Alternative Truths

by Bob Brown

  “What?” Smog. Rivers. Lake Erie. Fish floating. No. I made that agency for a reason. Redwood forests.

  “What?” said Donald. “I—” He shook his head.

  “What is it, buddy.” Bannon reached out a hand.

  “That’s Mr. President.” Dick, Richard Nixon, said inside Donald’s mind.

  “That’s Mr. President,” said Donald. He pulled himself back into his own head.

  Bannon’s face blanked for a moment, and then he smiled.

  “Yes, sir, I forget my place?”

  “What about air and water regulations.” Donald heard himself asking.

  “Sir?”

  “I asked you a question, man.” Donald heard himself speak. “How are we going to manage that?” I don’t care. Nobody really cares.

  “Riders on the funding bill.” Bannon stood. Donald looked at the ring on the table where his glass of scotch had sat. He pulled out his handkerchief and cleaned the spot. Bannon didn’t notice. Donald felt fear. Why was he doing this, saying these things?

  “We’ve put a rider in the implementation that cancels all EPA enforcement authority and bans any other replacement agency from enforcing the regulations.” He raised his glass to Donald. “Rather elegant, if I do say so myself.

  “No,” said Dick Nixon.

  About time, Donald tried to say but no words came out.

  Dick stood. He easily had 4 inches on Bannon. “Call Manolo,” he said. “Tell him I need some wine. The Rothschild. He knows.”

  “Sir?” Bannon, again went blank. “You want wine?”

  “Did I stutter?” Dick leaned toward the man. He had never been a big man. He liked it.

  “No sir,” said Bannon.”

  “It’s just that you don’t drink.”

  Dick stopped. “I what?”

  “You don’t drink, sir.”

  Donald reached out. Bannon would help him. Bannon could solve anything. Help me.

  “Sir?”

  They both looked down to where Donald gripped Bannon’s forearm. The man’s pattern was shrinking in on itself. Colors of confusion rimmed the darkness.

  Dick released the hand. It fought back. He smiled. He didn’t know whose body this had been. But it was his now.

  No screamed Donald. But a haze was forming. The room was dimming.

  “Well, I do now,” he turned and walked to the windows. He loved those windows.

  “Sir?”

  Dick spun. “What?”

  “Who’s Manolo?”

  “He’s my—” Manolo, his valet. Dick thought back. Many the night he and Manolo had worked. He still remembered the night they went out to the Lincoln Memorial and helped straighten some protesters out. Goddamned if the Secret Service hadn’t been pissed. Manolo? Was he dead now? What year was it? He couldn’t just ask.

  “For fuck’s sake, Bannon, I’ll do it myself.” He pulled open the door. A startled Secret Service agent stood there. Hell, this needed more than wine. “I need a bottle of rye whiskey and a newspaper.”

  “I can’t do that, sir.”

  Dick leaned forward. “You can’t do what?”

  “I can’t leave my post.”

  Dick fought down the flash of anger.

  “What’s your name, son.” The man’s pattern was solid, the color of iron.

  “Jenkins, sir.”

  Dick put a hand on his shoulder. He felt the man flinch. With his other hand he pointed to the phone on the desk. “Please,” he said. “Can you call somebody to make this happen?”

  “Uh—”

  “Please,” he said and squeezed the man’s shoulder. “You like this assignment, right.” He could see the blue streak of fear shimmer across the man’s pattern.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good, I understand it might take a minute.” He turned and closed the door, but not before Agent Jenkins was moving toward the phone.

  He smiled to himself and closed the door.

  The Bannon idiot was still there. The confusion was spreading across his pattern.

  “About the EPA, sir.”

  Dick ignored him and crossed the room to his desk. Not his desk. But he would get his desk back. This had been Kennedy’s desk. With barely a glance out the windows, he settled into the chair. God damned it was comfortable.

  “Clear my schedule for the next twenty-four hours. Tell them I have the flu. I don’t care.”

  “Uh—?”

