Category: Uncategorized

50

Monday, February 22, 2021, 5PM Eastern Standard Time

“Oh my gosh, hello stranger!” Mary said as she opened the screen door. “You’d better not hug me, I’m just back from my shift at Ball-Mart. You never know what’s circulating there.”

Joe made an awkward hugging motion in the air.

“How are you?” he said.

“Oh my gosh, it’s been so long,” Mary said.

“Is Jeff here?”

“He’s got an odd job he is not supposed to have. He’s on disability. He hurt his back a few years ago.”

“I heard something about that. That sucks.”

“Well come on in, have a seat. You want something to drink?”

“Tap water would be fine,” he said.

“We can do better than that. You want a Coke?”

“Sure,” Joe answered, and Mary went to the fridge, pulled out a plastic bottle of Coke, and handed it to him.

“You want a glass?”

“No, this is fine.” He unscrewed the cap and took a swig. “Thank you.”

“Well, what are you doing here?”

“Well, I happened to be in the area for my work, and it’s been so long I decided to look you up.”

“What are you doing these days? Last time we talked you were just about to go into the service.”

“Yeah, I got out about a year ago. Now I work for this security firm.”

Just tell them you work in security, Max had told him. So far, that explanation had worked for him.

“Oh, like finance?”

“No, unfortunately, I guess. No, it’s physical security for high-end clients, big shots. Beats being in combat for a lot less money, I guess.”

“Well it’s good to see you. And I’m glad you made it back in one piece.”

“It’s good to be back.”

“So how are your parents?”

“They’re fine. The same, I guess. Dad talks about retirement, but this virus thing has put that off, I guess. Mom’s doing okay. I live in Washington now, so I don’t see much of them, to be honest.”

I’m going to have to tell my dad I’m back in the U.S. and out of the service, Joe said to himself. It’s been a year already. Why can’t I tell him?

“Washington? Wow, that’s exciting. So, did you get this job through the service?”

“In a way. The company is run by a guy who used to do more or less what I did.”

“So, there’s some travel involved?”

“Yeah. A fair amount. I don’t mind it, at least not for now.”

“Good benefits?”

“I guess. I just signed up for the standard stuff. I’m glad I got the job before the virus hit. Though our business seems pretty unaffected by that.”

“Well I’m in the fresh food department, the meat section, so as you can imagine we were kind of overrun when the lockdowns started last year. For months afterward, it was pretty crazy.”

“I bet.”

“It’s calmed down a little since then, though. But there’s still a lot of mask and full-body-suit kind of work. The world has changed.”

“Yes, it has. Who could have predicted that, even a year ago. But working in a fresh food section – that’s been kind of a dependable job, huh?”

“Yes. I am so blessed. So many people without incomes, without benefits, suddenly ill.”

“Did you ever get the virus?”

“I think I had it. It seemed like a bad cold. Not too severe. And Jeff probably too. I don’t think Jane had the virus, but she had a cough and some kind of stomach bug recently.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear about that. She okay?”

“I think she’ll be all right.”

“What about Danny? Did he get it?”

Mary froze. Tears stung her eyes.

“Danny… no, he never… he never had it.”

“But he’s okay?”

Mary paused and leaned forward, with her hands on her knees.

“It’s been so long, I thought you would know,” she said.

“Know…?”

“Uh, Danny… Danny took his own life several years ago.”

It was Joe’s turn to freeze. His mouth hung open.

After several seconds, he spoke. “I am so sorry. I had no idea. No idea. Oh my god.”

“It’s been a while now,” Mary said.

“Several years ago?”

“Yes,” Mary said. “Five years now, almost.”

“Mary,” Joe said, “I had no idea.”

“Well, it was a rough time,” she said. “I guess we were going through so much, we didn’t inform everyone.”

“My father and mother never knew?”

“No, I guess not. If you didn’t know.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Mary said, rocking back and forth a bit.

“I understand… I guess there’s no good time to tell people something like that,” Joe said. “How are Jane and Jeff?”

“Well, we all have good days and bad days,” Mary said.

Joe looked down and shook his head. “I am so ashamed we lost touch,” he said. “I’ll tell my dad about it. I’m sure he will be…”

“No, it’s okay.”

“…I’m sure he will be shocked. He always spoke so highly of you.”

“Did he really?”

“Yes. He thinks the world of you.”

“Wow,” Mary said. “I never knew.”

“Listen, Mary, here’s my number,” Joe said, handing over a business card. “If you guys ever need anything, and I can help, let me know. I loved visiting with you when I was younger. You were always so nice to me. If you ever hit a rough patch again, I might be able to help. I’m sure my dad would too. We’re family.”

“Well, thanks. I don’t think we need anything, but thanks.”

“Listen, one of the reasons I’m here is to tell you I might be coming back in a month or so. Maybe we can go to dinner or something.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’d love to take you three out to dinner. My treat.”

“What are you coming here for?”

“Well, I work security on some political events. The President is coming here for a rally, I think it’s March 31, and I’m helping out with the security for the event. I don’t know how you feel about him, he seems to polarize people.”

“No,” she said. “We like him okay.”

“Well, if his rallies are something you are interested in, I can get you some pretty good tickets. VIP stuff.”

“Wow,” Mary said. “Wow. That would be great. I know Jeff would be over the moon.”

“Well, great. Shall we say dinner March 30, I’ll come here and take you out, and then the rally the next evening?”

“Wow, Joe. Thank you so much.”

“I’m glad I could do it. I’ll be pretty busy during the event, but I’ll try to set you up to get the backstage experience.”

“Thanks!”

“Well, this is going to seem weird now, and I hate to do this, especially after hearing what you told me, but I actually have a plane to catch.”

He got up awkwardly, the Coke still in his hand.

“Please take care of yourselves, and hug Jeff and Jane for me. And let’s stay in better touch from now on.”

“I’d like that,” Mary said.

He moved toward the door. He turned back and pointed.

“So March 30 and 31. Mark your calendar.”

“We’ll be here, with bells on,” Mary said. She opened the door for him.

“We’ll catch up on everything then in the right way,” Joe said.

“Take care. Call me, even if you just want to say hello.”

He walked back toward his rental car in the twilight darkness, fishing in his pocket for the unfamiliar keys.

He felt himself shiver.

Still winter, he thought.

51

Wednesday, February 24, 2021, 12PM Central Standard Time

“Where’s Pete?” Janet asked Mike as he sat down. “And what’s with the mask?”

“Pete’s’s sick,” Mike said.

“I thought he had the virus already,” Janet said.

“Maybe it’s not the virus. Maybe it’s just a cold. Or maybe what he thought was the virus when he had it wasn’t.”

“Well, I hope he gets better. He’s a good guy.”

“That he is,” Mike said.

“Who’s this?” Janet asked, indicating the younger man next to Mike, who sat two seats away, also masked, as per social distancing guidelines.

“This is my son, Joe,” Mike said. “Joe, this is Janet. She keeps us all in line around here.”

“Nice to meet you,” Janet said.

“Same,” Joe said. They both seemed about to reach their elbows across the bar, then Angelo coughed loudly in the back of the bar.

“You better be wearing that mask,” Janet yelled back at him.

“Sorry,” she said to Joe. “We got a regular here who likes to sit here and cough and scare all my customers away. I have to refill his beer with a squirt of Purell.”

Joe laughed.

“You were in the military?” Janet asked.

“Yeah.”

“What branch?”

“Army,” Joe said.

“My ex was in the Army,” Janet said.

“Sorry to hear that, I guess,” Joe said, laughing a bit.

“Not your fault,” Janet said. Then she turned to Mike. “How’d a lefty socialist like you have an all-American kid like this?”

“Beats me,” Mike said. “But when the civil war restarts, I hope he’ll put a good word in for me.”

“Huh,” Janet said, and moved off down the bar.

“She seems nice,” Joe said.

“She’s okay. She’s tough,” Mike said. “Sometimes I think she doesn’t like me much.”

Joe was silent.

“So, this was a surprise,” Mike said. “It’s good to see you.”

“Good to see you. Been a long time.”

“What have you been doing? I was surprised to hear you were out of the service.”

“Yeah. To be honest, I’ve been out for over a year.”

“Wow. That’s… you couldn’t tell your old man?”

“Sorry. It’s been a crazy time. Time came to re-up at the end of ’19, and the stuff I had been doing… well, the stuff that I wanted to continue doing wasn’t an option anymore, so I decided to get out.”

“Maybe someday you can tell me a little about what you were doing. I understand if you can’t.”

“Yeah, most of the stuff our unit was involved with is pretty classified. Sometimes for no good reason. But when in doubt, best to avoid talking about it.”

“How do you feel? Physically?”

“I’m fine. A few dings here and there, nothing that would keep me out of a ballgame. I did get out on a medical, but it was a technicality.”

“Have you seen your mom?”

“I called her. Haven’t seen her yet, but I will, probably today.”

“You should probably see her if you’re seeing me.”

“I will. This just worked out because my new job took me near here.”

“What is this new job, anyway?”

