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The President's Channel
by John Kessel
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Science Fiction

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Copyright ©1998 John Kessel

First published in Science Fiction Age Magazine, November 1998

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Howard awoke in the middle of the night and could not go back to sleep. He looked at the bedside clock. 3:20. Jeanine lay solidly asleep beside him. After tossing and turning for a half hour, envying his wife her equanimity, he got out of bed and headed for the kitchen.

He rummaged through the pantry until he found a bag of chocolate chip cookies, poured himself a glass of milk and sat down at the table in the dark. The moonlight coming through the skylight softly illuminated the piles of bills at the corner of the table. He could make out the top one: $1100 for the monthly auto premium. The premiums had leaped up back in January when Holly had taken some automatic weapons fire from a van driver on the beltline.

She was too young—only eight—to be driving, but she needed the after-school job if she was ever going to save up enough money to afford college. But she seemed more interested in boys; lately she'd taken to wearing fishnet stockings, and had shaved her eyebrows off and drawn them on a half inch higher on her forehead. Howard blamed the sexy advertising from the companies that sponsored the third grade.

He finished the last of the cookies without even realizing it. They had gone down as tasteless as silicone. Jesus—the company urine test was tomorrow! He turned the bag over to the list of ingredients, and squinted to read them in the faint light. DERACINATED SUGAR, PROCESSED RICE FLOUR, DRIED BEET PULP, POTASSIUM CHLORIDE, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE SHORTENING, CALCIUM PROPIONATE, XANTHUM GUM, ARTIFICAL COCOA SUBSTITUTE, INERT SYNTHETIC BULK MATERIALS NOT MORE THAN 30%.

He supposed there was nothing there to set off any alarms. He drained his glass of milk. It tasted like water—Jeanine insisted on buying only ultra skim. She acted as if somehow, if she managed everything precisely, she would keep them alive forever.

The only way to live forever was to be rich. The problem was, in order to build up anywhere near the vast sum it would take to have his genes recapped, they would have to live like paupers. Or he could raid Holly's college fund. Maybe Holly would do well enough in school to get some kind of scholarship? Right. The last time he had dialed up her academic record, she was maintaining only a B+ average. Eighty percent of the kids in school had a B+ average. Kids who showed up in class twice a week and spent the other days hitting themselves in the head with hammers carried B+ averages. Holly was more interested in getting her ears lopped than in school.

She could get corporate backing. But indenturing his daughter to a multinational was not a hurdle he was ready to make himself leap. Yet. He still felt pretty good. As long as he could keep his job. Maybe they could win the lottery.

At this rate he would never get to sleep. He shuffled into the den and turned on the TV. The forty-six-inch screen lit and he flicked through the channels. Sportsnet was rerunning round sixteen of the perpetual NCAA Basketball Tournament. The Rage Channel had videos of people driving their cars off cliffs. He skipped past Sex Over Eighty to a gab channel.

The Wowsers were complaining about increasing wirehead addiction. Trying to get a constitutional amendment against electricity.

Elizabeth Taylor was getting married again.

Congressman Grieve was calling for an investigation of the administration, claiming that NSA operatives were feeding made-up footage into government monitors to cover up their crimes.

The Commentary All-Stars dismissed the president's non-existent sex life and brought on an oral hygienist, who critiqued the chief exec's spotty flossing and speculated what effect periodontal surgery might have on the upcoming budget negotiations.

Howard flipped around until he hit The President's Channel.

The screen showed an image of a hallway; Howard recognized it as the one outside the president's bedroom. It was four a.m., and President Richter was awake.

Howard wondered what had gotten the Pres up in the middle of the night. Some government crisis? His latest poll numbers? A guilty conscience? The Pres was humming a song, the tune of which was familiar, but Howard couldn't make it out. The President liked to hum to himself; that was one of the first things Howard had noticed back when Richter had been promoted from Vice Pres and had had the camera and mike surgically implanted in his head.

His predecessor Gerringer had snapped midway through his second term—gone on a month-long binge, betting campaign money on football games, feeling up the interns, mainlining speedballs. So Richter found himself in a job he had never signed up for. So far he had seemed a completely stolid nonentity, a punching bag for the opposition, a vending machine for the lobbyists. Deposit your coins and receive your treat. Gerringer had been edgy; Richter was plain dull. Ratings on his channel had plunged. For all Howard knew, he might be the only person in the country tuning in at this late hour.

The Pres moved through the executive living quarters, down a hall and some back stairs. As he descended the stairs, Howard noted his clothing: he was wearing a wine-red robe and slippers. At the bottom of the stairs, the Pres poked his head around the corner, revealing a long view of a carpeted hall. A secret service man in a dark suit was stationed at the end of the corridor; the Pres jerked his head back, causing the image to spin dizzily.

Looked like Richter was finally going to do something interesting. Was he heading for some secret meeting? Maybe he had a rendezvous with his secretary, that Ms. Hodges? She wore short skirts and had long white legs.

The image of the hallway bounced as the Pres dashed across the corridor, though a swinging door to a dark room. He flipped on the light.

It was a kitchen. The Pres moved directly over to a stainless steel industrial refrigerator and took out a wheel of camembert. From a cupboard he took a box of crackers, a bottle of red wine, a bag of tortilla chips, a box of graham crackers, three chocolate bars, and a bag of marshmallows. He cleared a spot on a stainless steel table, pulled up a stool, and began gorging himself.

Howard watched for another fifteen minutes while the Pres put down half of the cheese, most of the wine, all of the chips. Watching the man raise the food toward the camera was like having food shoved at Howard through the television. By the time the Pres's hands were sticky with melted chocolate and marshmallows from the s'mores, Howard was feeling sleepy.

Pathetic bastard. No way he was going to get himself re-elected

Howard turned off the TV. He looked in on Holly, who lay sleeping, her face scrubbed free of paint, her scowl relaxed, looking more like an eight year old than she ever did when she was awake. He pulled the covers up over her sprawl and shuffled back to the bedroom.

Jeanine stirred. “Are you okay?"

Howard kissed her on the forehead. “Compared to who?"

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