Good plan General, make it so.

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Well, as you’ve discovered, that door leads to one of the elevator shafts. We’re about 2,000 feet underground, a third of a mile from the 25-ton steel blast doors of the main entrance. Inside the mountain are various excavations and within those excavations are several buildings which are freestanding within the chambers without contact with the rock around them. Some of the buildings are three storeys high. The buildings themselves are mounted on springs to absorb the effect of earthquakes or…other phenomena.

Very nice. Is there central heating?

Well…

A mortgage chain?

My Lord, we’re not buying this place, just sort of borrowing it. If you’ll follow me up these stairs…I can show you the Command Centre.

Ooh, exciting!

(The two men emerge into a large room containing several computer workstations, each one with multiple flat panel display screens mounted on top, telephones and large bulky instruction manuals. The entire end of the room is filled with computerised displays showing satellite views of the Earth, news feeds from CNN, clocks showing the timezones around the world and video feeds from the base. Although all the equipment is functional, the workstations are empty, and there is no-one else around)

My Lord, welcome to the NORAD Command Centre, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.

Impressive! It’s like a miniature home from home. Can we get Nickleodeon on one of those screens?

Erm…

Of course the screens aren’t as big as they were on my island base, and we had more workstations but…hang on. We’re inside NORAD?

Yes we are.

But that’s the centre for missile defence for North America isn’t it?

Yes indeed. It also happens to be the main setting for one of my favorite TV shows, Stargate SG-1. Commander Carter, now there’s a real woman…

What are we doing here? We’ll be caught! You FOOL General!

Excellency, the base is no longer being used. They mothballed the complex a little while ago. There are still some staff on site maintaining the base, but I took a leaf from your book and simply put them on the payroll. I had to get the equipment started myself, and apart from the contractors I got in to build your new bedroom and extend some of the facilities, we are, to all intents and purposes, alone here.

Alone? in NORAD?

What was NORAD, yes.

Wow.

It’s perfect my Lord. This complex was built during the Cold War. The base was built to withstand the impact of a multimegaton nuclear missile as close as three miles away. It’s been constructed to reduce the effects of any nuclear attack, to channel any EMP effects caused by such an explosion and to keep the occupants safe and the base operational in time of nuclear war. It’s self-sufficient, equipped with every kind of defence mechanism known to man, and is just ripe for expansion! It’s got direct feeds to all US military installations around the world and can monitor all air and space traffic wherever it is. They only shut it down because the Cold War ended and another base was performing a similar function. It’s a ready-made place to rebuild our empire – this time from within!

General, you’ve excelled yourself. I occasionally wonder if it’s conceivably time perchance that I started sort of thinking about considering the possibility of perhaps kind of one day pondering on the option of maybe giving you a payrise. Or not.

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