. "Dopamine."

"What?"

"Chocolate and champagne are well known to help the brain generate dopamine. Dopamine is the brain's way of rewarding itself. People get easily addicted to it." That made sense. These people were not idiots.

"Any way to test your theory?"

Mary pushed the intercom and asked Lionel, "Would you like to go run in the gym?"

His face lit up. "Yeah, that would be great."

"Thanks."

Mary released the intercom and told the President, "Running produces endorphins and, in turn, dopamine. This kid is like a mild addict in withdrawal who doesn't know where to get his fix." That made sense. "My guess would be that when his brain was put under strain, the process left behind some level chemical imbalance. We need to run more tests."

"Perfect," Emilio said. "And make sure the kid is not treated as a guinea pig. You lab guys have a tendency to do that, you know. We're here to help him: the information on the weapon is secondary. My gut feeling tells me this is too sophisticated to analyze, or that analysis will gain us nothing. Electoral wouldn't place something of vital importance, from either a materiel or informational perspective, in a position where we could get our hands on it and then get useful information out of it."

"We have many theories."

"Which may even be the point of this exercise: maybe she wants us wasting time on a red herring. Anything more I need to know right now?" Patrick was right, he'd needed to see this.

Emilio made a mental note to bring this to the attention of his SAC. He was not fully satisfied with a theory that Electoral had declared war on the human race: that made no sense. If she wanted everyone dead, she had so many other ways to make that happen.

You simply don't produce and send little objects that defy every law of science to a handful of high-priority people without attracting attention. She had to know, when she mailed these that they would be intercepted. So he figured she had somehow been forced to send these things, but by whom? The answer was too obvious to even consider. There was life on Mars; it somehow was in these globes. Electoral had been used to launch, against her will, an invasion of some type. She was unable to give any warning, so she had done the next best thing and gift-wrapped the aliens for him.

There were other possible theories, but none of them rung true to Emilio. He could hear the blond bimbo: "Not my fault if you can't figure it out, daaarrrrling!" In the back of his mind, something told him the sand was alive. He could order the destruction of these things, but as his father loved to say: "Never repair something that is not broken." The confinement seemed to work; the magnets brought this man back, and they were now wiser because of it.

As they walked out, Emilio asked the scientists to design him a hand-held device to induce those disabling headaches in someone who was infected. Who knew, he might soon need one.