  Dick stood and leaned forward over the desk. “Things are gonna change around here. Only one of us is in charge. It looks to me like you think that’s you.” The man’s pattern began to change, fading and losing the chaotic splotches of concealment. A dull red, the color of rotting meat seemed to permeate. Dick crooked a finger and motioned the man forward.

  As if in a trance Bannon shuffled forward. Dick reached out and took the glass from the man’s limp hands. He drank half of it in a gulp. Oh god that tasted good. He looked down at the unshaven bit of bluster. “Now get out.” He reached deep into where Donald cringed in the back of what had once been himself and found the words he was looking for.

  “And you’re fired.”

  The dull red pattern roared to a shimmering orange. Dick could almost feel the heat. “You can’t—” The words came out as a whimper.

  “The fuck I can’t.”

  Suddenly there was motion. Bannon leaned across the desk “Oh the fuck you can. I made you and I can fucking break you.”

  Dick leaned forward his face inches from the blustering figure, the red nose, the broken veins. Out of control. The pattern now spun. Flaming orange. But inside a streak of black.

  “Fuck you, you pussy,” said Dick.

  The blow knocked him back. Pain exploded in his nose. His hand went to his face. His nose? He forgot for a second, it wasn’t his nose. But it still bled. He wiped slowly with the cuff of his shirt. That’s more like it, he thought. He looked up at Bannon who stood, his flames subsided, now a mixture of black ochre and rotting meat. Yes shouted Donald. Bannon would save him.

  Dick smiled at Bannon and all the while wondering if the tape machines still ran as he raised his voice. “Help me, Agent Jenkins, he’s gone mad.”

  Bannon’s pattern shifted to yellow fear as the door burst open. Dick raised his arms, making sure the bloody cuff of the white shirt was visible as he cringed back from Bannon.

  “I’ll kill you, God damn it,” said Bannon.

  “Stay very, very still, Director Bannon,” said Agent Jenkins. The gun in his hands was steady. Within seconds, two more of the four Oval Office doors burst open and Bannon lay writhing on the floor.

  No said Donald. Where was Ivanka. He found himself sinking again into the darkness.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” said Dick but there was no stopping the circus until he was cleaned up. Looking across the room he saw the woman. Kellyanne. She had quietly set a decanter of what he assumed to be rye whiskey and a dozen newspapers down on the small table where before, Bannon had set his drink. He motioned her to stay.

  “Can I have a moment, please,” he said. “Agent Jenkins,” he held out his hand to the agent. “Thank you. You may have saved my life.”

  Jenkins’ cold iron pattern warmed to the praise.

  “I want Bannon in custody,” he said. “But right now I need a moment with Kellyanne to figure this all out.” He could see the resistance in the room. The concern. “Please,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

  The room reluctantly emptied. Kellyanne sat nervously on the sofa. Her pattern was confused, but malleable.

  How much easier life would have been if he could have seen then what he could see now. Who needs any enemies list when they wore their patterns outside?

  “Mr. President,” she said. Her tone, everything about her, willing and confused at the same time.

  He reached over and poured her and himself a drink.

  “Where do we keep the legal pads?” Again confusion. But in less than a minute she was back. Two legal pads. Two White Ho
use pens.

  She sat in silence making notes as he read the papers, and made his own notes.

  His heart sank as he read.

  He was screwed. The magnitude of the screwing came in snippets as he read. The Russians. The fucking Russians? All his work with China? The Middle East. Iran? Occupation forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  He needed more. Finally, five pages of neatly scripted notes. He looked at Kellyanne.

  She put her fingers to her lips in the universal sign of caution, scribbled onto a sheet, tore it out and handed it to him.

  “Who are you?” Three simple words.

  I’m Donald J. Trump, President of the United States. She was so far away. Why couldn’t she hear him?

  Dick drew a question mark.

  “You read the papers.”

  He again drew a question mark.

  She knew. How she knew, he didn’t know.

  “Will this be a problem?” He needed to know.

