“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.” - Niccolo Machiavelli

In a small room on the 100th floor of the Pillar of learning, with the students moving in and going about their day, five unique individuals gather around a long table for a meeting.

At the head of the table sits a man in a yellow cashmere sweater. His head hangs low, and leaves others to guess if he has kicked the bucket, or just sleeping. The wisps of white on his head have a minor glow to them as they dance about from the cold breeze coming from the air conditioning. Upon his many creases on his skin, a thin outline of goggles around his eyes from many years in a lab can be made out.

Occupying the space reserved for a seat clockwise from the oldman is a mobile computer station, something that is more fitting in a server room rather than a board room. On top of the cart is an outdated beige monitor from the early days of computers listing off binary. Beneath is a mess of wires and hardware held within plexiglass panels. The chaos it contains fills up the entirety of the space within, the lack of space allows the chaos to exert enough pressure to cause the plexi glass to bulge.

Above the table, orbits an outdated A7-L Pressure suit. Around and around it goes, ignoring the gravity of Earth by rotating and spinning in any direction it so desires. Every few rotations, the suit's limbs contort to some obscure position, breaking the bones of whoever was inside.

Behind the sleeping old man, is a wall of windows, from ceilling to floor. The golden rays of the sun shine through bright, gracing the room with its warmth. Basking in the heavenily body's embrace is binding body of wood, twigs, and roots wrapping themselves into an eerie humaniod figure.

By the coffee table, a classic black suit with a white dress shirt and red tie goes through the process of making itself a cup of coffee. The suit appears not to have any one underneath it’s layers of fabric, acting of its own volition or some other unseen force. Whatever the cause, the suit behaves like one being worn by a person, following the motions of its wearer as it goes to add sugar and creamer to its coffee, but never touching the objects. No one in the room seems to be alarmed by the strange occurrence.

Given the rest of those in the room, this might be considered rather mundane.

The suit held both mugs of coffee in front of its cuffs, making its way over to the empty seat next to the old man. The suit moves with care, doing its best to keep the coffee teetering on the brim from spilling on it.

The suit places one cup in front of the sleeping old man, and the other in front of the vacant seat. Before sitting the suit’s phantom limbs undo the one button holding the main flaps closed, exposing a gray waistcoat beneath, “Hank and PT would you please take your seats so that we can wake the old man, and get this meeting started?” The words seemingly came from the suit itself, as the computer didn’t beep, and the old man was still fast asleep.

At the suit’s request, the colony of branches and leaves turned it’s back on the sun’s embrace to take its seat next to the computer cart. The space suit’s orbit began to slow, after a few more rotations it stopped over the seat next to the suit and lowered into it.

The suit bent over and nudged the old man. The old man jostled a bit at first, but once he realized where he was he sat up in his seat at ease, “Thank you all for taking the time to come to this emergency meeting.”

The space suit’s upper body rotated itself to face the old man with a violent jerk, before an ominous snarl asked, “What is the emergency? Paul’s report this morning only mentioned the scheduled protests, and that the likelihood for them devolving into riots is slim to none. Have the statistics changed?”

The old man shook his head, “No Hank, they are being civil for now, and most likely will be for the rest of their demonstration. The reason for this meeting is because of,” the old man extended his arm to the computer cart. Upon doing so, the screen switched from random binary to a single grainy image from a gas station’s security camera. The shot was of a single figure standing by the pumps with no car. The figure wore an orange prison jumpsuit with a paper bag with two eye holes over his head, both of his hands were held towards the cameras. Each hand had its index and middle fingers pointed at the camera, with its thumb cocked back.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” The suit shot up on the shoes accompanying it, sending its seat crashing to the ground.

PT’s twigs began to snap and splinter as its mass of wood began to grow in stature.

The suit held up an arm to the mass of branches, “Sorry PT.”

“I wish I was Paul, but unfortunately I am not.” the old man’s exhaustion from age came to surface in the sigh following his remark. “This morning, while Turing was combing over the police’s network, he picked a report sent to them from the prison. It stated that Fingerbang escaped from prison early this morning, after starting a prison wide riot. Further reports from the prison indicate that this riot is still ongoing.”

Paul, the suit, began to pace around the table, with both arms of the suits in a power pose on his waist. Hank’s space suit began to fidget at a more sporadic pace, “How long do we have to prepare for his arrival?”

“We should assume that he is already in the city,” Paul’s pacing speed increased as he withdrew his phone from his chest’s pocket, “We need to lock down the school, and put every contin-”

The old man raised his hand, halting the pacing suit in his place,“Easy there Paul. I understand your concern, but doing so at this point would be counterproductive. While the nonaggression pact stands, we don’t have to worry about him causing any trouble for the time being.”

“We all know that a nonaggression pact is nothing more than a warning that it is only a matter of time till we are in the fucking crosshairs,” once again, PT began to show his disapproval at Paul’s f-bomb. The suit faced the bipedal tree, “PT! I KNOW YOU DON’T LIKE CURSING, BUT PLEASE DO NOT LECTURE ME RIGHT NOW!”

The computer monitor began to beep, displaying a long line of green binary across its screen, 01000110011101010110001101101011001000000110111101100110011001100010000001010000011000010111010101101100.

“Don’t tell me to calm down Turing!” Paul took rage filled steps to the wall of windows and pointed out to the city, adding to his theatrics he looked back to the others. “Do you all realize that at any moment, the Empire could attack us? Do you remember what happened last time? They completely burnt D.C. to the ground,” Paul’s voice crescendo in direct correlation to the rage that was being fueled inside of him, “They erased Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana from the map. They destroyed America.” Paul’s tone of defeat lingered in the air, causing the others to reminisce about the dark times they went through all those years back.

Paul stepped with a wave of somber thoughts filling his head. Before taking his seat, he addressed the group once more, “We all know Fingerbang escaping is a part of their plan. Whether it is the first or last step we don’t know but, we have to prepare, now.”

The old man brought his mug to his drink to sip some of his coffee, “That is why I have decided to authorize the Steel Curtain contingency plan.”