Chapter One

              Chapter One

“Mr. President, the press is demanding a statement,” the presidential adviser Mark Dean stated as he rushed into the Oval Office. The President, John Camerie looked up from the bill he needed to review and stared at his adviser.

“About what this time,” he asked, “I haven’t been informed of any new scandal?”

“Apparently we have been using our NASA satellites to spy on other countries instead of looking for extraterrestrial life,” Mark stated as he moved to sit in one of the two chairs in front of the President’s desk. He watched the President sigh and take off his glasses to rub the side of his left eye the way he did every time he had to deal with one of the asinine news stories being printed these days.

The President was only Forty-six but ever since taking over the Presidency he looked a lot older. His normally vibrant red hair had dulled and become peppered with grey. His blue eyes were dull and he had bags under them, his normally pale white skin looked grey under most lights now. When standing out of the public eye he stood hunched over, so his normally imposing 6 foot 4 inch wrestlers body looked broken down. If this is what being President did to a body, Mark promised himself he would never aspire to the job.

“Get the Head of NASA to call me and we will make a joint statement. I swear the press has nothing better to do these days,” the President said as he pushed his chair away from the beautiful Mahogany desk that came with being President. He had only been doing the job for a year and already he was sick of it. He had no idea how he was going to survive another three years. He knew when he started running it would be hard, but he didn’t realize that it was nearly impossible to get anything done.

All four political parties including his own were making the job harder than it needed to be. He spent nearly every waking moment basically mediating disputes between parties while still trying to keep the country running. The other countries were just as bad. He was called upon to be the moral compass for the rest of the world, and to monitor them like they were his children. He was tempted every time he was called by the United Nations to mediate some dispute, or talk to this or that dictator, or keep a country from starting a nuclear war, to go back to the early 20^th Century way of thinking and be a neutral country again. He wanted to tell all the other countries to bite him, and cut all ties and go back to focusing on fixing the problems in the U.S.

But he couldn't do that. He was the President of the United States of America, the world’s mother. He gave a harsh sigh, and turned his back to Mark. 

“Ask the Head of NASA how close we are to finalizing a plan for the faster than light engine they have been working on,” that was the only part of the job he liked, getting to know what America’s greatest scientific minds were up. The thought that they might have faster than light travel in the next ten years made him giddy. He couldn't wait until America could proclaim to the world they were the first to create F.T.L drives.

He turned back to see Mark making a call on his cellphone. He watched as Mark started writing rapidly on the notepad he always carried, as he converse with whoever was on the phone. John had a thought, maybe instead of running for President he should have just been the adviser. It seemed like a less stressful job. He grabbed his cellphone and shot off a text to one of the chef’s in residence at the white house asking for dinner. It was 8:30 pm and he wasn't even a third of the way through all the things he needed to do that day.  He sat back down and returned to reading the bill he was pouring over before he was interrupted.

He looked up as his door was opened again and the Secretary of Defense, Henry Lancome, came rushing in the room. What now he thought to himself.

“John we have a problem, the Russians are beside themselves. Apparently they believe the story that we are spying on them using NASA satellites,” the Secretary of Defense said as he took the other chair in front of the President’s desk. He immediately took his tablet out and pulled up the Russian news article, showing the Russian President calling out the United States about the spying.

            “How did they get that article so fast? Mark just informed me of it a few minutes ago,” John said rubbing his left eye once again. “Did they get sent an advanced copy of it or something? We need to get this cleared up as soon as possible,” He turned to Mark, “Schedule a press conference for tomorrow morning. Set up a phone conference with all the countries we are accused of spying on in the article. Henry is there any solid proof in that article I need to worry about?”

“Nothing we can’t easily discount,” Henry informed him as he glanced through the article. “They have no hard facts, just speculation based on a “source” close to the spying.”

“Find out who their so called source is. I want to know where they got their information. Make sure NASA checks their security over just in case,” John said thinking what else could go wrong.