THE PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD

“As the President of the World, there is something you need to be made aware of. I’d like you to prepare yourself. It may come as quite a shock,” the android assistant said. His name was Adrien and he had been the presidential chief aide for the last ninety eight years. 

“Don’t you worry your pretty rubber head about it,” Jason Stratophalus chuckled in a heavy New York accent, “I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff in my day.” 

Yes, Jason Stratophalus had been around for a while. He was eighty six years old, even though he looked no more than fifty. This was his very first day in office and he was taking it all in, stroking the mahogany chair arm rest with a grin on his de-wrinkled face. But to be fair, his assistant was much older than him. Androids didn’t age, so Jason patronized his assistant just on the basis of appearances. Adrien’s body had naturally been replaced many times but his AI brain retained all of his knowledge and experience. He clutched the tablet that was slung across his chest. This was where he kept all the data. He looked at Jason hesitantly, as if gathering his courage, but of course, he did have heaps of courage installed in his prefrontal cortex. Jason Stratophalus got up with a sigh and took a glass bulb filled with a neon green liquid from the bar. He sat down on the leather couch, took a sip, leaned back and crossed his legs.

“Alright. What is it?” He asked with a confident grin.

“Sir, you’ve just ingested an experimental insect repellant,” Adrien said, looking at the glass bulb in Jason’s hand. Jason put it away.

“Oh! Well, didn’t sting a bit, hehehe,” Jason joked with unwavering confidence, “alright, lay it on me, what is it?”

“From the moment you have been sworn in you are solely responsible for the payment of rent,” Adrian said, pointing to a number on the tablet.

“Rent? For this place?” he asked in his hoarse Joe Pesci voice.

“Nnnnnno,” Adrian said, “for Earth.”

“For Earth? The planet? I'm supposed to pay rent? Pay rent to who?” Jason exploded with questions.

“The Galactic Federation,” Adrien said in a somber tone.The President of the World stared into space, and Adrien imagined little sparks flying above his head as the cogs of Jason’s brain turned at the highest possible speed. The old man stared at the perfectly blue sky dotted with just one, white, round cumulus. But all he could utter in the end was:

“What?” 

Adrien sat down next to him.

“Have you ever seen those charts showing Earth’s debt? Have you never wondered who the Earth is indebted to?” Adrian asked. 

“That’s just the sum of all the bank loans and such,” Jason shrugged. He was starting to regret this whole presidency thing. Everyone kept saying that he’d won the lottery. It didn’t feel like winning the lottery right now. Not at all. He remembered how he briefly glanced at the tiny print at the bottom of the long document he had signed yesterday. He thought it was just a formality. What else was in there?

“No. That’s not it. We have debt as a planet. We trade with exterior planets, but we don’t own Earth. We produce things to pay for the right to live here,” Adrien said.

“For the planet,” Jason sighed, “unbelievable.”

“Also we’ve been using up too much oxygen. We’re behind on the bill.”

“They bill? They bill us for oxygen?” Jason Stratophalus gasped “I thought… I thought we had our own oxygen.” His entire world, or at least his idea of the world was slowly falling apart.

“Oh, no no no no no. We need external suppliers, otherwise we would have suffocated to death a long time ago. We have a yearly oxygen budget and we’re currently in the red.” 

“Why? What about the trees and the… the algae… I thought we were making enough?”

“Well, that used to be the case. Four hundred years ago,” Michael said, “The forest cover has been reduced by sixty percent over the years, ” Michael sighed.

“So what, we’re shipping it in?” Jason asked, making a face.

“The oxygen is delivered through a tunnel which is hidden by day and cannot be seen with the naked eye. you know those monster storms that have been happening lately? It’s not climate change. They’re caused by the masses of cold air that get dumped into the atmosphere. On delivery days the entire global air stream gets disrupted,” Adrian said. Jason Straphalus looked at Adrian and blinked a couple of times.

“Wait, who knows about this?” he asked.

“Well, you,” Adrien said hesitantly. 

“OK.” Jason said. 

“Me, of course,” Adrien continued.

“Uh-huh,”

“And Jack.”

“Jack? Who the hell is Jack?”

“He’s the systems administrator. It’s kind of hard to keep things secret from him. And then there’s the orbit crew - about thirty people that run things in near space.”

“Alright, thirty three people then.That’s not a lot, is it?” the president said. 

“How do you think we’ve kept it a secret all this time?” Adrien said.

“Wait a minute, how do I even know this is real?” Jason Stratophalus got up and shook his head. 

“Put this on,” Adrien handed him a pair of odd looking glasses with tiny tubes protruding from the frame. The president examined them suspiciously.

“What? What is that? It looks like a rejected third grade science project,” Jason Stratophalus murmured. 

“Just put them on.”

“Alright,” the president said with a sigh.

“Now look out the window,” Adrien pointed at the window. The president looked through the glasses and saw a completely different sky. Now it was almost black from various types of crafts, machinery either flying or just hovering in the air.

