The Empathy Protocol (Part I)
How to Manufacture a Soul
Author’s Note
Every era breeds its own kind of madness. Ours prefers charisma.
Malignant narcissism isn’t vanity. It’s a severe personality disorder — a fusion of grandiosity, aggression, and emotional void. Those who live with it don’t simply crave admiration; they depend on it like oxygen. They cannot love without control, or apologize without strategy. For them, power is proof of existence.
History remembers such people. Some wore crowns. Some wore uniforms. Some held office. A few changed the world — none for the better. Their stories always end the same way: in applause, then ashes.
I’ve often wondered what would happen if this condition could be treated — not through therapy or insight (those require humility) — but through chemistry. A drug. Something that could make such a person feel.
Would that be healing — or just another form of power?
That question led to this story: a completely fictional account of what might unfold if a future U.S. president, afflicted with malignant narcissism, were “treated” with such a drug. It is not based on any real individual. It is a psychological thought experiment — told as satire.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The disorder is real. The cure isn’t. Not yet.
Reading time: ~27 minutes
The Empathy Protocol is a story told in two parts.
Part I — The Drug
Before the secret, before the drug, before the consequences — there was a meeting.
Fluorescent light flattened everything — faces, papers, hope. No one sat comfortably. Meetings like this were not built for comfort.
Marcus Hale leaned forward over a spread of polling sheets. He didn’t look at the others when he spoke.
“We’re collapsing.”
He let the words sit there — flat, clinical. Across from him, no one argued.
“Numbers are in free fall,” he went on. “Approval down double digits. Trust metrics circling the drain. We’re losing places we used to win by twenty points. And this isn’t a policy problem.” He lifted his eyes now. “It’s him.”
A silent acknowledgment passed across the room. Not surprise. Confirmation.
“He’s escalating,” Marcus said. “More erratic every week. Rage cycles are getting shorter, grandiosity worse. He picks fights no one understands. He’s not listening to anyone anymore.”
Silence thickened. No one contradicted a word.
Dr. Adrian Cole sat at the far end of the table, hands still, posture precise. He had the quiet of someone who didn’t speak unless it mattered. A black analog watch sat on the table in front of him — removed from his wrist before the meeting began. He always did that. Some men shrugged off jackets before they worked. Cole removed time.
Marcus exhaled sharply. “If this continues, he won’t just lose — he’ll take all of us down with him.”
Cole’s voice came steady.
“There’s a way to stabilize him.”
Marcus didn’t flinch. “I’m listening.”
“A pharmaceutical intervention,” Cole said. “A compound developed quietly in a Midwestern research division. Built for individuals with pathological narcissistic traits. Emotional blindness. High dominance aggression.”
Marcus stared. “You’re talking about medicating him.”
“I’m talking about regulating him,” Cole said. “Before he becomes unmanageable.”
“What does it do?”
“It alters emotional salience. Breaks self-referential loops. Forces recognition of other people.”
Marcus frowned. “You mean empathy.”
“No,” Cole said. “I mean interruption. Of pathology. Of harm.”
Marcus studied him. The silence returned, heavier now.
“What are the side effects?”
Cole’s expression didn’t change. “Exposure to emotional recall. Remorse. Unscheduled memory processing. In rare cases — over-identification.”
“Meaning?”
Cole met his eyes. “Meaning he might start to feel things.”
Marcus leaned back slowly. “He’ll never agree to this. He avoids doctors, mocks therapy, and hasn’t admitted weakness in his entire adult life.”
“He’ll take it,” Cole said.
“How?” Marcus asked.
Cole didn’t hesitate. “I won’t offer it as treatment. I’ll offer it as advantage.”
Marcus stilled.
Now they were speaking the same language.
“What kind of advantage?”
“Voter connection,” Cole said. “Emotional resonance. Human credibility. If he takes this, people will feel him differently. He’ll read rooms better. He’ll make people believe again.”
Marcus looked at him a long moment.
“Why was this compound developed?” he asked quietly.
Cole didn’t answer immediately. Then he leaned forward, elbows resting on the table.
“It was designed for prevention.”
“Prevention of what?”
Cole’s voice lowered.
“Entire wars have been started by men who felt nothing for human life. Men who viewed people as objects. Tools. Currency. Men who could not feel — not really — and therefore did not care who died.”
Marcus said nothing.
