Author: James C. Clar

The evening before the president’s primetime appearance, the West Wing hummed like a server room.

“Poll numbers?” President Drake asked, standing at the tall windows overlooking the South Lawn.

“Seventy-six percent approval on the infrastructure package,” replied Chief of Staff Karen Tate. “The markets also responded well to the talk of deregulation.”

Drake nodded. A faint smile played across his aristocratic features. “Good. We stay the course. Confidence inspires growth.”

Energy Secretary Pauli shifted uneasily. “Some of the environmental groups are organizing protests. They’re upset by the renewal of mineral leases.”

Drake paused, almost as though listening to something no one else could hear. “We’ll emphasize the prospect of jobs in the Midwest corridor. That plays well.”

Tate exchanged a glance with Pauli. “It does,” she conceded.

***

Meanwhile, across town in a glass-walled conference room twenty floors above K Street, a different kind of meeting was underway.

“Latency spikes again,” muttered Ravi Bindhari. He pushed his glasses higher on his nose as lines of code streamed across a wall-sized monitor. “He’s overcompensating when faced with adversarial phrasing.”

“That’s not what worries me most,” chimed in Layla Chang as she tapped a key. A waveform flickered on the monitor. “Listen. This is from yesterday’s rehearsal …”

“My fellow Americans, our future is not written by foreign interests but by …” The audio glitched almost imperceptibly before smoothing out, “… but by you.”

“That’s so subtle, I mean …”

“Maybe so,” Chang cautioned, “but if it happens live? The compression artifact is bleeding through the vocal synthesizer.”

At the head of the table sat David Weilong, a heavy-set man in an immaculate gray suit and cufflinks shaped like dragons. He cleared his throat. “You assured us that this platform was highly stable.”
“It is,” Bindhari countered quickly. “Ninety-nine-point-nine stability in controlled environments.”

Weilong leaned forward and steepled his hands. “Tomorrow is not a controlled environment. It’s a live town hall with an estimated ten million viewers.”

“We can patch the speech-response module,” Chang suggested. “The issue only manifests when he’s nudged off-script.”

Weilong looked up. “Then don’t let him get nudged …”

***

The following morning, President Drake practiced before a small podium set up in the Oval Office.

“We will unlock the full potential of the American economy,” he read. He looked over at Tate. “Too strong?”

“No,” she said quietly. “Just balance it out with something about small businesses.”

“Sir,” Pauli interjected, “are we cutting the coastal restoration funds entirely?”

Drake’s gaze seemed to fix somewhere just beyond Pauli’s shoulder. “We’re, ah, leveraging strategic assets overseas.”

***

Over on K Street, Bindhari’s fingers flew over his keyboard. “I’ve identified the anomaly. I’m isolating it now. There’s a subroutine that’s oversampling. That’s what causes the apparent non-sequiturs.”

“What about the pauses?” Weilong asked with growing concern. “They look so calculated.”

“That,” Chang answered, “is the empathy modulation program. It controls micro-expressions.”

Weilong stood. “You have twelve hours. Make it work.”

Bindhari looked up from his console. “If we tweak it too much, he’ll seem flat, boring.”

“Boring is fine,” Weilong snapped. “Mechanical is not.”

Weilong stepped toward the window. He looked out at the Capitol dome shimmering in the morning sunshine. His phone buzzed. He answered without looking away.

“Yes?”

A male voice replied, calm but with an edge of finality. “We’ve reviewed the rehearsal footage. There’s a flicker in the right eye …”

Weilong’s jaw clenched. “We’re addressing it.”

“See that you do,” the voice said. “He goes live at 9:00 P.M. We don’t want anyone discovering our little secret now, do we?”