Patterns of Paralysis

1. Paralyzed Force

It did not start with the idiot box. It did not start with news anchors telling the stories, nor did it start with the couple sitting down to watch the evening news. It did not start with the popcorn they popped in the microwave, nor did it start with the wife’s unpleasant news from work. It did not start with the rising of the sun, nor did it start with the birth of the sun five billion years ago.

The chain of events that follows did not start even with the first atom hitting the second atom; there was no start. There was what lay dormant in the hearts of men and women. There was the potential for both the banality of heroism and the banality of evil. There was truth, and there were the lies they told themselves to sleep at night. There were principles, and there were variations on a tawdry theme. The energy was potential, but never kinetic-- There were forces at work in the world, forces pulling and pushing every which way. Some had aims, but some were aimless. They gave life to the vacuum and direction to purposeless vectors. They turned the potential to the kinetic. They created an infinite number of new possibilities, of new realities, of new decisions to make with each decision made.

The number of universes grew exponentially infinite. Every millisecond, each possible, inconceivable choice to any given choice was made. Reality fractured, subdivided, into the realm of impossibility. Each whim of man and woman existed as real somewhere altogether elsewhere, but our possibilities, all our yesterdays and tomorrows, existed in the ether. For them to come together in any given way the odds were incalculably small. Yet by virtue of living, physicists recognized that at least one reality had to be livable at all times or else they themselves would not exist to make these contrite theories of everything that function only to turn our certain everythings into muddles of nothing.

It was not a simple chain of events. It was not predetermined by the course set by the first and second atom’s first contact. It was not ordained by any higher being. It was not inevitable. It was, however, simply a potential of an infinitely complex system--an eventuality that had to have some realization in the realm of possibility but not necessarily conscious form beyond the minds of delusional, schizophrenic, psychopathic authors. It was a train of yes and no. It was an intricate dance of problem, step, think, step, decide, step--repeat--in double time. Anywhere it could have fallen off, broken course, and led to some nobler, better end.

But it did not. The eventuality being what it was, as incalculable as the odds were of it being the case, it was the potential that became kinetic. The forces mingled to produce an unbalanced system--a system which proceeded to accelerate, with only the slightest recourse, straight to the heart of chaos.

Clarity Golding unlocked the door to her Alexandria flat. The scent of freshly popped popcorn greeted her as she walked inside and tossed her purse carelessly on the hook on the wall. She stalked quickly into the kitchen, calling out, “You’re not going to believe this.” Thomas Golding stood behind the counter, wearing what appeared to be an apron, as he poured the bag of old-fashioned popcorn into a large bowl. “Why hello to you too, dear.” She stared at him and the popcorn. Normally, she would have tried to respond to the salutation with one of her own, but at the moment, her patience was more than somewhat tested. “I figured it out, Tom.”

“Clara!” Tom stared back at her in turn and dropped the empty carcass of the buttery popcorn bag onto the hardwood floor. He walked around the counter and reached out his long arms to embrace her small form. “You figured it out? That’s--” he laughed jovially. “It’s great. It’s everything we’ve been waiting for, and--” he became aware of the tenseness in her shoulders. He let go, backed away, and frowned. “Clara, what’s wrong?” “It’s not great,” she shook her head, “and it’s not going to solve anything. The solutions don’t mean anything. They don’t matter. They can’t matter if no one knows they exist. It’s Berkeley--if a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one there to hear it, it doesn’t make a--”

He cut off her hysteria. “Clara, what do you mean? You’ve spent ten years looking for the solution to cold fusion. If you’ve finally found the answer, of course it means something, and of course it’s going to make a difference. It’s the solution to the energy crisis. If we can be saved at all, cold fusion is the means.”

He hadn’t lied. Clarity Astra Golding was the premier nuclear physicist in the United States. She had spent the last ten years trying to crack the conundrum that was cold fusion. “Do you remember,” she said very quietly, “a few weeks ago when I told Hobbes that I was getting close?” “Yes,” Tom nodded, carefully taking off his apron and hanging it on a hook by the pantry. “He told you to give him the report first, before anyone else.” “Well, I did. I figured it out this morning, while taking the metro to my office. I spent four hours in the lab confirming, and the next seven hours writing a report. I sent it to the White House right before I cleaned up. By the time I was ready to come home, I had an email waiting from Hobbes.”

Tom leaned against the counter. “What did he say? That he’s going to make sure you win the Nobel Prize?” Tom teased, mocking his wife’s disdain for symbols of societal status. “No,” Clarity bit her lip until she could taste the iron of her own blood. She shook her head bitterly, the beginnings of tears forming in her tear ducts. She sighed and took a deep breath, steeling herself to reveal a truth that she clearly wished would go away if left unspoken.

“No. He informed me that I am not to publish my findings under any circumstances.” “What?” “Ever. I’m supposed to play the puppet and pretend that I haven’t put the pieces together. I’m supposed to lie, not just on behalf of the Department of Energy, but on behalf of the entire United States government, and say that we still have no clue how to practically conduct cold fusion. I’m supposed to imply that, well, it’s March 2047, and we were supposed to have figured it out by now. We haven’t, so maybe it isn’t possible.”

“Clara, come here.” Tom beckoned, and she came. He once again wrapped his arms around her, but this time he did not let go. He simply held her in empathy as she shook with a bloody cocktail of emotions. “Don’t you even care why?” she shook with misdirected rage. “He actually told you?” “No, but I know.” “So do I, dear. These are the lobbyists who have tried to buy my interest each day for the last seven years. It’s the alternative energy companies. They don’t want to give up their monopoly.”

Again, she bit her lip, but this time less out of frustration than the realization of how silly she was acting. “Exactly.” Tom smiled, guessing exactly what thoughts were going through her mind. He kissed the top of her auburn-haired head chastely. “You’ll be able to convince Hobbes to change his mind. You just have to talk to him in person.” She finally let herself lean into his embrace, allowing herself the simple solace of surrendering to the comfort of human companionship. She rested her head against his chest, releasing a long, deep, singularly cathartic sigh. “If anyone can do it--” he affirmed. “I know,” she murmured. “I know. It’s just--” “I know,” Tom anticipated her. He stroked her hair and repeated the mantra, “I know.” Neither of them completed the thought.

They both knew that it was not “just” anything. It was the everything to which Tom had alluded--the everything for which Clarity had spent her entire adult life working. It was the truth hitherto known not even to the deadly atom itself--the talk of pulp science fiction authors whose science was softer than a marshmallow.

Since the first glimpses into the forces that hold together that which holds us together, nearly one hundred years ago, fields of scientists had sought to make it possible for humans to provide energy for themselves in the same manner in which the sun produces energy--via thermonuclear fusion. The temperatures at which manmade methods could conduct this process, however, were far too high to be cost effective. A century’s worth of intrepid scientists had labored to make cold fusion possible.

Clarity Golding was one of those intrepid scientists, and on this day, the twelfth of March, she had cracked the cosmic puzzle. It was so much more than the loss of a personal struggle when victory was in sight, though that it was. It was the loss of a struggle fought by all science--a struggle to stay the forces of restraint on free inquiry. It was repression, suppression in the form of an unsettling trend. Inquiry no longer appeared to be free.

Clarity found these facts highly disconcerting, on both conscious and unconscious levels. It broke her stoic demeanor in a manner scarcely imaginable. Logic fell prey to frustration. All else fell in tow. She fell away from Tom’s embrace, internalizing a pain that she would have preferred not to feel at all. “Clara,” he murmured. A cycle. The repetition. Sinusoids infinite in a period defined. If anyone could convince President Grant Calvin Hobbes to change his mind--yes, she supposed, yes, it would be her. The concept of Grant Calvin Hobbes changing his mind, however, was utterly inconceivable. And if she couldn’t, and if he wouldn’t, and if that was the real realm of impossibility--then that made everything else impossible.