Cole held his gaze.
“History remembers their names. Hitler. Stalin. Pol Pot. Men whose emotional blindness killed millions.” He tapped the folder once. “Imagine if someone had reached them in time — with something that forced recognition.”
The room went still.
Marcus didn’t look away. “Does it work?”
“We’re about to find out,” Cole said.
Footsteps sounded outside the door.
Marcus straightened. “He’s early.”
Cole slid the black watch beside his folder but didn’t put it on.
The door opened.
He walked in.
“Don’t bore me — give me something useful, or I’ll fire someone.”
He didn’t sit. He never sat first. He moved to the head of the table like gravity served him personally.
He wore no ring. None of them had lasted long enough to matter. Three marriages, three public apologies — each rehearsed for the cameras. There was no First Lady now — just staff, strategy, and silence where affection should have been.
Marcus straightened a stack of folders that didn’t need straightening. Cole watched silently.
The president scanned the room, reading faces the way predators read wind.
“I’m told this is important,” he said. “It usually isn’t. Let’s find out.”
Marcus adjusted his tie to buy half a second. “We’ve identified a strategic vulnerability.”
“Speak English.”
“It’s costing us voters,” Marcus said. “Too many. Too fast.”
The president smiled, sharp and humorless. “Polls only matter to weak campaigns.”
“We’re becoming one,” Marcus said.
Silence. A violation — but he allowed it. Barely.
Cole spoke next. “We’ve identified the cause.”
The president narrowed his eyes. “You’re new.”
“I’ve been here longer than you think,” Cole replied.
“What are you? Advisor? Fixer? Priest?”
“Physician,” Cole said.
The president didn’t like surprises in his meetings. His gaze flicked to Marcus — before returning to Cole again.
“Then diagnose,” he said.
Cole didn’t reach for his folder. He didn’t blink. “You’ve lost connection with the electorate.”
“I don’t need connection,” the president said. “I need control.”
“Control requires belief,” Cole said. “Belief requires humanity. That’s what’s eroding.”
A dangerous stillness touched the room.
“Careful,” the president said softly.
Cole didn’t move. “You’re not losing because people disagree with you. You’re losing because they don’t think you see them anymore.”
The president stepped closer. “You think I care what they think?”
“No,” Cole said. “That’s the problem.”
Marcus flinched. Too direct. Too fast.
The president studied Cole like a puzzle he didn’t remember buying. “I’ve fired people for softer insults.”
“I’m not insulting you,” Cole said. “I’m telling you why you’re losing.”
Marcus cut in fast. “We have a solution.” He slid the folder across the table like he wished it were someone else’s hand pushing it.
The president didn’t touch it.
Cole did not look away from him. “There’s a compound.”
“Drug,” the president said. “Say drug.”
“A drug,” Cole said. “Developed off-book. Meant to correct emotional blindness before it becomes catastrophic.”
The president smirked. “You want to medicate me?”
Cole shook his head once. “Optimize.”
Marcus watched the president’s expression tighten. He hates being managed. He stepped in.
“This improves persuasion. It makes people respond to you emotionally again. Cuts through fatigue. Reverses negative perception.”
“Side effects?” he asked.
Cole answered steadily. “You may notice things you normally don’t.”
“Such as?”
“People.”
He stared at Cole. Then laughed — but the laugh didn’t reach his eyes. “I notice people. I’ve fired more people than you’ve met.”
“That’s not noticing,” Cole said.
Marcus shot him a warning look. Pull back.
Cole didn’t.
“You walk through people,” he said. “This would make you walk around them.”
The president’s jaw tightened. He lifted the folder and flipped it open with his thumb.
“What’s the catch?”
Cole folded his hands. “You may experience temporary emotional recognition. Brief windows where you register someone else’s pain. It won’t last at first.”
“I don’t do pain,” he said.
“No,” Cole said. “You cause it.”
Marcus’s pulse spiked. Jesus, Adrian.
The president let that line hang. A test. Push me again, and I’ll eat you.
Cole didn’t blink.
Finally, the president asked, “Does it work?”
Cole’s voice didn’t change. “It depends how early we intervene.”
“Early,” the president repeated. “You talk like I’m a disease curve.”
Cole didn’t deny it.
The president looked at the capsule sheet inside the folder. He didn’t touch it — yet.
“Is it legal?”
