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I am amazed and, I must admit, jealous that I was too blocked or stupid to unearth such a simple solution.

“Could it be from Maddy?” Margo says. “But why so cryptic? Why so vague?”

I theorize that Maddy is confused, frightened, perhaps even weak. I call in Burbank from the adjoining room and ask him to calculate the location of the sender.

With merely a quick glance at the screen and a few clicks, he says, “It’s coming from Dubai.”

“Of course,” says Grandma Jessica. “I should have known by the incorrect use of the nominative case.”

I am gratified that both Burbank and Jessica cracked the case so quickly, but I am also angry that I, someone who speaks so many languages, was unable to solve it. What’s happening to me?

“Everything else is on hold until I get to Dubai and bring Maddy home,” I say.

Jessica, Margo, and Burbank agree that this is the wise and proper way to proceed. I ask them for a moment alone to gather my thoughts and make a plan.

I initiate all my psychic abilities to find and commandeer a flight to the United Arab Emirates. I make no connections. I keep trying, but with no success. In fact, my intense concentration is rewarded with a wildly severe headache. My temples are throbbing. My eyes are stinging. What is happening to me?

I continue to work at making a mental connection. After a few seconds my headache and eye pain vanish. They are, however, replaced with a weakness in my spine, my knees, my shoulders. I am tired. I am also off-balance. I am too weak to rise from my chair. I am too frail to find Maddy, to save Maddy.

What’s happening to me!?

CHAPTER 88

HERE’S THE DEAL that I decide to make.

And, yes, I know that it is horrid and frustrating and humiliating. But I must.

I cannot halt the spread of Newbola. I cannot prevent Glenn Ambrose from destroying huge pieces of the world. Worst of all, I cannot get to Dubai to help Maddy.

So I do what I never, absolutely never, wanted to do.

I make arrangements to meet with President Townsend. He welcomes the opportunity to meet with me, his highly troublesome enemy. But I cannot think of any other solution.

I am steadily growing physically weaker, and I have no idea why. I am steadily losing my intellectual ability. Much as I detest Townsend, I don’t have a viable alternative.

So here I am, standing in the presidential office. When Townsend was illegally elected president by an illegal vote in the illegal world congress, one of his first acts was to rebuild the Oval Office as the Square Office. A simple redo, all that was needed was four new walls, arranged tohide the historic curved walls of the past few hundred years.

Another “personal” touch from Townsend was his portrait enshrinement of the former presidents whom he particularly admired: Richard Nixon, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Andrew Johnson, and, predictably, Donald Trump.

“How do you like the place?” Townsend asks me.

“It suits you,” I answer. We both know, of course, that this is my first visit to the presidential Square Office since Townsend was elected.

“Certainly took you long enough to get here,” he says, extending his hand for me to shake and then motioning to the armless visitors’ chair abutting his desk. Seated there I feel like a recent college graduate on his first job interview.

Although I am having difficulty breathing, and although there is significant pain coursing up and down my spine, I present myself as a friendly, hearty sort of guy. Townsend does the same thing. If you were to watch us together you’d think that we were the closest of friends. But Townsend and I know otherwise.

This is an act. Our smiles are too wide. Our handshakes are too firm. Our voices are too high and happy.

Then, as if we have cut to a brand-new scene in a movie, the warmth and friendliness are sucked out of the room.

“So, my instinct and my sources inform me that you are here for a very specific reason,” Townsend says seriously.

“Then you’ll be glad to know that your instincts and sources are correct,” I respond, and I am as somber as Townsend.

I add, “I am here to ask a favor. A favor that will impact the preservation of the entire world.”

“What makes you think I’d be interested in preserving the entire world?”