I remain at my post, hidden behind the computer consoles, and check the National Rating Service’s computer to see how well Our Man really did. The screen shows a rating of 0.54. Not bad. In fact, the best rating for any candidate who’s been tested so far. It will look really impressive in the media; should get a lot of votes for Our Man.
He still has to go through the primaries, of course, but that’s done mainly by electronics. No more back-breaking campaigns through every state for month after month. The candidates appeal to the voters individually, through their TV screens and home computers, a personal message to each bloc of voters, tailored to each bloc’s innermost desires, thanks to the polished techniques of psychological polling and videotaping.
But this test run in the simulated Oval Office is of crucial importance. Each candidate has got to show that he can handle the pressures of an average day in the White House, that he can make decisions that will be good, effective, and politically palatable. Excerpts from today’s simulation test will be on the evening news; tomorrow’s papers will carry the story on page one. And naturally, the entire day’s test will be available on PBS and even videotape for any voter who wants to see the whole day.
Of course, what this day’s simulation really tested was my program. I feel a little like Cyrano de Bergerac, ghostwriting letters to the woman he loves for another man to woo her.
Making sure that no one is watching, I tap out the code for the White House mainframe’s most secret subroutine. Only a handful of programmers know about this part of the White House’s machine. None of our candidates know of it.
In the arcane language that only we dedicated programmers know, I ask the mainframe how well my program did. The answer glows brilliantly on the central screen: 0.96. Ninety-six! The highest score any program has ever received.
I hug myself and double over to keep from laughing out loud. If my legs worked, I would jump up and dance around the studio. Ninety-six! The best ever!
No matter which candidate gets elected, no matter who votes for whom, the White House mainframe is going to pick my program. My program will be the one the next president uses for the coming four years. Mine!
With my heart thumping wildly in my chest, I shut down the consoles. All the screens go dark. I spin my chair around and go wheeling through the emptied, darkened studio, heading for the slice of light offered by the half-open door. Already my mind is churning with ideas for improving the program.
After all, in another four years the primaries start all over again.
THOSE WHO CAN
Some stories go their own way, despite the conscious volition of the writer. This one was inspired by a funny incident at a meeting of a major corporation’s board of directors. But the story didn’t want to be funny. Not at all.
We get all the kooks, William Ransom thought to himself as he watched the intent young man set up his equipment.
They were in Ransom’s office, one of the smaller suites in the management level of Larrimore, Swain & Tucker, seventy-three stories above the crowded Wall Street sidewalk. As the firm’s least senior executive (a mere fifty-three years old) Ransom’s duties included interviewing intent young inventors who claimed to have new products that could revolutionize industries.
The equipment that the intent young man was assembling looked like a junkpile of old stereo sets, computer consoles, and the insides of Tic-Tok of Oz. It spread across the splashy orange-brown carpet, climbed over the conversation corner’s genuine llama-hide couches, covered the coffee table between the couches and was now encroaching on the teak bar behind them.
«I’ll be finished in a minute,» said the intent young inventor. He had said the same thing ten minutes earlier, and ten minutes before that. But he continued to pull strange-looking racks of printed circuits and oddly glowing metallic cylinders from the seemingly bottomless black trunk that he had dragged into the office with him.
If I had known it would take him this long, Ransom thought, I would have told him to set up after I’d gone for the day, and let me see it tomorrow morning.
But it was a half hour too late for that decision.
Ransom glanced at the neatly typed note his secretary had efficiently placed on his immaculate desktop. James Brightcloud, it said. Inventor. From Santa Fe, New Mexico. Representing self.
Ransom shook his head and suppressed a sigh. He was going to be stuck with this madman for the rest of the afternoon, he knew it, while Mr. Larrimore and other executives repaired to the rooftop sauna and the comforts of soothing ministrations by this week’s bevy of masseuses. It was a fine accomplishment to be the youngest member of the executive board, career-wise. But it also meant that you were low man on the executive totem pole. Ransom had been dreaming about deaths in high places lately. Two nights ago, he had found himself reading Julius Caesar and enjoying it.
«Just about done,» James Brightcloud muttered. He pulled a slim rod from the trunk and touched it to the last piece of equipment he had set up, atop the bar. Sparks leaped, hissing. Ransom almost jumped out of his seat.
«There,» Brightcloud said. «Ready to go.»
The inventor looked Hispanic, but without the easygoing smile that Ransom always associated with Latins. He couldn’t have been more than thirty. Darkish skin, much darker eyes that brooded. Straight black hair. Stocky build, almost burly. Lots of muscles under that plain denim leisure suit. Ransom thought briefly about the Puerto Rico Libre movement that had been bombing banks and office buildings. He laid his hands on the edge of his very solid teak desk and pictured himself ducking under it at the first sign of a detonation.
«I can demonstrate it for you now,» James Brightcloud said. He neither smiled nor frowned. His face was a mask of stoic impassivity.
«Er… before you do,» Ransom said, stroking the smooth solid wood of his desk unobtrusively, wondering just how much shrapnel it would stop, «just what is it? I mean, what does your invention do?»
«It’s a therapeutic device.»
Ransom blinked at the young inventor. «A what?»
Brightcloud stepped around the machinery he had assembled and walked toward Ransom’s desk. Pulling up a chair, he said, «Therapeutic. It makes you feel better. It heals soreness in the muscles, stiffness caused by tension. It can even get rid of stomach ulcers for you.»
Ransom’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling, and he thought of the sauna on the top floor. He could feel the steam and hear the giggling, almost.
«I suppose,» he said, «it also cures cancer.»
«We’ve had a couple of remissions in the field tests,» Brightcloud answered straightfaced, «but we don’t like to emphasize them. They might have been spontaneous, and it wouldn’t be right for us to get peoples’ hopes up.»
«Of course.» Ransom made a mental note to fire his secretary. The woman must be getting soft in the head. «Er… how does this device of yours work? Or are the operating principles a secret?»
«No secret… if you understand enough biochemistry and radiation therapy principles.»
«I don’t.»
The inventor nodded. «Well, to put it simply, the device emits a beam of radiant energy that interacts with the parasympathetic nervous system. It has a variety of effects, and by controlling the frequency of the emitted radiation we can achieve somatic effects in the patient: muscular relaxation, easing of tension, of headaches. That sort of thing.»
«Radiation?» Ransom was suddenly alert. «You mean like microwaves? The stuff the Russians have been beaming at our embassy in Moscow?»