“It isn’t illegal,” Cole said.
Marcus jumped in. “It won’t show on blood panels. Nobody will know.”
“I don’t care if they know,” the president said. “I care if it works.”
“It will change how people feel about you,” Cole said. “Fast.”
The president tapped the folder once. A signal — to himself, not them.
“Will it make people love me more?” he asked plainly.
Marcus didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
The president smiled — slow, deliberate, hungry. He reached into the folder, peeled a capsule from the blister sheet, and held it up between two fingers.
“If it makes people love me,” he said, “I’ll take two.”
No history book would ever mention what happened in the Oval Office that morning—and everyone in the room would later lie about being there.
Cole stood beside the Resolute Desk, back straight, expression unreadable. Marcus Hale paced near the windows, arms crossed, watching the room the way a man watches a fuse burn.
The president entered without announcing himself.
He didn’t slow down. Didn’t greet them. Just moved—like someone who believed rooms adjusted to him, not the other way around. He went straight to the desk and looked at the tray Cole had prepared.
A glass of water. A blood pressure cuff. A white capsule.
He studied the capsule with the faintest curl at the corner of his mouth. Not curiosity—ownership.
“We’re doing this,” he said. Not a question.
“Today is the safest window,” Cole said. He kept his voice neutral, clinical. Marcus could feel the tension under it anyway.
The president looked at Cole. “Safe for who?”
Marcus stepped in before Cole could answer wrong. “You’ve got three hours before the press call. Enough time to run clean evaluations.”
“Not my question,” he said.
Cole met his eyes. “Safe for you.”
The president gave a single approving nod. Correct answer.
Cole reached for the blood pressure cuff. “Standard vitals before administration.”
“I don’t do standard,” the president said.
“It isn’t for you,” Cole replied. “It’s for dosage calibration.”
A pause. Then he extended his arm.
Cole wrapped the cuff around his upper arm and began measuring. He didn’t look at the monitor. He didn’t need to. He watched the president instead—like a man measuring something only he could see.
The president studied him back. “Where did you come from, exactly?”
“Medical Division.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” Cole said. “It isn’t.”
Marcus stepped forward, a warning in his voice. “We don’t need background. We need results.”
The president smirked. “Marcus doesn’t like mystery. Makes him sweat.”
“I don’t sweat,” Marcus said.
You’re sweating now, the president thought, watching him.
Cole peeled off the cuff. “Pulse is elevated.”
“I’m talking,” the president said. “That’s not pulse. That’s dominance.”
Cole neither agreed nor disagreed. He picked up the capsule.
Marcus watched the room carefully. This is where he tests us. Right here.
Cole held out the capsule with one hand, the glass of water with the other.
The president didn’t take the water. He never did. He swallowed the capsule dry, like a man accepting a dare from himself.
Marcus exhaled—barely. Cole didn’t move.
“Now what?” the president asked.
“Now we monitor,” Cole said.
“For what?”
Cole met his gaze. “Shift.”
The president smiled—slow and arrogant. “Nothing moves me.”
“Everything does,” Cole said. “You’ve just built systems to prevent it.”
The president’s jaw tightened a fraction.
Cole watched. “When it begins, it won’t feel dramatic. It’ll feel inconvenient.”
“I don’t get inconvenienced.”
“You will,” Cole said.
A knock broke the moment. A staffer opened the door.
“Sir—there’s a change to your schedule. A family from the bridge collapse arrived early. They’re asking to see you.”
Marcus turned. “We can reschedule—”
“No,” the president said immediately.
Marcus blinked. Too fast. Wrong instinct. He covered it. “We can push them to next week, after—”
“I said no,” the president repeated, sharper. “Send them in.”
Marcus shot Cole a look—Is this it already? Cole didn’t look back.
Cole was watching the president’s hands.
They were still. But not relaxed.
The door opened, and grief entered the room.
A woman stepped in—early forties, plain black coat, nothing rehearsed about her. Her eyes were swollen but dry, the kind of dry that meant she couldn’t afford to fall apart yet. A boy followed—twelve, maybe thirteen—close enough behind her that it looked like he didn’t trust the room.
The president watched them. No cameras. No advisors. No performance required.
Which meant whatever happened next would be real.
“Ma’am,” Marcus said, moving to intercept. “The president has only a moment—”
The president lifted a hand without looking at him. Marcus stopped.
