POTUS

A short story

“Why can’t I have her killed? She’s an imminent threat to the United States and the entire world.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but it’s unconstitutional to kill Americans on American soil,” Attorney General Skylar Hastings replied. She sat on one of the room's two sofas perpendicular to the president’s desk. “It’s forbidden by the Fifth Amendment, which says, ‘No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.’ Numerous laws reinforce that.” 

“Presidents order assassinations all the time,” President James Judson insisted. “I did it last week with a Hellfire missile in Yemen.”

“Yes, but that was against a non-American in a foreign country. Killing an American on American soil can’t happen.” The attorney general narrowed her eyes, a look that Jamison was familiar with: I’m one hundred percent correct. 

A crow swooped by the window, casting a deep shadow across the room as it passed under the brilliant security light outside the Oval Office, momentarily capturing the room’s attention.

The president slammed his fist on the Resolute desk, sending tremors through the Oval Office. “Then let’s change the goddam Constitution before this Ms. X wipes out civilization. He pressed his palms on the desk, tensing his arms, and rising up like a tsunami the moment before it washed ashore, his six-foot-six frame looming over everyone. “Do you hear me? Before Ms. X wipes out America.” The president turned to Colton Connor, the Secretary of Energy. “Isn’t that right, Colton?”

“Yes, at this rate, America will have zero energy in a week.” He twisted a pencil between his hands until it snapped with a loud crack. “The clock is ticking.”

Thirteen people crowded the Oval Office: the president, vice president, national security advisor, secretaries of Energy, State, Interior, Homeland Security, and Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, FBI director, the chief of staff of the Air Force, the president’s chief of staff, and the attorney general. The civilians sat; the military officers stood. 

Energy Secretary Colton opened the black binder stamped TOP SECRET: SCI PRESIDENTIAL AUTHORIZATION ONLY. “We fed the press a story about a local electrical grid overload, but that cover won’t last another twenty-four hours. The effects are presently localized, but by tomorrow or the day after at the latest, the media will figure out what's happening, and we'll have mass panic, violence—anarchy on a national scale. Ms. X’s condition is amplifying logarithmically, which means—”

“I know what logarithmically means,” the president growled. 

“Yes, Mr. President.” Secretary Colton recalled that POTUS had been a physics professor at Harvard. A scientist for the White House was one of Judson’s campaign slogans, along with An educated America is a better America. Glancing at the pages in the black binder, Colton continued, “Ms. X consumes electricity. When her physician first observed the phenomena, Ms. X absorbed electricity at the rate of 1,000 watts a day, the equivalent of the energy used by a toaster every hour. The following day, Ms. X consumed the electricity an air conditioner uses. A week later, Ms. X was devouring the equivalent of an entire New York City apartment building.”

“But she doesn’t live in New York,” vice-president Petti interrupted. He moved to straighten his tie but at the last moment remembered he hadn’t had time to put one on.

“No, sir. A few days after she morphed, her hometown of Bridgton, Maine, population thirty-one-thousand-nine-hundred-twenty-one, went dark because Ms. X had diverted all the town’s energy to herself. She’s not willfully eating energy; consuming energy is now a part of her, like breathing. By this time tomorrow, half the state of Maine will black out, followed the next day by all of New England and eastern Canada. The entire east coast of the United States as far south as Georgia will be without power in three days, and a week from today—there won’t be any electricity in America.”

“What happens to the energy Ms. X absorbs?” the vice president asked.

“As far as we can determine, it’s just gone. She metabolizes it,” Colton replied and shook his head. “If we had time to study her, we’d know more, but we don’t have time. Everything’s falling apart. Two planes over Bridgton crashed before we realized what was happening and declared a one-hundred-mile no-fly zone around Bridgton, but that will be a one-thousand-mile zone tomorrow.”

“What about the rest of the world?” Secretary of State Isabella Rojos asked.

“The planet has another two weeks, at most,” Colton replied. 

