Author’s Note: Some of the characters in this serial are real. Many are not. The behaviors of the real characters are hypothetical. Consider them fictionalized. And consider this an alternate recent history story.

 

The New Administration

by Rocketman

 

 Pages 30 – 98 from the manuscript submitted to HarperCollins® Publishing by former Presidential Aide Edward Milton.
Return address: P. O. Box 41682, Arlington, Virginia.

 

Chapter 4: The Moment Everything Changed

 

Having weathered the first two months with the secretarial nominations intact and the mid-east crises moving toward general calm, the staff, myself included, sensed a smooth ride ahead. But unfortunately, you can miss the storm for the peace that precedes it.

In retrospect, how could anyone conceive of the storm to follow?

It was about six in the morning. The President’s first trip abroad was scheduled to begin today. I entered the master bedroom, expecting him to be beginning his morning calisthenics.

I hardly expected to see his wife standing straight as a rod, jaw set and asking firmly, "Who are you?"

Laura’s eyes were upon the form of a dark-brown-haired young woman looking up blearily from the bed, her head against the pillow. She seemed to be in her early twenties.

"Honey?" The young woman asked, seemingly perplexed by Mrs. Bush’s accusation.

Seeing an argument building, I put myself between the two of them and inquired as to what was going on. Laura filled me in. She’d woken up with this girl nuzzling her in place of her husband.

"I am your husband." Remarked the girl in a flat accent.

Laura’s Texan drawl made her response potent even though she tried to keep her voice down, "You are not! Now tell me who you are, young lady."

Something about the clause on the end didn’t sit well with the girl. She fingered her lips a moment. Then she looked at her fingers. Inspecting them critically, her eyes moved down her body.

Staring down, she cast off the blankets. The girl wore a man’s shirt and boxers, which hid her figure quite well but they would likely slip off if she were to stand up.

Laura’s eyes demanded a reasonable explanation and having finished a head-to-toe critique, this mystery woman looked over at Mrs. Bush and answered firmly, "I am George Walker Bush."

Of all the things I remember from the first day of the Crisis, that surreal pronouncement, spoken by a woman with a soft, soprano voice stayed with me.

Laura naturally denounced her again, to which she supplied info of a personal nature. After a couple rounds of this, Mrs. Bush crumpled into a heap, out cold.

"Sir?" I asked.

‘George’ didn’t really answer, she just gave me one of those funny grimaces the President often did. She edged over to Laura and tried to rouse her. In the meantime, I took out my mobile phone, called the Secret Service and told them we had a ‘Situation’.

Literally an instead later, the nearest Servicemen were in the bedroom, inquiring about the President’s whereabouts. I gestured cautiously to the kneeling girl, who was shaking Laura gently.

The men shot me glares. They attended to Mrs. Bush while I helped the girl to her feet. She had delicate hands, nails of regular length and a mop of dark, nearly black hair, which covered her ears but did not extend far beyond the neck.

To bolster her claim, her eyes were the same as the President’s. The negatives in her column though were her small, 5’4" frame with a convincing womanly shape and a pair of breasts.

She seemed a little unsteady on her feet, so I helped her to the restroom, holding her hand all the way there.

"Believe me?" asked the girl with worry-filled eyes, more plea than question really.

"I do."

"Then would it be okay if you stay with me, Milton?"

"Perfectly fine with me."

I even stayed with her when she went into the bathroom. It turned out later her main worry in those first few hours was of losing her identity and not being recognized.

By some gravity-defying miracle, her clothes had stayed on during the walk over to the restroom. When the door closed though, the clothes fell quickly from her, despite her best efforts to keep them up.

Instinctively, I turned away to give her some degree of modesty. Listening, I heard her whimper. Turning back, I gulped and asked her if I could help.

She just shook her head automatically, her mind distant, inside the impossible reflection that stared back at her in the mirror.

"What do you think happened, sir?"

Tearing herself away from the incongruent image, she looked at me and realized how much shorter she’d become.

"Oh God….I have no idea." I reached over and picked up a robe off the rack. That’d help keep her warm and at least make her presentable. Sure it was still far too large, but at least it fit better than the boxers and shirt.