  Her inner turmoil played out in her pattern until it settled into a color not unlike Agent Jenkins.

  “No, sir,” she said.

  “Good,” he said and raised his glass. “We’re gonna get it right this time.”

  He stood up and walked over to where the letter hung on the wall. He felt a shiver as he touched the frame. Something drained out of him and the frame and letter within glowed a dull throbbing orange. He felt a confidence he hadn’t known in the years he had spent in this office. This time would be different. He slipped the picture off the wall and let it fall into the waste basket before he left the office.

  Donald watched as the door closed. He reached out but only found emptiness. He screamed and only found silence. And then darkness.

  END

  ALTERED TO TRUTH

  Irene Radford

  I, Roger Middleton, finished knotting my blue and silver tie. Satisfied that I looked every inch a gentlemen, I saluted my image in the mirror and retrieved my coat from its padded hanger. It settled on my shoulders as only a custom made silk suit could do. I never tired of this morning ritual. I liked the image of myself emerging into the world as a man going to an important job. An important man, going to an important job.

  Chief of Staff to the President of these United States. The second term was coming soon. It would be without the rancor of the first. Congress now understood its role, the courts were pacified, and the populace, growing less rowdy on their new diet of managed facts. A populace that knew its place; that understood and accepted governance.

  As it should be. Efficient rule by the competent.

  Mr. Donald Trump, the unquestioned President, had surrounded himself with the best educated men in the empire, and even a few women. Involvement required a demonstrated lineage, loyalty, and financial success. Without it you were not of the ilk needed to manage the most powerful empire the world had ever known. I fit the profile. Even though the facts of my life had required alteration as well.

  I emerged from my suite of three rooms plus an en suite bath.

  I strolled through the maze of corridors within the New York Trump Palace or, as it was already known, the Golden Tower. Unerringly, as if I’d known the building from childhood, I found a semi-public staircase that led down a level, along a corridor at the back of the building to another upward bound staircase. The top landing led to the offices of the Advisors and nowhere else.

  The Advisors, as we had become known, were the true power in the land. The Donald had always said he wanted to lead, he would leave the governing to those best at it. Those, it turned out were the Advisors. We advised him, we advised the Congress, we advised the courts.

  I nodded as the retinal and palm print scanners did their thing. No one, not even the Secret Service, entered this space without an Advisor already in the room.

  I settled in and had just filled the silver teapot and set out shortbread, colored sugar coded to the season, lemon, and sugar on a tray when Bannon entered the office and hastily closed the door behind him. He leaned against the dark paneling, head back, breathing short and shallow. A wide man, he filled the portal and used it as a suitable frame. Everything he did was practiced-sloppy, ready for a photo op that made him look less than he was.

  “By the good lord above, the Cabinet is gathering earlier every morning. In less than five minutes they’ll be pounding on the door demanding solutions they should be able figure out themselves.”

  “If we wanted them able to make those decisions we wouldn’t have put them in Cabinet positions.” I wasn’t worried. I already knew the questions and, to most, already had answers. As the chief advisor, the staff kept me informed.

  “We did campaign on the premise that we would drain the swamp. We never claimed we would backfill it? Taking these burdens is part of what we must do if we are to advise President Trump in a manner he needs to be advised.” I held out a cup of tea along with the lecture.

  “I know, I know,” said Bannon. “I just didn’t expect them to be so incompetent.” He set his tea down and reached his thick fingers into the sugar bowl, grabbing a half dozen cubes, which he crumbled into his tea and wiped his hand on his pants.

  I groaned inwardly. It was hard to believe this man had once been a naval officer.

  “I mean hell, I don’t know what the interest rates should be,” Bannon resumed his rant. “I don’t know how to get more food in the stores.” He took a loud slurp from his tea and set it back on the saucer, his spillage not limited to the saucer. “There are still enough actual voters out there that if we don’t get this together, we could be in trouble.”

  I looked up at him. Bannon had been there since the beginning, as had I, but he was starting to waiver. He might need to go.