“Ah, it’s… it’s hard to explain. My CO knew this guy who used to be in the service who started up a private security firm. High-end clients, taking them place to place, making sure they’re okay, among other things. It’s the kind of stuff contractors used to do in Iraq and Afghanistan for the State Department, but with about one one-thousandth the risk. The biggest risk actually is the freaking egos on these guys. Most of them don’t need security at all. It’s a status thing. But we go along, pretend, and take their money. It pays well. I just moved in to a nice apartment and bought a car.”

“Well, that all sounds great. You sure you’re okay? If it was me, I’d want to take a nice long vacation, decompress, smell the roses.”

“Well, we are different people.”

“You’re telling me,” Mike said. “I knew that right away, the first time I looked into your eyes. I felt like you were saying, ‘THIS is supposed to be my dad?’”

“Ah, you’re not all bad,” Joe said. “We’re just different.”

“So, what do you think about America since you got back? Is it different from what you expected?”

Joe thought about it.

“Hard to say if the apparent change comes from having been someplace so completely different for a while, or if things really have changed. I don’t know if things are so different, or my frame of reference is just different.”

“That makes sense,” Mike said. “But I think I can tell you, things are very different from when you first went in – what was it? – ten years ago, eleven?”

“It’s over fourteen, believe it or not,” Joe said.

Mike gave a low whistle. “My god. That’s right. I was still in my forties. Time is really passing.”

“But I guess since then things certainly have changed, just reading stuff online.”

“I think too much about it,” Mike said. “Ask anyone here. It’s hard to keep my mouth shut, even though I know everything I say is just alienating people I should be trying to convince. But to be honest, I don’t think anyone’s convincible anymore. The legendary ‘swing voter’ was always a unicorn. Anyway, I’m the unicorn around here. I’m about the only liberal here.”

“Makes sense, given the area. For a blue state, this is a hell of a red area.”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “I like the wide-open spaces. When you grow up in a tiny house with a lot of people, in a crowded city, you just want space. At least I did. The downside for me, or, I don’t know, maybe it’s an upside, is, I live among people who don’t necessarily think like me. But they’re good people. Hell, your car breaks down, your pipes freeze, you got an animal in the attic, they will be there for you.”

“Solid Americans.”

“Yep. But they voted this guy in twice, and I don’t think they understood what it would do to the country. Or I don’t know, maybe it’s what they wanted.”

“There does seem to be a lot more division.” “What do you think about that?”

“Uh… I have not had much time to think about that. When you’re in the service, I think most people put that on hold. It doesn’t affect our day-to-day.”

“Well, I’m sure it affected what they had you doing.”

“I guess. But you get a job to do, and you do it. We didn’t think about the why too much.”

“Was it a change in what you were doing that made you decide to get out?”

“I don’t want to get into all that,” Joe said.

“Well, getting out of Middle East wars, that’s not necessarily a partisan issue,” Mike said. “I know the President was for getting out, but a lot of liberals were too. But the way he did it, without consulting any military leaders, abandoning allies, local minorities, that troubles me.”

Joe was silent.

“Okay,” Mike laughed. “Not getting anything out of this one.”

“You know how it is,” Joe said.

“Well, I really don’t, as you know well. You’ve chosen a different path than I did. In fact, I’m pretty sure I didn’t really choose a path. But I never considered the military. It wasn’t exactly the fashionable career choice right after Vietnam.”

Joe took a drink.

“Well, where are you headed after this?”

“Not sure. I think back to DC.”

“So, you aren’t going back to North Carolina to settle? Your old man was hoping to have a place to crash when his retirement savings ran out in a week or two.”

“You retiring?”

“Doesn’t look like it. Not anytime soon, anyway. 401-k has taken quite a hit.”

“Did you want to retire?”

“I really have not thought about it. I sort of assumed I would work till I couldn’t work anymore. Being an insurance underwriter isn’t exactly like being a coal miner. I can probably tap away at a keyboard till they put me in a box or my fingers fall off, whichever comes first.”

“And you can just talk and the words appear on the screen now,” Joe said.

“See? I’m probably good till 85 then.”

“Well, my lease ran out in North Carolina a couple of months ago, and the company I work for is headquartered in the Washington suburbs. They put me up at a long-term-stay hotel near DC till a few weeks ago.”

“Well, let your mom know.”

“I… I already did.”

Mike paused for a second.

“Well, that’s good. You should keep her informed.”

“Wow, all this concern for Mom. You two getting back together or something?”

“No, nothing like that. I just don’t want her getting angry because you saw me and not her. You don’t need that.”

“You seeing anyone?”

“No. It’s been a long time. To be honest I’m set in my ways. I’m a loner.”

“I think that’s true,” Joe said. “Always been true. You’ve probably said more to me in this conversation than you said to me the whole time I was growing up.”

“See,” Mike said, “I can be talkative. I’m known for my big mouth around here, right, Janet?”

“That he is,” Janet, who had moved back toward them, said. “He’s not exactly the strong silent type. He should wear a mask more often.”

“Well that just hurts, ma’am,” Mike said.

“The truth hurts,” Janet replied. “You two need anything more?”

“You?” Mike asked Joe.

“I thought we were having tacos,” Joe said.

“Oy,” Mike said. “Your old man is losing his marbles. Why don’t you get us tacos and two more beers, please, Janet.”

“Wow, ‘please?’ That’s a change,” she said, and went toward the kitchen.

“It was a surprise to see you on TV,” Mike said.

“It was a surprise to be on TV,” Joe said.

“You didn’t look thrilled,” Mike said.

“They kind of sprung it on me,” Joe said. “One of the people we do security for owned the team, and my boss is kind of hooked in with him. I didn’t expect it.”

“I can’t believe I was watching,” Mike said. “I’m not even much of a basketball fan. Just happened to turn to it randomly. I guess I wouldn’t have seen you today if not for that. Another reason for you not to like that, maybe.”

“Ah, come on. I had to see my old man, right?”

“I hope so. I hope you always feel like you can come see me.”

“Sure.”

“Hell, you can crash with me. I’ve got a whole room for you. I can give you a key if you need it. Anytime.”

“Thanks. But I doubt I’ll be back around here when you aren’t around.”

“That would probably be the best time for you to crash at my place. No need to get interrogated by your dad.”

“That would be a first,” Joe said. “We never talked all that much.”

“You seemed to know what you wanted to do. And I figured you were talking to your mother about anything important. She’s always been more useful than me.”

“Why do you always put yourself down?” Joe said, loudly enough that it startled Mike, and drew some attention from the peanut gallery around them.

Mike looked around, then said in a low voice, “I was joking.”

“Were you, though?”

Mike looked at Joe in the eyes for a moment. “Did that bother you? Why the big reaction?”

Joe thought for a moment. “You always surrendered. You never stuck up for yourself.”

Mike thought it over. “Sometimes you have to give way.”

“Not all the time. Not on everything.”

“Didn’t you prefer living with your mom?”

“It never seemed like you wanted me to live with you. I didn’t think it was an option.”

Mike was silent. After a minute or so, Joe spoke. “Anyway, water under the bridge, right?”

Mike stayed silent. He seemed to be trying to master his emotions. Finally, he spoke.

“If I had known… if I had had any inkling you wanted to live with me, I would have done something about it,” he said. “You were such a quiet kid, and you seemed so different from me, and you seemed not to want me around. Like you were permanently pissed off at me.”

“Of course I wanted you around,” Joe said. “A boy needs his father around.”

Mike looked down at this. “I have to, uh, go to the washroom,” he said. He pushed back from the bar, got up, and walked toward the rear of the bar, past the still-coughing Angelo.

Joe sat with his elbows on the bar, looking straight ahead. He pulled his mask down and took a drink of his beer.

After two minutes, Mike returned and sat down slowly.

“I wanted to ask you about that basketball game thing,” he said, looking straight ahead at something invisible across the bar.

“What?”

“I said you didn’t look happy when they were announcing you had just returned from Iraq.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I wasn’t happy either.”

“You?”

“Me.”

Joe was silent.

“Because contrary to popular opinion around here, I am a real patriot. I love this country. And I am proud as hell that you, my son, have served my country, even if I didn’t, and even if I have had serious disagreements with some of the wars my country’s government has chosen to fight.”

He paused and took a drink.

“I’m proud as hell of you, Joe. It sounds strange to say that. Not because I wasn’t always proud of you. I was. Always. But it sounds condescending. It sounds like I am saying, ‘I, your superior, have deemed that you, my inferior, have done something good, and you should crave my precious approval.’”

Joe looked like he was about to say something, but Mike raised his hand to stop him.

“I don’t think my approval is something that matters much. But I’m proud just to be associated with you. I’m proud to be your father. Even if I wasn’t such a great dad. So, when I say I didn’t like that thing they did to you at the basketball game, I am saying it as your father. It looked to me like they were stealing your valor, the valor of someone I love and respect, to create a smarmy fake-patriotic moment, manipulating every person there so they could sell more beer or basketball tickets. It looked to me,” Mike said, “like a bunch of fat, clapping, non-serving phony patriots having their chains pulled by some corporate-military bullshit machine, and thinking they were part of whatever hell you went through over there, when in fact they were part of what sent you off there in their place, and will do it again and again just so they can get an endless supply of those sweet tear-jerking moments. And as your father, I was repulsed by that. It made me queasy.”

“Wow,” Joe said.

“I’m sorry,” Mike said. “It’s the way I feel. So, I guess I wanted to know if you felt that way at all.”

