(Page 1 of 2) A Bittersweet Anniversary by Christopher Alen F.SUMMARY: Submission for July flash fiction contest, "Deception."A Bittersweet Anniversary.
For sixteen years I've been holding up this damned illusion. Sixteen years spent just like tonight--strolling with an aire of magnanimity through galas and balls, glad-handing, smiling for the imagers, patting part-time compatriots and false comrades on the back, lauding them like heroes. Champions. Role models.
My wife--my perfect, beautiful wife--glowing with enhanced alabaster skin, her dress charged with subtle magic to reflect her curves seductively, yet shield her sexuality. Non-racially-indicative eyes, shaped by the Surgeon Magus into perfect ovoid forms that are neither European, Iranian, Russian, Japanese, Angolan. Variably coloured to reflect light that is familiar, yet unplaceable. Selected for her average height, average build, average tone of voice. Her impeccably calm demeanour. Pleasant. Not so pleasant as to be unnerving, oh no--simply pleasant. Constructed into a version of honesty.
A journo strolls up to me casually from amidst the throng of people. Here, I am nested in an envelope of invisible security. Perhaps it is a prison, and it's mine to savour openly. To relish openly the free air, the free conversation, the free speech. Free food and free drinks, expensed to my supporters. Cash donations, all made freely and openly--of course--and the journos there to document it all. Smiling and ubiquitous, forming open and penetrating questions:
// Sir, in your policy amendment dated June of last year, you indicated that the government would begin to approach the question of disabling the Nexus Environmental Management Systems and returning our lands to natural homeostasis. As the stated objective of your leadership since your Beautiful Coup, can you clarify the progress that has been made in this endeavour?
Twinkling eyes flicker with something between glee and shame--the journo knows this is the disguise. Using terms like "natural" to openly identify the concerns of the people. This is the mask we wear. Sixteen years since I took over and still the journos regale the people with tales from The Beautiful Coup.
I'm quite sure some antagonistic miscreant journo coined that particular turn of phrase in the days of my first term. It meets all the criteria--enamoured of my sovereignty, glorifying the revolution while measured against realism. This is not a lie--it was a coup of sorts. Of sorts. But the referent remains. The punk journo reconstructing the history of my calculated ascension, equivocating The Beautiful and The Bloodless. A detail yet to be suppressed.
But I smile at the journo anyway, and his imager staggering behind him--the lens embedded into his forehead, drawing power and lending added sight that the human brain was never meant to accommodate, attached through coils of magic to highly controlled memory forms. The implants producing a state much like drunkenness--a fusion-via-quanta-induced fugue. That makes it sound sciencey and benign.
// Excellent question, thank you. But must we talk shop? It's our anniversary! Come, let's share a drink!
Pleasantries upon pleasantries.
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