Checking out the size, the grimace came again, but she was willing to try it. The end trailed like a bridal gown train behind her, necessitating she hike it back up a few times, even though she had it tightly knotted. Unfortunately, the top section had no tie.

After some work, we found a way to keep it up, provided she moved at a leisurely pace and swore off jumping up and down.

"Gee wiz, how tall do you think I am?"

I’d guessed before, but to be sure I reached two hands out, one to the top of my head and one to hers and looked over the difference. "5’3 and ˝, maybe 5’4", hard to tell." Actually that was being kind to her ego.

"That’s almost a whole foot," realized the girl, who was difficult to look at and think of as the President of the United States.

"What about weight?" The President, as I told myself I should think of her as, asked.

At which point, rather stupidly, I did something that no one on any terms should do to a President and live. Either because of a split back or the anger that followed. I lifted her into my arms, assessed her weight, then set her back down on her feet. Remarkably, her robe stayed in place throughout this.

It came to me somewhere between the calculation and speaking that I’d just done the wrong thing.

I’d done it a lot with my sister. Back then it was fun and carefree and the look that my sister had afterwards was nothing like the shock on the President’s face. If someone had slapped her, she wouldn’t have worn such a look.

Really, I worried not only about the death of my career, but my physical death as well. People had done less and met with quiet demises.

Time seemed to amble by in the moments before her response. I could have counted the lines on my palm and given myself a reading in the interceding span. When she finally seemed to come out of paralysis, her vocal cords didn’t want to work. Her mouth moved, but no words came from it.

Should I try to apologize first, catch her before she had a chance to respond? Seemed like a good idea and might smooth things over. But, of late, I’d had a bad run with seemingly good ideas.

Moving to speak, I caught a whimper on the President’s lips, which soon became a moistening around her eyes. Instinctively, I tried to comfort her, but she turned away, leaned over the sink and pinched her nose, trying, I knew, to keep the tears from coming.

My voice returned to me at last and I said, "I didn’t mean to do that. Sorry, sir."

Still, she said nothing about what had happened, as I expected. She just pinched her nose and sniffled.

There was a knock on the door, which broke the tense mood. Answering, I was met by a Serviceman. "Where’s the President?"

Again, I pointed her out to him.

"What are you doing? Do you know where the President is or not?"

"I do. She’s right over there!" The President lifted her head up, swallowed and looked right at the Serviceman.

I expected him to denounce the claim again and perpetuate this stalemate, but instead he said something in code to his ear-piece and walked into the restroom.

"Do you have proof?" I encouraged the Serviceman to question the President about her identity. She passed every question he challenged her with.

Intrigued, but likely suspecting the possibility of sabotage and spying, he asked her to show him her fingers. Looking them over, he frowned and turned away.

"Fuck." He said under his breath.

"What?"

"This is the President. But..."

"But what?"

"But how the fuck do you wake up one morning as a twenty-year-old woman?"

Seeing that the President was thinking the same question to herself, while struggling with her robe, I replied, "I don’t know. I’m leaning toward twenty-three myself. What I do know is it just won’t do to parade her around in an robe several times too big for her."

He took my hint, put his hand to his ear-piece, muttered something and walked out. The President moved closer to me, still clutching her nose. "…find Laura."

I nodded, wondering about my promise to her a few minutes ago to never leave her side. Opening the door, I found she was following me. Not too closely, mind you, but following nonetheless.

We walked out, back to the master bedroom. A swarm of people, some Servicemen, some not, gathered in the room. With the President’s emergence, a silence fell over them.

A pair of doctors went to her side. Word got around fast I knew, which meant in a couple of hours the whole world would know. Did this constitute an incapacity of the President to govern? I certainly didn’t think so but others would naturally be skeptical, probably of the whole thing.

I really hoped those in Congress wouldn’t try to remove her, my political mind kicking in, but such an issue might develop unilateral support in either way. Regardless of party lines. An unheard of proposition, but due to events, one likely to develop in the wake of this.