To have the potential, the power, but to be forced to ignore it--she could imagine nothing worse, no way around the spineless cactus. She needed time to think, and as it was this that she did not have, she made the conscious decision to lock the torrid thoughts in a small button box in the darkest corner of her mental attic. She put on a weak, meek smile. “Let’s just forget about it. We’re missing the news.” “Clara, this is a little more important than the news. You aren’t my brother; don’t play the fool and--” “But I’m not,” she shook her head violently, grabbing his hand, leading him to the couch in the living room. “I just want to unwind.”

Somehow they ended up on the couch, his arm around her shoulders. A bowl of pungent popcorn lay untouched before them. The television hummed before them, as it was wont to do each weekday evening at precisely 8:00 p.m., by executive order of the President. “Good evening,” the painted face on the idiot box boomed, “and welcome. I’m Regina Davis, and this is the American News Network’s Daily Recap.” The anchorwoman, Regina Davis, was petite and blonde--more like Malibu Barbie than a serious broadcast journalist in her manner and appearance. Any sane individual with a brain of standard volume would have wondered, upon first seeing her, if her brain had any volume at all. Yet, a standard sixty-five star American flag waved contently behind her in the depth of the scene.

“Our first story,” she resumed with a toothy smile, “is the verdict in the final trial of the unrepentant followers of usurper Addison Peterson.” It was sentences like these that made ANN’s use of government-provided script writers painfully obvious. “Alexander and Adam Peterson,” the image on the three dimensional screen faded into a courtroom, where two men of similar build stood in shackles, accused of a crime of blood stained within their skins, “the sons of General Addison Peterson, have been sentenced to death, with no chance of appeal, pardon, or mercy, for conspiracy to overthrow this great Government of the United States.” Regina’s voice cut off.

The judge who had decided the fate of these two young men spoke in glowingly mixed metaphorical terms, telling of lives that never were, playing god, and making death from the fabric of fate. Tom squeezed Clarity’s shoulder, and slowly she leaned back to settle against his chest. “That could have been you, you know.” She winced. “I’m pretty sure I would know if I was Addison Peterson’s son.” “You know that’s not what I mean.” He frowned in the slightest, given the absolute uncertainty of his own paternity. “Yes, of course I know what you mean.” She grimaced at the memory. “I was false; I repented for a treason I never did commit.” “Clara, if you hadn’t publicly apologized, Hobbes would have put your head on a spike, Instead, he made you--” the note sounded sour in the air of the day’s disappointment. “Well, at least you’re--”

“I’d rather die free than live a slave, Tom. What meaning there is in this universe we make ourselves, and if we are not to be left free to do as we will, then all earthly meaning falls away. Life’s but a bout of indentured servitude. We choose to live in it, and I sometimes,” her eyes glittered beyond his range of sight, “I regret having signed my soul over.” “Clara,” his voice sliced through the hollow air. They had had this conversation before. They had had it one year ago when Hobbes threw his rival Addison Peterson into the Thunderdome on national television and all of Peterson’s followers were given an ultimatum. They had had this conversation when Tom had immediately issued a public apology and Clarity had stubbornly refused to do the same.

As time wound over the period, he said again the words he had said to her stoicism so many times before. “There’s meaning in this,” he whispered, laying a soft kiss on her ear. “There’s meaning in what’s here,” he took her wrist in his hand, guided her heart to her breast, just above her heart. She turned her head to look into his dark, deep eyes. “Do you mean the health of my cardiovascular system as a symbol of my biological state of life, or the standard irrational myth that emotions originate in the heart?” “This,” Tom answered, not letting the words bother him as they once would have. “Us. That I love you. That you love me. There’s meaning in the love we share, Clara.” “The same meaning as in any chemical reaction, Tom, the same meaning as in the cold fusion of two hydrogen atoms.”

The evening news continued to hum on before them. It moved to a press release issued by the Department of Energy, signed by Secretary of Energy Clarity Golding, announcing the veritable impossibility of scientists ever achieving cold fusion. President Hobbes expressed his sincerest regrets. Clarity watched the farce with an imperious calm, her blue-green eyes pristinely dry. It was all ephemeral, she told herself; the lies were all ephemeral, just as happiness was just a chemical reaction. And yet there was Tom’s hand, resting on her heart, and his arms around her narrow frame. No matter how ephemeral, here they were, together, when all other forces balanced out to zero. Here they were, paralyzed together in the ephemeral eternity of the moment.


2. Wind in Dry Grass

Clarity wrestled with the illogical desire to bang her head against the window the government-provided car. She knew it was thoroughly unreasonable--that it would make absolutely no difference and would, as opposed to making her feel better or relieving her omnipresent nausea, only give her a damnably unpleasant headache. Thus, she did not disturb her carefully coifed auburn curls, smudge her perfectly primed foundation, or scratch her elegant pearl earring by being so inelegant as to bang her head against the tinted window. It did not mean, however, that she did not want to. She was off to the circus--literally. Almost. It was really closer to a meat grinder. That was a truly sorry thought.

Her interest in sporting events as a whole mounted, on a scale of zero to ten, very near to absolute zero. She figured that she had far better hypothetical uses of her time, such as, oh, she didn't know, solving the mysteries of the universe, as was her job. But wait--cruel universe--even if she could solve those mysteries, it was to no end. She meant for her solutions to be used, but no, the government wouldn’t have it. The government would not deign to change the system, and, though it claimed to exist for no other purpose than to serve the people, it did not feel the need to do anything in their interest.

Although the technology to which Clarity had devoted her entire adult life had the potential to save the entire planet, as well as open up the possibility of other planets elsewhere, the government did not believe that the people had a right to that knowledge. The government, in the form of President Grant Calvin Hobbes, believed that scientists should not spend their time doing research--that society, as a whole, should not spend its time pursuing the professions in which it had been trained. Oh no.

That was why, after all, Hobbes at vetted her, the most promising physicist in the country, to head the Department of Energy. It was to ensure that she would be utterly ineffective. It was to ensure that the government could control her. She hated herself for taking the job. She had wanted to turn it down, and wanted regularly to quit; however, like her desire to bang her head against the window, she did not. Tom had insisted, had insisted that if she hadn’t taken it, Hobbes would not have accepted her apology, no matter how public it had been. Yes, he now controlled her. She had no choice but to play to his whims, to his universal desire to make his entire cabinet a useless, vestigial appendage of a too strong heart.

That was why, at this exact moment, she sat in the back seat of this god-forsaken government-provided car, a luxury that she neither wanted nor felt she deserved, yet none the less provided by the money of taxpayers who were wealthy and whose wealth Hobbes had seen fit to redistribute to--well, himself, and those whom he had coerced into serving him. She was off not to the circus, but to the Thunderdome, where Hobbes, his cabinet, and the majority of the other two branches of government would be forced to observe the death sentence of Alexander and Adam Peterson. The two young men had elected to die in the Thunderdome, by the Thunderdome, rather than be put to death on a public street corner with a guillotine.

Okay, she admitted to herself, they did not actually put convicted murderers to death on public street corners with guillotines. She doubted that Hobbes could have quite gotten away with that. However, the methods of death did, in fact, reduce the accused to the status of dogs, cats, or other common household pets who have outlived their purposes. Clarity concluded that no, she would not want to die that way. However, however, however, there was always a poignant however. The Thunderdome was the only alternative, and what sort of a choice was that, really?

The Thunderdome was a choice, but at the very best, a loaded one. It was the only chance a man or woman sentenced to death had of revoking the sentence. Each participant was given one Roman-style weapon, his or her choice, and placed in the dome with others who had also volunteered, and signed the necessary documentation, to participate in the gruesome affair. They then went at it, on national television, and in front of an audience of high-paying spectators. They killed each other, still like dogs, but at least fighting and with weapons in hand. The last one standings (there was only ever one left standing, if not zero) had his sentence turned from death to mere life in prison. So, as a loaded choice, most took the path that led to the smallest chance at life.