“What the heck… is that? Is that a bear in a space suit?” He pointed at a rather obese astronaut bobbing helplessly in the air.

“Technically it’s not really a terran bear. It’s a member of an intelligent alien species from the planet Shand, which surprisingly, perfectly resembles these local animals,” Adrien said.

“Why do you talk like that? Are you an alien?”

“Oh dear, I knew you wouldn’t be psychologically fit for this."

“Tell me you’re not an alien."

“I’m not, we just get like this when we interact with them for too long,”

“I need a dose of tranquilizer, a hydrogen inhalation and a migraine helmet. Then I can think about all of... this,” the president said weakly, leaned on the couchrest and walked out of the room on trembling legs. Adrian sat down on a chair and sighed. He put on the magni-glasses and looked out the window. It relaxed his emotional circuits to see the ships coming and going. Now was that really a Shand in a space suit? He hadn’t seen one in years. The Shand looked a little lost, bobbing in the air. Adrien went up to the small podium, pressed a button and a communication unit sprang out from the wall. He looked at all the little dots on the screen. Each represented a craft in the terran airspace. He pressed another button hauling the bearlike astronaut.

“Que tu est…. okidoki?” Adrian asked in a broken latin mix. 

“They said there’d be rivers of milk and honey on this planet,” the Shand said in English, “I like honey.”

“Oh,” Adrian sighed, “that’s more of a… figure of speech.”

“Oh,” the Shand said. Adrien sat down and waited, but didn’t have to wait for too long. Five minutes later the president of the world came back into the office with bloodshot eyes, but visibly calmer.

“How do we pay them?” he blurted out.

“Gold, rare earths, water and um…” after all those years he still had trouble saying it, “peep…” he uttered. The empathic circuits temporarily shut down his communication apparatus. 

“peep?” the president looked at him with a sarcastic smile. Adrien took a deep breath.

“People,” he said.

“What, like regular people? Our citizens?”

“Yes, it’s part of the agreement that had been signed over two hundred years ago. Remember the industrial revolution? It wasn’t a revolution. It was a data dump,” Adrien said. Given the president's colorful past, Adrian didn’t think that Jason Stratophallus would ever object to having people exchanged for the right to stay on the planet they currently inhabited. Throughout his life, the current president of the world had dabbled in almost every type of business, including things that weren't entirely legal. He was a true man of the renaissance.

“Huh. Can we buy it back?” Jason Stratophalus asked.

“No one’s ever asked that question,” Adrian said, in a state of profound shock, “I don’t think that our resources would be sufficient."

***

When Adrien walked into the Trapezoid Office next morning, Jason Stratophalus was emptying his drawers fervently, stuffing his briefcase with papers. Adrian immediately stopped with his foot midair. He opened his mouth. Jason stared at him, a little rattled, with a stupid half grin on his face. Adrian stared back at him and they stared at each other for a minute before Adrian broke the silence.

“Ah,” he said, while his diplomatic protocol whirred in the back of his head searching for a fitting script, “are you going somewhere?”

“Me? Noooo,” Jason immediately sat back on his chair, putting his hands behind his head and his feet on the desk. 

“Um, If I may ask, why were you just stuffing your briefcase with…” Adrian glanced at one of the sheets, “...with all your presidential oaths?”

“Oh, I just need my lawyer to have a look at them. Er, after hours,” Jason said nonchalantly.

“But we have an entire team…”

“I know, I know, look I just need an independent opinion, that’s all,” Jason interrupted him. Adrian found it odd. Usually the president would call people into his office, not the other way around. Sure, it was only his second day so he was not used to how things worked around here, but Adrien felt something was off.

“Is there a problem with your contract?”

“No no no no, not at all,” Jason said with a bit of an exaggerated conviction.

“Mr. President?”

“Alright, I’ll tell you, after all you’re my aide, you report to me and only to me, understand?” he said. He lowered his voice and leaned over the desk “I want out,” he whispered. 

“What in the world do you mean?” Adrien said, clutching his tablet.

“I want to be unelected.”

“But you can’t,”

“Then I’ll resign,”

“I don’t think that’s legally possible at this point,”

“Hah! See, that’s why I’m taking this outside,”

“Well, you’ve only been in office for seventy two hours, barely,” Adrian protested.

“Yeah, and I don’t really like it anymore,” Jason shrugged, “I thought I would, but I don’t. Hey, we all make mistakes! We never really know what we sign up for, right?”

“Mr President with all due respect, you have signed up to be President.”

“Yeah well, it’s a bit overrated.”

“You cannot be un-elected,” Adrian concluded, after scanning the code on his tablet. 

“What about the ‘undo button’ clause?”

“But that can only be enacted if the sitting president were to break the law. Then the people would decide whether they want to vote you out of office."

“That’s easy then,” Jason Stratophalus grinned like a little boy. 

***

“May I ask why do you want to go through all this trouble?

“Well, I entered this agreement egregiously under informed, wouldn’t you agree?”