“Are you saying that in seven days, America will revert to the eighteen-hundreds?” the president asked.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. No cars, trains, planes, computers, smartwatches, ebooks, electric lighting, air conditioning, x-rays, MRIs, dentist drills, refrigerators, radios, mobile or landline phones, washing machines, or GPS. No more modern food production and distribution. Hospitals will fail, water purification plants won’t work, America’s military will be impotent until we build a fleet of sailing ships, and communications will be reduced to tin cans on string and carrier pigeons. Fireplaces and wood stoves will heat homes, candles and gas lamps will illuminate the night, and we’ll get around by horse and buggy. The American government will collapse in the following days, as will all state and local governments—governments everywhere.”

“And if Ms. X dies of old age?” the president asked.

“Then it will be over; the world will slowly return to normal,” Colton replied. “We think.”

“Define slowly.”

“A century will pass before civilization recovers. But there’s no guarantee that the United States will be the same when the lights come back on. America could be two or twenty countries, a dictatorship, a communist or fascist state, or an ist that hasn’t been invented yet.” 

“Unless we kill Ms. X now,” President Judson said.

Before anyone could respond, the vice president asked, “How is this happening?” 

“I’ll answer that question,” the president said, lowering his voice an octave like the university professor he once was. “Ms. X has a one-of-a-kind random mutation. A one in fifteen billion chance, fifteen billion being the number of people who have lived since Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity in seventeen-fifty-two. Maybe somebody had this mutation long ago—nobody would have noticed until the nineteen-twenties when electrification took off in America. The only way to stop this is to kill the gene, to kill Ms. X.” Judson locked eyes with everyone in the room, one at a time.

“My vote is no to killing Ms. X,” Secretary Rojos said.

“We don’t vote here. I’m the president.”

“Yes, of course, Mr. President. May I just point out that Ms. X is Zoe Clement, a twenty-nine-year-old woman with a husband and two-year-old daughter named Christina. Until Bridgton blacked out, she was a waitress at Pleasant Diner, much loved by her customers. Killing her isn’t just illegal; it’s immoral. Once the door is open to government-sanctioned murder, it will never close.”

“Sacrificing one person to save civilization? That’s not immoral; that’s essential,” National Security Advisor Daniella McKenna said. “If we don’t kill this one individual, millions will perish because they can’t get medical care, because there won’t be any vaccines, from freezing to death in the winter, from heat stroke in the summer, starvation, and a thousand other reasons. History will remember Zoe Clement as a hero, but if we don’t remove her, there will be no history to be remembered.” She paused for a beat. “We will provide for her husband and daughter.”

“What if her daughter has the gene, too, and starts eating electricity? Are you willing to kill a two-year-old, as well?”

“Damn right, I am,” the national security advisor replied. 

A cacophony of discordant, unintelligible voices with timbres increasing in tone and urgency filled the Oval. 

Judson yelled, “Stop talking! Every minute we wait brings us closer to disaster. I am ordering the immediate assassination of Ms. X—no, I won’t sugar coat this—Zoe Clement, a mother who lives and breathes and has dreams and fears like the rest of us. With this order, I violate the Constitution of the United States as well as a dozen federal laws. If I’m impeached and thrown in prison, so be it. Anyone who wants to resign and not be a party to this may do so, and I will note that for the record. I and I alone am responsible for this decision.” Judson turned to Homeland Secretary Naomi Kale, “Where do we stand?”

“A Delta team has been shadowing Clement since we understood the threat. We have a sniper positioned two miles out, within radio range, but far enough from Ms. X, so the radios still work. The team can have her removed within a minute of your order.”

“The order has been issued. Do it.”

Homeland Secretary Kale spoke into the phone, pressing it hard to her ear for thirty seconds, and then said, “It’s done. Zoe Clement is dead.” 

The Homeland secretary collapsed onto the sofa, but the phone’s shrill ring summoned her into an upright position a minute later. 

All heads turned toward her. 

She rested the phone down without having spoken a word. “It worked. The power is back on in Bridgton.” 

