King of All I Survey-Chapter 150: The Mexican Army Takes Mom Prisoner

When you have a super interdimensional quantum Computing AI using the entire structure of the universe as hardware, it takes a surprisingly small amount of time to put very complex plans into motion. So as the lead vehicles of the Mexican Army arrived in Chilpancingo, we were ready.

Mom had indeed changed the plan, recruiting help from her new ’sister’ Maribel. Maribel, for her public work and very high-profile appearances in Guatemala and now in Colombia, was becoming quite famous and universally revered throughout all of Latin America. One small Catholic village in Guatemala had even mounting a campaign to have her declared a saint. This public support, Mom thought, would be a powerful weapon in the kind of battle we hoped to wage.

The army, of course, knew where our facilities were located and they were the first places visited as the army spread out through the town. This wasn’t the first town they had rolled into where we had a presence, so they already expected that our facilities would somehow be able to resist any attempts at forced entry. Still, they had to try. Our hospital, being one of the largest of our buildings, was quickly surrounded. The windows were dozens of Mexican journalists watched with video cameras at their disposal, used local variations in the shield field that encompassed the building to render them reflective from the outside, to all eyes appearing to be a normal result of the bright sun outside and the darkness inside. We didn’t want the army or the Mexican government to know that the eyes and ears of the country were watching. Indeed we had drones positioned around the building, and even with army’s positions seeing and recording everything.

Initially, my request to speak to the President De La Huerta had been stonewalled. His plan, it seemed, had been to take our people prisoner first, and maybe talk later. Of course, shielded buildings that could not be entered by his people blunted the effectiveness of that strategy. Up to this point, he had not been able to take a single one of our operatives, or identifiable local volunteers.

That had changed, when the government realized that and then found that all of our buildings were protected by some unknown method against forced entry, even against bullets or attempted ramming with heavy vehicles. Yes, they had tried using truck to smash through the wall of what looked like a simple brick warehouse from which he had been running a food distribution center. Unfortunately, this resulted in a very sudden stop of the vehicle’s forward progress and some injuries to the four men in the truck at the time. Nothing too serious, but two of them had broken limbs, another had a pretty significant concussion. Joe. used one of our invisible drones to scan him and told us that he would recover with the conventional treatment he would receive from Mexican doctors.

So, my call to the Mexican President ended up coinciding pretty closely with the army’s arrival in Chilpancingo. I actually had to delay a few minutes to make sure the timing was right.

I told each of the television and radio journalists and reporters in the hospital that their offices had decided to put them on with live coverage of the army’s arrival in the city which was a notorious former cartel stronghold. We provided a separate monitor for them to watch their own coverage, telling them their editors had requested them to narrate the coverage. We had just enough time to brief them on the hospital’s set-up and charitable work treating the local people, including a surprisingly high number of chemical addition treatments, so they’d have some background information of the place the army would be aurrounding. Their offices had no knowledge of this, but Joe would be hacking into all their feeds and replacing whatever they were trying to air with the various feeds created from Chilpancingo. Joe would handle the editing on the fly, cutting away to various remote views as events dictated. The actual broadcast of events would be delayed by 15 minutes, so as not to tip our strategy to the President too early. The stage was set.

Maribel was not in our hospital at the moment, Mom’s plan called for her to be elsewhere. As the army vehicles pulled up around the hospital and troops poured out of the vehicles, they positioned themselves around the building to prevent anyone from leaving unseen. After having been denied entry, their strategy had changed to laying siege to our facilities, surrounding them, hoping to wait us out even if it took days or weeks.

As they arrived, I was put through to President De La Huerta by telephone. Well, telephone on his end, through Joe on my end. I used my adult android form and voice for the call. "Hello, Mr. President. It is a pleasure to speak to you, finally," I said cordially. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm

"I am ordering you to open your buildings and have your people exit one at a time with their hands raised," he said cutting through the small talk. I was sitting in a simulation room, at a modest office desk with the various logos of our charitable foundations visible on the wall behind me. I was also being recorded for the broadcast. I put on a surprised and confused expression for the cameras.

"Mr. President, what seems to be the problem? We are working to provide humanitarian aid to people in regions where lawless gangs and drug-trafficking violence have wreaked havoc over the last years. We are only providing emergency food relief, free medical care, and helping to rebuild and improve the local infrastructure whose maintenance has been ignored while fear of the cartels kept government services away. I understand that our civilian and unarmed charity workers are a much easier target than the cartels would have been, but unlike them, we are only here helping the people. Why would you come after us?"