Joe thought for a moment.

“I… I was too close to it to think anything that specific. I just wanted it to end. Do I think they were a bunch of phonies? The whole crowd? I don’t know. If I was mad at anyone I was mad at the people that made it happen. My boss, I guess, and the basketball team owners. It was a little mortifying. I… I never understood why combat veterans were so unwilling to talk about their war experiences. Now I think I do. It cheapens something that should be sort of sacred, life and death.”

Mike nodded vigorously. “That’s kind of what I was getting at.”

“But you shouldn’t get so angry. I went through a lot tougher things. Everyone has.”

“Okay.” Mike paused. “I want to ask you something else.”

“What?”

“It’s about the President and the Republicans. What do you think of them?”

“Like I said, I haven’t had a lot of time to think about that stuff.”

“You must have some opinions about them.”

“I… I don’t feel qualified to talk about political stuff. I haven’t been paying a lot of attention.”

“Well if you ever get caught up on the news and want to talk about that stuff, I would value your opinion. I have too many opinions, probably. I could use a sanity check.”

Janet came by with the tacos.

“Thanks,” Joe said.

“Anything for our men in uniform,” she said, smiling.

“I think she likes you,” Mike said. “At least she likes someone in this family.”

They flipped their masks down and ate in silence for a minute or two. Then Joe spoke up.

“I went and saw Mary recently.”

“Oh yeah? How is she doing? God, I haven’t seen her in years.”

“Did you know that Danny killed himself?”

Mike froze.

“What?” was all he could muster.

“Yeah,” Joe said.

“Oh my god,” Mike said. “Just, now, recently? When?”

“It was years ago.”

“What? How… how could I not know this? When did it happen?”

“About five years ago,” Joe said.

Mike leaned forward with his head down. Joe said nothing for a while. Finally, Mike turned to him.

“How are they?”

“Well, the rest of them are still alive. Jeff’s been through a lot. He was in jail a number of times for drugs. I think he’s clean now. He’s put on a lot of weight. Mary’s got a job at Ball-Mart. Their daughter –”

“Jane,” Mike said.

“She had been sick a few weeks before I came by. Supposedly not the virus and not too serious.”

Mike was still reeling. He had put his taco down and pushed back from the bar. “I can’t believe it,” he whispered.

More silence.

Mike finally said, “How the hell did we lose touch for so long?”

Joe shook his head silently.

“I don’t know. I always got the idea that we thought of them as, I don’t know, lower class?”

Mike began to protest. “I never… She was my cousin. We grew up together.”

“And then grew apart, I guess. If it makes you feel any better, I think she has been out of touch with all her cousins.”

“It doesn’t. I wish someone among us had been there for her. As I was not, obviously.” Mike seemed to be thinking. “I think maybe the divorce knocked me for more of a loop than I appreciated. I dropped pretty much everyone but you. I got a little too self-absorbed.”

Seeing Joe’s expression, he said, “That’s not an excuse. Just an explanation. It’s dangerous to get too much into self-pity. I guess I did just that.”

“It’s not your fault,” Joe said.

“I should have been around to help out,” Mike said.

“It might have happened anyway,” Joe said. “Stuff like that… it doesn’t come out of nowhere. His dad was a junkie and a jailbird.”

“I had heard about some of that,” Mike said. “And how he’s kind of in the tank for the President. But Jesus.”

“And they were homeless for a while.”

“Homeless?” Mike said. “Oh my god.”

“For a short time, I guess. They had a rough ride till Jeff got straight. I have to hand it to Mary. She really must have come through for them. I can’t imagine what all that must have done to her.”

“Not to tell us…” Mike said, his voice trailing off. “What must she have thought of us?”

“I doubt she was thinking too much about anyone,” Joe said. “Shock. Then, when’s the right time to call up your relatives and say, ‘Oh, by the way, my son hanged himself’?”

“He hanged himself?” Mike said, visibly shrinking. “Oh, god.”

“Sorry, Dad,” Joe said. “I’ve been in a combat zone too long. I did not mean to shock you, honestly.”

“No…thank you for telling me. I could have died without knowing, with all these diseases going around. …Have you had the virus?”

“Yeah. You?”

“No. At least, I don’t know. I’ve had colds. Nothing that made an impression on me.”

“Well, be careful.”

“My god. Well, at least… this has been a meeting I will not forget soon. Jesus.”

“I’m sorry to have been the one to tell you. I was wondering if maybe you knew.”

“Not a clue. Does your mom know?”

“I don’t know.”

Mike thought for a moment.

“Well, think about whether you should tell her. I guess there’s no non-shocking way to tell her that news. But I guess she should know.”

“Okay.”

“You know, I think of myself as a reasonably thoughtful guy,” Mike said. “Then this comes along and lets me know I have been a thoughtless asshole all along.” He waved off Joe’s head-shaking. “It’s easy to think of yourself as basically decent just for advocating certain political opinions and voting a certain way. It’s a little harder when your own flesh and blood suffer like this but decide they would rather not reach out to you in a crisis.”

“I’d better get moving,” Joe said. “Any message for Mom?”

“Say hello from me, will you? And say hello to her new guy. What’s his name again?”

“Mel,” Joe said.

“He seems like a nice guy. The opposite of me in many ways. Which seems right now to be a pretty good thing.”

“Well, that’s wrong,” Joe said. “But okay, I’ll say hello for you.”

“Take the tacos to go. They’re actually not terrible.” He turned to Homero. “Right, Homero?”

“Dog food,” Homero said.

“He’s just giving us gringos a hard time,” Mike said.

“You take care of yourself,” Homero said to Joe. “It’s good to see you back here in one piece.”

“Likewise,” Joe said. “Encantado.”

“We’ll make a good mejicano of him yet,” Homero said.

Joe grinned and waved, and then reached back to the bar to put some sanitizer on his hands.

“Take care of yourself, Dad,” he said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Mike watched him all the way out the door.

Janet came over and stood across the bar from him.

“You okay?” she said.

Mike looked down at his tacos.

“I’m sorry, he finally said. “I’m fine. Just got some bad news. Somebody in the family died.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Janet said. “Was it sudden?”

Mike looked up at her. “Yes… but five years ago. I just learned about it now.”

Janet did not know what to make of this; her extended family was so intimately entwined in one another’s business that she could not conceive of something happening to one of them and going unreported for five minutes, much less five years. What an odd duck, she thought, as she turned back over toward Angelo, who had chosen this moment to begin another coughing jag.

“That’s it, Angelo,” she said, loudly. “Hit the bricks. OUT. Before we lose even more service members.”

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

52

Monday, March 1, 2021, 9PM Moscow Standard Time

The President stared at the screen on his desk, transfixed.

“Bozhe moi,” he whispered.

The President had received the terminal that same morning from Antonov. Normally he avoided technology like the plague. Even before the full extent of the perils of computers had been demonstrated by “Operation O Face,” he had sensed that they boded little good and much ill. And he had heard that they could be a tremendous waste of time. Thirty years after their introduction, and almost as long since they had become a status item among the oligarchs of his nation, he still had never used a cellular telephone. Phones and computers were for people carrying out orders, and television was for sheep.

But he had never understood the seductive power of “Reality TV” until this moment. Of course, what he was watching was essentially a cable television channel available only to himself. He had tried to pull himself away, and through his usual iron will, he had succeeded in turning the damned thing off for most of the day. But even as he took care of his regular business he had remained distracted by what he had seen. At a meeting to plan the legislative agenda, his deputy had leaned over to him.

“Everything okay, boss?”

“Yes, Sergei Borisevich.”

Antonov had been correct in his assumptions. Like himself, the President – the other one, that is – never used a computer.

Unlike himself, the American President was almost literally never without his smart phone.

And it was his private line. He and almost everyone else in his administration, according to Antonov, blithely used their personal phones and computer systems regularly for official public business; this had made hacking into them quick and easy. Even after all the screaming about how his opponent in the 2016 election had destroyed America’s security by using a home email system for public business – screaming that had certainly helped him win the election – he did this.

When you win by that small a margin, as Antonov had said, any of a dozen factors could have, and really, did, win the election for you. The screaming about her private phone and email fell into that category.

As did numerous activities of the Russian government. Nothing was provable, of course, and no one in his government would publicly admit anything, on pain of some very bad outcomes. But their smirks, which were very much allowed, said it all. The Olgino Trolls had certainly had an effect. The margin in the three critical states was almost certainly smaller than the number of votes swayed by those pimple-faced social undesirables in St. Petersburg.

The President began to laugh quietly to himself now. The previous Democratic candidate’s home email server turned out to be the only one that his intelligence services had been unable to crack. The allegedly secure government servers were child’s play. It was the private server in her suburban basement that his hackers had proven unable to breach. Many had tried; a fair number were no longer around because of their failure.

But this – this was different. No one in this American administration seemed to give a damn about security. They either did not care that Russians (and presumably Chinese and many others) were vacuuming up all of their communications, or else they were some combination of oblivious and arrogant. Maybe they were so sure of the loyalty of their voters that they did not need to concern themselves with either the blatant hypocrisy of their actions, or the fact that real enemies of the United States were profiting from them. Their voters would blame Okomo and the Democrats for everything anyway.

***

The Federation President had had an intimidating (but technically adept) flunky standing by as Antonov brought the device into his office.