All this I considered as they checked her throat (healthy), temperature (97.7 ^oF) and blood pressure (112 over 52). Moving onto a respiratory check (also good) and pulse (60, despite the pressure of the moment), another group of people came over and questioned her officially while the doctors were doing their job. They even performed a quick fingerprinting to match with records.

When those results came back positive and Mrs. Bush, still a little groggy, was helped back into the bed, everything took on a decidedly different tone. Some people froze in shock, demanding access to the fingerprints.

Once enough people had been shown the evidence, doubt emerged. "What if her fingerprints have been altered?" Naturally a plausible possibility, but no technology existed that could alter them so and besides there was no distortion, as often happens with fingerprint alteration, especially as would happen in a woman nearly half the President’s weight. Which would mean only around twelve of the sixteen aspect points would check out. Enough for customs and other purposes, but questionable under these circumstances.

But which was not the case here. A Serviceman passed around a printout as Laura and the President talked to one another.

All sixteen points checked out perfectly, no flaws, no distortion. Whoever or whatever had transformed the President had left this proof behind, intentionally or not. As soon as they saw the evidence, the Servicemen shifted to thinking of this woman as the President. Unfortunately, the prefix "Mr." would be inappropriate. Fortunately, the code words could remain.

I joined a tearful Laura who was clutching the President’s small hand and saying things like, "we’ll get through this" and "I’ll be by your side, don’t worry". I made disinterested note of a small gray triangular object on Laura’s night-stand.

The President’s emotional episode had passed. They both looked at me a moment with questioning eyes. Laura spoke first.

"How could this happen?"

Reaching into my scientific mind built of pulp sci-fi and the occasional novel of minimal worth, not to mention the off-hand blurbs caught on the nightly news about scientific advancements, I answered, "It’s best not to speculate until we can know for sure. But the only thing I can think of is some kind of weird hormone or perhaps a virus."

In quick succession, the doctors shot down both my theories. A new team came over and took the President’s new measurements, which on paper would immediately be recognized as those of a woman.

They then sent a couple of runners to go fetch the President’s new wardrobe.

Once the doctors were finished and satisfied with her, it came time for the aides and Cabinet members to gather around. This included the heads of the NSA, NSF, CIA, and FBI. One of them rushed over to turn on the television.

"That’s fast." I said under my breath. The President watched as the picture brightened, the tensest music the network had available playing over a blue background marked, "Breaking News".

The commentator, one those from the Big Three, began, "We’ve received word from internal White House sources that the President is either missing, possibly kidnapped from the White House or has suffered some sort of accident. Details are still sketchy….."

Clock it, fifty-two minutes.

He went on to mention information about both possibilities, both not being confirmed by the White House. The President cleared her throat and told the chief of staff to prepare a press release announcing what had happened, including the fingerprints as proof.

She looked questioningly at the President but nodded after a moment.

The Secretary of Defense stepped forward, "Sir?"

Apparently, she wasn’t going to let that note of respect go, at least not yet. I could see Ashcroft towards the back and contemplated what he was doing here while he gave me his usual look of disdain.

About this time, the runners came back from who-knows-where. Not likely Macy’s since it was only a little bit after seven.

Putting a hand up to pause the Secretary, the President nosed through the bags and sighed, then handed them to Laura, "Gonna need your help.."

Laura nodded and the Defense Secretary continued. "We must consider this was some kind of attack against the United States."

"We must."

"As well, I suggest we place our forces on Defcon-4 in case this is not all the bastards have planned."

"Do it." Clutching her robe tightly, the President walked to the bathroom with Laura beside her.

When she left, the murmurs began and more than a few people started watching the broadcast, which reiterated what little had been leaked so far. The National Security Agency Director shook his head and paced. Oddly, the National Science Foundation Director looked calm as I wondered a moment why he’d been called here, aside from his biology experience. Considering that the drive from Arlington would have taken an hour in itself with the morning congestion, I suspected that he’d been hanging around.

As for CIA Director, I never worried how he got anywhere so quickly, I just worried about the stern poker face and frosty demeanor he always wore. Same almost for the FBI Director, but I knew better than to trust that face. We’d hit it off real well when we first met last month. Granted not a long time to judge the measure of a man, but we’d had drinks together on a few occasions.