“It’s not an agreement, technically,” Adrien said.

“It’s not? Ah, see,” Jason Stratophalus gave the android an apologetic smile,”I’m not well versed in the legal technicalities. That’s why I need to see a lawyer,” he patted the stuffed briefcase.

“Mr. President you have a legal team who’d be happy…”

“Yeah, yeah, legal team, let me ask you this: who do they work for?”

“For you,” Adrien said, a little surprised.

“No but, who employed them? Who sends them their digital paycheck? Because, I’m sure it’s not me.”

“Right, right, of course it’s not you. Hold on,” Adrien moved his eyes from side to side as his artificial brain retrieved the data. They are payed by the legal entity which is a proxy of the state which is the collection of all the citizens of the world,” he recited.

“So technically they’d be my opponents if I, say, decided to wiggle my way out of this?”

“I must say, now that I look at it, this employment schematic creates a sort of legal conundrum.”

“Hah! I could sue you, you know?” Jason Stratophalus waved a finger at the android aide jokingly, “you weren’t acting in good faith.” Adrien looked at him perplexed.

“I must admit I had never given it much thought. As a public servant, my independent thought circuits have been trimmed down to almost nothing.”

Jason Stratophalus walked up to Adrian, squinted and examined his silicone face.

“It’s mind boggling that someone put you in charge of this. Is there no one else?”

“Well, there’s Jack,” Adrien said, trying to escape.

“Hah! Right, there’s Jack.”

“It’s not that we hadn’t tried to employ more people. Public administration isn’t the most popular line of work these days."

“Right, every kid wants to be a model or a DJ nowadays.”

“You also didn’t have a lot of competition,” Adrien said, making himself as small as possible. But Jason Stratophalus didn’t take offense. He was lost in his own thoughts. He took the magni-glasses and put them on again. He marveled at the sky.

“Idiocracy…” he whispered. 

“We don’t like to use that term here. We call it an era of a temporary collective intellectual challenge,” Adrien explained politely. Jason tore off the glasses and tossed them to the side but Adrien managed to catch them. 

“Call it what you want, I call it ‘there-aren’t-enough-intelligent-people-to-go-around-era,” Jason Stratophalus scoffed, “alright, I’ll see you tomorrow Adrien. Oh, and not a peep about this to anyone alright? Or I’m gonna have to pull your plug, he he, don’t… take it personally,” he patted the android on the shoulder lightly. Adrien opened his mouth, offended.

“Plug? I am nuclear powered, sir!”

“Whatever. You get the drift.” Jason Stratophalus said and dashed out the door. 

***

Next morning Adrien arrived at the Capitol to find chaos. The entire staff including the librarian stood outside, confused and rattled. 

“What is going on?” Adrien asked the librarian.

“Mr. President ordered to evacuate the whole building."

“Why?”

“Some sort of bomb threat."

“Well where’s security?”

“Mr President gave them the day off.”

“What?! Why?” Adrien asked, but before he could get any answers he saw Jason Stratophalus jogging towards him.

“Alright, everyone move back!” he ordered, gasping and trying to catch his breath.

“Mr President, what are you doing?”

“Back!” The president of the world yelled angrily. As Adrien wondered why, the building behind him exploded with a loud earth shaking rumble. 

“Mr President, what have you done?” he asked.

“Don’t you worry your pretty rubber head,” Jason replied, coughing from the dust. 

“You didn’t have anything to do with this, did you?” Adrien asked.

“Yes, I did. Now you can go and do the whole undo button thing,” Jason Stratophalus whispered into Adrien’s ear. Adrien looked around. The librarian was sobbing, others walked around, holding their heads. The only person that seemed to be unbothered by the hundreds of tons of rubble lying in front of him was the desperate president. He grabbed his briefcase and looked around, for a split of a second a shade of uncertainty ran through his face, to immediately disappear into his usual arrogance. 

“Give me a call, OK?” he said with hasty confidence and got in his car.

***

Jason Stratophalus lay in his bed reading the holo-paper, on the thirty fifth level of his skyscraper mansion, an architectural atrocity invented in the twenty second century. The monstrous roman style building was erected on a fourteen acre meadow, so that Jason could get a nice view. The de-election results had not yet been published and waved the hologram away. The phone rang in his head.

“Aaaargh!” He yelled. He couldn’t get used to it, just like most of the people in his generation, “Oh god, what is it, what is it?” he asked with a grimace. 

“Mr President, I’m afraid you’re going to have to come back,” Adrien’s voice sounded in his ear.

“What? Why?”

“Everyone loved it.”

“Loved what?”

“The explosion. In fact you have gained a lot of new followers,” Adrien said proudly. 

“Oh no. I forgot. It’s the idiocracy. People love that kind of stuff now,” Jason Stratophalus whispered to himself.

“Once again, you are the president of the world,” Adrien said, “congratulations.”

“Thank you, rubber boy,” Jason Stratophalus sighed weakly and put the blanket over his head.