533 members of the sitting U.S. Congress had been killed in the explosion that rocked the Capitol Building on January 17, 2008, at the very start of President Bush's "State of the Union" address. The only two surviving members had been John McCain and Barack Obama. Through typically politically-imitated, sleazy tactics, O.U.T.R.A.G.E. had arranged for those two senators to be absent. While it was customary for at least one cabinet member to be absent from the annual State of the Union address, it was untypical that two leading senators would not attend the gala. Politics aside, the "State of the Union" address was one of Washington's premier photo ops. Anybody who was anybody wanted to be there. Colin Powell had also not attended, again due to some clever manipulations on the part of O.U.T.R.A.G.E. From the outset, the organization had its 'short list' of contenders to be interim leaders of the republic until a fresh election could take place. Powell, McCain, and Obama figured prominently in that plan, and were at the very top of "the list".
The 'Rebellion of '08' had taken its toll on America. Some of the country's brightest talents had been snuffed out. But there will still hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - of people with leadership skills, commercial talents, and business acumen who might be persuded to step up to the plate and take over where the former leadership left off. To be certain, there was still a need for people to direct the everyday affairs of government and industry. These functions still carried on, although with less puffery and a lot more personal, hands-on guidance. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. representatives were out in the field, recruiting new candidates to take over mayoral slots in some cities, manage partially-destroyed corporations, reconstruct many of the organizations still valuable to society, and run for Congress in the November elections. Search and rescue missions were still ongoing, under the skilled direction of experienced personnel who seemed to work much better without layers of supervision and multiple tiers of bureaucrats telling them how to do their jobs.
Slowly but surely, the devastation of the east coast hurricane and the west coast earthquake was being cleared away. Major U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, Washington, DC and New York City were all but gone. Most surviving residents had taken up housing in abandoned shells of cars or remnants of structures that still remained standing. It was becoming more and more evident that the final death toll from the events of January 17, followed by the hurricane and earthquake, would be in the tens of millions. Health concerns dictated that bodies were burned in mass graves quickly, to prevent the spread of disease. If a body could be identified, it was recorded and any personal effects were saved in a plastic, zipped bag. For millions of victims, that small plastic bag filled with a driver's license, wallet, key chains, and perhaps a few other trinkets, were all that remained of the individual's life story. The stench of death filled rescue workers' nostrils until the nauseating odor no longer was even noticeable. "You get used to it in one helluva hurry," said one volunteer who had driven from Overland Park, Kansas to Los Angeles just to help clear the carnage. "I'll probably be here through the summer," he predicted, "and even then we won't have made a respectable dent in trying to clean all this up. It's tragic....and, you know what the worst part is? When I saw pictures of the devastation a year after that tsunami hit the day after Christmas in 2005? I wondered what was taking those people so long? Same thing with the Katrina hurricane. NBC kept broadcasting video a year later, and I kept wondering why there was still so much debris lying around after a year! I guess now...I know." As his voice trailed off, he predicted it would take "years" to clean up all the destruction, especially since so much of the equipment needed for such work was also completely demolished and unusable.
Tens of thousands of people from America's heartland had ventured into the most devastated areas, volunteering to help in any way they could; still, the work continued at a snail's pace. The American psyche had never been this badly bruised before. Millions of people were suffering from chronic depression. Millions more were still in a daze, not knowing exactly how to proceed with their lives. Those that suffered most seemed to be those that had the most: without their half-million-dollar homes, elegant clothes, luxury cars, boats, and comfortable lifestyles, they were helpless. Those people who were used to living paycheck-to-paycheck and struggling to make ends meet seemed to be in a 'business as usual' mode. Not knowing how they'd eat the next day didn't seem to be of enormous concern to them; they were used to such circumstances.