Washington, D.C. --In the first of what could become a series of last ditch efforts to rehabilitate his tarnished image as a liberal and progressive after losing Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat and his party’s filibuster proof (though still possessing a so-called supermajority in the house) to Republican, Scott Brown, President Barack reluctantly decided it is time once more for ‘Obama Girl’ to work her magic, regenerating the faithful.
“Are you sure there is no other way,” said President Barack Obama as he sat in the Oval Office behind his desk. His back turned to his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel and company as he stared at his own reflection, which shined back at him off the surface of the windowpane, D.C. city lights twinkling like stars in the dark outside in the distance.
“No. Mr. President,” replied the president’s chief of staff as he motioned with his hand for a Naval officer with a black attaché case handcuffed to wrist to step forward. “There’s no other way.”
Removing a metallic blue key that hung from his neck by a silver chain, Obama turned his chair around to face the locked black attaché case lying on his desk.
Obama looked up at his chief of staff, who while shaking his head no, mouthed with his lips in utter silence: “There’s no other way.”
A now decisive Obama with a quick turn of his metallic blue key opened the black attaché case. Reaching inside, he removed a red plastic coated keycard and without hesitation broke it in half, pulling out a piece of paper from inside.
Written on it were a seemingly random sequence of letters and numbers.
As another Naval officer handed the president the red crisis line phone, Obama paused a moment to look over at Rahm Emanuel once more. Again, his chief of staff mouthed to him the words, “There’s no other way.”
“NORAD?” said an assertive Obama. “This is your president speaking. Be advised I am ordering you to release agent code name, ‘V’ –”
“-- That’s ‘V’ as in Valkyrie,” said the chief of staff, pulling away the red phone away from Obama’s ear. “Execute emergency shadow government executive order code name ‘Valkyrie’.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Obama, taking back the red phone from Rahm Emanuel before correcting himself. “I meant ‘V’ as in ‘V for Vendetta…No. Wait. That’s not what I meant, either. I meant ‘Obama Girl’.”
“Sir?’ came a shaky reply from the voice of a young inexperienced officer on the other end of the red phone.
“You heard me!” yelled out Obama, attempting to exude confidence by raising his voice. “That’s an order! Confirmation code is as follows: Echo, Charlie, Whiskey, Bravo, 1,0,1. Now release ‘Obama Girl’. You got that solider?”
“Yes sir! Echo, Charlie, Whiskey, Bravo, 1,0,1,” repeated the voice over the red phone. “Immediately, sir!”
Afterwards, Obama just sat there with the red phone at his ear long after the dial tone and recorded operator message played into his ear, as his chief of staff cleared everyone out of the room.
“Now it’s time to activate the signal, Mr. President,” said Rahm Emanuel as he slowly removed the red phone from the president’s ear, placing it back on its receiver.
“Already?” said Obama shaken out of his daze like state as he looked around the empty Oval Office. “Hey. where did everybody go?”
“You did the right thing, Mr. President,” said a reassuring chief of staff as he guided Obama’s hand to the upper drawer of the desk. “Now you have to activate the signal.”
A still seemingly dazed president attempted to resist, wrestling Rahm Emanuel to the ground, but his chief of staff easily overpowered him.
“Now, now, Mr. President,” said Rahm Emanuel as he cradled and rocked Obama in his arms, stroking his head. “You knew one day it might come down to this. Now activate the signal.”
Too weak to walk on his own strength, Obama was carried in the arms of Rahm Emanuel back to his presidential chair. Obama reached under his desk, pushed on an unseen panel and out slid open a hidden drawer with a flashing red button in it. Slowly the president reached out to push it, but he froze.
“Here. I’ll do it,” said the emboldened chief of staff but even he paused, hesitating a moment before finally pushing it. “There…. See, nothing to it.”
“My God,” said Obama with his chief of staff standing at his side looking out the window of the Oval Office at the signal spotlight that shined over Capitol Hill reflecting the silhouette of the ‘Obama Girl’ off the clouds in the night sky. “What have we done?”
“I am Shiva,” answered Rahm Emanuel paraphrasing Robert J. Oppenheimer director of the ‘Manhattan Project’ quoting ancient holy Hindu text when he witnessed the explosion of the first atomic bomb, lighting up the skies of New Mexico with a power thousands of times hotter than that of the surface of the Sun. “The destroyer of worlds.”
“How long…how long do you think we got?” asked Obama recognizing the same quiver in his voice that belonging to the young officer he spoke with over the phone moments before, but now seemed like an age ago.
“It will be a matter of seconds now,” replied Rahm Emanuel as he calmly lit up a cigarette. “She’ll be here in a matter of seconds.”
“Is there… is there --” hesitated and stuttered the president.
“Is there enough time to can you call in your wife and children and say goodbye?” interrupted the chief of staff.
“No,” said Obama reaching his hand out to Rahm Emanuel. “Is there a chance I can take a drag on your cigarette?”
“Sorry, Mr. President…” replied Rahm Emanuel as he causally tossed the mostly intact cigarette to the floor, extinguishing it with a twist of his shoe. “Not enough time.”
“I use to rule the world…” Obama began to sing himself the lyrics from the song ‘Via la Vida’ from the rock group ‘Coldplay’ as he sank from his chair to the seeming safety and security under his desk. “Seas would rise when I gave the word. Now in the morning I sleep alone, sweep the streets I use to own….”
Hundreds of miles away in a fallow field somewhere in the state of Wyoming, the surface hatch of a missile silo slides open. A monument later, a scantily clad ‘Obama Girl’ emerges, oblivious to either her recent captivity or release, dancing and swaying to the iTunes playing on her iPod plugged into her head. Catching a scent in the air, however, she stops in her tracks and with a single bound takes flight to the star studded heavens above, moving across the midnight sky like a streaking comet, headed in the direction of Washington D.C.
Copyright © 2008-2010 by Robert W. Armijo