Yet, Clarity found the affair utterly repulsive. The idea of taking the life of another, of violating that one sacred precept of nature, unsettled her to the core. She could not bear the thought of murder, of murdering, of depriving others of that which she herself could not stand the thought of being deprived. It was, however, what it was. Individuals made this choice every day. It was some measure of dignity, she figured, to die with weapon in hand, and the blood of others smeared on one's clothes. It was like war, she assumed, but staged. Anyhow, once a week, the dome was opened, and those lucky enough to have tickets were let in. How they had enough murderers to warrant the ritual occurring at such frequent interval she didn't know.

As the two Peterson boys were so high-profile, and for Hobbes so personal, he had wanted to attend, and what Caesar doth do, others doth follow. He had requested her presence, though not specifically, of course, and she knew what that meant. She did not have a choice. She never had a choice anymore. That was what it meant to be controlled, to be owned, to be the toy, the slave of another. She was not her own. She was his. They were all his. And so few of them knew it. The desire to bang her head against the window returned. She still did not do it. As pleasant as it would have been to give herself a concussion, she did not think that Hobbes would have approved. And of course, she could do nothing of which Hobbes did not approve. So, instead, her countenance settled into a dissatisfied frown. Next to her in the town car, which traveled on a thin pad of air over the ground, Tom watched her carefully. He, too, given his position as the junior Senator from the great state of Virginia, was obligated to attend this function.

Eventually, they reached their destination. The Thunderdome had been erected as close to the heart of Washington as they could manage. Hobbes's men had had the old post office, only a few blocks away from the Capitol, and the surrounding block torn down--or, more accurately, blown up, to the tune of the national anthem, with a glorious fireworks show as a parting scene. The building was, quite literally, a dome, and not much more. From the outside, all that could been seen were the cross-hatched panels of one-way black glass, supported by wrought iron. The glass let light in but none out. The car pulled up to the VIP entrance. With one last sigh, Clarity stepped onto the sidewalk with her three-inch heels as Tom reached for her hand. They walked through the doors, into the large, surprisingly luxurious complex. She had been here before, unfortunately, as had they all. They had been forced to come to the Thunderdome to witness the deaths of each individual who had not repented for following Addison Peterson over Hobbes in the aftermath of the chaotic election of 2044.

This was no different, just another spectacle where they would all bow down before the President and succumb to his omnipotent will and omniscent wisdom. This was no different, she told herself, willed herself to believe it. She walked through the door, her hand in her husband's, and onto a spiraling platform that reminded her a bit of a double helix in DNA. They walked along the path, her heels clicking loudly with each step, up to the top level of the Thunderdome. Other, ordinary men and women--the veritable plebeians of American society, walked along the same spiral, looking for the seats indicated on their tickets. No one wanted to miss this circus. Next to these people, Clarity would have felt a bit out of place. She looked as a woman of her position should, in normal business attire--today, a gray pencil skirt, and a cream-colored cashmere V-neck sweater that hugged her curves. She was the essence of formality, and apparently, of elegance, in spite of those inelegant, unladylike desires (banging head on window, cough, cough).

Yet, as Hobbes had made it obligatory for as much of the government as he could directly control to attend this event, there were other government officials, patricians, in fine clothing. She was not wholly out of place, only, perhaps, in her heart. “Hey, Clara!” a voice called somewhere behind her. She turned her head at the sound of the familiar voice. Sophia Isabella Vogt, the junior Senator from the great state of Massachusetts, was running up behind them. Sophia was a petite woman, her blonde hair bobbed edgily to her jaw. She was charisma and society and elegance, all rolled into one, as well as one of the best friends Clarity had. She managed to catch up to them. “Hey Tom,” she added as she fell into step beside Clarity. “Hey Sophia,” Clarity smiled against her will. As misanthropic as she tended to be, sometimes, just sometimes, some people were okay. Sort of. And only sometimes. “Hello, Sophia,” Tom smiled politely. He knew how these two were. “I'll see you later, Clara; I told Jim that I'd meet him a little early.” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek and turned to walk away. “How's the 'Premier Physicist of the 21st Century' according to the Nobel committee doing today?” Clarity frowned. “She was forced to come to the Thunderdome to see Peterson's innocent sons murdered in a gruesome manner. How do you think she’s doing?”

“Okay.” She grimaced a little. “I get it. It's not like any of us really want to spend our time watching government-sanctioned murder. But we don't exactly have a choice.” Clarity groaned. “I know. Trust me, I know. Can't you politicians do something to make this place illegal? Or can't somebody get the courts to do something?” Sophia gave her what could best be termed as “the look.” It was the “you can't possibly be serious” or “have you completely lost your mind” look, which Clarity received more often than she would have liked. “Of course you can't,” Clarity answered her own question. “That would be too rational for you political types.” “You work for the government, Clara. You're a political type, too.” “No,” she shook her head in vehement denial, “I'm not. I'm a scientist. Even the Nobel committee agrees, you said so yourself.” The look intensified. “Sure, Clara, sure. What was that about the press release last night on ANN?” Clarity looked out the panes of dark glass, to the dark world beyond. It was a fitting lens to a pessimistic day. “You should be able to figure it out. Propaganda isn't rocket science, and even then, rocket science is far less complicated than cold fusion. Though,” she paused thoughtfully, “the solution was surprisingly--” “Clara,” Sophia put a hand on her friend's shoulder, putting the pieces together, “are you sure you're okay about all this?” “Yes,” she nodded a few more times than was strictly necessary. “Yes, I'm fine.”

They kept walking up the spiral path. “Well,” Sophia said after a moment, “try to stay calm through all of this.” They had approached the Presidential Box, where Clarity would find the President, the Vice President, and the rest of the Cabinet. She stood, her key card poised to gain entry. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Why would I not be calm?” “Something is going to happen.” “What in the world is that supposed to mean?” “It's just gossip,” she shook her head dismissively, “but I trust my sources.” “Are your sources legal or illegal?” “That doesn't matter. Just,” she gave Clarity another pat on the shoulder, “stay calm.” “I always do,” Clarity called, miffed, as Sophia walked away, back down the path to the seats reserved for Senators, where she knew her husband would be. She swiped her key card, and the door swooshed open. The chamber before her was grand. It contained two rows of ten luxury seats each. All but two of them were already full. One man, fat and bearing a bald head that shone in the fluorescence of the room, stood to greet her. “Good to see you could make it, Ms. Golding.”

Against her better judgment, as so many of her actions this day were, she offered her hand, which he took. “It's nice to see you, too, Mr. President.” He squeezed her hand, and she was very careful to maintain her stoic shield. She would not be baited. She went to one of the empty seats and sat down. She stared out over the railing just before her to see, under many levels of ordinary seating, a large sandpit. It was, at the moment, empty and clean. Soon, however, she knew that it would be filled with the blood of the guilty and innocent alike. She waited impatiently, drumming her fingers on her thigh. Sooner or later, it had to start.

The door opened once more behind her. She turned her head to see a man whom she knew well, James Aaron Burr, Secretary of State, favorite of Hobbes, and half-brother to her husband. Hobbes, Vice President Jameson Moore, and her colleagues of the Cabinet all greeted Burr warmly. He smiled over their heads, as he was a tall man, though still an inch shorter than Tom. Yet, there was something in Jim's air, some grand nobility that all men else admired. It was a charisma of calm compassion. Clarity waited to make her greeting, as the only remaining seat in the box was adjacent to hers. She wondered for a moment if Hobbes wasn't about to make everyone else move so that he could sit next to his favorite, the prodigal son, but it didn't happen.

