Welcome To The Harem
Here It Is by David Hearne
Summary: Post-col. Part of the Leonard Cohen collection of stories.
TITLE: HERE IT IS (1 of 1) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE CLASSIFICATION: Post-colonization RATING: PG Send feedback to ottercrk@sover.net AUTHOR'S NOTE: Leonard Cohen seems to be the inner voice of "The X-Files." When I heard "In My Secret Life," I thought, "What a perfect MSR song." I knew that I would write a fic based on the song, even though it ended up being about William. "In My Secret Life" comes off Cohen's latest album. I've been listening to the other songs and feeling inspired by them as well. I decided to write a series of stories based on this album. Each fic can be read independently as well as in the order in which they were written. All of them are set in the post-colonization world. Cohen's lyrics are quoted at the end. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The Secretary of State had been the last Cabinet member to be replaced. The President wondered what the Secretary had been thinking in his last days. What conclusions had he made about the secret meetings held by the President and other Cabinet members? What did he feel as his colleagues behaved in stranger and stranger ways? The persistent calmness of the White House in a time when chaos had been overtaking the country may have frightened him. Such questions were vaguely interesting to the President, but they were unimportant. The new Secretary of State was now in place, preparing the United States of America and the world for the forthcoming changes. Reports on the process were encouraging. FEMA was keeping martial law in place. The virus had passed into the water supply. As other countries waited for the Americans to die, the President's country was being transformed into an incubator for the plague about to be unleased in six days. The U.S.A. had been chosen well as ground zero. Underneath its grand facade of democracy, corrupt men had held power. Those men had loved their secrets. It had been easy to hide one more secret among them. There had been problems, of course. The hybridization program getting out of control, the attempt by the powerful men to create a vaccine, the rebels...all of them had been difficulties, but they had been solved by the arrival of a new squad of enforcers. Despite the colonists' uneasiness toward hybrids, the 'super-soldiers' had excelled at paving the way for colonization. They had been the ones who terminated the hybridization program, rendered the vaccine useless, and smashed the rebellion from other worlds. Rebellion still existed on this world, but it didn't matter. Outposts like Valentine and the fort on the Mexican-American border could do nothing more than preserve a few humans. By December 22nd, the world would no longer be theirs. One problem still lingered, though. The Wandering Child. Information about The Child had begun as a trickle, then enlarged with each new story about a defeated platoon and a healed man. The President had been once inclined to dismiss The Child as a myth. When the stories could no longer be ignored, a team had been sent to investigate them. The team vanished. The President and his comrades then realized who was The Wandering Child. The realization hadn't frightened them; they hadn't known how to respond exactly. This child had been hidden from them for a long time. When the colonization process had started, they had decided that the child was now irrelevant -- and perhaps better forgotten. He had been, after all, never meant to exist. Besides, what could he do now? The final seconds had almost elapsed. What could one child do against the forces at work here? As he sat in the Oval Office, the President wasn't thinking about the Child. He was focused on the latest intelligence reports. He read that FEMA was directing its search for Skinner and Kersh in Oklahoma... Then he received a new message. It was relayed to his mind and made him look at a door. Someone was coming; someone who had just sauntered past the guards; someone who had entered the White House as if it was a convenience store; someone coming to meet the most powerful man in the world. The door was opened by a dark-haired boy. He was a few inches taller than the average eleven-year-old male. Dirt was smeared over his clothes and backpack. His shoelaces were worn. When he looked at the President, his expression was very calm. Without saying a word, the boy sat in a chair before the President's desk and placed his backpack on the floor. Seated in his chair behind the desk, the President returned an equally cool stare. "The Wandering Child, I presume," the President said. "My name's William." "I presumed that as well. I had also presumed that your powers no longer existed." "I brought them back." "Well..." The President stood up and walked to the other side of his desk. The six-foot-two-inch man looked down at the boy. "They can't help you now. You are now surrounded by replicants. You can't fight us all." William didn't blink. "What about your weakness?" The President smiled. "You mean, the magnetic ore? Our scanners have already examined you. You're not carrying any of it. The ore doesn't exist anywhere within ten miles." And William said, "It does if I say so." The President reacted as if he had been physically struck. He grabbed the edge of the desk behind him. His eyes widened while William's expression remained calm. The President stuttered, "You...you can't...can't..." "Yes, I can. It's easy. Watch..." The skeleton inside the President's body stiffened. Then he felt himself bending. William let him feel the pain for a few moments, then changed things again. He waited until the President was strong enough to talk. "It's impossible," the President gasped. "Just impossible...for you to do these things." "Why did you leave me with my mother?" The President looked at William with confusion. "When I was born," William said. "Why did you leave me with her?" The President stared at William for a long time, then carefully sat himself on the desk. He rubbed his knuckles while he spoke. "We thought that you were human at the time," he mumbled. "You were right." "No. No human could..." "I'm human. So are you." William left the chair. He reached for one of the President's hands. The President flinched. "I won't hurt you," William assured him. He gently held the President's wrist and turned the palm upwards. William passed his finger over the veins faintly visible through the skin. "Whatever they have done to you, this is human blood inside of you." "I...I don't understand..." "You were created by this government to serve it, but now you serve the colonists." William raised his solemn, handsome face. "Why do you have to serve anybody?" Astonishment took over the President's features as William sat back on his chair. "The world was going to change on December 22, 2012." "Ah...yes. Yes, that's the plan." William shook his head. "I said that it *was* going to change. No matter what the colonists would have done." "I still don't understand what you're saying." William looked over the President's shoulder. The President got the feeling that William was listening to another person. Only there was nobody else in the room. The boy turned his eyes back to the President. "Why do you think Gibson Praise is unique?" The President opened his mouth, then closed it. When he opened his mouth again, he said in a low voice, "Are you saying that there are others?" "'Where there is one, there is another and another and another.'" A smile rose on William's face, disrupting his usual solemn expression. "That's a line from 'Planet of the Apes.'" He nodded to the invisible figure in the room. "Right. The *real* one." "Wait a moment," the President said, his voice higher pitched than usual. "Have you met these other missing links?" The smile turned into a frown. "I have, but they're not 'missing links.' Gibson is a sign of what's coming. Or what was supposed to come." William stood up. He picked a sheet of paper from among other documents gathered on the desk. The words on the sheet were written in an ancient language. "The smoking man read the prophecy wrong," William turned to the air at his right and said, "Yes, you did. The human race was supposed to end in this year, but that was the *old* human race. Gibson was the first step toward a new kind of human." He looked at the President. "You are the second. I am the third." The President studied William's face for any hint of a lie. When he found none, he said -- "And after that?" William walked over to a window. He pointed upwards and said, "We will become what they fear." The President walked to William's side. He could see a point of light moving in the dark sky. "So," the President said, "they came here to stop a potential threat to them." "That's right." "If that's true, then why allow my kind to exist?" "They need your strength. But once colonization is completed..." "I see." The point of light abruptly stopped, then went straight up. "Why are you telling me this?" "So you know what your choices are. I was told that I had to choose between two sides. But there are really three." "And...you've chosen our side?" "I didn't say that." "When will you make your choice?" "You'll know when." The President didn't ask any more questions of William. As the boy continued to examine the dark sky, he said, "Have you ever seen 'Planet of the Apes?'" "I don't watch movies." That odd disruptive smile returned to William's face. "It's really cool. It's about..." The smile was replaced by a slightly uncomfortable expression. "It's about a man in a world controlled by beasts. He finds out that he's a beast too." The light vanished from the sky. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX "Here is your cross, "Your nails and your hill; "And here is your love, "That lists where it will." 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