Altimexis
-
Posts
1,083 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Forums
Stories
- Stories
- Story Series
- Story Worlds
- Story Collections
- Story Chapters
- Chapter Comments
- Story Reviews
- Story Comments
- Stories Edited
- Stories Beta'd
Blogs
Store
Help Center
Writing
Gallery
Events
Everything posted by Altimexis
-
For days it felt like I’d been floating in a dense fog. Nothing made sense as I felt like I was on fire sometimes, and other times I was freezing. Then things started to clear and now I found myself sitting on a log with my feet dangling in a stream. It was densely wooded where I was, with sunlight filtering its way through the tree canopy above me, feeling good as it landed on my bare shoulders. Looking down I noticed two things immediately. The first thing was that I was much younger than I s
- 4 comments
-
- 12
-
-
-
We pulled up in front of a huge glass and steel skyscraper - it looked to be forty or fifty stories high and, together with two shorter, but otherwise identical neighboring towers and two more under construction, dwarfed everything else in the surrounding neighborhood. “This is where you live?” I asked, stating the obvious. “Seven years now,” Jeremy answered as the doorman opened the door to the Limo. “Welcome home, Mr. President, the doorman said as he opened the door to the building for us.
-
“Dad?” my daughter asked me again as we sat together in her kitchen in her North Carolina home. “Out with it, how in the world do you know about Shy Drager syndrome?” I was trapped. How could I respond without tipping her off that I knew something? I was desperately trying to avoid turning her world upside down, but Sandy was smart. Unless I outright lied to her, she’d figure it out. On the other hand, she always could tell when I wasn’t telling the truth. No, lying was not an option. “I mean
-
One of the worst things about being a former U.S. president is that you can’t be spontaneous. Once you’ve sat in the Oval Office, you’re subject to Secret Service protection wherever you go. If you want to go to the theater, for example, you have to reserve a box and the Secret Service has to thoroughly inspect the place, well in advance of your visit. If there are any concerns, they’ll actually bring in bomb-sniffing dogs! And unless there is a separate, secure entrance you can use, you cannot
-
Friday, May 6, 2061 - Eighteen years after the assassination I had already buried one husband and watching my beloved Sammy lying in his hospital bed, separated from me by a protective plastic barrier, was almost more than I could take. We’d had seventeen wonderful years together as husbands and I knew I should have been grateful for the time we’d had, but it was difficult not to be bitter that he was being taken from me prematurely. He was just 65 years old at a time when life expectancy was ov
-
Monday, October 5, 2043 - Six Months after the Assassination The tremor in my right hand was only getting worse. It had started nearly a year ago when I started noticing difficulty walking through doorways. It seemed like such a silly thing then. I would be walking along and the moment I came to a doorway, my body would literally freeze and I would have to concentrate on moving forward. It was as if there were an invisible barrier that kept me from going through. When I started having the black
-
Sunday, April 5, 2043 - Sixteen Days after the Assassination It was taking every ounce of self-control I had to keep from crying. As Dad said, America was looking to us to guide them in mourning Pop. Dad was the mourner-in-chief and Sandy and I were the first family of mourning. The strange thing was that we were also the first family again, for real. I still couldn’t believe that Dad was now the President. I sure hoped someone didn’t try to kill Dad too. At least all the people responsible for
-
Sunday, April 5, 2043 - Sixteen Days after the Assassination This had to be one of the saddest days of my life and, yet, I felt pure joy as I sat by my husband’s side. Rick had made a full recovery and that in itself was worth celebrating. I myself had been cleared of all charges stemming from the assassination of David Reynolds. Although there was no proof that I had not played a part, nor could there ever be, the President himself assured me that there was no evidence whatsoever tying me to hi
-
Wednesday, April 1, 2043 - Twelve Days after the Assassination There was no warning when they broke through. We were eating what we assumed was lunch when we heard a loud crash coming from the store room. Before we could even react, several heavily armed soldiers with headlamps burst into the main room, blinding us with their lights. With weapons drawn, but pointed down, they were upon us in no time. How the Hell did they get in here so fast? The nex
-
The Congressional chamber was abuzz with activity. That Jeremy would be making the announcement of Schroeder’s suicide here was amazing in itself, however my brother-in-law felt strongly that members of the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court should be present when he made the announcement, hence the change in venue. It was a last minute decision, and it was the right decision. Although it looked and felt like my brother-in-law was about to give a State of the Union address, this was still
-
“You look awful, Dad,” I heard my son say as I stared down into my full cup of coffee. “You haven’t even touched your coffee, he went on, and I bet you haven’t had anything to eat yet, have you?” Finally looking up into his face, I saw nothing but concern. Scarcely a week had passed since he’d lost one of his fathers and, here he was, worrying about his other dad too. “I’m sorry, Josh,” I finally managed to say. “There’s just been so much going on and I’m not getting nearly enough sleep. I gue
-
What a fucking mess we had. ‘So many mysteries,’ I thought to myself as I lay awake in bed. How ironic it was that this was the earliest I’d gotten to bed in a week, and yet I couldn’t fall asleep. I had too fucking much on my mind. It was a time of grave peril. And now we had Bruce Warren in our midst. I had very mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, it was good that we had an independent set of eyes and ears to substantiate what was happening. That Brad trusted him went a long way to as
-
The sound of the Promenade from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition roused me from what had been a restless sleep. The ringtone was specific to only one person, Bob Jamison, and hearing it first thing in the morning could only mean trouble. Stumbling around in the twilight haze of the limited sleep I’d gotten, I finally located the source of the offending music. Phones had changed a lot in the thirty plus years since I’d gotten my first one as a kid but, unless one opted for an implanted mod
-
“Check!” the Palestinian Prime Minister called out after taking one of my knights. The two of us were playing a game of chess to pass the time while Altaf took an early afternoon snooze. Although I was never a major fan of the game, that I could play it at all was something of a miracle to me, even after all the years since I was cured of my Down’s syndrome. A broad smile took over my face as I moved my king into the position he’d vacated and called out, “Check mate, my friend.” “How in the .