President Judson spoke to his chief of staff. “Call a full Cabinet meeting, and inform the speaker and Senate majority leader.” Then to his attorney general, he said, “I’m prepared for the legal consequences.”

Before either could reply, the phone nearest Homeland Secretary Kale rang. “Yes?” She listened and then said, “That’s not possible. That’s impossible. No, I don’t know what we’re going to do. Stand by. Monitor. I’ll get back to you.”

“Talk,” The president said.

“Detroit, Tulsa, Burlington, San Jose, and Albany. The power’s failing in those cities now.”

“How?” the vice president asked.

“Same how,” Kale said. “This mutation may be random, but it isn’t one-of-a-kind. 

“Can you identify who’s consuming the electricity in those locations?” Judson asked.

“Yes, these five new mutants are surrounded by the same near-ultraviolet glow as Clement, which shows up on our satellite scans. We know exactly where they are.”

“Kill them,” the president said. “Immediately. Stop this plague while we can. Send teams.” He glared.

“How many will have to die, Mr. President? What if it doesn’t stop with six? What if it’s sixty or six hundred or six hundred thousand? This is insane; this is wrong. We can’t keep killing Americans to save other Americas,” Secretary Rojos said. “This is barbaric.”

“We haven’t reached that point yet,” national security advisor McKenna argued. “We’re a long way from it. How many, you ask? Six hundred thousand, a million, even that would not be too great a sacrifice to save three hundred thirty million Americans and eight billion people around the planet. When the lights go out, governments will vanish, and anarchy and savagery will replace the rule of law.”

“The world will continue without electricity, most people will live, but the people we murder will not,” Rojos said. 

“An incomprehensible number of people will perish. Do you want Americans shooting each other for food and shelter?” 

“Humanity thrived for millennia before there was electricity. The golden age of ancient Greece, Chaucer, the Renaissance—they all predated electrical power.”

The president shouted. “I’ve made my decision. Once more, if you disagree, resign.” The president stretched his arms out, his fists balled, clenched fingers toward the ceiling. He slowly unrolled his left hand. “Six people.” Then his right hand. “The millions who will die from lack of medical care, heat, food, and more. Remove them.”

Just then, the lights in the Oval Office flickered, then turned off, and a blue and green glow encased the president. Not even the emergency lights worked. 

Judson spun in his chair and looked out the window. As far as he could see, Washington, DC was black. 

A preternatural quiet filled the air. The hum of air conditioners, whir of laptop fans, and vibrations of phones—gone. 

A full moon just above the horizon illuminated the room. Except for the president, now encircled by an aurora, a white, ghostly glow painted everyone’s face. Nobody moved and nobody breathed. 

Four Secret Service agents burst into the Oval Office, their footsteps heavy against the room’s thick carpet. They clicked on their flashlights, but they did not work. 

Their usually taciturn faces bore puzzled expressions. The agents had not been read into the crisis. 

“Mr. President, are you okay?” the lead agent, Cole Martinez, asked as he approached the Resolute Desk. 

“Hold on,” Judson said. He surveyed his phosphorescent hands and arms and exhaled a woebegone sigh. 

President James Judson leaned back in his chair for a minute. He retrieved a piece of paper and pen from the desk drawer, wrote under the moonlight for several minutes, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand from time to time, his Montblanc scratching against the paper, then folded the note in half, and with a steady hand, passed it to agent Martinez. “Deliver this to my wife. But first, I need you to do something. You’re not going to want to, you’re going to protest that you can’t, you will probably lose your job and might even go to prison, but you need to do this, and everyone in this room will tell you that they agree. Today is a day of sacrifices.”

“I don’t understand, Mr. President.”

The president turned to his attorney general. “Tell him, Skylar.” His voice cracked.

“Agent Martinez, unholster your gun and press the barrel against the president’s heart.” The attorney general spoke crisply, pausing for a barely perceptible interval between each word. “We don’t have much time, so I’ll explain quickly.”

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If you enjoyed POTUS, I think you’ll also like my story, Lawbreakers.