Bud Palacio had no sooner opened his newsfeed than the child’s broad, moon-like face appeared over the top of the screen.
“What are you doing, Grandpa?”
Such deep brown eyes. Pure Palacio, according to the neighbors, and his daughter, the mother, who, five years ago, had been so proud, beaming when the child had arrived. “You see, Papa, you see the resemblance, and now, because of this child, the family name shall live on.”
But not this way, Bud had thought, and then the same as now, he’d have gladly given his own name for his daughter to have married, or at least acquired a child by more traditional means. Besides, the eyes were not as pure as folks would have him believe. He saw how the colors within the irises altered; that net of amber and gold and small dark flecks which expanded whenever the child was aroused, whenever it was watching, listening, asking questions. That was not Palacio, nor were those barely visible silver lines around the mouth and ears.
“I know you can hear me, Grandpa. I asked what you were doing.”
Bud turned his attention back to the screen. Babe Robotti had just been sworn in as America’s fifty-sixth president.
“Waiting for the soup to boil, that’s what.”
“The soup, Grandpa? And is it nearly done?”
“Well, it’s been simmering a good long while.”
“Can I see?”
“No, it’s an old man’s job to pot-watch.”
Bud read the headline. Babe Robotti Takes First Presidential Steps.
“What’s in the soup, Grandpa?”
“Oh, the usual mix. So much sugar and spice and salt. Plenty of salt. Carrots too.”
“Carrots, Grandpa? Mama said we don’t get those anymore, we don’t need them.”
“Well, let’s just say the carrots are a special kind, seasonal.”
The child turned its head to the side, silent for a moment, processing.
“And is the soup for me and Mama?”
“No, child. You’re part of it.”
Again, the turn of the head, the extended silence. Then “Mama, Mama, Grandpa’s lying again!” and the child was gone, feet clomping off into an adjacent room.
Bud listened for a while to the exchange between mother and child, a similar exchange to the one he’d heard so many times before. “Now you know what they told you at Early Learning. Old people do sometimes lie. They can’t help it, and so we must forgive them. And your teachers have explained to you about jokes, haven’t they? Grandpa used to tell jokes all the time when I was a girl. It’s an old-fashioned habit, wrong in so many ways, but one that he just can’t seem to break.” A joke, yeah, that’s what it was, all just one great big joke… With a shake of the head, Bud read on:
However, as all good citizens are aware, this is not Babe Robotti’s first time stepping into The White House. His arrival here thirty years ago—and then to a mixed reaction—has since gone down in history as America’s greatest achievement yet. So, who better placed, one might ask, to lead this ever-progressive, upstanding nation of ours, than he who paved the way for an entire generation, and helped make us who we are today? And while there are some who might still disagree, whose ideas are not only markedly outdated, but undeniably dangerous when taking into account the riotous behavior displayed in recent years by certain sections of the public, most notably our elderly and their so-called ‘Trad-Marked’ young sympathizers, one only has to hear the joyous reaction of the crowd to know that at last we have a president who is truly one of us.
It wasn’t long before the picture flashed up on the screen. The close-up. Robotti’s face bearing an uncanny resemblance to that of the forty-ninth president, but with silver lines around the mouth and ears, and those eyes, those giveaway eyes. Blue like those of his bachelor father before him, but with nets within the irises, the prototype of which had been developed some thirty years ago and made from fast expanding AI metal.