The Chief of Staff to the President wandered around as well, glancing nervously at the elegant furniture, from the carved, four posts of the Presidential bed to the one-of-a-kind hassocks and chairs. Not to mention the marble doorway siding

Before she made her way through every piece of furniture in the room, the door to the bathroom opened and all eyes turned toward it. Out stepped Laura first, her arm gesturing. The President followed in a formal suit with pants not all that dissimilar from the kind she normally wore, excusing a comparatively deep neckline.

Her hair had been neatly brushed but I expected the Presidential hairdressers would do more with it before long. Laura hadn’t applied any makeup. Again, a job for someone else.

The President’s chest, vaguely visible in her old clothes and completely visible for a short time to me, was obvious. Next to Laura, she appeared rather like an attractive blending of Barbara and Jenna, around the same age, but a little on the short side.

On her feet, she wore gray flats and a matching pair of socks. For runners, they sure did have good fashion sense.

Looking left and right at those assembled the President sighed and reached over for her favorite cowboy hat resting on the dresser. Putting it on effectively shattered the whole color scheme.

With a dresser mirror nearby, the President looked herself over, Laura standing by her side. She straightened the hat a little, let her hands drop to her sides and made a patented pout, which looked rather goofy when replayed on the occasional late-night show, but seemed overtly feminine on this instance.

This sent her eyes to wide and stomach to reverse. Scrambling, she retched into the toilet. All swiftly averted their eyes. A couple repetitions of this behind a gratefully closed door and the President returned, Laura steadying her with her hand. She whispered to Laura and she clutched her close to her.

The belated tears came on Laura’s suit. Sobbing, the President hid her face in the material as Laura wrapped her arms around her. The CIA Director muttered something to himself that he hoped no one heard, but I caught enough of it to know I dare not repeat it.

Laura helped her over to the bed and laid her down. "Rest a moment, sweetheart."

The President did, hands on her stomach, knees crooked. Running her hands through her husband’s hair, Laura smiled and went over to talk to the assembled aides.

The press secretary joined the group and I went to the President’s side.

"What are you thinking?" I asked.

She brushed aside some residual tears and muttered, looking up at the off-white canopy, "That I just screwed up."

"That’s been predicted for quite a while by Jay Leno."

No lifting chuckle. "Just not quite like this."

"Indeed. How do you feel?"

Her voice ebbed, becoming even smaller, "Like something that’s been stepped on by a horse."

"Sounds bad."

"And that’s just the stomach troubles."

"What about the rest?"

"What would you like to know?" Her voice rose out a little bit.

"How does it feel?"

"It? It as in the whole thing?"

I nodded.

"Like not being yourself anymore, but this new, confusing thing that’s difficult to comprehend. A different person."

Satisfied with that, I rose. "So what now?"

"I don’t know."

Her eyes looked over to the group, a heated discussion now going on.

"Do you think it’s permanent?"

Closing her eyes slightly, she muttered, "I don’t see why not."

Then the press secretary came over and asked to speak with the President. I moved aside. She asked her if she really wanted to release the information and, if so, should it be presented before or during the necessary press conference to follow. And when the press conference came did she want the secretary and others to precede her?

"Send out the information as soon as possible and announce a press conference for nine o’clock. I want you, Milton and Laura to go first, then introduce me."

"Yes, Mrs. President."

Apparently, she had no qualms about using the feminine address.

President Bush pushed herself up with her arms, ready to chew out the secretary, but lost her resolve just before speaking her upset. "Fine…do it."

Laying her head against the pillow, Laura went to her side. Before her wife could comfort her, she nimbly rolled off to the right and stood up.

Stern-faced, she worked her way through the aids who hadn’t yet been addressed. Laura sat on the bed and smiled nervously at me. "Good luck with the press." She drawled.

"Same to you."

I’d yet to figure understand why the President had lost her accent, which contrasted shockingly with her wife’s voice.

Once all the aids had been dealt with, ‘introduction’ wise, President Bush decided it was time she left the bedroom. I accompanied her onto the promenade and the stairs, which she took one at a time.

