The Tree of Knowledge by Daniel Miller (room on the broom read aloud .txt) 📕

As she walked toward the lectern, Cristina Culebra’s eyes carefully ran across the crowd in search of the needle that hoped to disrupt her campaign. The tree would guide her.

Cristina’s crowd held seventeen hundred people. Seventeen hundred potential assassins. She had seconds to determine who that assassin would be. An eternity.

She assessed the crowd, highlighting and discarding people in her mind.

Eight hundred men.

American political assassins were always men. The women faded into the background.

Approximately two hundred over twenty-two years old.

Most of these kids were college kids, and college kids don’t assassinate. They need a few more years to realize that the world isn’t what they were promised. The chanting college students were grayed out.

Fifty between twenty-two years and thirty years old.

Once you hit thirty, your delusions of grandeur fade.

Now to the logistics. How many could get a shot off? Her mind pushed everyone over thirty into the backdrop until fifteen young men glowed like Technicolor actors in a black-and-white film.

Fifteen young men were within sufficient range that they could hit her.

Fifteen faces. Which one of these is different from the others?

It took her one moment. The waifish boy stood out to Cristina like a red crab on a white beach. He hovered on the balcony to the immediate left of the stage, wearing a red shirt, but it wasn’t a campaign shirt, it was a stiff, unironed red T-shirt, something you’d buy in a pack of ten. It was a minor inconsistency, but to Cristina Culebra, it was everything. Identifying these minor inconsistencies in every situation she faced had enabled Cristina to always stay several steps ahead of the rest of the world. She read his face. Fear, anxiety, anger. All the other men in the crowd were cheering, while this man stood stiff and still, arms suctioned to his sides, fists clenched as though any wrong move might blow his cover. This was not a true believer. This was the enemy.

Cristina continued to walk toward the lectern and wave to the crowd, all the while keeping one eye on this disgraceful ode to Booth, Oswald, Hinckley, and the others that followed. The question is . . . does he have the guts to do it? Or will he panic? How will he do it?

It must be a gun. No way this twig thinks he can get me with a knife. And he couldn’t get a bomb through security. He could get a 3D printed gun through the metal detectors, though. She calculated the distance and angle for his shot. The balcony was about twenty feet above the stage. The lectern was another twenty feet from the edge. The shot would be about twenty-eight feet. Very possible, but tough with a homemade pistol, someone next to him bumping him, and the building shaking with the crowd. He’d have to get closer. He’d have to jump onto the stage. Cristina directed her eyes at the cold, angry gaze of the young man and knew. He’ll try. But he will fail.

At that moment, the boy leapt from the balcony wielding a gun and landed on the stage screaming, “Sic semper tyraaaaaann—” Before he could finish his cry, the lioness had taken three catlike steps toward him, grabbed his right arm, dislodged the gun from his hand, and shoved him to the ground. The maneuver took less than five seconds. Cristina Culebra paused a moment to absorb the look of sheer shock on his face while her security team sprang on top of him. As she turned, she gave him a wink and a silent wag of the finger.

The crowd stood motionless as Cristina Culebra calmly straightened her formfitting gray suit and approached the lectern. Her footsteps echoed like the knock on a door. Even her security team just crouched and held the boy, waiting for what would happen next. She grabbed the lectern with absolute poise, looked down at the dark wood grain, and knew that this was her moment. She raised her eyes to the audience and delivered the line that she had written over a week ago.

“If only President Lincoln had taken self-defense classes.”

A jet engine could not match the roar that exploded from Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium at that moment.

Chapter 15

“A job well done, the two of you,” said Turner after Ying and Albert had ceased celebrating.

“Thanks, Professor,” replied Albert, wiping the sweat from his face and putting his arm around Ying. “You know, I never played sports when I was a kid, but that was really fun. I kind of wish I had.”

“Well, there’s going to be plenty more where that came from. I believe Mr. Salazar is ready to give you some weapons training over in the east barn, which, based on Ms. Koh’s shooting performance, at least one of you badly needs.”

The two of them continued to talk as they walked into the barn, where Raphael sat perched on a hay bale.

“Yeah, where did you learn to shoot like that?”

Albert blushed. “Oh, my dad and I used to go hunting all the time in Minnesota. I used to like the shooting, but I always felt bad for the animals. I probably haven’t shot a gun for about twenty years.”

“And you’re not going to shoot a gun today either, my friend,” said Raphael, eavesdropping on their conversation. He wore an impish smile as he waved the two over.

Albert and Ying sat down on each side of Salazar and looked on as he stared off into the distance, twirling his toothpick in his mouth. His neck was short and thick, which gave his head the appearance that it was sprouting directly out of his shoulders, with nothing in between, like a snowman.

“So, you liking the Tree so far?” he asked in his heavy accent.

Albert and Ying nodded, wondering what exactly they were doing.

Salazar continued, “Yeah, I guess it’s pretty cool. I don’t really get it, but I think we’re on the right team.”

Ying glanced at Albert as if to say, “Are you going to