Word: beetle
Challenger:
elfie_elfieLength: 200 words exactly
Not often, but sometimes, the President Of The United States hated his job.
There were times, he'd admit to his wife, that he'd been sorry he'd ever ran for public office, let alone been elected.
Discovering that Canada had a fully operating and armed satellite with a thousand warheads and that it had been in geosynchronous orbit above Washington for sixteen years... well, that was one of the times. Seeing photographs of the platform, a huge crouching black beetle against the starfield, with its huge maple leaf motifs adorning each warhead was another.
He wasn't quite sure what alarmed him more: the fact that they were there, that they'd got there first, that his own intelligence agencies didn't know anything about it... or the possibility that they had known, and had chosen not to share that knowledge.
Given the circumstances, the Canadians had been generous, he acknowledged. They could have demanded anything they wanted, and with a satellite that could shoot down anything sent to attack, they could have had pretty much received it.
With a sigh, he reread the documents. Then he appended his signature and signed the Proclamation announcing his country's new national anthem: The Maple Leaf Rag.
© Lee Barnett, 2005