Once on the second floor, the entourage of aides, secretaries and Servicemen prompted attention from the scattered morning tourists who snapped as many pictures as possible. As a reflex, the President shielded her face from view. But the tourists got a few good exposures off.

The Servicemen intercepted them and pushed the tour group back to provide room for the President to pass. Naturally, spooky for the President, the group muttered questions about whether this was Jenna. But by and large, they just seemed perplexed by the amount security and personnel.

We only encountered one more tour group on our way to the west wing, but they swiftly moved aside and were less camera-happy than the first. The President lunged for the Oval Office as though it were a sanctuary from all this. She walked around the length of the room, grabbed ahold of the presidential desk chair and bowed her head.

Then her head bolted up. "What?!"

She gestured to her desk. "That’s not mine."

Placed in the center of the desk was a black cassette recorder. Instinctively, President Bush reached out for the recorder, but the closest Serviceman told her to back away. Not one to argue on this point, the President moved aside and allowed the Servicemen to deal with the item.

"We better call in some bomb diffusion officers in case this thing is hard-wired with plastics explosives or something worse," muttered one of the agents, lifting his glasses up, leaning over the device and staring at it intently. Bush made her way to the opposite side of the Oval Office, putting as much distance between herself and any potential explosion.

"Sir, I think it’s best that we go elsewhere, for your safety", said the chief of staff, her arms folded. She offered her own office, which was a little cramped for that purpose. Fortunately it was close to the press-room and had a small, but cable ready television.

I occupied myself with hunting for snippets on the various channels and finding only the same suppositions repeated over and over. Turning my head, I looked at the Secretary of Defense and the President as they talked with one another. Out of the corner of my eye, I spied someone unfamiliar. Looking straight at them I immediately realized it was Laura. Running my eyes over her a couple more times, I was still unnerved by my mistake, but understood wherein my mistake lay.

From the side, she did seem a little different. Rubbing my forehead, I wondered if the day’s events thus far were beginning to get to me. Another look at her from the side revealed no further incongruity.

It did reveal something that I thought was peculiar. Relenting the knob of the television to the nearest aide, I walked over to Laura.

She sighed, "What is it, Milton?"

"Is that a rash? I didn’t see it yesterday." On her left hand was a bright red rash on the palm side, a few inches around. She shrugged and said, "I’m not sure, I didn’t see it yesterday either. Feels fine though, doesn’t itch."

"Better get it checked out."

"I will, as soon as everything calms down."

I nodded, glanced at the President as she came over to us, and asked, "What’s up?"

"Well, from what I’ve heard, the bomb experts will examine the recorder, tell us if it’s dangerous and if it’s not, they’d like to play it since there’s a tape inside. It may be a clue as to who did this to me."

Laura shook her head and shut her eyes, "Who could do such a thing?"

A question we all wished we had an answer to.

Bush sighed and said, "I think we should all have some breakfast and figure out what we’re going say at that press conference. I, for one, am famished."

And so, we had a pleasant meal, the three of us, my promise to her still not forgotten. The trek to the dining room was not quite the task of forging the seas of tourists, but it still had its problems.

As for the actual meal, I had a cheese omelet, toast and milk, while Laura asked for lighter fare. The President ordered her usual. Kidding that she now had a figure to watch, Laura flashed me a mean look, as did the President shortly afterward, but her look lasted only a moment before she switched her order to match her wife’s.

"I’m sorry about that, sir." I offered as reconciliation.

She shook her head, "That’s okay. You’re right anyway, somewhat. And you might as well say ‘ma’am’, everyone else probably will."

"I rather favor the title ‘sir’ for you. Not to say you make a ‘handsome’ woman. You are quite attractive. It’s instead the matter of your name in my thought-processes that throws me. ‘George’ doesn’t exactly fit at the moment."

She smiled, "Milt, come on, when was the last time you called me by anything but ‘sir’?"

I shrugged, "Think of it as speech preparing. I’m sure one of the reporters is going ask something along those lines, or they’ll christen you something you may not like."

The President considered this for a while, but then nodded with one of her odd facial contortions, which I’d seen far too little of in the past two hours.

"So what do you have in mind?" I asked her to think of one she’d like to have first. Since she couldn’t come up with anything, we alternated offering suggestions. I started first.

