DISCLAIMER: The characters herein are used without permission. No infringement intended.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
FEEDBACK: To ralst31[at]yahoo.co.uk
SPOILERS: Season 5, episode 10.
SERIES: Scenarios.
Scenario # 1
By ralst
"POTUS? Are you serious?" Shaw side-eyed Harold in a way she normally reserved for Root at her most perkily annoying. "First Root and now the President? I think your machine has been watching too many soaps."
The furrow between Harold's brows broadcast his own scepticism at the machine's simulation mixed with the residual dismay at having watched the projected death of one of his closest friends. "It is not inconceivable that we would be called upon to protect a number of international importance," he said, although without much in the way of conviction.
"Yeah, it happens to Gerard Butler all the time," Fusco scoffed.
The machine's simulation kept playing itself out on the screen but no one besides Root was even watching.
"Shouldn't your machine have ended the simulation the second Root got shot, Harold?" In John's book there was no longer any such thing as acceptable losses, especially when it came to his team.
"It will be trying to determine the scenario that provides the best outcome and to do that it must -"
"Root dying alone in some hospital is the best outcome?" Shaw glared, her eyes boring into Harold with the intensity of a .45 calibre slug. "Really, Harold?"
"I didn't mean to suggest -"
"He's not even the real President," Root interrupted, her interest in the demise of her facsimile minimal at best but such a blatant piece of historical inaccuracy was too much for her to bare. "I think there's something wrong with the Machine."
"Of course there's something wrong with it," snapped Shaw. "It killed you, Root."
"It didn't kill -" Harold began, only to be interrupted yet again.
"I'm not dead, Sameen, and if you don't believe that you're welcome to come over here and pinch me all you like."
Fusco and Shaw performed matching eye-rolls while John allowed himself a small smile. "I think this simulation has run its course," said Harold, taking advantage of the break in mood to cut the video display.
"About damn time," decreed Shaw, "and you can tell your all seeing eye from me, that if it kills her again it won't have to worry about Samaritan, because I'll take a sledgehammer to it myself." Root beamed at the threat against her God causing Shaw to backtrack at the speed of light, "Not that I care what happens to her or anything."
"Of course not, sweetie."
Scenario # 1 terminated
The End