The Impression

“Ethan, we heard you have a good impression of President Clark. We’d like to hear it.”

Ethan took a deep breath and steadied himself. It was kind of legendary around the office, Ethan’s impression of the President. He’d been asked plenty of times before, usually by the other interns. Once in a while, maybe after a long day when his coworkers had been drinking, one of the higher ranking staffers would pull him aside and ask him to do it. But never the Vice President.

Roughly thirty minutes ago, Ethan had been roused awake by a Secret Service member pounding at his front door. At first, Ethan thought someone had tracked one of his anonymous troll accounts back to him - that kind of thing was common with the Presidential interns, but those who got caught were usually fired right away. The Secret Service assured him he wasn’t in any sort of trouble, but they also made it clear they would not be leaving without him. It was near three a.m. as they ushered him into a large black van, which then sped down the highway towards Connecticut avenue. They just gave him a basic shirt, suit, tie, socks, and dress shoes and told him to put them on.

When they got to the White House, they grabbed Ethan by the arm and led him down the West Wing to the Vice President’s office. Inside, Vice President Brendan Raimi sat at his auspicious wooden desk, looking haggard and stressed. Next to him sat one of the President’s advisors, Marcus Schmidt, who seemed unphased by the late hour.

Up close, Ethan could see the faint lines of the VP’s SkynTek under a heavy base of bronze foundation. It was all the rage in Hollywood, the customized 3D-printed face fillers that could be grafted and settled in a matter of hours. Ethan found the idea of a man getting plastic surgery humiliating, emasculating, but he buried the thought. Ethan knew that great men were often subject to vanity.

Vice President Brendan Raimi was born in North Carolina to a long line of state senators and businessmen. He was a rare, dying breed of man who seemed poised at any moment to daub himself with a handkerchief or suckle a mint julep. His questionable 70s-style haircut, piercing blue eyes, and penchant for plastic surgery were frequent targets for the fags with the cartoons and the musicals and the TV shows. At first, Ethan had suspected him of being a closeted homosexual, but Ethan’s personal investigation into the matter only revealed affairs with female staffers.

Opponents of the Vice President liked to paint the man as some bumbling, out of touch drunk, but Ethan knew Raimi had the heart of a wolf. Back when he was governor of North Carolina, he pulled this stunt with some refugees and shipped them off to San Francisco. One of the buses crashed - forty six dead. He was a hardass, a real Christian.

“Just do the impression,” said the Vice President. “Kid, you’re not in trouble. Promise. Just do the fucking impression.”

“What do you want me to say?” Ethan knew it didn’t matter. He was buying time to calm down. His head hurt. His eyes and hands felt heavy.

Next to Raimi sat Marcus Schmidt, a steely man in his 60s. Marcus didn’t have an official title, or at least not one Ethan could remember, but sat in every meeting and called a lot of shots. When Schmidt spoke, the other men in the room would lean back and nod their heads like they were really trying to absorb his words. No one said it, but everyone knew he had the line to the weapons and the oil guys. To the money.

“Like you’re giving a speech,” said Mr. Schmidt.

So Ethan did. He ad libbed as best he could, taking bits pieces from the President’s rally the night before. In other circumstances, Ethan might have thrown in a crack at President Clark’s daughter, a lousy drunk who canoodled with Hollywood actors, or his ex wife, who left him for an actual homosexual during the first Great Hunger in 2028, but Ethan knew better. This was a respectful impression.

It was all in the accent. Clark grew up in New Hampshire, but visited his family’s estates in Florida, North Carolina, and Louisiana. He had a kind of twangy East Coast sound, he liked to chew his “arr”s, and slow down every three or four words for emphasis. Though Ethan was only 23, his ill-fitting suit and stiff posture aged him greatly, which helped the impression. It didn’t hurt, either, that he looked like he could be the man’s son.

President Clark was a character, larger than life. Ethan had only met him briefly, but admired him greatly. Though Ethan would never admit to it, he saw President Clark as a father figure, a model of how to conduct himself. His peers had become slothful and complicit in the moral degradation of this country, and Ethan saw Clark as the one to fix it. Clark was a machine, like a power drill or a jackhammer, constantly chipping at the moral rot of America.