The woman faced him. Her voice was steady because it had to be. “My husband died on the bridge.”
The president nodded once. Not sympathetic—acknowledgment only. Safe territory. But then he spoke again, and something in his voice had changed.
“Tell me what happened.”
Marcus shot Cole a sharp look. He doesn’t ask questions like that. Cole didn’t react—outwardly.
The woman hesitated, unprepared for a president who asked. “He was driving home. The middle section dropped. He didn’t even have time…” Her voice caught once. She didn’t apologize for it.
The boy didn’t speak. He stared at the desk, jaw tight, fists tighter.
The president studied him. Something pressed behind his sternum—not pain. Tension. Ignore it. It’s nothing.
“We didn’t even get to say goodbye,” the woman said. “They pulled his car out at dawn. They wouldn’t let me see him.”
For a second, something old moved in him—an image he didn’t summon.
Not the woman in front of him, but another face.
Three ex-wives blurred into one; a daughter’s birthday missed without reason.
He blinked, and it was gone. But the ache remained.
Say something presidential. Clean. Contained. Move on.
But that wasn’t what came out.
“I’m…” He stopped. His tongue resisted the words. He pushed harder. “I’m sorry.”
Marcus froze. Cole watched him like a scientist witnessing a fault line move.
The woman nodded, but her face didn’t change. People like her had heard apologies before. Most of them were useless.
The president looked at the boy.
The boy didn’t look back.
A flicker of something moved through the president’s expression—frustration, then confusion. Why won’t he look at me? People always look at me.
He took a step forward, and the boy finally met his eyes. No awe. No fear. Just raw, exhausted honesty. Grief without permission.
And suddenly—he felt it.
The weight in the boy’s stare wasn’t defiance. It was loss. The kind that didn’t have words. The kind that had to be carried. The kind that did not end.
The president’s jaw tightened. He blinked once. Hard. Something inside him recoiled—then cracked.
He didn’t want this feeling. He didn’t invite it. He hated it.
But he couldn’t stop it.
“I should have…” He stopped. He didn’t know what he was about to say, only that it was dangerous. Too honest. He shut it down. Reset his face.
His voice came out lower. “Your father should still be here.”
The boy didn’t nod. He didn’t move. But his fists loosened.
Marcus stared. Cole exhaled silently, eyes never leaving the president.
The moment stretched. The room held its breath.
The president looked away first.
Danger. This was danger.
He straightened, recalibrated, rebuilt the old armor over his voice.
“We’ll take care of you,” he said.
The woman frowned slightly. “How?”
He hadn’t thought that far.
Marcus jumped in. “We’ll arrange a support package.” He looked at Cole. “Medical accommodations. Legal assistance—”
The president’s voice cut him off like glass.
“No,” he said. “I will take care of you.”
The woman didn’t know what that meant. Neither did Marcus. Neither did Cole.
But the president did.
Because for the first time in years—
—he meant it.
Steel could stop bullets, glass could stop wind—nothing stopped the thing waking up inside him.
Wagner swelled through the armored cabin of the motorcade as the city slid past in gray motion. The president sat in silence, staring out the window, but he wasn’t seeing anything out there. He was watching something behind his eyes—a flicker, a distortion in memory.
He blinked once. It didn’t go away.
Marcus Hale sat opposite him, scanning briefing notes he wasn’t reading. Dr. Adrian Cole sat beside him, hands calm in his lap, a man who could wait out a storm without checking the sky.
The president inhaled through his nose, sharp. Something in him felt misaligned, like an instrument slightly out of tune. A face surfaced—uninvited. A voice. A room. A woman. He crushed it before it grew clear.
Cole saw the shift. “You may experience memory activation. Emotional recall. It’s transient.”
The president didn’t look at him. “Nothing’s happening.”
Cole didn’t argue. Which was worse.
Marcus checked him carefully. “You’re pale. If there’s a medical issue—”
“There isn’t,” he said.
The face came back anyway.
He didn’t want it. Didn’t summon it. But there she was—that woman, years ago, standing in his office. Not famous. Not powerful. Just someone he had destroyed because he could. He remembered the sound she made when she broke. He hadn’t thought of her since. He hadn’t cared.
So why the hell now—
The music pressed into the moment—Wagner, strings like iron.