Jim made his way to sit next to her. She smiled her usual quixotic smile at him. As the chatter resumed in the box, Jim leaned to whisper in her ear, “I just had an interesting conversation with your husband. I'd like to talk to you about it a little later.” “Of course,” she nodded. She wasn't completely sure what Tom had told Jim, but she assumed it was something about the fusion fiasco. What Jim intended to do about it she had even less of an idea. “Ladies and gentlemen of America,” a voice called over the loudspeaker, “welcome to the THUNDERDOME. Let the blood begin!”

And so it began. So twenty-one men and four women, each bearing a weapon somewhere between a stick and a mace, entered the sandpit from areas all around the side. So the entrances slid shut behind them. So the blood began. Clarity watched it fall, watched the sand turn red before her. She watched coldly, not allowing her heart to be stirred. She watched with scientific disinterest, with less feeling than she watched her own experiments.

This was their society, this carnal lust for blood, abated to what end? She did not know. She watched the men and women fall, some of whose trials she remembered following, and watched when the final two standing ran each other through at the same instant, leaving no one standing. There was no one standing. The crowd was silent, more silent than wind in dry grass. At that, the loudspeaker announced that their great President of this great nation would address them. Clarity waited, her nausea and illogical head-banging desires returning, as Hobbes and Moore exited the box and headed down the spiral staircase to the sandpit, where a podium had been brought out. She looked over the seats in the stadium. Would no one stand up?


3. Such Deliberate Disguises

The Honorable President Grant Calvin Hobbes brandished the blood-soaked garden shovel above his head. The crimson blood glittered in the light that filtered through the black glass of the dome. He had been talking for the past twenty minutes, but Clarity had long since stopped listening to his words. As soon as he had picked up the shovel, which had been the chosen weapon of one Adam Peterson, who had managed to kill a grand total of seven of the other individuals in the dome, Clarity had promptly tuned out. She did not want to hear him glorifying the shovel, as he undoubtedly was, or praising the Thunderdome. She did not want to hear his glorifying anything, or praising any aspect of their society.

There was nothing great or glorious about the blood. It was a symbol only of the mortality of all men and women. Looking at that gleaming blood, as it dripped to the sand below, and as she fancied that she saw flies and maggots swarm around it, she felt her servitude keenly. She studied the sea of corpses in the sand, twenty-five men and women who had chosen this fate. At least they had chosen to die in this manner, given that they had had to die.

She studied her own life. She was sitting here watching this, against her will. A press release had been issued in her name last night, against her will. She lived in a society that made hell turn to heaven in a cruel alchemy of realities, against her will. Every aspect of her own life seemed to happen before her, without her, utterly against her will. She had no control, no control over any of it.

The shovel, it seemed, had more control over its own fate than she had over hers. The traveling shovel of death was freer than Clarity Astra Golding, freer than any part of her. She stared at it with a morose fascination, wishing that she were the shovel rather than herself. Or better, that Hobbes would stab her with the shovel. She wouldn't have minded it if he had championed it as he did now. Or, better, that she could impale herself on that shovel, thus eliminating Hobbes--eliminating Hobbes from the fantasy, she meant. And paused.

Her thoughts stopped on that single accidental thought--eliminating Hobbes. It had, she ran over the words carefully, it had potential. It was the spark, the beginning of the faint form of a plan in her mind. She shut her eyes and ears. She lost herself in the image that presented itself before her closed eyes. She imagined being late to a Cabinet meeting one day. She would enter, her hands and their glorious tool behind her back. Just as Hobbes began to rebuke her for her lateness, she would raise the shovel from behind her back and hack off his head. She would defenestrate his limp body and then raise his head on a spike, as he would have done to her had she done what she freely wished to do before this wretched mess. She would declare to all the world, "SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!"

A tentative hand tapped her shoulder. Her eyes snapped open. Her intricate, and extremely gratifying fantasy, shattered in a most ungratifying way. She looked first forward, where she saw that Hobbes still clutched the shovel as if it were the greatest object in the universe since the fortuitous invention of the Thunderdome itself, which was, of course, his own invention. She then looked to the source of the tap, to the owner of the hand, which turned out to be none other than Jim. He looked at her pointedly, his blue eyes piercing through her own in a gaze that was pregnant with meaning. He ran his other hand through his sand-colored hair. “Do you mind talking now?” “Not at all,” she shook her head.

As much as she liked her fantasy, she acknowledged the supremacy of reality, and in reality, she would very much like to be distracted in an earthly way from Hobbes's Ode to the Glorious Shovel. She stood up. He, too, rose from his seat. They exited the box as discretely as they could and made their way up the remainder of the path, to a secluded area near the top of the dome. There was a window to the heart of the sandpit, which made it possible for them to observe the action with weary eyes, in spite of the ensured privacy of the conversation. The Thunderdome was the one building in the entire country that did not have security cameras at every frame of sight.

For some reason, they thought a building with prison guards and government officials was safe. Clarity waited for her brother-in-law to speak, her face half-lit in the dim light of the foggy morning. Jim wrung his hands nervously before him. He did not meet her eyes again. He turned, his back to her and the environs of the dome, to face the outer shell.

He stared blankly out at the city of Washington D.C., which lay open before them. It had not changed so very much in the past half-century, or century, even. Technology had but inched forward, for the same reasons as the city would never know that cold fusion was not only possible but viable. If one followed the money, one went in a joyous circle, a ring of posies and pansies, right ‘round the prickly pear--only lateral motion, never forward.
 
“Tom told me everything,” Jim finally said in words that cloaked his feeling. It was like talking to a mirror. “Everything?” Clarity asked skeptically. “There's a lot to tell in this vast universe, Jim.” “About the press release being fabricated. About what the President told you yesterday.”

Jim clarified without humor. “Yeah,” she replied for lack of a better response. He once again ran a nervous hand through his short blonde hair. “What are you going to do, Clara?” “What do you mean? There's nothing I can do.” “Tom said you were planning to talk to Hobbes--to ask him to change his decision.” Clarity laughed coldly, cruelly, with the air of a psychopath. “Do you really think, Jim, that I can change his mind?” “No,” Jim whipped around, his face cloaked in darkness while light revealed his words, “but I can.” “You're kidding,” she gave him the look, deadpanned, doubted, dreamed--and promptly suppressed the spark of hope.

“No, Clara,” he finally met her eyes again, “I'm not kidding. I'll talk to him. I'll ask him to reverse his decision, to let you issue a new press release saying that you decided to do one more experiment, just to be sure, and to your surprise, it happened to work. I'll do something. I'll get him to change his mind. He respects my opinion, Clara. He'll listen.”

“Jim, you can't be serious.” Something about the light in his eyes frightened the part of her that was capable of feeling fear. It was, however, a small part in proportion to her whole. “I’m completely serious.” “Why, then, Jim? Why would you put so much energy into a lost cause? He’s not going to change his mind, not even for you. The only thing that’ll change is his regard for you; he’ll think less of you for siding with me.” “He shouldn’t doubt that I’m on your side, Clara; you’re my brother’s sister.” “And his bastard son’s wife. Blood holds no power over him.”

She spoke of the rumor as generally accepted truth. As much as she resented it, she could no longer doubt it. Too many of the genetic markers matched. Before Tom’s mother had married Jim’s father, she had been in some sort of brief tryst with then-Major Grant Calvin Hobbes. Nine months later, Thomas Grant Golding was born. Three months later, she married a Burr. Six months later, James Aaron Burr was born. So grew the family tree.

He did not dignify the rumor with a response, not even in private. He had spent the better part of their childhood defending his brother’s honor. “And I hope, Jim, that you aren’t just taking my side because I’m your brother’s wife.” She counted on his rationality, on his reason, on his ability to at least somewhat see the issue as she would. “No,” he shook his head, “that isn’t the only reason. There’s a world,” he gestured to the bustling city beyond the glass, “a universe, and as the only sentient--” Known sapient species, she corrected internally. “--species, we have a duty to try to understand it. No one man should be able to tell those who know better than him what they may or may not know.”