A long time ago, Ethan had wanted to be an actor, took a couple classes even. But Miss Cooper, an unmarried cow masquerading as a drama teacher, called him a male chauvinist pig and ripped into him at any opportunity. He quit the next semester and went into political science. Too many fags in theater. And no money in it.

After Ethan finished his impression, the two men across from him sat there and took a powerful, pregnant pause. Ethan knew something had been decided at that moment. The VP gulped and started talking.

“Now, what you need to understand, son, is that what I’m about to tell you is a matter of national security. If you tell anyone, and I mean a single soul outside of this room, you will face prison time, your family will be buried in legal debt, and possibly much worse. President Clark, our vision for the future, everything we worked for, needs you right now. Do you understand?” Ethan Nodded.

“The President had a heart attack. He’s alive, thank God, but it was a rough one. He’s not awake right now.”

“Now, our friends at the Democratic party have been harping on Jim’s heart condition for weeks. Basically put a curse on the poor man. With the election tomorrow, or I guess today, you can imagine this is shit timing.”

“Yes sir,” Ethan said. “But why am I here?”

Mr. Schmidt stood up and motioned to the Secret Service guard at the door. The guard opened the door, and the President’s chief of staff, Barbara. Behind her, two men around Ethan’s age, one white and one Indian, wheeled in an AV cart with a screen and camera on one side, and a laptop on the other.

They pointed the camera at Ethan and turned on the screen. Ethan saw a reflection of himself. In that moment, Ethan noticed how tense everyone looked. They were all staring at him with big, tired eyes, but they didn’t say anything. They just kept staring at him. In the silence, Ethan thought he could hear some mechanical whir in the other room, like a faint rushing sound.

The tech crew fumbled with the keyboard for a few seconds, and then Ethan’s shape began to change on screen. His face widened, and his cheeks sagged. On screen, he was no longer Ethan Carmichael. He was President Clark.

A chill ran down Ethan’s back as he looked, as he understood what this was all for. He felt at the scratchy, loose fitting jacket they’d given him, and realized it looked just like the ones President Clark usually wore. Same with the tie, the pants, even the shoes. It became clear to Ethan that everyone in front of him - Vice President Raimi, Mr. Schmidt, and the president’s chief of staff, had spent considerable time and resources coming up with this plan. They’d all been talking about him, maybe for hours, before Ethan had arrived. He couldn’t help but feel flattered.

Barbara, the President’s chief of staff, started speaking.

“This screen is powered by an AI trained on videos of the President. As long as you don’t turn your face too fast, or move your hands too quickly, you should be able to look and sound exactly like him.

“Polls open in six hours, and they close at eight on the West Coast. All we need you to do is cover the daytime TV circuit and buy us some time. Once the polls close and all the votes are in, we’ll disclose the President’s condition, and we’ll take it from there.”

In the room, Ethan felt a release, as though the building itself had released some heavy sigh.

“Now,” continued the Vice President, “a lot of people in this room don’t want me to say this. They think we shouldn’t give you a choice. But you do, you always do.” He got real close and looked Ethan dead in the eye. “We’re up right now, boy. Not by much, but I believe we have it.”

He put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder. His hand felt leathery and strong, sported a fat silver watch, and smelled a little like oaked whiskey. This hand had shot a gun before. “Do you believe in President Clark’s mission, son? Are you willing to help us see it through?”

Since Ethan was a young boy, he’d felt that he was special. He knew in his bones that he was destined for something big. When his mother read him Harry Potter, he saw a reflection of himself in the poor, tortured orphan, who was destined to change the course of history. When he heard the story of Jesus in the manger, Ethan saw himself in that God-begotten infant, destined to save all mankind from damnation. He only admitted to believing this once, and the whipping from his mother was enough to never speak of such a thing again. But down deep, Ethan never let the idea totally fade.

So the question had an obvious answer. This was the moment Ethan was meant to rise to the occasion. This was why God brought him to Earth.

“Yes, sir. I’ll do it.”