-
The shrill sound of my phone awoke me from what was a troubled sleep. Kurt and I had been up until about 3:30, attending an impromptu Cabinet meeting at Jeremy’s request. Although Schroeder might still be the President, technically in any case, our threat to make use of the twenty-fifth amendment had tied his hands so effectively that, had Jeremy not stepped into the void, America would have been rudderless. So what the fuck was my phone doing, ringing not even three hours later? Kurt didn’t ev
-
“Mmmm . . . this is nice,” my boyfriend said as his lips separated from mine. I was certain the grin on my face matched the one I was seeing on his. It might have been only a few days since we met, but we already knew we were made for each other. Alan was my soul mate. Around us the sounds of explosions echoed throughout our living room in the Underground White House as Tie Fighters clashed with rebel X-wing aircraft, high above the Death Star. We were watching the holographic re-make of Star W
-
“Get rid of the ball, Kyle!” I shouted out as one of our boys found himself hemmed in. We were all in the back yard playing a game of touch football. It was a needed distraction from the events of the last few days. I was coaching both teams of boys, many of whom weren’t at all athletic. Still, physical activity is one of the best ways to deal with stress and we’d all been under way too much stress. “Get rid of the ball!” I shouted again, but it was too late. In mere seconds, Dare was triumphan
-
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States!” echoed from the holovision in our private quarters. We were on board the train that was ferrying my brother’s body back to Washington. The President’s news conference, already delayed from the originally scheduled time of 10 AM, was finally getting started. Joining me in watching the news conference were my wife, Kayla, and my best friend, Bruce Warren, himself a reporter for one of the largest news organizations in the world. The trai
-
“I haven’t seen you this excited in a long time,” my wife, Cathy, commented as we worked our way through the residential blocks of the Underground White House. “That’s because it’s not everyday I get a leg up on Trevor Austin,” I replied. Yes, I’d really pulled a fast one this time. Putting extra manpower on the subject, I’d managed to get a major lead on the true identity of President Schroeder’s pick to succeed Trevor as the National Security Advisor. It turned out that Richard Samuelsson was
-
I awoke with a start to an incessant beeping sound that at first I couldn’t place. As the fog of sleep lifted from my brain, it dawned on me that the beeping sound was that of the alarm clock on my phone. I was in our quarters in the Underground White House and had just lain down, seemingly moments before, to take a brief nap before starting another day in crisis. Actually, I’d finally gotten to bed at 1:45, so I’d slept scarcely more than three hours. Even that was more than I should have allow
- 1 comment
-
- 10
-
-
-
-
Friday, March 27, 2043 - One Week after the Assassination I wasn’t sure when I became aware of being awake. It wasn’t like waking up from a dream. No, this was different. I slowly became aware of myself, but my thoughts were jumbled and I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten here - wherever ‘here’ might be. Actually, perhaps the most disquieting thing about my situation as I regained consciousness was that I had no idea where I was. With great effort, I tried to concentrate on what I could remember
-
Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - Twenty-five Years before the Assassination I groaned at the sound of the alarm clock as it woke me from what had been a fitful night’s sleep. Today was the first day of school and my first day as a high school English teacher. I was excited, yet nervous as hell, and it felt like I’d hardly slept at all. Just a few months before, I'd successfully defended my dissertation and had been awarded a doctorate in Education from New York University’s prestigious Steinhardt S
-
The tension in the room was palpable as members of the President’s Cabinet - David Reynolds’ Cabinet - slowly filed into the Situation Room in the Underground White House. In not quite a week, we’d lost David, the Vice-President, the Secretary of State, Karen Richards, and my longtime friend, Paul Manning. Now David’s Secretary of Health, President Schroeder’s Secretary of State and my longtime friend, Altaf El Tahari, was missing in Israel. I knew that President Schroeder blamed me for Paul Man
-
Unemployment. I’d been working in one form or another since I was a teenager, so the notion of being unemployed for the first time in my life was a strange one. Not that I needed to worry about money. I was the majority stockholder of one of the largest Internet security companies in America - a company I’d built up from the small, local security firm my father established some fifty years ago. My husband was still the President’s chief of staff and we co-owned a house in Georgetown with Jeremy
-
“What a shocker!” Bruce exclaimed as we sat down together to eat lunch and discuss the recent events in the Middle East. “I can’t believe Paul Manning’s dead! I’ve known him as long as I’ve known you . . . not that he and I were ever friends but, Gees, he was one of your best friends.” “Saying it’s a shocker is a bit like saying New York’s a big city,” I replied, too shocked myself to cry. Moments before, President Schroeder had told the American people about the latest developments in the Midd
