Moments later another notional landing touched down between Belleville and Kingston, Ontario. The mark of that landing spread. More fingers thrust north, east and west. Black dots appeared over critical locks along the canal system there.

Another landing appeared near Saint Catherine, Ontario. The Welland Canal, vital link between the inner Great Lakes and the eastern cities of Canada and the United States, turned black. A Canadian forces liaison officer, on the other hand, turned white as his country's forces — paper thin for decades, the legacy of a mix of neglect, active hostility and eager toadying to the United Nations — turned from translucent to transparent before disappearing altogether.

"Cease work," the general announced. "Reboot. After Action Review in thirty minutes." The screens all went blank.

"Ladies, gentlemen. I am going to go see the chief."

The White House, Washington, DC

"Well, can we hold the Canal then, General?" the President of the United States asked of the gargantuan, shiny-domed, black four-star seated in the leather chair opposite his desk in the Oval Office.

The general was a big man — huge really — with so many medals, badges and campaign ribbons that he left off several rows of ribbons or the fruit salad would not have fit even his massive chest. To the left of General Taylor sat an apparently agitated woman from the Department of State. The woman was dressed . . . severely, the general thought. No other word would quite do.

"Hard to say, Mr. President," the general answered. "We don't have the troops to spare, not enough of them anyway. Nine divisions? Two or Three corps? In the Second World War we stationed seventy thousand troops there and thought we could hold it. But those seventy thousand would have been, at most — absolute worst case — facing a Japanese attack not much greater in size, operating at the ass end of a long and fragile logistic pipeline, and moving in the teeth of one of the greatest concentrations of effective coastal defense artillery and airpower in the world, and with ourselves having a broad material and technological advantage, plus sea, air, rail and road-borne supply. We have few or none of those advantages now."