  “The people like the predictability of interest rates but the bankers don’t,” I reminded him. “But we own the bankers now. The rates stay low. We’ll raise the cap on short term to 48%. That should keep them happy.”

  Bannon sipped his tea without comment.

  “No interest loans on commercial greenhouse projects. And we’ll put the public work crews on expanding reservoirs,” I mused out loud.

  The food shortages weren’t so much food shortages as they were specific. The country had all the corn, pork, and apples it could eat. But with the import and export markets gone, there were problems with translating the commodity into sufficient payback to ensure delivery and continued production. “We need to concentrate on ways to grow more and different food here at home.”

  “Well, yes. Good ideas. I’ll work on them.” Meaning he’d do nothing. I knew that. I already had the orders ready for signature to make them happen.

  Oh. Dear. My tie suddenly seemed too tight, choking breath and words from me.

  I heard heavy footsteps on the formal staircase outside my office. I recognized the stomp of elevator shoes on lush carpeting, followed by labored breathing. The Donald approached.

  Bannon made himself scarce through the connecting door to his own office. He slammed it closed and locked it behind him.

  I opened my office door and bowed to the president’s regal presence.

  Then I spotted Bannon’s real problem. And mine. A menace to all the Advisors. The FBI director. One of the few who could get to the President without an Advisor present. A man who had access to thousands of files of private information about everyone. I thought the man knew better than to target an Advisor, but the smug look on his face told me different. Damn, I didn’t want to have to replace the Director as well as Bannon.

  “You know what he’s telling me?” Trump waved an arm at the Director as he paraded toward his own office—all he needed was a gold robe and gilded laurel coronet to look like a reincarnation of Caesar. “He says the people aren’t happy. He says they’re hungry.” He looked down at the tray of cookies I kept filled for all the Advisors and the man himself. He picked up a shortbread with orange sprinkles and wolfed down. “How can they be hungry,” he sputtered the words, bits of cookie spattered out. “I see food everywhere I go.
”

  Of course he did. The Donald, always a big man had reached enormous new proportions. He rarely wore the same suit twice. His tailor had to fit new, larger ones almost every week.

  A pair of Secret Service escorts stood nervously on either side of the President. “Please escort the Director back to his office,” the Donald said, waving the Director away with a dismissive gesture. Minutes later, the sputtering Director gone, I drew the President into my now empty office where we sat companionably.

  “I have something for you,” I said. “Something special.”

  Trump liked things like this.

  I walked to my desk and found the small remote. A slight click and a section of bookshelves separated from their fellows. It popped open an inch.

  I pried the bookshelf another foot away from the portal. The opening behind the shelves looked black, no interior illumination until I tilted an Atlas of The Conqueror’s England out and back in. The room blazed with golden light, revealing an office. It was oval, the windows, the fireplace, every detail a perfect replica.

  He looked across the room. “And that door?”

  “It goes to your current office.” I stepped through. “No one knows about this office. It is yours. A sanctuary.”

  He stepped forward, his hand on the desk.

  From the court of Louis 14th, it came from Cardinal Richelieu’s private study. It hadn’t been used for 400 years.

  Trump bee-lined toward the oversized gilded monstrosity. I held out the key. Once he’d lowered the unlocked lid that extended the writing surface, his eyes fixed upon the stacks of narrow drawers suitable for stationary, envelopes, sealing wax, and writing implements. I imagined the Cardinal, his robes flowing, his wax warming, sitting at this desk, contemplating the future of the world.

  Trump settled into the massive leather chair. He let his fingers flow over the golden surface and abruptly yanked open the lowest, and deepest left hand drawer within the desk interior. His gaze fixed upon something within.

  I moved to stand just behind the man’s left shoulder, my proper place in public protocol. My mother and nanny had taught me that in childhood. As I watched, Trump gently caressed a long and slender velvet box, the size suitable for an elegant and bejeweled bracelet. Something about the box begged me to reach over my boss’s shoulder and grab it away from him before . . .