Futures Part Fourteen

fiction
Futures Part Thirteen

Natalie hadn't voted in the election. She had never voted. Never even registered to vote. She was pretty sure that even if she had, her identity would have held, but she decided she didn't want to chance it. She had spent years living a very quiet, very nonpolitical life. Waving off anyone who wanted to talk about the latest news out of DC with a laugh and "I'm just not interested. I know I should be, but I've never been able to convince myself that my one little vote would matter."

What she was more worried about was her one vote mattering a great deal. That somehow the electronic fingerprint on that one vote would notify The Home Office where she was and her safe little life would no longer be hers. She knew, she really did, that it wasn't likely. That if they had figured out she wasn't where she was supposed to be by now they weren't likely to. Or at least they wouldn't have any way of figuring out just exactly what happened.

She did spare a thought for whoever was living life as Sarah. Someone was pretending to be her. She knew that much. She had seen her at the original switch. Talked to her, given her a few pointers on how to be Sarah. She had to admit she had looked so much like her that it would have fooled anyone. Natalie believed that the new Sarah was still doing her best Sarah work. In fact at this point the new Sarah had been Sarah longer than Natalie had. And since she hadn't been Sarah either, really, she felt more like Natalie now than anyone else.

The benefits of reaching out to the The Company when she did. They had taken care of everything. New identity. New life. All she had to agree to was turning over her identity as Sarah and keeping quiet about it all. Since she didn't want The Home Office to ever find her she agreed.

So she knew that Sarah was doing well and living her new life in Upstate New York after her time in Nebraska. A placeholder position. She had been pulled from her assignment as Olivia North's campaign manager and right hand woman. Or more accurately she had asked to be removed. Had said she felt as though she was becoming less than objective. After what had happened with Jayde they were quick to commend her for letting them know and also letting her know she would still need to spend some time in Nebraska before getting her retirement position.

That had been the only real tricky part. What if her time in Nebraska revealed her arrangement with the competition? Or worse, what if it led her to believe she was wrong and needed to confess?

She had held that stupid meme in her head the whole time as a talisman. The one that had started her down the path. The one she was no longer sure she had seen organically.

"Are we the baddies?"

It had popped up in a thread discussing a fairly innocuous government policy. One that Representative North was trying to get changed. One that she was getting a lot of push back on. And then that stupid meme. "Are we the baddies?" and she wasn't sure if it was meant to say the rest of the government was the baddies or if Olivia was. But she knew how it landed in her gut. How it felt in that moment. And how she couldn't shake it.

Was she the baddie? Was The Home Office? Was she getting too close to Olivia to be objective? That was the only answer she knew for sure was yes. A few weeks after seeing that meme she was contacted by someone from The Company. She hadn't realized at the time who they were, of course, but the courting began that day. She could see it now. The only thing she was never clear on was if they had started it or if her conscience had. Either way, she had resigned her post, spent 3 months in Nebraska, then given all of her electronics and identification to a woman who looked like her and...

Now she was Natalie. She no longer looked like Sarah. She no longer thought of herself as Sarah. Sarah felt like someone she knew in another life, and that was as true as anything.

The one thing she was never sure of was had she been wrong. Had she been wrong when she was with The Home Office or had she been wrong when she had let The Company step in. She guessed that now she would find out.

For the past few weeks things had been in motion.

Messages sent frantically to a phone that sat at the bottom of Crater Lake.

Agents sent to a job site only to discover that their relocated employee had never been there at all.

A personal tarot reading laid out on a table in San Francisco.

And many others.

All of them saying, "It's Begun"

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Hail to the Chief began as President North stepped to the podium.