“Mr. Antonov,” he had said.

“Yes, Gospodin Prezident?”

“There are no cameras or microphones in this device?”

“No, Gospodin Prezident.”

“You are very sure?”

“Yes, Gospodin Prezident.”

The President had motioned to his flunky.

“Open it up.”

Antonov betrayed no nervousness as the thick-neck deftly wielded a tiny screwdriver and opened the laptop in a few seconds. The flunky examined the contents, pulling a few parts out and examining them through a jeweler’s loupe. After a minute or two, he reassembled the contents and screwed the laptop shut again.

“Clean?” the President asked.

“Clean, Gospodin Prezident.”

“Good,” the President said. He turned to Antonov. “You understand we cannot be too careful.”

“Yes, Gospodin Prezident.”

“And you understand the consequences if there ever were to be something like that discovered in this thing.”

“Yes, Gospodin Prezident.”

“Very good,” the President said. “We understand one another.”

After a few pointers on how to operate the machine, he had dismissed Antonov, with strict instructions to make himself available for instant communications with Sergei Borisevich at any time of the day or night. Then he had dismissed them all. Waiting a decent interval, he then had turned the machine on again. A menu allowed him to choose from the devices of several dozen American politicians. But there was one and only one that interested him. With a grimace he quickly passed over the Senator whose activities had scarred his corneas a few weeks earlier, and found the link to the one he had wanted: his counterpart’s phone.

He had, of course, talked to him several times, in side meetings at global summits. But now he was able to watch him in his home, on a triple split screen showing the pictures for both the forward and the “selfie” cameras, as well as what the target would see looking at his screen.

After watching for close to an hour, he was dumbfounded.

This man did almost nothing but eat buckets of fried chicken, drink diet soda, excrete the results, read newspapers while on the toilet, watch Wolf News (and its allegedly more liberal rivals), and Toot about perceived slights, quoting various fringe lunatics who had posted opinions supporting him or insulting his domestic enemies.

What struck him were two things, and then one bigger thing.

First, this man did nothing productive, or as close to nothing as a human being could get. Had he done anything today that had anything to do with his job, with actual policy, “faithfully executing the laws?” Nothing.

Well, if you distorted the meaning of that phrase, he had. He had made several phone calls demanding that certain functionaries be fired for doing things in the normal course of their jobs that he felt had made him look bad.

And that was the key, the second insight. He supposed he had suspected this from the first time he had seen this President on television decades ago, long before he had entered politics, and watched him stumble from bankruptcy through scandals through broken marriages, all accompanied by press conferences. It was all about his personal image. Nothing else. The entire federal government of the greatest and most powerful nation in the history of the planet, the organization that had won two world wars and a Cold War, put human beings on the moon and brought them all back, invented the Internet and most computing technology, was now almost exclusively devoted to gratifying the ego of a damaged petulant child.

He remembered several years before the other President had been first elected, when there was supposed to be a beauty pageant in Moscow, and this man had Tooted something about hoping to meet him and become his “new best friend.” At the time, he had told his aides to make very sure that he was kept very far away from him for as long as he was in the country.

There was no grand strategy. This other President was not “crazy like a fox.” He had no plan, other than to wake up, see who might be attacking him, and then go on-line and bewail his fate. It couldn’t even be called infantile. Infants occasionally smiled, laughed, showed affection. This man never laughed. People called Vladimir Vladimirovich cold and humorless and a murderous dictator, and he had to admit that was not unfair. But even he laughed on occasion. And he most definitely had a plan to Make Russia Great Again, though some people disagreed with his means, and most of those people met bad ends.

But this President? “Make America Great Again?” Substitute his name for “America,” and “Flattered Again” for “Great Again,” and you had everything about this man. There was nothing else to him. No plan, and therefore no predictability beyond the moment-to-moment certainty that he would viciously attack those who said or did anything that he thought was “mean,” sicking his 70 million Tooter followers, some of them deranged and heavily armed, onto them. He hated people who were “mean” to him.

But that wasn’t quite it either. And that was the third insight. He didn’t even care if the publicity was bad. In fact, he seemed to prefer insults and slights. They allowed him to wallow in his favorite activity: whining that the entire world was against him. “No President has ever been So Persecuted,” he whined in one of the grammatically challenged Toots Vladimir read. Six presidents had been shot, four of them fatally, but this one, who had been handed the most powerful job in the world after having done virtually nothing to merit it, was the most persecuted?

It all boiled down to this: The American President could not abide not being the center of attention for the entire world. Whether for good, bad, or other reasons, he had to dominate every news cycle. If a day went by without him being at the top of the headlines, he would do some disruptive act to return himself to what he saw as his rightful place: monopolizing all the oxygen in the global mediasphere for him, him, him.

This neediest, most narcissistic baby in the world had gotten exactly what he wanted: the full attention, at all times, of the entire world. In a way, it was almost beautiful, thought the Russian President. What were the odds that such a profoundly psychologically crippled human being should luck into a world that so completely pandered to his every whim? He was like an orphan baby born with no arms or legs who had found himself carried wherever he wanted, and supplied with all needful things as he grew, by the normally deadly wild animals surrounding him. And as a result, he grew up with an arrogant assumption that he was owed these services by all around him, and he owed them nothing but tyranny and further demands.

And it had all worked out! At no point had he ever been refused anything; well, except as a young child, when he must have been abused by his wealthy father, of course; that’s obviously the person on whom he had modeled his entire misanthropic, miserable modus operandi. But of course, since that point, he had never reexamined his lazy, egotistical, abusive approach. Why should he change something that had never failed to work for him?

He, the Russian President, had led an austere, disciplined, ascetic life, thinking that only in this way could he achieve the highest level of power. But someone who had led a dissolute, disheveled, slapdash, self-indulgent, completely undignified existence, crying and complaining and picking fights with nonentities, a man who had simply been handed everything his entire life, had arguably achieved greater power.

He stared out of the other President’s phone. He had to admit, it was mesmerizing. In the background he heard some television propagandist saying flattering things about the other President. The President seemed to coo in response. He heard the propagandist complain about some criticism being made of the President by some political rival. This got a real reaction. He heard the President utter an unearthly groan and begin swearing at the television. More fried chicken in bed. Another visit to the lavatory seemed in the offing. Vladimir Vladimirovich shut the computer.

Merely watching this man was disorienting. The Russian president did feel he had gained a visceral understanding of where America had gone wrong, but he also felt as though simply observing this creature was somehow contaminating his brain and causing him to feel slightly mentally unbalanced.

He had gained access to the not-so-secret lair of his world rival, and what had he found there? A vacuum. A black hole of self-absorption where knowledge and taste and thought and logic and national greatness – all higher things – were simply crushed out of existence. And snorted? There was all that sniffling.

He had seen enough. It was time to harvest the gains from this unexpectedly successful experiment. He got on the phone to his deputy.

“Yes, Gospodin Prezident?”

“Sergei,” the President said. “I think our friend in Washington is now more of a liability than an asset. I think it is finally time, as I foretold to you years ago, for us to twist the knife the other way. Release the dezinformatsiya about the Baltic leaders, and get the generals to work on operational plans for annexing the territories we discussed. Prepare to leak the information on all the money our people have given the Republicans. And release anything we have on this President and his party.”

“I will begin the execution of the plan immediately, Gospodin Prezident.”

“And Sergei?”

“Yes, Gospodin Prezident?”

“Send someone to destroy this computer. Incinerate it.”

“Srazu, Gospodin Prezident.”

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

53

Wednesday, March 3, 2021, 12PM Central Standard Time

“Taco Wednesday,” Pete said. “how I’ve missed you.”

“How are you feeling?” Mike said.

“Fine,” Pete replied. “It was just a cold.”

“You had everyone here worried,” Mike said.

“Keep everyone guessing, is my motto,” Pete said.

“I thought Janet was going to start crying,” Mike said. “I think she digs you, man.”

“Well,” Pete said, “can you blame her, really?”

“No,” Mike said. “You are a mountain of a man and well-beloved in the community.”

“Where’s Angelo?” Pete asked, as Janet hove into view.

“He’s in the hospital,” Janet said, wandering over after thinking she had heard her name mentioned. “The virus, I guess.”

“No shit,” Pete said.

“How long has he been sick?” Mike asked.

“Well, at least a month and a half, from how he’s been coughing around here, but now I guess it’s the full-blown pneumonia.”

“Poor guy.” Janet scoffed.

“Just because he got sick don’t make him some sort of a saint,” she said. “He was a pain in the ass before he got sick, and he remained a pain in the ass after he got sick. Besides being a nasty drunk.”

“Well,” Pete said, “maybe if I had his problems I’d be nasty too.”

“We all know you’re a nice guy, Pete, but there’s no need to go all Francis of Assisi on us,” Janet said.

“Well in that case, I need a drink and three tacos,” Pete said.

“And the same for me,” Mike said.

“You, you could use some Francis of Assisi,” Janet told him.

“Are you even Catholic?” Mike asked.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Janet said.

“Nothing,” Mike said. “Just, I didn’t think St. Francis was that big a celebrity in Protestant churches.”

“I saw the Mickey Rourke movie,” she replied.