A cacophony of shouts, cheers, and applause sounded from within the central section of the dome. It took them both by surprise, Clarity nearly jumping out of her skin. “What the hell is happening in there?” It was too much applause, she knew, for the end to an ordinary speech. She turned to the small window so that she could see the happenings of the sandpit. Jim came up beside her. They peered through the small rectangular window, their shoulders touching, but neither of them was able to see much. They could see the podium at the center of the pit, surrounded by blood-soaked sand. Hobbes stood now off to the side of the podium while Vice President Jameson Moore stood behind it, clearly speaking, and gesturing to the President, who, for some odd reason, still held the shovel, but now like a scepter or staff or walking stick.

Jameson Moore was very physical when it came to oratory. He made grand, illustrious gestures whose symbolic meaning Clarity couldn't begin to decipher. He was a good deal younger than the President, who had lived, to the best estimates of web encyclopedias, some three score years. Moore, however, was closer in age to Jim and Tom, somewhere around the ripe age of two score years. Why they measured age in such large terms Clarity had never quite been able to determine. She herself was two years past one-and-one-half score years. Yes, that was more convoluted than was strictly necessary.

She repeated her ghosted question, still not able to see the small, shiny object that Moore held in one of his hands. “What the hell is happening?” “I fear the people have chosen Hobbes as their king.” Jim said the words softly, darkly, as if he were afraid to let them out into the light--as if that would make them truer than his previously silent fears. They shouldn't talk of such things, after all, the walls had ears. “Then,” something caught in Clarity's heart, her breath hitched, she saw an opening, and proceeded to measure her words carefully, “then I take it that you wouldn't have it so?”

She backed away from the small window to face the exterior of the dome. She knew that no good could come of watching what Sophia had warned. She had to keep her calm, had to be rational about this. Jim, too, backed away from the window and turned to look out the external wall once more. “No, I wouldn't. As much as I respect Hobbes as a man,” he paused tortuously, “for his character and his accomplishments, I would not have him in any higher position than President.” Clarity watched the world outside, half-listening, twice-thinking, and using far much more of her brain than should have been available for casual use.

The streets pulsed with hover cars. People walked, quickly, along the streets. The morning mist pressed in, omnipotent around them. Fear was tangible in that not-so far off air. It was real, not a joke, not a hoax, not a dream. It was real, and the fear was frightening in and of itself. It had to be stopped, she knew. Somehow or other, it had to be stopped.

Jim continued, “This country was never meant to have a monarch, Clara. They say that, if George Washington had but asked for a crown, men would have given it to him, willingly, would have traded one King George for another.” He ran his fingers through his hair, as was his wont when nervous. “But George Washington, like my forefather,” who was Aaron Burr, “fought for the reasons they laid down in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It wasn't, as some historians tell us, a ploy for better economic situations. No, it was a fight for a republic, and a republic it must stay, even for Grant Hobbes.” There was another shout, another flourish, another bout of jarring free fall for their hearts. “Yes,” Clarity nodded violently, willing the cheers to go away--to vanish from her head. She could not bear them, could not bear what they might represent.

“All men and women are created equal. We are endowed with the same certain natural rights. Both you and I were born as free as Hobbes. He is as human as we are; he is as mortal as we are. He may, as we do, develop fevers from the common flu, and he may vomit when food turns sour in his stomach. He does, as we do, grow old in spite of ourselves, and he does inch closer, day by day, to the end of his days. He has, as we have, a conscience, and he must, as we must, follow it to his own detriment. He will, as we will, one day perish, and he will, as we will, leave a legacy to the rest of the world.” Another wave of clamorous praise assaulted their ears.

The barrage of cheers and applause hung rancid in the air. “I do fear,” Jim murmured, “that they are empowering his legacy at this very moment. Senator Vogt suggested that it would be so.” Clarity had already guessed that this was what her friend had meant, though how Sophia had found out, she did not know, nor did she want to. Yet, even as the idea formed in her mind, she pressed forward. She had no choice, now that the first force of the shovel had set her moving, she was the prey of inertia. “He would have himself declared God almighty. He is the puppet master, even now, pulling our strings, leading us in an intricately patterned dance whose steps we do not know. We are pawns in his cosmic chess match. We are slaves who fawn before his waiting feet. We are not our own,” she shook her head as the tears formed in her eyes.

She knew not what she said, but that she had to continue. “We must, at times, be masters of our fates. The fault, Jim, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. We have let it come to this, all of us. We are born the same, and our names sound the same. What is there in ‘Hobbes’ that there isn’t in ‘Burr?’ Any name may set the stars afire; any name may play any role. There is no reason, Jim, no reason that he should have any honor that is not awarded to you. That he might, that whatever happens even now down there happens, it is not the American way. It is the tyranny we threw off nearly four centuries ago. It is the tyrannies we have fought in the centuries since all around the globe. It is not the America in which I wish to live.”

“I have thought these thoughts, too, Clara,” Jim whispered, even now a shade quieter than before, “and so have I fought them. I know where they lead, perhaps better than you do.” Clarity considered that. Did she know where they led? At the moment, not quite. It was just talk, just palter in double sense, and nothing more. “Are they thoughts on which you would act?” she dared ask. He shook his head very slowly, wrestling within himself to find an answer to that most treasonous question. “I don’t yet know.” “There are others,” she began cautiously, “who would side with us.” “That I don’t doubt, but I first wish to see, for myself, what lies in Hobbes’s heart.”

At that, he nodded to her and proceeded to walk away, back toward the President’s Box. Clarity stood still, still staring out the window. What events she had set in motion she could only incoherently grasp. She tried to make sense of it, tried to make sense of the world that existed beyond the window and the world that existed in her mind. She did not know if there was a middle-ground, a No Man’s Land, where the spirits lived and all hope died. If there were such a place, she did not doubt that she was in it now, donning the cloak of disguise that would have to hide the dark thoughts in her heart from the man who would be God, the Devil himself.

Sic semper tyrannis, she thought, as she turned away from the black glass, resolved.


4. The Eyes are Sunlight

As soon as President Hobbes and Vice President Moore returned to the Presidential Box, the Cabinet stood, and the entire party made to depart. Again, Clarity really did not understand the security--or lack thereof--of this arrangement. She could only assume that, in addition to the weapons she knew the President carried at all times, they had Secret Service operatives undercover everywhere. Somehow, although that thought should have made her feel safer, it only made her feel less so. The walls had ears, she repeated for the second time this day.

Down the spiral walkway they went, down, and down. The citizens who had managed to afford tickets to this majestic event came out to stand on the edge of the walkway as the Presidential train moved downward and out. She had found, upon returning to the Box, that Moore had indeed offered a diadem to Hobbes. Three times. And three times, Hobbes had refused it, but with increasing reaction time each pass. That, if offered it again, he would take it Clarity did not doubt. Jim's fears were, indeed, well-justified. Hobbes would be king. Moore would make him king. The people, the damnable public, would have it so.

Who did that leave to save the republic? Clarity Golding, apparently, and company. She had said that others would join them, but the list was not as long as she would have made Jim believe. Hopefully, he would come around. She would convince her husband, if not because he was convinced the crime was necessary, then because he was convinced that it was necessary to her happiness, which he placed above all else. Sophia, too, could be convinced. There were likely others she was forgetting at the moment. It would come together. Perhaps.

“Mr. President!” A man in rags, who looked scarcely better than the common hobo under the common corner bridge, approached them. “What? Halt,” Hobbes called. “Halt,” Moore seconded, and all halted. “It is as you requested, sir.” Because everything was always, and if Moore had his way, would always be, just as the tyrant requested. “Thank you, Jameson.” Hobbes shifted his attention to the haggard man, whose clothing was riddled with holes and whose gray beard hung well to his chest. The top of his head, however, like Hobbes's own, was perfectly hairless. “Speak, you.” “Thank you, Mr. President. I would warn you. Beware the Ides of March.”

