President Clint Williams and his mistress, Laura Silvan, promised to make this inauguration much more than a healing process. They promised to make it a coronation.

"Call me a radical, but I'm not so sure a monarchy would be all that bad for America," the President was quoted in a favorable pre-inauguration interview in the New York Times flyer. "A monarch has the ability to move decisively, to use genius rather than mediocrity to forward the process of peace! To use science!"

If in the eyes of the president and the New York Times the inauguration was the coronation of a king, it was also the ascension of a new queen. Laura Silvan, the emperor's first concubine, was to be made goddess of the political heavens. It was Camelot redux.

First Lady Annette Elise Underwood-Williams hadn't even moved all her belongings out of the White House yet. The rumor was that First Lady Annette was the typical tabloid suicidal - soon headed for the Betty Ford clinic. It was even rumored that she was a Black Orchid addict.

The government sanctioned propagandists at Facely, Gaggle, FederalYouTube, Twister and Bang were in overdrive with full blanket coverage of the First Lady and her insanity. But covering even more of the digital spectrum was coverage of the First Concubine, Laura Silvan.

The President and chief consort's inauguration walk down Pennsylvania Avenue was particularly bold. Despite the threat of terrorist attack, Laura and the President walked hand in hand down the broad boulevard, greeting their public with smiles and royal waves. The First Couple seemed remarkably self assured, free from worry that some stray rebel among the admiring horde would use a contraband assault rifle on them. And well they should have looked confident, the threat of assassination was so grave that stand-in doubles actually made the walk, and the crowds were packed with adulating government workers unlikely to upset the applecart of pomp and circumstance. This was the brink of a New World Order!

"Peace is my mission," the President began his acceptance speech on the Capital steps. "Human evolution is the mechanism!" Dressed in only a tuxedo against the cold wind blowing down Pennsylvania Avenue, he looked resplendent - in control of his destiny and the destiny of his nation. Heck, the destiny of the World!

"In order to achieve peace, there needs to be a force strong enough to cross the bridge to the future. Democratic institutions served this country well for nearing three hundred years of our nation's existence, but those forces have not been sufficient to guarantee peace in our society. Our Revised Constitution is a living document, it is not an excuse for inactivity! So must our moral structure come alive to create a new political destiny! A New World Order!"

Cheers from the homogeneous crowd of Friends of Clint Williams, though what in heavens name he had just babbled they had no clue.

"Our environment is at risk. The racist gap between the rich and the poor continues to rise! Crime, rape and violence dominate our streets. Contraband assault rifles are still in the hands of millions of law breakers. Global Warming has raised ocean levels by a full half inch and will continue its devastation until New York and Washington DC are covered! Never before have our children been at such risk from White Supremacists! It is time to act decisively to put an end to the injustice, to mold our Revised Constitution to meet the needs of the present! Our forefathers would never have accepted our inaction if they knew we held the solution to reverse the decay of our civilization in our hands."

It was a speech driven by the appeasement of the pollsters. Based on the legalistic idea that all the world's sins and pet peeves could be solved if only we had someone strong enough to make a law decreeing an end to the irksome realities of everyday living. The astonishing thing was not that a President would give such a speech, but that he seemed to believe his own hype. Even more astonishing was that his adulating countrymen believed the vacuous promises.

"Our country has in the past had no room for an aristocracy, or a king." the President continued his convincing bombing run on the concept of freedom. "But what it does need now is a Commander in Chief capable of carrying on this battle for the peace of our nation, and the world! I will use my constitutional authority as Commander in Chief to set priorities in stopping the rape of our environment, enforcing gender equality, equalizing wages between the rich and poor, banning the ownership of weapons and creating a just society for our children. And I will assure those endowed with the color white pay for their centuries of aggression!"

It was a fine speech, a laundry list of doing good. I would have voted for Williams, if I'd heard this speech at the age of eighteen. But it was a speech no different from one Mussolini could have given in Italy during the second World War. The trains will run on time! Wise management of industry and society by gifted technocrats governing a pliable population was the essence of fascism. The only difference was that Mussolini had lacked a bio-warfare virus capable of rendering his population docile enough to make his schemes work.

But enough of political babble, the real essence of government is the concerts and parties thrown for the elite.