“Okay, now I get it,” Mike said. “That was Mickey’s pre-having-work-done, beautiful-beautiful-man phase.”

“Good a basis for a religion as any,” Janet said.

“As are tacos and beer,” Pete said.

“Coming right up, St. Francis,” Janet said, and turned away toward the kitchen.

“I told you she dug you,” Mike said.

“As you say, why not,” Pete said.

“Why not indeed,” Mike said. “But as long as we are talking about religion… maybe you can answer me a question.”

“There you go again,” Pete said, in a Reagan-like voice.

“That’s pretty good,” Mike said. “Another hidden talent. But riddle me this, Batman.”

“Okay,” Pete said, wearily.

“What does ‘In God We Trust’ mean?”

Pete put his elbows on the bar and began massaging his temples.

“They asked me, ‘Have you been undergoing any stress lately?’ And I told them, ‘I can’t think of any.’ And it’s only now that I realize what it was all along.”

“No, seriously,” Mike said.

“I’m seriously getting a migraine.”

“No, I have a point.”

“It’s on the top of your head,” Pete said, “and yet somehow it’s a pain in my ass.”

“‘In God We Trust.’ It’s everywhere around here. But what does it mean?”

“Uh… we trust in God?”

“Okay. So, if you trust in God so much, why do you have to spend all sorts of taxpayers’ money to put that phrase on license plates and billboards and in classrooms and on public buildings and, I don’t know, in lady’s rooms, for all I know?”

Pete was still massaging his temples.

“I’m serious,” Mike said. “If you believed in God and trusted Him, or Her, or It, then wouldn’t you trust Him, Her, or It enough to not have to plaster that phrase on every flat surface in the state? If you really trusted in God, then you’d trust that you would not need to do much of anything, right? Trust in God means, you can relax. ‘Let Go and Let God,’ right? But that is not what I see the kind of people who push ‘In God We Trust’ doing. They aren’t trusting God at all. They think unless they have that phrase written everywhere, then really bad things will happen.”

Pete turned to Mike and said, “Friendo… you think you might be overthinking things a bit?”

“Why can’t everyone else be underthinking things?”

“So once again, everyone else is wrong and you are right?”

“It’s been happening so often lately,” Mike said. “But let’s humor you.”

“That would be a first.”

“Let’s say I’m being too literal.”

Pete scoffed. “What, you, Coach? Too literal?”

“Okay, let’s say the meaning is some broader point. It means, ‘We are God- believers.’”

“Okay.”

“But not all of us are, are we?”

“I’m starting to have less trust in God right now.”

“And even those that do believe in God don’t have the same concept of ‘God,’ do they?”

“I promise to trust in any God that makes you shut up right now.”

“So what can it possibly mean? I think it means, ‘You had better say you believe in the kind of God I believe in, or you are not one of us.’ It’s sticking it in the faces of those who may not want to knuckle under to the kind of fundamentalist literal Protestantism that passes for Christianity lately in this country. White, Republican authoritarianism, supportive of the President, without much connection to the actual Jesus Christ. It’s taking something sacred that should be beyond politics and stealing it for their side. Like they’ve done with the flag and the military. As a patriotic American, I object. And as an admirer of Jesus Christ, and a stickler for grammar and meaning, I object even more. If they actually trusted in God, they would stay completely out of politics and would not have to do billboards or license plates. They would actually TRUST IN GOD that all that stuff would work itself out. So, they clearly do not trust in God. Okay, I’m done,” Mike said, and took a swig of his beer.

“Thanks be to God,” Pete said. “You’re making me wish I was back in the hospital. So, tell me, what’d I miss last week?”

“Just my kid,” Mike said. “Came through town for his job.”

“Really? How is he?”

“Good, I think. Still a little cryptic about his job.”

“Well like I said, it’s got to be better than being over there.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“You still upset about a grateful nation expressing its thanks to him?”

“Of course.”

“Thattaboy.”

Mike smiled.

“Well, I have another question,” he said. Pete began to massage his temples again.

“Apparently,” Mike continued, oblivious to his friend’s distress, “I’m an elitist who wants to silence everyone, because I think my opinions are smarter than everyone else’s.”

“Glad to hear you’re coming around. The first step is to admit you have a problem.”

“But I’m a little stuck because there’s something I just can’t understand.”

“Of course you can’t.”

“Well, whenever I disagree with some Alabaman or Texan about politics, I am an elitist pig who wants to silence them.”

“Correct.”

“And I can accept part of that. I AM an elitist pig, I guess.”

“You’re really coming along,” Pete said, sounding a bit relieved.

“Thank you. My question is this.”

“Two questions on one Taco Wednesday? I don’t know if I will survive that.”

“You’ll be fine. Here’s my second question. Now when I disagree with some Texan or Alabaman, I’m evil because I think my opinions are smarter than theirs.”

“Yes?” Pete said, uncertainly.

“So, my question is: What opinions of theirs do they consider to be dumber than mine?”

Pete’s eyes narrowed and he stared at Mike. “This sounds like another trap.”

“No, I literally have had people tell me, ‘You think all your opinions are superior to ours.’ But that’s what opinions ARE, right? I mean, when they disagree with me, do they think their opinions are inferior to mine? No. Somehow, when I think they’re wrong, I’m an elitist. But when they think I’m wrong, well, they’re just great Americans.”

Pete continued to stare.

“And when they disagree with me, it’s merely a difference of opinion, whereas when I disagree with them, and present facts to support my opinion, well, I’m trying to silence them. What’s that about?”

Pete thought it over for a second.

“Okay, I do think that liberals think they are always right and I do think they think that people who disagree with them are stupid.”

Mike thought it over.

“But again – how is that different from when you disagree with me? Should I say you always think you’re right? I mean… you DO always think you’re right when you express an opinion, right? That’s what opinions ARE.”

Now it was Pete’s turn to stroke his chin and take a swig of lager.

“There’s just something about how liberals express opinions. ‘Anyone who thinks different is stupid.’ ‘How could you be so stupid to think this?’ ‘Well I went to Harvard and this is what they taught us there.’”

Mike took his own swig and considered in turn.

“Well, what the right tells me when I disagree is ‘You’re a baby-killing atheist and God hates you.’ I think I’d rather be called stupid.”

“I don’t know. There’s something about being called stupid. It makes you want to lie in wait and seek vengeance on whoever does it.”

“Not me. Maybe the difference is I really don’t think I’m stupid. If someone called me stupid, I would just laugh. Maybe being called stupid when you think deep down that you might be stupid is what really gets people angry.”

“There’s my elitist boy, right there!”

“No, I think I’m on to something here. Now let me stipulate here…”

“‘Stipulate.’ That’s just the kind of word to use when you want to communicate with the poorly uneducated.”

“…Ha ha. Let me just state here for the record, I do think I’m stupid. I think everyone is stupid in 90% of stuff.”

“Thank you for using small words like ‘stuff.’”

“For example, I have never changed my own oil. That makes me pretty stupid at automotive stuff. I would be a babe in the woods if I had to repair or maintain most of the objects that are around my house that make my everyday life possible. I can’t fix a dryer or a dishwasher. I once fixed the switch for my sink disposal, and I couldn’t stop talking about it for weeks. I wanted a Nobel Prize for it.”

“You’d be better off with a chest to pin it on, brother,” Pete said, taking a victory sip.

“I can’t grow my own vegetables or raise my own meat. I can’t make clothes or build a house. I can’t cure any diseases.”

“Sure. Who has time, when you’re…did you actually say ‘raising your meat?’”

“And that doesn’t even begin to address all the many intellectual disciplines I am a complete idiot at,” Mike said. “I am not a lawyer or a banker or a computer scientist. I suck at math and science. I mean, I know the basics, I could explain how we know the earth goes round the sun, but I can’t explain to you how we know other basic things, like what causes gravity, or why people have to die instead of living forever.”

“I can tell you that one. People have to die, or revenge would be pointless.”

“So, I am not only stupid, I’m ignorant, but I guess I’m comfortable enough in my ignorance that somebody calling me stupid is not going to get me angry.”

“But you went to some Ivy League college.”

“I was their admissions mistake of that decade.”

“Yeah, yeah, you can say that, but you went there and graduated somehow, so people think you, like, tie your shoes better than them.”

“Which I don’t. I also suck at shoe-tying.”

“But you have, like, a super power. It’s Super-Liberal-Elite-Man! He, merely by disagreeing with someone, can make them sure he thinks they are stupid, and make them want to take vengeance on him for the rest of his life!”

“That is one stupid super power.”

“I have to agree. But it’s real.”

“The thing is,” Mike said, “all they are doing is hurting themselves.”

“As most angry people do,” Pete said.

“Do you think you voted out of anger, that way? To punish elitist liberals?”

“Probably, to some extent, sure,” Pete said.

“But now it’s having real effects.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Mike said, “It might kill Angelo.”

“I think Janet might vote for that,” Pete answered.

“That’s another thing,” Mike said. “Can I prove that the President being a completely self-absorbed ignorant douche…”

“Hey,” Pete said. “That’s the Honorable MISTER Self-Absorbed Ignorant Douche to you.”

“…That his completely idiotic, negligent, me-me-me response to this whole virus outbreak killed any particular person? No, I can’t. That’s how stupid I am. But am I pretty sure that when you put a completely terrible person who only cares about himself and brags about how he knows everything already and is a genius in charge of, say, THE WORLD, then really really bad things are going to happen because of it.”