Clarity resisted the urge to laugh hysterically. She truly had come to Rome. It was too much, given the shape her plans were taking, just too much. Yet, she did not laugh. She swallowed awkwardly, and let her face lose color, as she knew it should. “What, man? Who are you?” “I am no one,” the man replied cryptically. What that meant no one could quite say. “He is an astrologer,” some nameless onlooker cried. Another added, “He writes horoscopes for The Washington Post.” “Lucky Starr,” Clarity murmured.

She had before read her horoscope, Pisces, in that paper--not because she believed in such things, but as an experiment, to see just how wrong a horoscope could be. Unfortunately, though in details utterly inaccurate, it had been broad enough to be somewhat true. “What did you say, again?” “Beware, Mr. President, the Ides of March.” “Sir,” Moore frowned, “the Ides of March is the day after next.” “I am aware of that, Jameson.” He gave one last, extended look to the astrologer, his lips parted in an agony of doubt and indecision. He seemed to be considering something grave. What it was, Clarity preferred not to consider.

Yet, she marked the date. For, as much as she hated it, she had a profound respect for fate. She would, if the circumstances allowed, mock it in this instance. Hobbes came to a decision. “Let’s go on.” “Beware!” the astrologer called as the procession resumed down the double helix. “Mr. President, beware!”

Clarity felt Jim’s eyes on the back of her skull. She knew his thoughts wound round the same pole as her own. He did not know it yet himself, but she knew his heart was won. Soon, they reached sunlight. The doors of the grand entrance to Thunderdome opened before them. A sleek black limousine, with the Presidential seal embossed on the door, sat waiting. She took her leave of the Vice President coldly, offering her hand and feigning her heart, but no more. Jim’s hand, however, she clasped warmly when he, too, headed for the President’s private car.

“I’ll come to you tomorrow, Clara,” he said quietly. “Come to dinner,” she offered. “Bring Mercedes and Aaron, too. I’m sure Tom won’t mind. Around 7:00?” “Alright,” he smiled. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.” He patted her hand before letting go. Then, with a knot in her stomach, Clarity approached the Honorable Hobbes. “Mr. President.” As before, she offered her hand. He took it, with the proper quota of polite reverence. “Secretary Golding.” “I think,” she started, “I should like to meet with you tomorrow, if you’re available.” “I think,” he smiled broadly, rather creepily at her, “my dear, you think too much.” “Very well, then.”

She bristled mentally, filing the comment away for use in books and eulogies. “I would like to meet with you tomorrow.” “To what end, my dear?” The term of endearment, which she received from him at infrequent intervals, never failed to unsettle her. She figured that it was his not-so subtle way of reminding her that she was married to none other than his son, even if he denied the existence of that son. She brushed it off, however, for the sake of not attacking the President before they were ready. “I’d prefer to discuss that in private, at our meeting tomorrow.”

“Now that, Ms. Golding,” he broadened his smile, “is how it’s done. Isn’t it, Jim?” He shot a good-natured laugh in Jim’s direction. “When you want something, you don’t ask for it. You order it done, with every confidence, even when you have no authority to make such an order. Yes, that’s how it’s done. Now, at what time is this meeting of ours?” “At 10:00 a.m., in the Oval Office.” “That it is. I will see you then, my dear.” He released her hand. He then slid into his limousine, followed by Jameson Dallas Moore and James Aaron Burr. The rest of the Cabinet dispersed in various directions, toward their own ordered cars. Hers and Tom’s wasn’t due for another ten minutes, nor did she expect Tom for at least that long.

She stood on the cement of the sidewalk, in the cold of the March morn. The cars whizzed by before her, creating a wind of their own. Persons of every walk of life swarmed around her, like so many bees, buzzing on through their lives, looking for honey, worshiping the monarch, reproducing, and then, as was their duty, dying--dying without so much as a second thought--never, even while living, never so much as a second thought. It was not their nature. It was a thought that Clarity could scarcely comprehend.

It was her nature to question--to question everything, from the accepted laws of society, to the accepted laws of physics. She was a deviant, by all social standards. She did not have even so much as a shred of doubt behind her atheism. She did not believe in the good of mankind, did not believe in the good of anyone. She was the perfect misanthrope, and an incurable cynic to boot. Yet, in spite of her, and all of her futile attempts to dilate time without accelerating the universe beyond the impossible cosmic speed limit of the speed of light, time went on. In spite of humanity and its silly attempts to live, time fought on. In spite of its hopeless compulsion to derive some ordered meaning from the petty chaos, time raged on. In spite of all the forces that begged it to stop and be still, time would not die; time lived on.

For the second time that day, she jumped when a hand touched her shoulder. She snapped around. “Oh,” she sighed wearily, “Sophia, it’s you.” “In a red trench coat and all my glory, yes, it’s me. Who else would it be? Your other best friend?” Unable to find a witty response, she settled for shrugging. So, Sophia moved into the conversation right away. “Did you keep your calm?” “If you are referring to my reaction to Moore offering Hobbes the diadem--” “I am.” “--I didn’t actually see it.” Sophia scrunched her brow. “What do you mean you didn’t see it, it was impossible to miss. I’ve never heard more thunder in the Thunderdome.” “Oh, I heard it, alright,” Clarity grimaced. “I heard it all too well. It made it difficult to concentrate on the conversation I was having just outside the Presidential Box.” “With whom?” “Just Jim.” “You’re saying that Jim missed a Hobbes speech to talk to you?” “Yes,” Clarity shrugged. “What of it?” “You do realize that he still feels guilty about siding with Peterson at first, right? He hates to miss a single speech.” It was true.

Although Jim had, like the rest of the Republicans, initially sided with Peterson in 2044, he had been the first to apologize to Hobbes. As righteous a man as he was, his regard for authority was in-born. Clarity was much the opposite. “He wanted to talk to me.” “About what?” She clasped her hands in front of her, trying not to pay too much attention to them. “A variety of subjects.” “Thank you, Captain Vague. Would you care to clarify that?” Sophia was not exactly one of Jim’s buddies. Clarity was not sure how much of what had been said had been said in confidence, and how much she could relay. What she did know, however, was that if they went through with what she thought they were about to conspire to do, she wanted Sophia on her side, no matter what Jim said or wanted. She resolved. “Let’s walk.” They started walking down the sidewalk, toward the National Mall.

The chilled wind smarted against Clarity’s face. It burned lightly, but pleasantly. She felt more awake than she had after her morning coffee. “We talked about the press release. He told me that he would try to convince Hobbes to change his mind.” “He knows, doesn’t he, that that’s not going to happen?” “I told him as much,” she nodded. She shifted her hands, clasping them instead behind her back. “Anyhow, then we heard the noise from inside the dome. We couldn’t see what was happening, but he guessed as much. He must have heard the same rumors,” she gave Sophia a meaningful look, “as you.” “And?” Clarity stopped. They were in front of the National Archives.

She looked up at the hallowed building, considered how little it had changed since her childhood. It was the only symbol of hope she would accept in the earthly world. “As great as his regard is for Hobbes, he wouldn’t have him as king.” “Then what,” Sophia murmured very quietly, “would he do about it?” “The same,” Clarity declared, boldly and at full volume, her voice ringing through the chill, “as I would.” “And that is?” “Did you hear the warning the astrologer gave to him?” “Yes,” Sophia nodded, her eyes alit, “to beware the Ides of March.” Recognition dawned. Her jaw dropped. “Clara, you’re not--” “I have a meeting with him tomorrow. If that meeting does not change my mind, for my heart is resolved, I will give him reason to wish he had bewared the Ides of March.”