Cole watched him quietly. “This is the beginning of pattern disruption.”
The president finally turned to him. “English.”
“Things you never felt before,” Cole said, “you’ll feel now.”
The president stared. “Feelings are for people who lose.”
Cole didn’t blink. “Feelings are for people who survive.”
The air in the car changed temperature.
Marcus stepped in fast. “We have two rallies ahead, a bilateral call at six, press tomorrow. Whatever this is, it can’t interfere.”
“It won’t,” the president said.
It already is, a voice inside him answered—a voice he didn’t recognize. His own.
The motorcade slowed, shifting route. Outside, streets folded around them like a controlled chessboard.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
Marcus didn’t answer. The door opened.
Isabel stepped in.
She didn’t speak. She didn’t smile. She sat beside her father and looked at him—not the way the world looked at him, but the way someone looks at a fracture before it becomes a break.
He held her gaze. His instinct was to dominate the moment. Bend it. Own it. But she didn’t look away.
Something moved behind his face—something she saw that he didn’t want seen.
And she frowned, just slightly.
Not in judgment.
In recognition.
Something was wrong.
He didn’t look away from Isabel, but something behind his eyes shifted—like a light flickering in a sealed room.
Marcus broke first. “We’re behind schedule. If this isn’t about strategy, it can—”
“It’s about him,” Isabel said, still watching her father. “Something’s wrong.”
“He’s fine,” Marcus replied.
“No,” she said quietly. “He isn’t.”
The president’s jaw tightened. “I don’t need—”
The memory punched through before he could finish. No warning. No mercy.
A woman in a gray suit.
Tears she tried to hide.
His voice—cold, amused: “You’re nothing without me. Remember that.”
Her reply: “I hope one day you feel what you do to people.”
He had laughed at her. Laughed.
Now, years later, in the back of a silent motorcade, her voice landed inside him like a buried blade finally finding daylight.
He inhaled sharply.
Not pain.
Impact.
He forced it down, burying it under will. Under power. Under the man he had built to survive.
Cole watched him carefully. “Memory interference will increase,” he said.
“Stop calling it interference,” Isabel said. “What did you do to him?”
Cole didn’t answer.
Marcus cut in. “Nothing happened. He’s under pressure. That’s all this is.”
Isabel turned to Marcus. “Pressure doesn’t change a person’s eyes.”
Marcus held her stare for half a second too long before looking away.
Cole remained still. “Your father agreed to enhancement—”
“Enhancement?” she repeated. “He doesn’t need enhancement. He needs truth.”
“That’s what he’s getting,” Cole said.
“No,” she said. “He’s getting hurt.”
The president snapped out of the memory and back into the car. “Enough.”
His voice held. But Isabel heard what the others didn’t—the strain under it. The leak of something human.
She turned fully to him now. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”
He didn’t move.
Kings could be stripped of crowns. Empires could fall. But a simple question—that was the thing he had never learned to defend against.
He met her eyes. For one terrifying second, he almost told the truth.
Then survival returned to him.
“I don’t feel,” he said.
Cole watched him. Marcus exhaled. Isabel didn’t blink.
“Yes,” she said softly. “You do now. And you’re afraid of it.”
The limousine rolled to a stop outside the South Portico. Staff waited ahead. Cameras. A public day.
The president didn’t move.
Something inside him was swelling—uncontrolled, rising like a tide he couldn’t command. He didn’t know if it was grief or rage or something worse.
But it was coming.
And the world was about to see it.
U.S.–Mexico Border — Three Days Later...
The wind came in dry and hard off the desert, snapping at jackets and press badges. Helicopter rotors thumped overhead, the constant low growl of patrol engines circling in the distance. Cameras were already rolling. They always were.
He stepped out of the armored SUV into a blast of sun and sand, flanked by Secret Service. Marcus Hale followed, clipped and controlled, scanning the press zone with the eyes of a man who had stopped believing in luck. Dr. Adrian Cole emerged behind them, untouched by the chaos. He didn’t shield his face from the dust. He watched.
Isabel stepped out last.
The air tasted like metal and politics.
The president moved toward the line of podiums and waiting microphones. Flags stood rigid behind him, pinned by cables so they wouldn’t betray the wind. He didn’t blink against the sunlight. He didn’t believe in squinting. Squinting looked human.
