Free Project Reunion by Ginger Booth

this?”
“It’s tight, sir. But I’d like to move by Thanksgiving. I think that would give a huge symbolic morale boost. There’s nothing to make you feel grateful for what you have, like giving it away to someone less fortunate. Failing that, Christmas.”
“Nice touch,” Niedermeyer agreed, nodding thoughtfully. “Alright, everyone. Let’s take a break before the other three presentations. Be back in 15 minutes.”
It was already mid-afternoon. I couldn’t imagine how we’d review three more presentations today. I left for the hallway, to mingle with avm89 from Poughkeepsie – Lt. Colonel Ash Margolis – and the other Rescos from outside Connecticut. Emmett just sat down on the edge of the stage in the auditorium, to speak one-on-one with anyone who came up to chat.

Chapter 7
Interesting fact: Maine sent no representative to the summit meeting in New London. The sole Resco from New Hampshire caught a ride down on a Coast Guard boat. The U.S. Coast Guard no longer patrolled Maine, having cut a deal with Canada to cover it. Maine was deep in negotiations to become a Canadian province. But the Maine Resco insisted that they would accept their share of New York refugees regardless. Contacts in Canadian intelligence confirmed this.
The final session for the day was long, but not as long as I’d feared. Of the three other presenters, two stood and said they backed Emmett’s plan instead of their own. Like Emmett, they’d accepted the challenge to plan a resettlement of New York refugees. Unlike Emmett, they hadn’t gotten nearly as far in the limited time available. They did have some details worked out to elaborate Emmett’s plan, and offered to work with him on it. Emmett gladly accepted their collaboration.
“And that leaves you, Colonel Hoffman,” Niedermeyer prompted with a grin.
“For the record, I also support Major MacLaren’s proposal,” Colonel Hoffman replied. He got up anyway, to hand off his laptop to the A/V technician, and take the slide control device in return.
“Nevertheless,” Niedermeyer replied cheerfully. “Colonel Hoffman is here from south Jersey. He’s the ranking Resco there. And he gamely took the short stick, to develop a proposal to relieve New York in situ. I think Emmett got the easier assignment, Pete.” That got a few laughs.
“I didn’t think so at the time,” Hoffman replied, with a rueful smile. “First off, I’d like to thank Major MacLaren for making his epidemiology team and his own progress available to me at every step along the way. I’d also like to help your planning team any way I can, Emmett.”
Hoffman went on to present the options he’d evaluated for how to add food and remove illness from New York City and its suburbs, without removing its borders or people. Essentially, the best he’d come up with was to extend Tom Aoyama’s work out on Long Island – quarantine zones, growing inward as a diseased core shrank.
Geography and demographics were not kind in this pursuit. The moving Long Island quarantine line would hang up shy of Queens and Brooklyn, unable to swallow two whole boroughs of the city. Instead they’d need fully armed borders-within-the-borders there, to pass a controlled flow of refugees into the disease-free end of Long Island.
They could start another moving quarantine line. Naturally, Hoffman focused on trying to reclaim northern New Jersey, which wrapped around the city proper to its south and west. The border-within-border challenge would be even more personnel-intensive there.
“After Long Island, the second best agricultural opportunity inside the city epidemic borders, is northwest Jersey here,” Hoffman pointed out. Naturally he had a map of the city environs on the screen. “General Cullen... Do you have any authority over the Pennsylvania border here, sir?”
“I do not,” Cullen confirmed.
Hoffman paused. “That’s...essentially the same down the entire western edge of New Jersey, in or out of the epidemic