In the proceeding hours, the world seemed to move at three times its normal speed. Ethan signed big, complicated documents covering liability, depositing some millions of dollars into some account that now somehow belonged to him, and forfeiting his rights to ever speak of any of it.

For the rest of that night, fewer than ten people saw Ethan at all. The Vice President, Mr. Schmidt, Barbara, the pair of video techs, and a handful of Secret Service agents were the only people allowed in the same room as Ethan. The Secret Service blocked every door and cleared every room before Ethan entered, so that he was never seen by another person. All requests for food, drink, computer equipment,or anything else were coordinated through the agents and delivered to them.

The crash course in media training over the next hours went better than expected, at least according to Barbara. Ethan was a loyal devotee to Clark’s platform, and quick learner. They gave him an earpiece, and by five A.M. they had already run through a series of mock questions that Ethan answered mostly adequately.

“Keep it short and stay on topic,” Barbara told him. That meant guns, abortion, sanctions, the war. Obvious. “And don’t turn your head too fast. Just look straight at the camera and go slow.”

The first stop was CNN. Some uppity half-man lectured Ethan for what felt like ten minutes straight about Gallup polls in North Carolina. Clark had done poorly in that debate. The moderator, some half-jew from East Harlem, had thrown loaded questions about climate change at him all night.

“The thing is,” Ethan said, “I don’t give a damn if North Carolina votes for me or not.” He knew this was a gamble, but it was exactly the kind of thing Clark would say. The room went deadly still. Barbara glared at him, like she was a mother who just caught her child swearing. He went on, there was nothing they could do.

“I mean, I hope they vote for me. If they got common sense, they’ll vote for me. But if they don’t, we got Florida, Nevada, Ohio in the bag. We don’t need North Carolina. North Carolina needs me.”

The fag in the glasses from CNN stumbled through the rest and sent him on his way. The team sat in awe, in horror. They signed off.

“What the fuck was that?” asked Barbara. “That was off fucking script. What the hell are you doing?”

But it was too late to pull out of the other interviews. There wasn’t time to discuss the rest. They had to reset, powder his nose, and prepare for the next.

“Just stay on topic.”

It came to pass that Ethan’s North Carolina stunt paid off, in a way. It was the only thing anyone could talk about. After lunch, the next three stations grilled him on his comments, and Ethan doubled down, each comment more outrageous than the last. His dismal gallup polls in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Georgia didn’t matter. All eyes were on North Carolina. He could see it made Vice President Raimi squirm. It couldn’t be easy to watch some kid shit on his home state over and over again, Ethan knew that.

It was a kind of compulsion Ethan had, ever since he was young. He liked to needle people, to see what they would do under discomfort. To see what they could tolerate. Ethan remembered this girl in his sixth grade class - Sarah, or Sam or something. It didn’t matter now. He had asked her to the spring dance, and she turned him down. Ethan swore revenge. From that day on, he whispered the word “fat” to her every time he passed her in the hall. He’d mouth the word from across the classroom every time he made eye contact. He’d pass notes to her with just the word “fat” on scraps of paper. Wad up fistfuls of them and sneak them in her backpack when she wasn’t looking. Nothing creative, not a nickname - just the word. She wasn’t even fat, really, but he knew it bothered her. That’s what mattered.

In a couple weeks, it broke her. All the other kids in the class had picked up on his habit, and Sarah couldn’t escape the chorus of “fat” anywhere. She changed her route to school, then she switched classes, but it was too late. Ethan remembered watching her crying, unloading handfuls of crumpled notes from her backpack. In that moment, he knew what it meant to win.

In no time, Ethan felt at home behind his camera. In between takes he watched videos of President Clark and honed his act, like a whittler carving away at a piece of cedar. At midday, the team had lunch - plastic-wrapped sandwiches from the White House kitchen. The men patted him on the back and complimented his voice. Ethan felt good, like he was a key member of an elite team, like he’d said he wanted to be on his resume.

The interviews after that went more smoothly. They had lined up a run of conservative outlets, who all stuck to the easy topics. Guns, refugees, abortion, the war. In one interview, Ethan called one of the reporters “son” and could have sworn he saw the man blush.