In a departure from the past (an admission of the star quality of politics), Laura Silvan was scheduled to begin the festivities that afternoon by singing at the Kennedy Center. A Tribute To Our President, the invitations said. A tribute to World Peace and a GreenWorld. This president had tuned the playboy Kennedy model to a fine art with the acquisition of Laura Silvan as a trophy, replete with his version of Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday Mr. President.

I found out that Sapphire had decided there was no more fitting place to end the reign of President Williams than at the Kennedy Center, a theater named for a President who had spent his life chasing skirt. I was at the same moment both drawn and horrified by the thought of Sapphire taking matters into her own hands and becoming a modern John Wilkes Boothe redux. But violence never solves anything, it only leads to more bloodshed.

It was Sapphire who on her own decided to kidnap the President. She didn't tell me, because she knew I'd object. Sapphire knew I still held out hope that democratic processes and good men in government could still turn things around. Good men would surely impeach the President and bring sanity back to the world. I only found out about the plan after Sapphire had left to carry it out and I knew in my heart I had to stop this folly before innocent people were hurt. I followed Sapphire cross country over the Freedom Railroad that had grown up. I wasn't sure how I would get in to the Kennedy Center, given it was crawling with Secret Service and the Capitol Police Praetorian Guard.

It was Sapphire who easily gained admission to the Kennedy Center for a small band of kidnappers. Through attendance at Mahdi Ahmadi's numerous lobbying affairs, Sapphire had come to know Harley, a secret service agent assigned to the First Lady.

"My family was threatened because of my involvement on behalf of the First Lady," Harley told Sapphire. "Persona non-grata after twenty years in the Secret Service! I have a bone to pick with the president." Harley had a knowledge of the stage hallways that laced the structure of the Kennedy Center Theater.

Sapphire's team's other members were nameless but ruthless, made so by their having lost lovers or children to the inoculation campaign. One was a housewife (a Gold Star mother), another a marine. It was supposed to be a bloodless affair, a kidnapping where they would force President Williams to confess his crimes live over Social Media, but it was a mission they knew was likely doomed. Sadly also doomed was the idea of non-violence. Confronted in a hallway at the Kennedy Center, the housewife dispatched two Presidential Secret Service men without hesitation, the first with a garrote, then another by knife. The course was set and there was no turning back.

The gliteratti filled the auditorium to the brim, chatting assuredly, believing themselves protected by the power of this most gifted president. Many were large contributors to the President's campaign and had easy access, as well as immunity from the inoculation campaign (why convert the already converted?). Others were obviously infected with ANS and were there to demonstrate solidarity with the man they thought able to save them. President Williams call for special powers to care for the health challenged was even then being debated in the hallways of Congress. Indeed, Speaker of the House Rory Reid and Senate Majority Leader Abe Amabo were also in attendance (though from the opposition Republicrat party). They could feel which way the political winds were blowing.

A rush of silence crossed the theater as a sole sleek figure made her entrance onstage. "I want to dedicate this first song to the President of the World, my hero, Clint Williams," Laura Sylvan spoke confidently, regally.

The President nodded approvingly from his box and Laura began to sing a cloying ditty.

There's a star in the sky, it's a blazing new light
Bringing peace and love and an end to the fight
No more fear, no more wars, no more suffering
Please greet the man, who should be our next king!

At least it wasn't "Happy Birthday Mister President" a la Marilyn Monroe.

Each time Laura sang the refrain there were greater roars of approval from the crowd. I thought the song a bit pretentious, it lacked a soul. It certainly wasn't vintage Laura Silvan, perhaps her heart wasn't in this after all.

I hadn't realized just how powerful the fighting algorithms that ran my software were until I found myself clinging to a dark scaffolding high above the Lincoln Center stage. It was possible to wedge myself along a crevice, up a wall, until I was near the President's viewing box. I could feel my heart pounding as I contemplated one last time what Sapphire was about to do. Even a madwoman doesn't enter into an attempt to assassinate the president of the United States without having debated endlessly the need for such an action.

Enough contemplation. Sapphire pulled herself over the box railing and uneasily confronted the future ruler of the world. God save my soul, I thought as I stared at the frightened faces in the booth.