Pete sat still, not reacting.

“And the hard part is, there’s a delay. He can dismantle the government piece by piece, simply by firing the smart people, or just revolting them so much they don’t want to be associated with him, and we won’t get nuked or die of a virus the next day. Maybe even the stock market starts going up again for a while.”

Pete clinked his beer into Mike’s, which was sitting on the bar.

“My 401-k is actually above where it was when Okomo left office again,” Pete said. “Hard to believe, even to me.”

“Maybe we’re past the worst of the virus,” Mike said. “But there’s still no vaccine. Wall Street is a very bad predictor of where it itself will be in a year or even six months. No one knows. But that’s my point. Things don’t immediately go straight to hell when some idiot leader makes a terrible decision. Vietnam started out okay, and so did the Iraq War. ‘Cakewalk,’ I think they called it. But if you refuse to admit that, say, putting an angry self-obsessed moron in charge of the economy, our foreign policy, public health, our justice system, and the nuclear launch codes MIGHT be a really bad idea with extremely bad consequences, just because the world doesn’t end immediately, well, I might call that a word that begins with ‘s,’ if I didn’t have this idiotic super power that would make you hate me forever.”

“I could never hate you forever,” Pete said.

“Well thank you,” Mike said.

“I mean, why go on hating you after you’re dead? It would be pointless.”

“See? Now that’s intelligence at work right there.” They clinked beers.

“Here are your tacos,” Janet said.

“Thank you, doll,” Pete said.

“Any time,” Janet said, smiling as she walked away.

“‘Doll?’” Mike said. “Whoa. Talk about future bad consequences.”

“Says the man who can’t even let America trust in God,” Pete said. “We know where you’re headed in the afterlife.”

“I trust not,” Mike said. “But until then, let’s eat, drink…”

“And be annoying?” Pete said, crunching into his taco.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

54

Thursday, March 4, 2021, 2PM Eastern Standard Time

“Okay, Doc, let’s get this over with.”

“It should not take much time at all, Mr. President.”

“You know I don’t like getting examined.”

“I’m aware of that, sir. Most people don’t.”

“I’m not most people.”

“That is very true, Mr. President. Now if you could just lie down and we will get you into the scanner.”

“My old doctor, back home, he would just look at me and then write up a nice letter. Now that was a doctor.”

“I’m sure he was an excellent doctor, sir. Now are you wearing anything metal? Belt buckle, cuff links, pens, anything at all?”

“Just my wedding ring.”

“Well, maybe we should get that off just in case. It probably would not set anything off, but better safe than sorry.”

The President slipped his wedding band off and handed it to Dr. Vincent Bloombach, M.D., Admiral in the Public Health Service and Presidential Physician. The President instantly seemed to feel better, lighter, with a newly naked ring finger.

“You know, I think I feel better already.”

“That’s great, Mr. President. We’ll just stick that in the pouch with your other valuables.”

The President narrowed his eyes. “Keep them where I can see them.”

“Of course, sir.”

“A lot of people would want to grab anything that belonged to me.”

“I’m sure that’s true. Now, Mr. President, at this point we always ask the patients if they want anything in the way of a sedative, because this experience can be uncomfortable for some people. I know you are on a prophylactic dose of Adderall, so perhaps you would like something to relax you? Nothing too much, just something to take the edge off.”

“I don’t need that. I’m not weak like that. I don’t even drink.”

“Very good, sir. No sedative.”

“I don’t even need to sleep. I sleep three hours a night.”

“You told me that, sir. It’s remarkable.”

“Remarkable. That’s exactly what my last doctor wrote about me and my health. And he didn’t even need any machines to tell him.”

“Well, sir, you do have a lower back issue that you mentioned to me, which you said was affecting your excellent golf game, and I think this machine was perfectly designed to analyze that. And you didn’t want to disrobe or be examined manually.”

“Manually. No. That means hands? Not with this virus thing. Though I had it. They said I didn’t, during the election, but it was lies. But I think my opponent had it worse. That’s why he was on all those brain drugs. And the people believed me.”

“Yes, they did, sir. Now we’re going to move you back under the machine. You will have to stay still in a confined space for about 45 minutes. Many people like to close their eyes during this period. We need you not to move, so we will be putting your head into a brace that allows you simply to relax back into it. Some people even fall asleep during this process, and that’s okay too, as long as you don’t move. You’ll hear some clanking. Do you want some earbuds to drown it out? Some music perhaps?”

“I am not many people. I don’t mind clanking. And I don’t sleep.”

“Very good, Mr. President. Lie back down and we’ll get this thing going.”

“Hold on a second.”

The President grabbed his phone and began to type rapidly with his thumbs.

–<() Disloyal Democrat governors want me to stop their citizens from taking over their statehouses. They want to be saved by the Deep State Swamp. But The Transition to Greatness cannot be stopped!

“Okay,” he said, putting the phone on a table near him. The President lay back, and the nurse pushed a button, and he moved slowly backwards into the imaging machine. He now saw how enclosed the space was, and had a moment of panic. Close your eyes, he thought. He shut his eyes and relaxed.

“Everything okay, sir?”

“Everything’s great,” the President said.

“Okay, prepare for 45 minutes of clanking.”

“Let’s get it over with,” the President said.

Some humming as the machine started. Then clank. Clank. Clank. Clank.

Jesus, what a pain in the ass just for a bad back. Is this from the virus? I wish I had the old doctor back, the drunk one. Or my private doctor, the one they called Dr. Dude. He would sign anything I wrote up. No examination at all. That’s a doctor. These military guys are too stiff. Are they real military guys? The last one was. I think this guy is a phony. Coast Guard or something. Probably never even guarded a coast. Jesus, I hope they cleaned this fucking machine since the last time it was used. What if some big sweaty guy was in here? Some Mexican? Nah, this is a military facility. Do we still let Mexicans in the military? Maybe I need to issue another Executive Order. Ugh…maybe it was a black guy, the last one in here. I should have asked. They have all those jungle germs. Or even some Southern guy, sweating fried chicken all over this thing… mmm, fried chicken. I could use some fried chicken right now. Tennessee Fried Chicken. Mmmm. Gravy. Mashed potatoes. But I don’t want to think about some sweaty Southern Baptist sweating virus and god knows what else all over this machine. Think of something else. Women. It could have been a woman in here before me. Some hot number. Like my wives, before they married me, before I ruined them. Maybe that porn star. I called her Horse-Face. But really I liked her. Amazing gazongas. Fake of course. The best kind. Hey – can this thing detect brain waves? Can it see stuff I am thinking? I better not get a you-know-what while I’m in here. Shit – can this thing see my you-know-what? I shoulda asked. But how could I ask. I haven’t had a chub in months, now would be the wrong time to get one. Or would it? Would it impress them? Who sees this? Some hot nurse? Do nurses get the fake gazongas, or do they react with the medical equipment? Nurses. They should be so lucky. I’m President. They’re just a nurse. What a story that would be. For her, anyway. I’d grab this one, and I’d get away with it, too, like I always do – plus there’s doctor-patient confidentiality. But she’s not hot enough. At least it’s not a male nurse. Ugh. Talk about a boner-killer. Well I don’t want one now anyway. What can I think about… the Attorney General. What a conniving little bastard. Just the kind of guy you want in that position. Like Max King. He was a SEAL. Why am I getting a chub now? Am I gay? They say everyone’s a little gay. But not me. The Senate Majority Leader. Now that guy is a boner-killer. Looks like a turtle. I better not laugh. I don’t want to be doing this again. Then there’s my son-in-law. I heard he had a run-in with that Texas fracking guy. Good. I heard he got a chunk ripped out of his ass. Why I let him take all these jobs, just so he can fuck them up, is beyond me. Of course it’s my daughter. I can’t say no to her. I’m just a girl who can’t say no… why did she have to marry him? And a Jew? I hate Jews. They know money, though. Why’d she have to marry the one stupid Jew? So he went to Harvard. His father bought him the place. Millions. Like my dad got me out of the local school, got me into that Ivy school after two years… god, the old man never let me forget it. And I never let my sons forget I got them into their schools. God knows they never would have even graduated from high school if it weren’t for me. Jesus, Number Two is a dope. Maybe I shouldn’t have told him he was a dope so many times when he was growing up. When he smiles he looks like an idiot. And Junior… whole different set of problems there. I remember when I came to his college dorm to pick him up to go to a ball game. He wasn’t ready, was wearing a sweatshirt and a ball cap on backwards. I punched him right in the face for making me look like a chump. The look on his roommate’s face! That’s how you show who’s in charge. Junior said nothing, just changed into a suit and came along, said nothing to the roommate. We had to pay the roommate something, but it was worth it. Now Junior thinks he’s going to take my place. Ha! I’m never leaving.

Clank. Clank. Clank. The clanking began to fade as the President started to fall asleep.

Be President forever…night is falling. Everything getting quiet…now I’m rising. I’m going up up up. I am President of the universe… no one can stop me. Now I look down, to the church across the park, all the little people, like ants…they worship me with their glowing red eyes…Book of Revelation…I am the Beast, Zed said so… Now there is the man with the beard, walking out of the church… now it’s Zed… now it’s the Attorney General… no, it’s Zed, and he is rising to meet me in the dark blue sky. Now he’s coming toward me… he’s sniffing me… he’s going to tell me something… is this the end…?