Then, just past three P.M., an explosion ripped through White House like a holy wind. The rumble of it, the rushing wind shook Ethan to his core, and for a moment he thought he would die. An acrid, gray smoke cut through the air. Despite the ringing in his ears and the light coating of ash, he and everyone else in the room was unharmed. The explosion had gone off somewhere in the East Wing. The sirens screamed of horns and bells and red lights, as though the building itself shook and panicked, a scared animal.

As though from nowhere, hordes of security guards crowded around the group, and hurried them into another room. Ethan just caught a glimpse of the President’ then down a hallway, into a set of doors, then down a hatch and a metal ladder, into a series of tunnels Ethan had no idea how deep.

When they finally came to the safe room, it was a lifeless gray and beige cube with office furniture and the President’s Seal on one wall, and TVs on the rest. Ice buckets of plastic water bottles, deli meats, various cheeses, protein bars, and individually sealed bags of trail mix spread open-faced across some tables in the corner.

The four TVs on the walls streamed the major news networks. News had just broken that the White House had been attacked. Helicopters weren’t allowed in White House airspace, so news trucks were racing to Pennsylvania avenue to get a ground shot. Cell phone footage showed the East Wing up in smoke. One news crawler read BREAKING: EXPLOSION AT WHITE HOUSE.

At the end of the hall, a freight elevator clunked open, and a small medical team pushed the unconscious president on a gurney, along with bags of fluids, trunks of equipment, and consoles of electronics into an adjacent room.

Raimi unscrewed a plastic water bottle and took a deep gulp.

“Breathe,” he said. Ethan did.

“Things are happening very quickly now,” said Schmidt. “We need you to be ready.”

“Kid, you did amazing out there. Exactly the kinda thing we were hoping for. Swear to God, half the time I forgot that wasn’t Jim talking.”

“We need you to be ready. And we need to act quickly.” Schmidt repeated. “People need to know the president is okay.”

“They need to know we gotta fight.” said Raimi.

“What are you talking about? Did you know this was gonna happen?” The question spilled out of Ethan like a jar of marbles - messy, loud, dangerous.

Raimi and Schmidt looked at each other for a good beat. Raimi leaned forward and cleared his throat.

“A radical extremist attacked our nation’s most sacred landmark. The seat of this country. But President Clark will not be stopped. Not by anyone, anything.”

Schmidt slid his hand forward on the table and made a symbol with his fingers. Raimi looked down, then did the same. The gesture might have been lost on the common person, but Ethan understood. He slid his hand forward and did the same.

Ethan imagined the three of them forming the legs of a solid oaken stool. Like the one his maternal grandfather used to make. Something sturdy, simple. Practical. It would serve as a podium, upon which a new and less forgiving country would sit.

Ethan stopped himself - his metaphor didn’t actually work. That wasn’t him on the camera, not really. It wasn’t his picture, or his voice, his mannerisms, or even his ideas, really. Those were President Clark’s. Ethan was a stopgap, a temporary support.

“We have the script ready. We need you to deliver a message to our constituents.”

They walked him to a makeshift media room with lights, a green screen, and a teleprompter. Ethan sat on the chair marked with white tape. On the monitor screens, Ethan watched the President take his seat, mirroring him exactly.

One person attached a mic, another pecked at a laptop. Barbara counted him down. The teleprompter started to scroll.

“My fellow Americans, it is with great sadness that I must report that the White House has been attacked. I am safe, as are my family and the Vice President. Please know that I am fighting harder than ever.

“The leftist mob threatened our country’s seat this evening. The crown jewel of our beautiful nation - our great White House. They tried to kill me. But they couldn’t.

“I urge all of you to remain calm. To my supporters – please trust, they will never slow our cause. Now is not the time for fear, to hide at home. If you really believe in the cause, in beating back the forces of Satan, make yourself known. I want to see all of you at the polls and the rallies tonight. Do it for me. Do it for our future.”