“Clara,” Sophia stared at her, stared at the cold glimmer in Clarity’s blue-green eyes, “you’re not a killer.” “Not yet,” she shook her head, “no, but neither will I consent to live as a slave.” “Monarchy isn’t slavery.” “It is something less than freedom, and I will accept no less than freedom. I refuse to live in a society in which the government believes that it has some inherent right over me, over my person. It has nothing but that which I consent to give it. I will consent to give Hobbes no more than the Constitution says I should. No more, Sophia, no more.”

She looked up at the building before her. She was tempted to visit it. It had been far too long. “I don’t want to go home quite yet. Tell Tom that I’ll take the metro home, will you? And, please think it over.” Sophia looked at her wearily, with a certain measure of concern for her friend’s sanity. “Alright. I will.” “Thank you,” Clarity smiled weakly. She was fine, really, as sane as she had ever been--though, arguably, that was not very sane. Sophia turned around, leaving her on the steps of the National Archives.

Resolutely, she walked up the steps in double-time, her heels clicking against the pavement. The wind whistled around her. She reached the top step and waited, expectantly, for the door to swoosh open. It did not. She frowned and looked at the dark glass of the door. In the door hung a small sheet of paper, which announced that, by virtue of it being a government-declared holiday, the National Archives were, quite decidedly, closed. She laughed. Her cackle coughed in the cold air. Of course.

Oh, of course Hobbes would have the National Archives closed on the day of the Thunderdome. That she had never thought to check before astounded her. She had been remiss. It was a madness, a souring of the blood, which compelled her to run down the steps. The cold air chilled her blood, but not so much as it chilled her heart. At the bottom of the steps, she stripped off her three-inch heels. She ran bare-footed, holding her heels in one hand, through the mall, and along the streets of Washington. The wind whipped around her. She stopped laughing as she ran, for lack of air. She ran as quickly as she could, needing to run, needing to feel the pavement flying beneath her feet, in a mad rage, as the world whirled and whirred beside her. She kept going, and going, hardly knowing the difference between the fabric of her thoughts and the world before her. Her composure had broken.

It was too absurd, far too absurd to be true, and yet it was. There was no way around it, no way around it but to do what she barely dared to believe she could do. She kept running until she reached the Jefferson Memorial. The cherry blossoms hung delicately around the Tidal Basin. At the base of the steps, she slipped on her heels again and marched up the steps. She knew there were cameras all around, just as she knew how disheveled she looked, and just how this would look to Hobbes’s goons. Yet, she did not care. She did not care in the least. She stared at the statue before her--at the monolithic form of Thomas Jefferson, who, in life, had towered over all others at six foot three inches, and now towered over all, all except the new colossus, Grant Calvin Hobbes. She stared, panting to catch her breath, into his cold bronze eyes. She spun around, her balance suddenly lost. She read the words around the top of the dome, “I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

She collapsed to her knees, staring still up at Jefferson’s eyes in the lonely memorial. Even now, at the middle of the day, it was empty. No one dared to come to such places such as these. The bronze eyes seemed to glow, with some unearthly warmth. They pierced through her weary soul. They bid her to swear, not on the altar of God, but here, on the altar of the Republic, the same oath. The eyes were sunlight. She could not resist their allure; she was utterly oblivious to the minute cameras that lurked behind that, that were the source of that light she found so utterly mesmerizing. She had no choice. She was not her own. “I swear,” she murmured, her chest still heaving, her lungs still burning in the chill of the thick fog, “I swear upon the altar of this Republic, of these United States, of this universe, of all entropic eternity, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” The eyes were sunlight.


5. Prayers to Broken Stone

Clarity had gotten, at most, three hours of sleep the previous night. After her collapse at the Jefferson Memorial, she had headed to the Library of Congress, not really expecting it to be open, but knowing that she had to try. To her great surprise, and satisfaction, it had, in fact, been open after all.

Apparently, although it was not acceptable to let the public read the founding documents of the nation on public holidays, it was perfectly fine for it to rummage through the largest collection of books in the nation. She had appreciated the twisted irrationality and had manipulated it to her advantage. She had sifted through the stacks and found, buried and restricted, a good number of books she had read many years ago, before it became illegal to possess such seditious materials. She found Locke’s Two Treatises on Government, Rousseau’s The Social Contract, and even, coincidentally, Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. She had had to read paper copies, as archaic as that seemed in so late a year as 2047.

She had devoured the prose at the blitzkrieg speed of two thousand words per minute and had stayed in a dark corner of the library, huddled in a chair near a fire, until midnight. Then, turned out into the street by an angry librarian, she had taken the metro back to her Alexandria flat, only to meet, and avoid, her anxious husband. She dismissed his concerns, saying that she was tired and would explain it to him tomorrow. However, instead of sleeping or explaining, she had settled into a chair in her study with an electronic padd and copy of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. She had fallen asleep, padd in hand, sometime halfway through the night.

Yet, as little sleep of as poor a quality as she had received, it was not noticeable by the time she found herself wandering the hallowed halls of the White House. Her three cups of black coffee in the past five hours had served her quite well. The thick concealer that she had caked on top of the bluish, purplish circles under her eyes no doubt helped, as well. Her hair was thrown into a messy bun. She wore a loose violet sweater over a striped lavender and white oxford, with a crisp black pencil skirt.

She looked far more chic--and alive, honestly--than she felt. So she found herself outside the Oval Office, waiting for her audience with the man she despised most in this world. She presented herself to his secretary, and waited oh so very patiently. Finally, the secretary informed her, in a nasally tone, “Ms. Golding, the President will see you now.” She was ushered through a large mahogany door into the Oval Office, the heart of the West Wing, of the White House, of Washington, D.C., and really, of the United States of America herself.

She had been here, of course, before, but she couldn’t help but do a double-take. The room seemed darker. The carpet was a deep bloody hue, which reminded her vaguely of a certain crimson substance of which Hobbes seemed unseemly fond. The curtains around the windows behind the renowned Resolute desk, too, were that same crimson color. Most of the furniture in the room was either dark wood, black, or in some rare cases of accents, white. It was an utterly anachronistic cross between historic colonial and modern post-modern interior decorating. On the walls hung paintings of men whom, she assumed, were Hobbes’s heroes. She recognized them immediately. Julius Caesar. Alexander the Great. Alexander Hamilton. And of course, there was President Grant Hobbes himself sitting in a plush chair behind his reputable desk.

Ever the gentleman, he stood when she entered the room. “Ms. Golding, good morning. Can I get you something to drink? Black coffee is your poison of choice, if I do recall?” She went into iceberg mode, guarding herself. In an absurd bout of paranoia, she wondered if he intended to poison her coffee. She did not doubt that, if he wanted to, he could cover up her murder. She took too long thinking these paranoid thoughts.

“I promise I didn’t mean literal poison,” he smiled patronizingly, charm on full intensity. “Of course not,” she smiled through her teeth. “Black coffee would be perfect, thank you.” He pressed a few buttons on his desk, no doubt ordering coffee that his secretary would no doubt soon deliver. “Please sit,” he gestured to the chair in front of the Resolute desk. She walked across the large room, keenly aware of the dull thud of each step as she walked over the rug of the Presidential seal, which spanned a good deal of the floor space at the center of the room. Only when she took her indicated seat did he himself sit once more. She waited. He waited. The secretary came in with the coffee, handed each one of them a coffee mug that appear to be closer to a teacup in design and bore a loopy dark red monogram of “GCH.”

She raised her cup to her nose, sniffing the acrid black liquid. It smelled safe. She took a cautious sip. Her tongue burned, and her head recoiled back. But aside from the whiplash it had caused and the slight twinge of singed taste buds, it tasted perfectly normal--abnormally good, even. Hobbes chuckled quietly, watching her, observing her as if she were the most fascinating spectacle in the universe. He blew a long cooling breath on his own coffee before taking a long draught.