“Mr. President,” the doctor said.

The President looked up, uncomprehendingly.

“Mr. President, we’re done.”

The President looked down and saw that he had a you-know-what.

“Don’t worry, sir, it’s perfectly normal…”

“Shut up,” the President said, as he rolled awkwardly away off the table.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

55

Friday, March 5, 2021, 3PM Central Standard Time

It was a sleety, gray afternoon in St. Louis, Missouri. Judge Jacob Cooke, Chief Judge of the 8th District Court of Appeals, was looking forward to the weekend. He was reading over a report on a promising new vaccine for the virus. Maybe we can get back to normal finally, he thought. It had been a dreary, disruptive year.

As he was thinking these happy thoughts, his cell phone buzzed. He picked it up and answered.

“Cooke.”

“Judge Cooke?” A man’s voice.

“Speaking.”

“This is Jim Bielecki over in Omaha.”

“Jim,” Judge Cooke said, thinking.

“U.S. Marshals Service. I head up the Judicial Security Division up here.”

“Right,” Judge Cooke said. “What can I do for you?”

“We have had an incident up here,” Bielecki said.

“What kind of incident?”

“A pair of shootings.”

“Jesus. In the courthouse?”

“One outside the courthouse, one at the home of a judge. There may be more.”

The bottom of Judge Cooke’s stomach seemed to drop out.

“Dead?” he said.

“One dead, one seems okay, but we have her in protective custody. And we’re trying to account for all the other judges.”

“Who?”

“Judge Chuck Thomas was killed. Judge Judith Martin was unhurt, but as you can imagine, she’s pretty shaken up.”

“Jesus.”

“We have the police and FBI here looking for two males. One blond guy who was reported to look like ex-military, and a younger, gangly-looking guy, walked with a limp.”

“They are two of the judges who sat on the three-judge panel to rule on the recount issue in the Omaha congressional district,” Judge Cooke said suddenly.

“Judge Martin seems to think there’s a link to that as well. She’s pretty shook.”

“Have you checked on the third judge?”

“Lewis,” Bielecki said. “We’re trying to locate him right now. And all the others, just in case.”

“My god,” Judge Cooke said.

“It’s my understanding,” the agent said to him, “that the Eighth Circuit is set to rule on this case?”

The judge sank back in his chair.

“That’s right.”

“Your honor, I think we are going to have to step up your security down there in St. Louis,” Bielecki said. “If there is a link to this case, then they won’t stop with these judges. Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary around your courthouse?”

Cooke thought for a moment.

“Nothing I’ve noticed,” he said. “Missouri’s had armed people protesting the virus lockdown and trying to force their way into the statehouse, but Jeff City’s 120 miles from here.”

“I’m going to call my guys down where you are,” Bielecki said. “You need to coordinate with them to get some procedures in place to secure the courthouse. I’ll give you the right numbers. And Judge?”

“Yes?”

“Be careful. We’ll do all we can do, but it’ll help if you notify your people and try to make sure they are safe.”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’m going to be busy over here with this investigation and securing the place here, but our guys down there will help you.”

“Thanks.”

“And Judge,” Bielecki said, sounding a little hesitant.

“Yeah?”

“Your honor, I would trust the non-politicals and the middle-seniority agents maybe a little more than the senior and political people on this.”

“What… what are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything, your honor. Just, listen to the working guys on this one. Don’t put anyone’s life at risk just because some higher-up seems ready to nonchalant it. That’s about as far as I can go.”

Cooke did not know what to say to this.

“Uh, okay. Thanks.”

“Tell your people to keep their heads down.”

“I will. Thank you again.”

Judge Cooke put his phone down and put his head in his hands.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

56

Saturday, March 6, 2021, 12PM Mountain Standard Time

The crowd outside the state capitol building was cheering. Ban Wilson acknowledged its applause with a wave.

“You people are America,” he said, through a bullhorn, to the heavily armed crowd of white people, the vast majority male. A cheer went up.

“You know that this Deep State, liberal, swamp-creature, globalist Virus Hoax was brought to you by the same people who brought you the Global Warming Hoax and the Russia Hoax and the Ukraine Hoax and the Ruppert Hoax,” he said. “Then they infected the President to cover their tracks. These people don’t understand anything but force. And force is what you have shown to them today.”

Loud cheers.

“They call you hicks, and rubes, and Flyover people, and Doorknob-Lickers, the poorly educated,” the bicoastal, Ivy League-educated speaker went on. “Well, I call you America.

“The Founders clung to their guns and religion,” he continued. “They never anticipated a wave of mass migration, an invasion, of non-English-speaking, virus-infected people who did not share our culture overwhelming this nation.”

Now this great-grandson of immigrants, some non-English-speaking, the rest brought over on disease-ridden “coffin ships” during a famine, warmed to his topic.

“We must hold fast to our culture,” he yelled. “We must hold fast to the principles of our Founders. We cannot let these multicultural elitists tell us what light bulbs we can use, or whether we can go to restaurants, or how we can power our cars, or whether we can eat hamburgers!”

Loud cheering.

“Today we say enough is enough. Today we refuse to apologize for being Americans. For being males. For being Christian. And yes, for being white. We refuse to apologize for manliness, and for traditional family values,” said the tubby, late-60-ish, non-church-attending, thrice-divorced, absentee father of three.

“So don’t let these effete elitists stand in your way! The American Revolution was fought against people exactly like them! In the good old days, the days of our Founding, we would take people like this and tar and feather them! Run them out of town on a rail! Take this building! Show America what real Americans look like! Take this building!”

“Let’s go get them effetuses!” yelled an armed man near him. The crowd held their weapons high and made for the entrance to the statehouse.

The police and security guards looked to their commanders for guidance. None was forthcoming. One sergeant yelled “HALT!” as the crowd came within 100 feet of the door. Some of the protesters hesitated.

“Go!” yelled someone behind them. “Forward!”

The crowd surged once again. The sergeant yelled “READY!” His police raised their weapons. “AIM!” The crowd kept coming. “FIRE!”

A volley of rubber bullets and tear gas hit the crowd, and several protesters went down. The crowd seemed to buckle, then more people came from behind to fill in the gaps. Now some were aiming weapons at the police.

The sergeant once again yelled “READY!” The police raised their weapons. Then someone on the protesters’ side yelled, “FIRE!” and a dozen or more rifles were fired at the police. Several fell dead. The crowd surged past them and into the statehouse.

Inside, on the top floor, the Governor heard the shooting and ran to the window. She could not see what had happened from that vantage point.

“What the hell was that?” she asked her Chief of Staff. He shrugged, as if to say, How should I know?

She walked outside to where her bodyguards were. Her Chief of Staff followed her. One of the guards was on a walkie-talkie.

“What is happening?”

“I think they are storming the building,” one of them said. “I think that was them shooting.”

The Governor’s heart sank. She knew most of the State Capitol Police.

“What is your recommendation?” she asked the bodyguards.

They both looked to be at a loss.

A commotion now began below, rising up the twin circular stairways that led to her office. It rose and rose. There appeared to be no countervailing force at all that might impede its force. No sign of the State Police.

Well, I guess this is it, the Governor thought.

“Don’t resist them,” she told her security detail. “It’s pointless. Tell them I’ll be in my office.”

She turned and walked calmly back into her office, leaving the Chief of Staff standing outside, mouth open, as he watched the boiling mass of enraged humanity move toward them.

She walked around her desk and sat down to wait for her visitors. I wonder if this was what it was like for Allende, she thought. But he was an actual Marxist. I’m just a moderate Democrat in a slightly red state.

Outside, Ban Wilson stood, bullhorn down at his thigh, half incredulous at what he had unleashed.

“Holy shit,” he kept whispering.

“I didn’t think they’d actually do it.”

57

Monday, March 8, 2021, 4AM Eastern Standard Time

The President was up and reading the press this Monday morning, and he did not like much of what he was seeing.

The New York Record could have been worse, he thought to himself.

MIDWESTERN GOVERNOR DEPOSED

Armed Mob, Led by Ban Wilson, Carries Democratic Governor and Staffer Out on a Rail; Wilson Declared Governor by Republicans in State Senate
Four State Police Dead in Melee
Five More State Capitols with Democratic Governors Now Surrounded
No Federal Response
President Had Called Attackers “Fine People,” Said Governor Should “Make a Deal with Them”

…And I was right, he thought. She should have made a deal.

At least that story knocked the other one down the page, he thought. He actually didn’t mind this headline. I really can count on The New York Record to treat me nice sometimes, he thought:

President Denounces Killing Of Federal Judges

Attributes Slayings to “Angry People Who Feel Judges Are Out of Touch.”

But the Washington Tribune had dual headlines, the first about the Midwestern state coup, and the other one headlined:

TERRORIZED JUDICIARY

Judges Nationwide Living in Fear of Retribution from President’s Followers

“What the fuck,” the President said. “What the fuck.”

He reread the first headline in the Record and said, “Fucking Ban Wilson. Always making it about him.”

The door opened.

“Sir, would you like your coffee?”