"Carol."

The President shook her head.

"Geena, kinda like Jenna."

Same response.

"Lynn."

Again, the same.

"Georgina."

She chuckled, but adamantly shook her head in negation.

"How about you just open up a magazine to the editor’s page and adopt the first female name you see?"

"I need a…." I handed her a Newsweek.

"Hey, what are you doing with one of these?"

"Developing my bipartisanism. Come on, open it."

She flipped to the editor’s page, glanced down and said the first female name before her. "Melissa Ann." Grimace.

"Works for me", I took a sip of orange juice.

"Lovely", responded Laura.

"Well, it could be worse, I suppose, there’s a ‘Keri’ in here." We nodded solemnly. She handed the magazine back to me.

Glancing over at the grandfather clock in the corner of the dining room, I announced, "The press release should be out by now. I wonder if panic has begun to run wild in the street?"

Disinterested, ‘Melissa Ann’ picked at her omelet. Laura frowned at her, "What’s wrong, dear?"

Widening her eyes a little, President Bush gestured to herself, "Isn’t it quite obvious?"

"Oh, come on, even when things get tough, you always smile or say something clever."

She flipped the omelet over with her fork, "Not that the press would ever hear about it."

"Who cares about the press? You know how they are."

"What will they do to me now, like this?" She pulled at the front of her suit, nearly yanking the napkin away. "I can only imagine and those imaginings are not good."

Laura patted her on the shoulder and tried to convince her of different things.

"Ow, watch the nails!" Exclaimed the President, shying away.

She apologized to her husband and tried to explain that her nails were nowhere close to her.

"Well, I felt something weird, whatever it was."

"Perhaps it’s some sort of side effect of what happened to you or something?"

"I don’t know." Since I hadn’t been looking in her direction at that moment, I had little to offer in regards to whether Laura’s nails might have poked her husband. If they had though, I doubted she did it on purpose.

"Well we better get ready."

The staff attended to our dirty dishes and Melissa’s half-full one. I questioned her on this point as we walked back to the chief of staff’s room to hear one last snippet of information before we prepared to speak.

"I thought you were famished?"

"Smaller stomach, fills quicker", she muttered hurriedly. But I knew it was more than that. She probably had butterflies about speaking to the nation like this, not to mention the possible calls by those on the Hill for her removal or, at the very least, resignation for whatever reasons they saw most critical.

Taking a deep breath, she walked into the room and asked the aids, their eyes glued to the television, what was going on. The closest one spoke.

"They think the release is a sham, an enigmatic practical joke, but they’re concerned and perplexed by the fingerprinting evidence and demand we produce the President or explain our reasons for this."

"I’m glad they’re getting all those adjectives out. What about the phones?"

He sighed, "About twenty minutes after the release the system had to be shut down due to massive overflow."

"They’re interested, at least." He said that from the news and confirmed by a quick look at the press-room it’s going to be standing-room-only for this conference. The press secretary intercepted the President and talked to her off to one side.

I twiddled my fingers, literally, while the time wore on till the conference. As second person up, I had the difficult task of massaging the press and sticking to the credibility of what had happened. I only wished I had notes to follow. But then I had lived it.

The Servicemen told me to tell the President that the recorder had been checked out clean but they still wanted to guard against possible encoded subliminal messages.

I inquired as to what was on the tape, had they given it a listen?

He nodded and told me, "Music. The Blue Danube."

"Interesting. The whole thing?"

"Most of it, we think. But, again, we have suspicions there is an underlying structure present."

The President came over and I filled her in on what I’d been told. She nodded, intrigued, but whispered to me that it was time we get ready. The press secretary joined us, as did several aids that took care of the President’s hair and makeup.

One of them noted there was a tiny hole in the back of her suit, a little below chest level. Well, I guess runners aren’t perfect. They smoothed the hole over, attended to the rest of us and vanished just as quickly as they had arrived.

Looking in the closest mirror, President Bush smoothed her suit out with her hands, took a long look at herself, glanced down the hallway leading the press room and promptly passed out.

 

To be Continued….

 

 

 

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© 2001 by Rocketman. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.