For his age, he was not an unattractive man. His frame was wiry but muscular. He seemed to exude strength. His grandfather, if Clarity’s recollection served her well, as it always did, had come from the South of France, and somehow, it showed quite clearly in the bony architecture of his face. The mirth of his current expression, half smirk and half genuine smile, fit his countenance well, just as his designer white oxford fit his broad shoulders well. His dark eyes radiated warmth.

He did not look the part of a villain. But villains seldom did look the part. “So, my dear,” he smiled kindly, almost as society would have expected him to smile at his daughter-in-law, “what is it that you wished to discuss?” Clarity tried another sip of coffee. It truly was an exceptionally fine French roast. “My work on cold fusion,” she started. Among other things, she thought.

“Interestingly enough,” he leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his shiny bald head, “I had a fascinating conversation with Jim Burr about just that yesterday after the Thunderdome excursion.” “Really.” She meant for the word to ask a question, but somehow, the second syllable of the word fell flat off her tongue. “He asked me to reverse my original decision, and to let you issue a press release, and of course publish your findings, and let cold fusion set free into the free market.”

She waited, coldly, morosely, for him to continue. Hobbes really appeared to be enjoying himself quite immeasurably by dragging this conversation out. “Would you like to know,” he asked in a careful cross between amusement and condescension, “what his argument was?” Clarity said nothing. There was nothing she could say. “He used a number of idealistic terms. He tried to appeal to my emotions. Something about it being cruel to suppress free inquiry, I believe?” he laughed, shaking his head.

“It was really quite endearing. But you see, Ms. Golding, I don’t myself buy appeals to emotion. My mind works in more rational terms, as I believe, does yours. Am I correct?” She smirked in spite of herself. “As a scientist, I would certainly hope that my mind works in rational terms.” “Yes, of course,” he nodded. “Am I also correct in presuming that your aim here this morning is the same as Jim’s was yesterday afternoon?” “Yes,” she nodded, pulling her lips into a thin line, “it is.” “Well, because I found dear Jim’s speech so endearing, I have decided to consider changing my mind on the matter.”

Her lips parted in surprise. “Really?” “Yes, my dear,” he smiled, “I have. But not on the basis of Jim’s idealistic speech, no, but on the basis of your assuredly more rational arguments.” Her mouth hung most inelegantly open for a moment while her brain processed this information. No, she had most definitely not expected to receive any consideration at all, or for Jim to have made any difference at all with his valiant, though seemingly futile, offer to talk to Hobbes. And yet—doubt. It could be a play, a ruse, a cruel charade.
“So. What do you have to say, my dear?”

For another long moment, she simply stared at him, trying to pull her disorganized thoughts into some sort--any sort--of coherent order. Nothing would come together. She wished time would just give her a break, for once, and slow down. “Well?” Hobbes asked expectantly, looking at her with concern, that frustratingly paternal concern that served no other purpose than to further provoke her frustration.

“I am a scientist, sir” she began candidly, “and you, although many honorable things, are not. I have two doctorates, in physics and chemistry, whereas you do not. I am more familiar with the process of fusion than any other chemical reaction in the known universe, and I believe I am more familiar with it than most any other person on this planet is, sir. Two days ago, I made a ground-breaking scientific discovery. I should only like the right that belongs to all scientists, to publish my findings. As I am the expert in my field, as you undoubtedly know, I believe I am best qualified to decide if I should publish my work, not you, sir.”

“I acknowledge the validity of your points, Dr. Golding.” It occurred to her that this was the first time he had called her by her proper educational title. “But what of our current energy companies? What of the impact your findings will have on the economy?” “I will default to my brother-in-law’s argument on this count. I believe the free market would protect the energy companies sufficiently. I do not believe a shift could be made to fusion power unless it was instigated by the government. I am not asking you for that, Mr. President. I don’t care about that, not now. I’m just asking for my right to my own intellectual property, to publish my work without the censor’s specter hanging over me. Is that really, sir, more than is my right?”

He stared at her for a long moment, watching her with a quixotic lilt to the tilt of his head. He considered her through her eyes, as if to the very depths of her soul, analyzing each word and sentence and careful turn of phrase for sincerity and veracity. It was a thoroughly hypocritical act, yet it had a certain logic to its inherent illogic. “No,” he smiled kindly at her. “No, Dr. Golding, it is not more than is your right.” She waited, frankly surprised that he would admit so much. She waited, wondering where he could go from such an admission. “You are completely right. I appreciate the logic of your argument, and I do believe you have managed to change my mind.”

She stared at him, her mouth once again falling open. This was not at all how she had expected this conversation to go, not at all how it was supposed to go. “Are you saying, Mr. President, that I may publish my findings, after all?” “That is exactly what I am saying, my dear,” he beamed, then corrected, “Dr. Golding. You may issue a press release immediately stating that, in one last ditch effort, you did indeed manage to find a successful method of cold fusion. Indeed, not only do I give you permission to issue such a press release, I request that you do so. Immediately. Oh hell, let’s do it here, now.” He continued in this vein. Clarity simply stared at him, not knowing what to make of it. This was not, she thought again, how this meeting was supposed to go. She couldn’t stand it. Her brow furrowed. Her thoughts burrowed deeper.

“Mr. President,” she interrupted his over-enthusiastic litany of scientific praises. “Why yes, my dear?” It did seem, for some odd reason, through the course of this interview, that he was treating her rather close to the daughter-in-law she was. What reason there was for this perceptible behavioral shift, only Secretary of State James Aaron Burr could have guessed. “May I ask you a question?” “If I don’t have to guarantee that I will provide an answer, then yes, of course.” He smiled. “I am, of course, entitled to the Fifth Amendment.”

She steeled herself to ask this question whose answer she wanted more than all others. She knew that she should not ask it, that knowing the answer, either way, would do her no good. It would make no difference, no difference at all. And that she was able to admit that to herself--that she recognized that her mind was too firmly set to change, even if he surprised her with the preferable answer--that was a thought that struck an ill chord. The dissonance shook her. He waited, seemingly on the edge of his seat, for her question. “Yes, my dear?” She started, her voice shaking in the air, “If you are offered the--” she stopped. She could not ask him. As much as she simultaneously wished and did not wish to know, she could not get the words out of her mouth.

She could not bring herself to ask the question, could not bring herself to hear the answer, no matter how much she needed to hear it. That she was afraid of it was all too clear. That she was more afraid of an answer in the negative than the affirmative would have, if she had been consciously aware of the fact, wrenched her soul. The specter of the blood-soaked shovel of death hung in her mind.

“Yes, Clarity?” She let out a wrenching sigh. It tore through her being. She was praying to broken stone. He had said her name, and she had no decent response. She had nothing, nothing but a broken question that she could not possibly ask. “What is it that you wish to know? I swear I’ll try to answer, to the best of my ability.” She shook her head dissuasively, “It’s nothing.” He smiled, shaking his head like a kind father-in-law, “No it isn’t. You wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t.”

And of course, that psychology possessed its own irrefutable logic. She could not deny it, not even with her hyper-rational mind, which could, ninety-nine percent of the time, rationalize anything. If necessary. She shook her head once more, staring at her now-cold black coffee. “Out with it,” he urged. She sought desperately for a new, safer question to ask him, one that sounded far less openly treasonous. She ransacked her brain, probing all the possibilities. She could not think. His paternal kindness was far too distracting, and-- Ah. There. She found the question to ask. It was just awkward enough to explain her reluctance to be out with it, and yet not so awkward as asking if he intended to be the emperor of her dear republic.

“Are the rumors,” she allowed her cheeks to flush, “true?” “There are many rumors, my dear. Which do you mean?” “The rumors,” she clarified with mock coyness, “that you are my husband’s biological father. Are they true?” “Ah,” he once more leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know if it’s wise for me to answer this, but, I suppose no harm can come of it.” He smiled weakly. “Yes, my dear, my daughter-in-law, they are.” There--the truth. It changed nothing.