"Mr. President," Sapphire looked deep into his frightened eyes and pointed her gun at his temple. You could see her mind change,she no longer was conducting a kidnapping but an assassination. "Sic semper tyranis! Death to the tyrant!" Sapphire yelled!

As she pulled the trigger, a secret service agent hidden along the front row leaped and tackled Sapphire, and what was to have been a fatal bullet instead embedded itself in the wall. The agent was only doing his job, Sapphire was only following her conscience.

We were instantly caught in the glare of stage lights that panned to our position. As we wrestled, screams rose from the crowd as they sensed the commotion. The box cleared, the President clambering over others to leave first. I snapped the humerus bone of the secret service agent, which seemed to immobilize him without doing irreparable damage, and then I flash evaluated my future in light of the rapidly changing situation.

While I had been quite prepared to give up my life in exchange for that of a tyrant, the assassination attempt had failed and now I found myself in the unpleasant situation of having to run for my life. I jumped from the theater box and into the scattering crowd, fortunately not breaking any of my own limbs in the process. Shots were fired in pursuit of me, winging one helpless bystander who began to scream in pain..

We'd been betrayed, too many things were going wrong, this was all falling apart too logically. Shots rang out, that told me one of our commandos had been executed. An arm reached through a side entrance and pulled me in. It was Sapphire.

"What the hell happened," I yelled.

"No time," she returned. The doorway was taking a pinging hail of bullets. We raced down the corridor, through a stage entrance, followed hot by at least three tuxedoed agents firing semi-automatics. Down a series of corridors, only to find waiting what I thought was my mortal enemy. Laura Silvan.

"Follow me," Laura commanded.

The jig was up, there was nothing we could do, nothing but follow this woman who would likely betray us the first chance she got.

I leveled my Beretta at her, she tensed expecting to be shot.

"She's on our side," Sapphire urged.

We exited to a waiting limousine, black and long with glass as dark as night. As soon as the door slammed, we were off in a screech of tires.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked.

"Because I love you," Laura said. "And I love Sapphire."

"Geez, I can't believe this," I blew up. "Do you understand what is going on? Do you have any clue what kind of world you've helped create?"

"I don't think you understand, Steven. I know very well that Clint is on a destructive path."

"He's a megalomaniac you mean," I blustered.

"Yes, he is that. I realize that now." Laura looked at the floor as if ashamed. "But the only hope you have is to trust me." She looked at me with those eyes that would melt obsidian. "Driver, pull over here," she commanded, and Sapphire and I were left to fend for ourselves on the backstreets of Washington D.C.

It was as if nothing had happened, total control of the media made it possible to pretend that no opposition to the President existed and no attempt had been made on his life. Facely, Twister, Gaggle, FederalYoutube, Bang - had wiped and scoured the Internet clean of any mention of a disruption at the Kennedy Center.

But the DarkWeb knew. And the Freedom Networks knew.

From a small hideaway in an abandoned house, Sapphire and I watched Web TV that evening, hunted beasts once again. At the inauguration ball, transmitted to the corners of a transfixed earth, the President began to dance with Laura, and it was something out of Cinderella. The Government social media spinmeisters missed no opportunity to make this into another Camelot photo-op for the President and his First Mistress. This was what the public expected; ever since they'd given up the notion that private or public morality was required of their President, the White House had become the national mythic soap opera.

The First Couple looked regal, twirling to the center of the dance floor and gazing at each other as though they were deep in love. The twinge of jealousy and hurt I felt at this scene was so deep it made Ell noticeably uncomfortable. Jealous software!

According to the political commentators, the glitter and pageantry were supposed to miraculously turn into wise environmental regulation, welfare reform, and even a coherent foreign policy. But all that glitters is not gold.

"Mr. President, the vaccine dispensed by Ultima Pharmaceutical seems to have rather strong psychotropic effects." A rather insolent and obviously uninoculated reporter thrust his microphone at the President in an unguarded moment. "Is it possible that we are not on a road leading to peace, but to total anarchy?"

The President raised his fists into the air in a gesture of power, his temples throbbing with blood pulsed by an overwrought heart.

"How dare you question me like that!" The President screamed. "I am the greatest peacemaker ever known! I am King of the entire world! Greater than Alexander, Greater than Caesar! I am a God on planet Earth!"