“Get the hell out of here,” the President snarled.

“Certainly, sir,” Carver said with perfect equanimity.

The President felt even angrier now, because he had wanted coffee. God damn it. Why do people have to be such assholes? All Carver had to do was wait for him to yell for him, and everything would be fine. But now he couldn’t yell, because he would look like a baby. Life was constantly presenting him with these unpalatable choices.

As if reading his mind, Carver knocked twice and then entered with his coffee. “Your coffee, sir,” he said. “I assume you would like your papers as well?” The President grumbled an ambiguous reply.

“Very good, sir. I will bring them in.”

Another grumble. The President began typing on his phone.

–<() Shame what happened to the Angry Okomo Judges. But when their Angry Decisions make Americans mad, they cannot expect them to sit still. Other Judges Take Note!

The President looked again at the bad news on his phone, and began to calm down as the coffee perked him up. He thought back to the discussion he had had the previous afternoon with his Attorney General.

***

“So, what’s going on with these killings of the Angry Okomo Judges?”

“Well, sir, it appears that an aggrieved free people can only be pushed so far,” the Attorney General had replied in his oiliest voice. “People seem to have had enough of these elections being decided by judges instead of by the voters.”

“Well, it makes me look bad. That’s what the media is saying.”

“Only the Fake News, sir,” the AG said. “And you know that simply works in your favor with the real Americans.”

The President had grumbled a little, but was somewhat mollified.

***

But now, even though people were killing on his behalf, he was de-mollified. He had the most powerful job in the world. Why did everyone around him end up being such a giant pain in the ass? Even when they did what he wanted, they had to mess it up so it made him look bad and got him mad.

It was like his wives. They seemed to do whatever he wanted, but then they started boring him, and that was that. Then the women he went to after them either started to bore him after a short time, or else they went to the papers and tried to rat him out, and the stories had to be spiked, or the women paid off, or both. Human beings seemed to be divided into borers, or rats.

But then there was the third category of people who were trying to destroy him. Well, he thought, there were a few less of those after the last few days.

Maybe everyone else would notice what happened to people who tried to cross him, he thought with satisfaction. The Recovery is on track.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

59

Wednesday, March 10, 2021, 3PM Eastern Standard Time

Mary was crouched down behind the butcher’s counter at Ball-Mart, trying to hide from the people who had invaded the store looking for food. How had they gotten past Gene and the other guys? Were they armed? What the hell is going on?

She watched as a masked woman with a toddler on her back grabbed a number of cuts of meat. Was she a Mexican? Mary couldn’t tell behind the mask. The woman saw Mary, and indicated the baby, pointing to her mouth as if to explain why she was doing this, and walked off rapidly.

Mary yelled over to the Bakery section. “Are you guys there?”

“Yeah,” one of the women in Bakery said, the one who had first alerted her to the danger. “But we’re keeping down.”

“Where’s Gene and them?”

“I don’t know,” the Bakery woman said, her voice, like Mary’s, muffled by her mask.

“Where’s the manager?”

“I don’t know.”

Mary thought for a second.

“I think I’m gonna go to his office.”

“Your funeral,” the Bakery woman said.

Mary crept out of her hiding place and walked slowly, crouching, around the butcher’s counter. She saw people grabbing huge amounts of food and putting it into shopping carts. But were they stealing, or just shopping?

Mary jogged down past several aisles, looking for one that was unoccupied. When she found one, she made for the manager’s office in the front of the store. She got to the front of the store to the long row of registers. Some of them appeared to be operating normally. She saw her friend Sheryl checking someone out as if everything was fine. She saw another person, also masked, using the Self-Check-Out machine.

But most of the rest of the people in the store looked like they were looters. They all wore those longer, turtleneck kind of masks. Some of the masks seemed to have been taken from the store itself. The amount of stuff in their carts seemed excessive. She walked over to Sheryl.

“Where are the cops?” she asked her.

“Cops?” Sheryl said.

“I mean, don’t you notice what’s going on?”

“What?” Sheryl said.

“I’m gonna call someone.”

“Okay. You taking break?”

“Uh… sure.”

Now she was wondering if she should have left the meat department unguarded. She walked back to the butcher’s counter. The coast appeared somewhat clear. She went out the back exit to get a cell signal – Ball-Mart suppressed cell signal within the store so employees and customers would not be distracted – and got out her phone and called Jeff.

After a couple of rings, he answered. “What’s up?”

“I think we’re being robbed,” she said.

“What?”

“I think we’re being overrun by hungry people,” Mary told him.

“What’s happening?”

“I see all these masked people.”

“Yeah, well that’s kinda normal, ain’t it?”

“Not like this,” she said. “People are going behind the counters and grabbing huge amounts of meat.”

“Okay,” Jeff said, now a little alarmed.

“I think it’s a mob, one of them mobs of unemployed people, like an organized thing,” Mary said.

“Listen, honey, you stay down,” Jeff said. “I know just who to call.”

“Okay,” she said. “You gonna call the police?”

“No, I got someone better,” Jeff said. “Go back to your spot and stay down.”

Mary hung up and went back inside. A customer was standing at the meat counter like it was a normal day.

“I’d like two New York Strips,” he said.

“Okay,” Mary said. “Which ones you want?”

The man looked through the glass.

“Those ones in the back, closest to you,” he said.

Mary wrapped them, priced them, and handed them over. The man thanked her and moved along.

Mary stood fearfully behind the counter, looking for signs of further chaos. It was hard to tell who the bad guys were, because everyone was wearing masks.

Ten minutes later, she heard yelling at the front of the store. She crouched down again. A moment later, a group of heavily armed men, some in camouflage, some in Hawaiian shirts and body armor, were running up to her counter.

“Where are they?” one of them asked her.

“Uh,” Mary said. “I saw one of them run down there.” She pointed to the general area toward which the lady with the baby had moved. But that had been some fifteen minutes ago.

“There seemed to be a lot of people just grabbing food and moving around real quick,” she said. “All in masks.”

The armed men, themselves masked, moved away toward the place she had indicated. She heard more yelling.

“FREEZE! ON THE GROUND!”

Mary braced herself for the sound of gunfire. It never came. What came instead were other shouts.

“POLICE! DROP YOUR WEAPONS!”

Mary crouched further down now.

***
The late news had the story when she got home.

“A local Ball-Mart was invaded by a squadron of armed men who styled themselves ‘Doorknob-Lickers,’ and ‘Boogaloo activists,’ who said they had been called to the store by a panicked employee, whom they refused to name, but who had told them that a group of possibly armed people had invaded the store and started looting.”

At this point the report showed one of the armed men Mary had seen, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt she suddenly realized was the same pattern as Jeff’s.

“We have these organized flash mobs of people who say they are hungry and destitute, but who are obviously just looters taking advantage of the good people here,” the man said on the TV report. “It’s so easy to blend in with all the masks around because of this fake virus Hoax. These people are trying to bring down society. We saw their kind at polling places and took care of them there in November. They want something for nothing. So, we have repurposed our militia into an Anti-Virus-Hoax Militia, to try to keep order here.”

A reporter asked, “But you yourselves were confronted by the police at the store, after holding a customer on the ground at gunpoint.”

“We are very sure that that ‘customer’ was actually a looter. It’s real hard to tell the difference nowadays. That’s what they count on. These people hate America. They hate the President. They sow chaos with this Deep State Virus Hoax, they want the economy to be shut down, and they come into our stores and terrorize good people to accomplish their socialist ends.”

“How is the virus a hoax, when the President himself had it?”

“You’re falling for Fake News.”

The reporter decided to drop the subject.

“So, the police released you?”

“We got no beef with the police, as long as they are upholding order and resisting these rebels. When they refuse to, we will show up. Now we were simply exercising our Second Amendment rights, so naturally they had no cause to arrest us.”

“But holding the customer at gunpoint –”

“He warn’t no customer, I can tell you that. I don’t even think he was an American to be honest.”

“Well, live for Channel 5, from Ball-Mart, this is Terence Rodgers.”

***

“I was sure they were robbing us,” Mary said.

“I’m sure they were,” Jeff told her. “They are taking advantage of this situation, this fake Virus Hoax, and the Democrat Election Fraud, to create civil disorder.”

“Who did you call? I thought you were going to call the police.”

“Police ain’t no use. I called some friends I’ve been talking to on-line. Good fellas. You okay?”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said.

She prayed her name would not come up in connection with the incident – or was it a non-incident? She just didn’t know anymore.

“I’m going to bed,” Mary said. She started walking back toward the bedroom.

“I’ll be in soon,” Jeff said. “I just got some texts to answer. Someone took down our ‘We Stand With The President’ poster and threw it on the ground. I had to put it back up. I think it was our friends next door again. I think the guys who helped you today might help us with that too.”

Mary was about to turn around and suggest that maybe it was just the wind, or to bring up the fact that Jeff had taken down the neighbors’ “Black Lives Matter” sign several times, but instead she just shivered.

“Sometimes I think we’re headed to a new civil war,” Jeff said. “Well, at least our side has all the guns.”

At the bedroom door, Mary turned back towards Jeff.

“I’m scared of my neighbors,” she said. “Those rioters scare me. Tell those men, whoever they were, tell them thanks.”

Jeff nodded, and then turned back to his computer screen.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian