“The President Is an Alien” by Johnny Ostentatious

The fiftieth President of the United States sat in the Oval Office, a blank expression on his Caucasian face. He swiveled in his chair, tented his long fingers together and stared out the window at the south lawn.

Beyond the water fountain were two members of the Presidential Protection Agency (PPA), the bureau responsible for guarding the leader of the free world. These two PPA agents were closer than Siamese twins. The Commander-in-Chief wished they weren’t standing on the other side of the fountain. If they were in clear sight, he might be able to read their lips.

Still sitting in his chair, the president turned 180 degrees with such force, his knee whacked the edge of a desk drawer, his leg making a slurping sound. Surprisingly, the Commander-in-Chief didn’t wince or cringe. He simply wheeled his legs under the mahogany desktop, then he touched the knot of his Benigni necktie while his thumb grazed his neck near the white collar of his Brooks Brothers dress shirt.

Today, the Chief of Staff stationed Agent Tracy Adams on the south lawn with his PPA partner, Stone Black. They scanned the area. The coast was clear.

Stone, who was Tracy’s best friend, stood in his usual on-duty pose: hands cupped below his navel. Adams stood in his comfortable position of hands behind his back, like a science officer on a starship.

“So, anyway,” Stone said, “I finally got a hold of Local And/Or General from The Models.”

Tracy didn’t have to ask if his partner bought the album on vinyl. This was their shared hobby, collecting records from the 1980s. That decade may have ended thirty years before they were born, but they both believed the apex of popular music occurred between 1980 and 1984.

Stone said, “Their version of ‘Man O Action’ is so much better than on the Cut Lunch EP.”

The Models were an Australian band who had palled around with INXS. Tracy wasn’t a huge fan of The Models. He enjoyed their 1983 album, The Pleasure Of Your Company, especially the third track, “God Bless America”, but his favorite artist from the Me Decade was The Mekons. They were so eclectic—ranging from punk rock to honky-tonk—that he never tired of their catalog.

“I’ll have to play for you ‘Drive And Reflex’ on the way home,” Stone said. “It’s the sixth song and is absolutely awesome.”

Tracy nodded. He and Stone carpooled every day into work.

Stone glanced around. He tapped Tracy’s elbow and mouthed the words, We need to talk.

Tracy gave Stone a thumb up. He didn’t think his partner wanted to talk more about music.

Two hours later, Tracy Adams and Stone Black finished their shifts. They left the White House, crossed the street to the Barack Obama Garage and hopped in Black’s iCar.

Fresh off the Apple lot, the iCar smelled of fresh upholstery and wintergreen mints, Tracy thought. The vehicle started as soon as Stone sat in the front seat. “Go home,” he told the iCar. The nuclear engine revved up. Eventually, the auto coasted out of the parking garage.

Tracy and his wife didn’t own an automobile, therefore the iCar fascinated him. Since the iCar drove on its own, you didn’t have to see out the windshield all the time. Currently, Stone activated the entertainment console, which stretched across the entire windshield. Black touched heat-sensitive buttons to pull up the folder that contained The Models’ Local And/Or General. Adams assumed his partner bought the record from a store that also emailed MP7 files to your inbox.

Stone ran the back of his hand across the windshield. The entertainment console disappeared. Now, Tracy saw Pennsylvania Avenue and all of its tri-partisan glory. Traffic was light. Obviously. It was one o’clock in the morning.

“What did you want to talk about?” Tracy asked.

Stone brought up the entertainment console once more. He turned on the Shuffle Songs setting and lowered the volume of “Drive And Reflex”. Quicker than a scud missile, the windshield showed Pennsylvania Avenue again.

“The president is an alien,” Stone said.

Tracy nodded. He suspected as much. The more Adams was around the president, the more the Commander-in-Chief seemed too perfect.

“Yesterday,” Stone said, “I borrowed a Heinlein Scanner from my buddy Scalzi over at Pentagon University. It’s basically an X-ray machine that fits in the palm of your hand. Real cutting-edge. It shows a visual of a person’s skeletal frame, but also gives you the molecular makeup of the subject you’re scanning.”

“What did the president come up as?”

“The visual gave me a readout of an ordinary human skeleton, but the Molecular Makeup Meter said he has an unknown liquid pumping through his veins that makes up sixty percent of his body mass. The closest thing the Heinlein could compare it to was sulfuric acid.”

“Really?” Tracy said.

“Really.”

The iCar crossed into Arlington. A sign stated that the Iraq War Veterans Foundation cleaned this portion of Ronald Reagan Boulevard. From the car speakers, The Models sang about being “Unhappy”.

“How did you get the scan of him?”

“It was easy,” Stone said. “Since the Heinlein fits in your hand, I took the scan yesterday at the ceremony for Gay Pride Day when he was doing the photo op with the Pope and her lover.”

Tracy had taken off yesterday to escort his oldest daughter, Jacquelyn, to the orthodontist.

“And Spencer didn’t see you?” Tracy asked Stone.

Aaron Spencer was the president’s Chief of Staff. The two were about as inseparable as Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.

“No reason he should,” Stone answered. “It only takes a second to take a scan, and you can do it halfway across a room with a bunch of people in the way. Later, you can crop out the bystanders and zero in on your subject.”

The iCar slowed down on its own. Tracy presumed the vehicle’s sensors picked up something. The auto rounded a bend. On the edge of a forest stood a deer. It must have been one of the clones with a dolphin brain, otherwise it would have ran into the iCar’s headlights.

“What do you think he wants?” Tracy asked.

“The president—”

Tracy nodded.

“—or should I say the motherfucking extraterrestrial?” Stone finished.

“Do you think he’s the first part in an invasion?” Tracy asked.

“Could be. The planet seems to be back on track with the end of World War Three, and global warming now nothing but a distant memory. Leave it to some asshole to fuck shit up when things are going well.”

The iCar turned onto Tracy’s street. In the distance, cicadas shrilled.

“You know what we have to do,” Stone said.

“What?”

“Kill him.”

Tracy Adams entered his humble abode. Even though the kids were asleep, the living room smelled of popcorn and apple juice. Tonight had been movie night with their cousins. I wonder what they watched. He could have answered his question by turning on the Web-TV and hitting CTRL+H for the history, but he was starving for his wife’s homemade leftovers.

Tracy headed into the kitchen. He heated up the lasagna and ate it with the gusto of Tony Soprano.

“Hey, you.”

At the foot of the spiral staircase (near the kitchen door) was Tracy’s wife, Robin.

“Hi,” he said.

Robin wore a kimono bathrobe. In the yellow kitchen light, her short black hair contrasted her Scandinavian skin.

Tracy grinned.

“What?” Robin smirked.

“Come here.”

Robin popped a Lifesaver strip from the counter next to the refrigerator, then she sat on Tracy’s lap. They kissed as if teenagers at Make-out Point. She wrapped her arms around his neck. He planted one hand on the base of her back, the other on the right side of her face, thumb stroking her soft cheek.

After the welcome-home kiss, Robin laid her head against Tracy’s chest. He folded his arms around her, so she didn’t slip to the floor.

“How was your day?” Robin asked.

“Fine, fine.” Tracy told his wife about Stone’s latest New Wave purchase.

“You two are something else.”

Tracy didn’t have to ask what his wife meant. A few years ago, Tracy and Robin’s marriage was on a crash course towards divorce court. He wasn’t communicating and she was sleeping with one of her Yoga students. The root of their marital troubles was Tracy. A loner his whole life, he had no friends outside of their marriage. This character defect caused him distress. Fortunately, Spencer teamed Tracy with Stone. The two hit if off immediately, which marveled Adams to this day because he was a conservative and Black was a liberal.

Tracy cleared his throat. “Stone thinks the president is an alien.”

Robin jerked her head off of Tracy’s chest. “Are you joking?”

Tracy shook his head, eyes down.

“This isn’t one of your pranks?” Robin asked.

“No.”

When off-duty, Tracy and Stone joked so much, strangers often thought they were a comedy-writing team.

Tracy recapped Stone’s Heinlein findings.

“What are you going to do?” Robin asked.

“I don’t know.”

“When’s the last time they gave you a polygraph?”

“Three months ago tomorrow,” Tracy said.

Working for PPA meant you were subject to random lie-detector tests. Previously, the longest Tracy went without one was two months.

“Do you think he—the president—knows?” Robin asked.

“I don’t know.”

Tracy and Stone were usually assigned Periphery Duty, meaning they never got closer than 100 yards to the president.

“Stone wants to assassinate him,” Tracy said.

“Are you serious?”

Tracy nodded.

“Oh, baby.” Robin rested a hand on Tracy’s left shoulder.

“I want to get more information before doing anything. A different kind of test, maybe. Someway to verify everything. Maybe even triple-check our facts before rushing into action.”

“Is—” Robin cut herself off.

“What?” Tracy’s back stiffened with anticipation.

“I was going to ask if there’s anybody you can talk to, but then I remembered where you work.”

“Trust no one,” Tracy said, quoting the tagline from the ancient TV show The X-Files.

Robin slid off Tracy’s lap. She took his hand, forcing him up.

“Come to bed,” Robin requested.

“But I’m not tired.”

“Neither am I.”

“Oh.”

Tracy grabbed the half-full bottle of Château Margaux from the fridge. Robin swiped up two champagne glasses from the rack above the counter island in the middle of the kitchen.

Hand in hand, Mr. and Mrs. Adams tiptoed upstairs to their bedroom. No other creatures were stirring, not even an insomniac titmouse.

The next day, as soon as Tracy Adams and Stone Black arrived at the White House, Spencer marched up to them. He stopped stroking his red goatee and snapped his fingers.

“You two,” Spencer said, “come with me.”

Tracy and Stone followed the Chief of Staff. They headed for the West Wing. Adams had been in this part of the White House countless times. However, given his partner’s revelation yesterday, it now felt more surreal than a Salvador Dali exhibit. The hallway bustled with everyday activity (gophers running errands, speechwriters dictating scripts into wristband recorders, receptionists shouting commands to interns).

Spencer screeched to a halt in front of the Oval Office’s double doors. Tracy forced the fingers on his right hand to stop twitching. The plush carpet felt like quicksand.

“Leave your weapons here,” Spencer ordered.

Tracy and Stone handed their laser phasers to Norma Allen, the president’s personal assistant. She was a frumpy forty-year-old, built like a bullet.

Spencer knocked on the Oval Office door on the right.

“Come in,” said the president, his voice sounding as far away as Siberia, thought Tracy.

Tracy Adams and Stone Black sat in the chairs in front of the president’s partners’ desk. The Commander-in-Chief leaned back in his creaking chair, his gray eyes reminding Adams of the Arctic. Behind the president stood Spencer, chin dipped, eye sockets shadowed. The Chief of Staff had drawn the blinds upon entering.

“Aaron thinks I’m wasting my time,” said the president, “but I’m taking a leap of faith here. Where is the scan you took of me?”

Tracy and Stone didn’t reply.

Spencer shook his head. Tracy recognized the mannerism as one Aaron had used in the primary election to convey condescension. Adams recalled that Spencer had finished second in the primaries and what a brouhaha it raised when the president didn’t offer him a higher political position than Chief of Staff.

The president touched the knot of his tie. “Both of you do realize I could have had your apartment and house ransacked, or I could have separated you two and had our operatives in the FBI or CIA torture both of you. However, I wanted to take the high road and handle this issue like the gentlemen we all are.” His eyelids squinted into slits. “Where is the scan?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Stone said.

The president knocked his head back and snickered. “Unbelievable.”

“Let me put it like this,” Spencer said, “either hand over the scan or the minute you walk out that door, both of you will be unemployed so quick, your best job prospects will be flipping burgers at McDonald’s or stocking shelves at Wal-Mart. Now, where’s the goddamned scan!?!”

Tracy’s heart slammed against his ribcage. Something was off. After you worked security for as long as he did, you developed a sixth sense of when unpredictability waited in the wings, ready to unveil itself at an inopportune moment.

“Make the call,” said the president.

Spencer strode for the door.

“Call,” Stone asked, “what call?”

“To have your car stolen and sent to a chop shop,” answered the president.

“Wait!”

Spencer stopped, hand on doorknob.

Stone leaned forward, hands on knees. “All right, you win. I’ll tell you where the scan is.”

Tracy’s hyper heart returned to a normal beat.

Suddenly, Stone leapt out of his chair. He seized a letter opener off the desk and brandished it like a dagger. The president wheeled backwards. Tracy jumped out of his chair. He reached for Black, but his partner moved too fast.

Stone landed in front of the president. He grabbed the Commander-in-Chief’s tie.

“What the. . . .?” Stone dropped the letter opener.

In Stone’s hand was the president’s suit. Attached to the clothes were skin gloves and a pullover mask.

Tracy had finally reached Stone. He dropped his hands from his partner’s arms. Adams couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“Shit,” Spencer muttered, head lowered, hand over eyes. He was at the end of the desk, three feet from Stone and the president.

In the corner—pressed against the closed curtain—was the alien that had masqueraded as the president for who knew how long. The extraterrestrial’s body reminded Tracy of a clump of seaweed, although it had a gray head covered in green stubble. Stretching across the alien’s face were not one but two mouths. They formed an X, the creature’s lips looking to Tracy like two vaginas. At the center of the X was an eye on an extra-long optic nerve.

“What the fuck?” Stone mumbled.

“Deepest apologies,” said the alien to Spencer, the words sounding as if a man and a woman speaking simultaneously underwater.

A translucent bubble formed around the alien. In less than ten seconds, the bubble turned chalky white. It resembled a giant egg. Predictably, it cracked down the middle. The two halves timbered. As soon as both of them touched the floor, they faded away.

A wave of nausea washed over Tracy. He scratched his forehead. Where the egg had been now laid the president, naked and curled in the fetal position.

Spencer snapped his fingers in Stone’s direction. “Get a new suit.”

Stone shuffled to the door Spencer had pointed to. Inside the closet were a dozen different conservative suits.

Spencer sighed. “Yes, the president was an alien. This here is the real president, but it’s not what you think. The aliens didn’t want to take over the planet. Their goal was to establish world peace so the human race could take the next step in evolution.” The Chief of Staff drummed his fingers against the side of his legs. “Give me a hand before Norma or the press secretary come barging in here.”

Tracy and Stone helped Spencer dress the president, who was slowly waking up. The leader of the free world smelled like a swamp.

With the president clothed, Tracy, Stone and Spencer propped him in the chair. The Commander-in-Chief yawned and stretched.

“Oh,” Spencer said to Tracy and Stone, “and congratulations. You two are officially promoted. You’re now the president’s personal bodyguards. He’s never to leave your sight, understood?” The Chief of Staff frowned. “Let’s hope he doesn’t fuck things up too much.”

[[END]]

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