The compound pulsed in his veins—quietly, invisibly—like a code slowly overwriting something.
Marcus stepped in close. “We hit security, jobs, border funding. Stay on message. No open questions.”
“No,” the president said.
Marcus froze. “No?”
“We’ll take questions.” He adjusted his tie. “I feel like talking.”
Marcus shot Cole a glare. Cole said nothing.
Isabel watched her father from a few feet away. Something about the way he held himself looked… off. Not weak. Not sick. Just slightly—misaligned. Like a copied image that hadn’t rendered cleanly.
A reporter shouted the first question.
Then another.
Then twenty more.
He ignored them all and chose a journalist from the Mexican press section.
A woman stepped forward. Unflinching. Unnervingly calm.
“Mr. President,” she said, “what is your current relationship with the new President of Mexico?”
He nodded once, prepared. “Professional. Purposeful. America respects Mexico’s sovereignty and expects the same.”
Her expression didn’t change. “Reports say your first meeting with her lasted only six minutes. You dismissed her publicly. You cut funding negotiations and called her—” she glanced at a note “—‘unprepared and emotional.’ Do you still believe that?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
The wind kicked up sand between them. Cameras snapped in rapid-fire bursts.
“Does it bother you,” she asked evenly, “that she’s a woman?”
He didn’t move. Didn’t smile. “No.”
“But you’ve used that word before, haven’t you? Emotional. When referring to women.”
Marcus moved—too late.
The journalist finished the strike.
“Do you have a problem with powerful women?”
The air around him changed pressure. Something moved under his ribs—sharp, electric. A flash. A surge.
A memory.
A woman crying.
Not the one from last time—another one. Younger. Eyes red. Voice shaking. Saying words he had forgotten on purpose:
“Why do you hate women who don’t need you?”
His breath stalled.
He blinked once.
Marcus stepped closer, whispering: “Walk away. Do not answer that.”
But something cracked.
He didn’t walk away.
He leaned into the microphone.
And for the first time in his life—he told the truth.
For a heartbeat, he said nothing.
Wind scraped along the fence line. Cameras clicked. The world waited.
“I…” He stopped. The words didn’t form. His voice didn’t obey.
Panic flickered across his face—not visible panic, not to the untrained eye, but something microscopic. A muscle tightening at the jaw. A redirection of breath. A man who always knew what to say suddenly didn’t.
He tried again.
“I have never…” The words came out strained, uneven. His throat worked. He swallowed hard. Something was moving in him—rising like a tide he couldn’t command.
He looked at the reporter. But for the first time in his life, he actually saw her. Not the camera. Not the power. Her. A person.
He blinked.
“This question…” He paused, fighting it. “It shouldn’t matter.”
Marcus watched like a strategist watching a nation tilt. Cole watched like a scientist recording the moment a variable mutates. Isabel watched like someone seeing proof of a miracle she didn’t want.
The president exhaled, slow, ragged.
“Do I have a problem with powerful women?” he repeated. “Yes.”
A murmur ripped through the press line.
Marcus didn’t move to stop him.
“I have…” He stopped. His chest tightened. He wasn’t supposed to say this. Don’t say it. Stop. Control it.
He couldn’t.
His voice fractured — a sound the world had never heard from him.
“I have been so disrespectful to women for so many years.”
The world froze.
Every camera kept rolling.
“I don’t—” He pressed his lips together, fighting for control. His voice broke anyway. He hated the sound of it. Hated himself for letting anyone hear it.
“I don’t know how to make that right.”
He stopped. Something was happening to his eyes. Heat. Pressure. He swallowed it—hard. Don’t cry. Not here. Not ever.
A tear broke anyway.
One.
Single.
Unacceptable.
The wind took the silence. The press didn’t move. No one spoke. Even the desert seemed to hold its breath.
He looked down, furious. At himself, not them. He set his jaw so hard it shook.
Isabel took one step forward—just one—but it was Marcus who moved first, placing a hand on her arm. Not to protect her. To stop her.
Marcus didn’t want this to end yet. This was working.
The president looked up again. Eyes wet. Voice raw.
“She has every right to lead her country,” he said. “Every woman does.”
He didn’t know why he said it. He just knew it was true.
And that terrified him more than anything.
End of Part I
Editor’s note:
This story is a work of political satire and speculative fiction exploring psychology and power. It does not depict real individuals or events.