"I don’t know what your game is, Timothy is it? I don’t know what your game is, Timothy, but you have no authorization to be operating in Mexico. We will not allow you to subvert the government’s authority under the disguise of charities."

"There is no disguise, Mr. President. We are only concerned about the welfare of the people. You did not object when we removed the cartels. Well, actually, you did object a little, especially when we moved against Jalisco and the western regions. Why was that, by the way? After our successful work in Chiapas and Guatemala, why would you not want our help with a task that for so long seemed so daunting to your own forces, that you barely attempted any action at all?"

"Do not try to bait me. The fact that you could remove the cartels shows you are lying about having only unarmed charity workers. Open your facilities now. Eventually, your people will have to come out, our forces are surrounding your buildings and are prepared to stay there until you run out of food."

"Unfortunately, our people are afraid of what might happen should they leave the buildings. I suspect, at the very least, they will be arrested and jailed"

"You’re damn right, they will. So will you. Are you in Mexico now? I am formally charging you and all your people with ordering and participating in the murder, the massacre, of over a thousand young men in the Chiapas region of Mexico. If you don’t surrender to our law enforcement, we will take you by force."

I bowed my head, "The events which led to the deaths of those men, all Chiapas drug-traffickers by the way, were unfortunate. However, I must point out that not a single one was hurt while on Mexican soil. They were heavily armed and in the process of actively invading the sovereign nation of Guatemala. They were killed in a defense operation of the Guatemalan government inside the borders of Guatemala. Some would consider such an invasion by a large force of armed Mexican nationals to be a direct act of war. Fortunately, President Arroyo knows the difference between criminals acting on their own and government sanctioned militias."

Since we had a drone in his office, I could watch him on a monitor as we spoke. An aide handed him a sheet of paper which he quickly scanned before he spoke again. "Our forces have just arrived at Chilpancingo, we have your hospital there surrounded. Let’s make that the first point of your surrender, shall we? We are prepared to use heavier weapons to force the building open, if you do not let us in voluntarily."

"It is a hospital, with patients, your own citizens, President De La Huerta. Surely, there is no need for bombs."

"Not if you open the doors. The choice is yours. If you care about the people so much, just open the doors," he demanded.

"OK." All was going exactly according to plan, I thought. Now, we’ll see if we can pull this off. "We will open the doors. The safety of the people of Mexico is our first priority, though perhaps it is only second on your list... maybe less than second?"

"You have thirty seconds," he stated, unmoved.

"Yes, we are opening the doors now." I saw him looking toward one of the men in the room, a general by his uniform, who was holding a phone to his ear, communicating directly with the senior officer on the front lines. Joe, did you get direct orders to the commanding officer to open fire on the hospital?

Yes, it’s all recorded. They did order the use of force against the building.

I watched a second video feed of the front of the hospital. I knew that the scene in Chilpancingo was now being recorded and narrated by dozens of Mexican reporters although the actual broadcast would be delayed by fifteen minutes. Vehicles with heavy fifty caliber mounted guns pulled up to the front of the Mexican forces, they were flanked by soldiers with shoulder-fired rocket launchers. They all faced the building which had a big sign over the door reading:

Health First

A Charitable Hospital

Providing Free Care for the People of Mexico

All Welcome

We waited just long enough for the local commander to give the order to "Prepare to fire!" We wanted that for the news reports. Then, the front double doors swung open wide. A woman dressed in a white hospital coat stood there. Her arms crossed defiantly. "What do you want?" She shouted to the soldiers, "We are working here. There are sick people inside."

No fewer than two dozen soldiers, in full body armor and armed with assault rifles held at the ready rushed forward in a precise formation, some taking positions against the wall on either side of the door. Two grabbed Mom by the arms and yanked her roughly outside the building. She was forced to the ground, two assault rifles trained on her. We had not counted on her being treated so badly, but we knew she was shielded and could not be injured by anything the Mexican Army could do. Still, I imagined Dad’s face reddening with anger. At exactly that moment, a disturbance from behind the main force caused a shift in the attention of the soldiers still lined up behind the heavy weapons.

My video feed switched, and I saw Maribel. She was pushing confused soldiers out of her way and yelling at them to make room. Behind her, were dozens of women and children, many of the children in wheelchairs, being pushed by their mothers. Others walked or even limped forward at their mothers’ sides. The mothers began yelling angrily for the soldiers to let them bring their poor babies to the hospital. The bewildered soldiers began to step aside, clearing a path for the indignant women. Some recognized Maribel and a few called her name out loud, "It’s Maribel Flores!"

It took about ten seconds of the soldiers giving way under the determined charge of the sick children, before a senior officer took action. "Hold your ground! Don’t let them pass!"

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