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oncoming waves was grossly underestimated.”
    â€œMy God, they thought they were being rescued and the ships sank?”
    â€œYes, the waves caused many, many tragedies, and the sunken ships helped open the door to a significant Chinese presence on our shores. We no longer had enough vessels to cover two thousand miles of shoreline. I suppose they could have brought every remaining vessel to the East Coast, but that would have been foolish, even in a crisis like this. Thank goodness, they kept a naval presence on the West Coast. If they hadn’t, the Chinese would have taken over the entire country.”
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œWell, the war began just weeks after the tsunami. By that point, the Chinese had a significant number of men on theground helping with the rescue and recovery effort. But it still wasn’t enough. They offered a second fleet to join the effort, and it was absolutely massive. A few days after it arrived, they made it clear that helping us was the last thing they wanted. The strike was so carefully orchestrated, so elegant in design, that the Chinese must have been planning it since the day the tsunami struck. They had but one opportunity to use the element of surprise, and they made sure it was a crushing blow. First, they launched missiles that took out our satellites. Then they unleashed the firepower of their floating armada to sink our ships and hobble military installations in the East. Their forces on the ground were another major component of the coordinated assault. They had secretly stockpiled weapons and machinery among their supplies for the rescue operation. They had worked for weeks right alongside our troops—troops that were not equipped for battle. Sure, they had rifles, but they were not there to fight. When the Chinese troops on the ground attacked, it was a slaughter. They attacked soldiers who were—at best—lightly armed. When our troops tried to regroup and assemble, they had no GPS and no space-based imagery of the enemy’s movements. With their main operating bases getting hammered from the sea and the air, they were cut off . . . isolated. It was not a fair fight.”
    â€œThe Chinese aid was just a Trojan horse.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThe Chinese must not have gone far. I mean, there’s a lot of firepower out West. They must’ve come in and shut ’em down.”
    â€œThey weren’t able to. At least not initially.”
    â€œWhy the hell not?”
    â€œThe Chinese attacked the West Coast simultaneously. Some people think it was a red herring; that they just wanted to split our forces and didn’t plan on winning the West. I believe they tried to take both coasts. They were so high on power . . . so greedy. Plus, our forces were already spread thin when the tsunami struck. We had a massive number of troops fighting conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa. When the tsunami hit, we couldn’t just pick them up and bring them home on a moment’s notice. The Chinese knew that, and they took advantage of it while they could. But they failed to anticipate how hard we were willing to fight to defend our homeland. It took just five months to quell the attack in the West. The Chinese fleet retreated from the West Coast, and we sent more troops to the eastern front. This slowed their progress considerably and eventually led to a stalemate along the Mississippi. To this day, that’s where the front remains. It has been almost ten years since either side has gained significant ground on either side of the Mississippi.”
    I slid my chair away from the table. The problems of US citizens of the future were becoming my problems. I was no longer just a lab rat for the Chinese. I was a lab rat for the Chinese trapped a thousand miles behind enemy lines. Finding my wife and son felt impossible. I leaned forward with my elbow on my knee and pushed my thumb and index fingers into my forehead until the