Right at the end of the broadcast, Ethan lifted up his hand, just slightly, and made a motion with his fingers. It was subtle, but he knew the right people would knew what it meant. The techs didn’t catch it, but in the back Schmidt made a slick kind of smile at him. They took the mic off, and on the walk out, Schmidt patted him on the back.

Back in the room with the TVs, it was still coverage of the election. He was ahead in North Carolina.

“I want to see him,” Ethan said.

Another pause, and another knowing glance passed between Raimi and Schmidt. Schmidt nodded to a guard, who led Ethan and the two men to the adjoining room. Raimi took a protein bar on his way out.

The room was like the others in shape and size, except all the tables and chairs had been stacked and pushed to the far corners to make room for medical equipment. Aside from the IV drip and ventilator, Ethan spotted a state-of-the art drug synthesizer and a Skyntek printer amongst them. The ventilator emitted a regular beep and a slow, heavy whir as it breathed for the President. He looked like hell, with a puffy face and chapped lips sucking a plastic tube.

The whole scene reminded Ethan of his father, who had drunk himself half to death before wrapping his car around a tree when Ethan was nineteen. Ethan remembered it was a Saturday night, and he had to miss the finals for his speech and debate tournament the next day.

Ethan resented his father for lacking the decency to die on impact. Instead, his father rotted for weeks in a hospital bed in comatose. His mother spent every hour she could by his father’s side, and insisted Ethan do the same. He thought it was pointless. He hated to see his father like that - weak, crippled, useless, sucking up time and money and resources, clinging to a life that he’d already thrown away. When he died, Ethan tried to forget him. It hadn’t worked yet.

“What happened to him?” Ethan did his best to hold back emotion when he spoke. It was unmanly to cry, or show concern.

Vice President Raimi put his hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “Heart attack, like I said. Jim’s never been one to say no to a good time, guess it finally caught up with him.”

The President’s cocaine addiction was an open secret at the White House. Or maybe Raimi meant the drinking, or the cigars, but Ethan couldn’t be sure. Ethan had never drunk himself, or done drugs. He never wanted to be like his father. But Ethan understood the President was a man full of vitality - an immense sort of character who was inclined to live life at a higher volume than others. Such types of people often struggled with vice.

He stayed with the President for maybe ten minutes, saying nothing. He tried to absorb as much as he could from the man, just by being near him. Ethan felt a magnetic pull to him, even in President Clark’s unconscious state.

Clark’s breathing grew heavier, and the machines beeped louder. The doctors swarmed the machines, pressing buttons, changing bags of fluid. Like a dance, they cleared the president of unnecessary equipment. With a flourish, the lead doctor produced a pair of scissors and cut President’s robe down the middle, exposing his bare chest. The second one produced a small box with adhesive pads attached, and stuck them to Clark’s sternum and stomach. It took two secret Service guards to drag Ethan out of the room, kicking, screaming to see if the President would make it.

In the room with the TVs, Ethan could still hear the machines beeping across the hall. On one television, a gang of Clark supporters in Flagstaff burst into a middle school gymnasium. A man with a T-shirt of President Clark’s face smashed a voting machine with a crowbar. A pair of women wrestled on the floor over a tablet. Smoke began to fill the room as a group of men lit cans of ballots on fire.

“Jesus, Marcus. This is ugly,” said the Vice President. “We need to do something.”

“What did you expect? We were soft in Flagstaff. This buys us more time.”

A knock at the door. A Secret Service agent entered. “It’s Sparkler. She’s demanding to speak to the President.”

Sparkler was the Secret Service codename of the President’s daughter, Ashley. Secret Service usually only used the codenames in texts and emails, but Ashley had insisted they call her by her codename since she picked it out.

“Bring it out,” said Schmidt. The men nodded and a team rolled in the screen. “Keep the camera off, just patch it through the call.”

Raimi looked at Ethan with a miserable, pitiful look. Like he was about to tell Ethan his dog had cancer. Ethan felt like he did - he hadn’t slept in days.

“He calls her sweetheart. You have five minutes.”

The techs pressed a few more buttons and the call patched through.

“Daddy? Daddy are you ok?” said a panicked voice on the other side. Ethan found the use of the term childish.

