Falls Church, Virginia, December, 2077, Monday…

The office was high in the Sheila Remington building in Falls Church, Virginia. Renamed after President Remington, the HQ of the Department of Homeland Security was a twenty story black, opaque obelisk, built after the second war in the Middle East. Now it was showing its age but it was still a magnificent structure. Its roof was full of antennas of every shape imaginable, except for the area set aside for the helipad. The building also went a full seven levels below the surface, three of which were dedicated to a parking garage.

Not much of the building could be seen at night, due to its color and the fact that all large cities in the US, including the Washington metropolitan area, forced energy consumption to be cut drastically at night, except for essential functions. Government office buildings were very stingy about what they declared to be essential - most outside lighting was definitely non-essential. Essential lighting for DHS meant night ops in secure rooms spread throughout the building or other time-critical activity in the various labs and computer server rooms.

Jason Pezanowski was in one such ops room at an early morning hour. He was keeping tabs on an INS bust in Houston where his section had contributed intel. He watched the live feed on a big screen monitor as the agents in Houston raided an apartment building full of illegals.

Won't these people ever learn? Why do they keep coming? Ever since the Mexican oil wells went dry, they come and they come. Of course, he knew they weren't all Mexicans. And they weren't all Latinos either. As bad as it was, the US economy was still a cut above many, so they came and they came. As the world economy became more homogenized, though, the people coming into the country tended to be the really desperate, those people with no training, no jobs, and no hope in their native country.

Pezanowski had little sympathy for them. He knew that the detainees captured tonight might be in camps living in squalor for six months to two years, but they had broken the law. Even the kids would go back. It didn't count anymore that you were born in the US if your parents were illegal. A special amendment to the US constitution had taken care of that.

Jason was one of many who had over the years made the transition from some other agency, yet his many years of experience in the CIA and DHS only seemed to make his job more and more routine. He felt he was in a rut. Some extracurricular activities related to his work provided some necessary diversion and the local cops were reliable enough in setting him up with an occasional hooker, but the fact that his career did not progress also kept him in a sour mood.