It was unbelievable. Professor Franklin Drake had just hung himself. But college-clothed X4J-906AC had to make sure. The half circle auditorium was large enough and luckily filled with enough students that, without drawing attention to himself, he could easily punch in the recording on his phone to play back some 30 seconds of the Professor's words. He took his mind off the Professor's lecture and listened in his ever-present Bluetooth earpiece to the Professor’s recorded words, turning up the volume. Yes, that was it.

X4J-906AC thought a moment of all the neighborhoods and of the all the individual consciousnesses the professors 14 chilling words could affect, becoming an imminent threat to the necessary equilibrium that had been set and established. He quickly punched in the requisite numbers and emailed the voice recording to Area 18 Collection Extrajudicial Services. The professor's dossier was already weighed heavily with suspicious and potentially threatening repartee from interviews on the University's cable news stations. This was it, the one required light pin to TTT-FTG - 'trip the trick' and 'flash the grin' - or, as they say at WCO, a "moment of no recompense."

The Eureka moment was apparent to A18-LPTP, they gave it a red release that sent the encoded digital recording straight to Washington Command Operations. Secretary Stevens was meeting with a delegate from Jordan when his assistant breached the protocol. Stevenson used his special cell to punch in some numbers. Within five minutes he was standing before the President and an audience of General Haskins of Joint Chiefs and Security Council Head Adeline Rather.

The plain and austere looking Rather could not believe the recording, how incredibly stupid was the Professor? She quickly fingered through the file on her tablet. Yes, he was making only 35,000 annual, one of the stupid ones. She gave the president the affirmative sign.

General Haskins loved it when civilians recognized TSP, the Treason Statements Protocol - and was forced to press back a smile as he feint troublesome deliberation. His team was surreptitiously wired into WCO, and he had already two minutes ago sent out instructions, and S-1K was hard-circuited and triggered. The finger was on the button as he nodded his OK to the President. Now it was up to Stevens.

"This voice, are you sure it's not fake?"

How small can a man be made to appear in a room of towering adults with chilling looks of poison directed toward him? Secretary Stevens looked away. He read the writing on the wall. In two weeks, he would no longer have an office.

Known as a meticulous intellectual, the President's mind went quickly through the facts, but not quickly enough, something was missing. The president had picked and trusted his staff for efficiency and no nonsense. The vote was two with one abstaining. He nodded and General Haskins touched the button on his ear piece.

Prescott Willis was a specialist, enlisted with no rank and on his way toward getting rank. His console had been loaded. He had scored 113 points on the second level play with all hits and a remarkable no errors - the unit's highest for the month. Needing only 7 points to reach level one and rank, he had been working under the Extreme Environment Challenge, sitting concentrated without firing on four misleading fakes for 17 hours while looking for the Inestimable Jerk Mark on the screen.

He took a swallow of his eighth Coke. The screen suddenly blared blue-green-red with an accompanying buzz almost in Morse Code. All the other gamers in wide, air-conditioned Deep Safe Room 4 became instantly quiet and watched Prescott as he put on his seat belt, his finger on the remote's no-press console button. Preston's eyes suddenly opened wide with a military-induced, game-day relaxation glare on the screen. There it was, an eight-point orange- green spot flashing. The buzz light for Scout One Kill came up. Prescott nodded and Sergeant Miller hurriedly released the console dial with his passcode.

This was going to be easy.

The Professor left the University college on his way to a luncheon meeting with Mrs. Francine Wise, the colleague with whom he was having a clandestine affair. He stood three feet from his car when the low impact drone quickly spotted him, attached to his green spot and, falling in a flash from 15,000 feet in the sky, blew him out and away into smithereens through the flaming puff of a contained explosion.

Amid muffled applause from the other gamers, Prescott's screen lit up with a golden line directing him to level one. Haskins was about to leave the President's office when he received the sudden confirmation on his earpiece. He turned back to inform the Chief. But the thin black man lifted a finger to quiet him. Chairperson Rather was backtracking down the hall to the door in uncontrollable glee, screaming "Yes!" The President shushed her, asking Haskins to repeat the Professor's divisive statement from the tape.

"Certainly sir. He said, 'Disenfranchised black men are despised now, or laughed at, even among the black people.' " He added, "He has been scored, sir."

They all left the office, knowing how after every score, the President preferred the confines of his own silence to muse alone.

He looked through the French doors over the Capital plane and the Rose Garden outward toward the Washington Monument. What had he forgotten?

He looked at his skin.