“Hey there sweetheart,” Ethan said. “I’m okay, you don’t need to worry about us. We’ve got it under control. Where are you right now? Are you safe?”

“I’m at the house in Maine. They locked it down, none of the guards will let me leave the bedroom. I’m really scared, daddy.”

Ethan could hear her crying over the phone. He knew they were both 23, but he felt much more mature than the president’s daughter. She’d been a liability throughout the campaign - refusing to go on tour with him, living in Los Angeles, dating a young director who’d been critical of Clark. She was a brat and a liability as far as he was concerned, and Ethan had trouble hiding the judgment in his voice.

“That’s okay sweetie, that’s okay. We have it under control,” Ethan said.

Raimi passed Ethan a piece of paper reading SweetHEART, with the “heart” underlined.

“It doesn’t look like it. Do you see what’s happening in Flagstaff?” Ethan looked up at the TV again. The gymnasium was now fully ablaze. Outside, Clark supporters drug a woman by her hair. Her face was covered in blood. A squad of policemen stood and watched. The video cut back to the newsroom.

“This is breaking, the President has released a statement on the attack on the White House,” said the anchor.

They started a video of President Clark sitting in a plain office room.

“My fellow Americans, it is with great sadness that I must report that the White House has been attacked. I am safe, as are my family and the Vice President. Please know that I am fighting harder than ever.

“The leftist mob threatened our country’s seat this evening. The crown jewel of our beautiful nation - our great White House. They tried to kill me. But they couldn’t.”

Despite the fact Ethan had recorded the video himself an hour before, he couldn’t help but feel as though he was still watching President Clark. He felt the same swell of hope, of intention that had led him to join their cause. The techs had done great work, it looked and sounded real.

“I am sorry to admit, however, there was one casualty today.”

Ethan shot up, couldn’t speak, could barely contain himself. He felt every hair raise on the back of his neck. He felt a Secret Service guard loom close behind him. A picture of Ethan flashed on the screen - not him as Clark, but his face as it looked now. He shot panicked glances around the room. He hadn’t recorded any of this. Somehow the tech had spliced that together from the rest of the footage.

“A young man lost his life today, and his name was Ethan Carmichael. He was a hardworking intern who was deeply dedicated to the cause.

First he looked at Raimi, who wouldn’t meet his gaze. He took another long swig out of his water bottle. Then he looked to Schmidt, who shrugged his shoulders and made a hanging up motion with his hand.

“Oh my god, that’s so awful. Did you know him?”

“No, not personally.”

The President Clark on screen continued.

“I urge all of you to remain calm. To my constituents – they will never stop us. Now is not the time for fear, to hide at home. If you really believe in the cause, in beating back the forces of Satan, make yourself known. I want to see all of you at the polls and the rallies tonight. Do it for me. Do it for our future. Do it for Ethan.”

Schmidt slid him another piece of paper, reading HANG UP NOW.

“Sweetheart,” Ethan started. “I need to go now. Stay safe.”

Ethan tried to make it out the door, clung to the doorknob as Secret Service agents pinned him to the ground, his arm behind his back. He scream, swore, threw every insult he could until he felt the sharp pain in his arm. He felt the syringe deposit its load into his bloodstream, then he fell into a deep and powerful slumber.

Twelve hours later, Ethan awoke in a bedroom. His head hurt like shit, and his face burned. It took some minutes for Ethan to piece the night together - the Vice President, the explosion, the impression. As his eyes started to make sense of the shapes, colors, and lights around him, he pieced together the silhouette of the Vice President sitting next to his bed.

“He’s up,” shouted someone, from somewhere.

Ethan felt gauze taped to his nose and cheeks. He ripped them off and hobbled out of bed. His body felt big, heavy, slow. Through his hospital gown, he felt a sagging stomach, drooping fat on his arms that hadn’t been there before a few hours ago. He thought of making a run for the door, but he couldn’t take one guard, much less three.

No one stopped him as he hobbled towards the mirror. In front of him was something he’d been accustomed to - after hours in front of the AI screen, he’d become used to the President’s face looking back. But this was no screen. Ethan was dead, and President Clark lived.