The President, Emilio Sanchez was no ordinary man. Skill or luck alone had not given him the two Presidencies, there was more. The man had a secret which had died along with his mother a couple of years ago. He was not only better at the game, he was different than other humans in a very unique and secret way. No one had ever managed to extract out of him. The President was no superhero, no comic-book mutant, but his brain was wired differently.

Young Sanchez was born with what felt like a curse, a condition that he only recently managed to turn into a gift. The first thing baby Emilio saw as he discovered the world were the faces of his family members dying multiple times each hour. Unless he, as a toddler closed his eyes, he would see images of people do violent things: hit him, jump into traffic, as if he was having the types of vision usually enabled by LSD. The child cried for months. His brain forced him to see patterns, roads, or doors, as he called them. As if a mad director was torturing him, his mind kept playing, as quickly as it could, alternate futures for him in dangerous situations. It took a decade for his brain to begin to control these images, to sort them in a way where he could finally have what seemed like a normal life.

As a toddler, he cried uncontrollably at the sight of any change around him. His parents could not understand why baby Emilio kept being scared of everyone. He did not like toys, mirrors, visitors... the list of his dislikes was endless. Doctors and psychologists were unable to diagnose his condition. When his parents strapped him into his car seat for a car ride, baby Emilio saw nothing at every intersection but car floods, violent crashes, cars flying off of cliffs, and fire, fire everywhere.

The fear would end when they covered him with a blanket, but his parents refused to lock him away. Emilio learned to keep the cries to himself and simply close his eyes when he needed time alone. Heights were equally difficult to manage; he saw himself slide off ledges and die, he saw others walk off balconies and fall. In his over active mind's eye, he watched every elevator cable in which he stepped snap. He lived for years in his own private horror movies.

For normal humans, such visions do come but they are rare and fleeting. They come if at all, when standing on a transparent ledge over the Grand Canyon, or when strapping oneself to an amusement park ride. There, people see themselves fall and fear the edge. Not so for Emilio, he grew up in a permanent state of vertigo. Anyone else would have been driven mad by the visions, but Emilio somehow got used to them. They became part of him.

As the young man progressed through childhood, his brain's wiring began to change. He no longer saw death at every corner, but instead he saw complex alternate futures of possible realistic outcomes. At six, he was living in a permanent guessing game. When someone knocked at the door of his house, his brain generated images of the most probable visitors likely to walk in. After a knock, he saw images of his father opening the door, then his grandmother, or even his aunt. Images flooded until the door actually opened and his mind snapped back to reality showing him who was actually on the other side of the door.

The important thing to remember is that young Emilio had no way to know he was abnormal. With age, the accuracy of his predictions improved. By the time he was a teen, he rarely was surprised by the outcome of his visions. The images were no longer linked with events like a door knock, or a phone call, but instead were connected to a clock. By the age of fourteen, time regulated his life. His brain was changing, adapting yet again. He had no way to understand what was happening to him.

The clock was his drug and his salvation. It helped him, reassured him.

For every living thing close to him, he kept a close timeline in his mind of what they were probably doing. To him, his personal timelines were like a chess master playing fifty simultaneous chessboards blindfolded. He recalled sitting in class, lost in thought per usual, and knowing the principal would knock on the door. For almost an hour, he hesitated between a knock at 10:34:09 or 10:34:12. Earlier that morning, he had seen the man looking for the student who was responsible for a prank in the schoolyard. In his mind, he could see the man walk from classroom to classroom. He could see each class visit, each door the man opened.

Then it happened: the principal knocked on the door and walked in, just as young Emilio had played in his mind. It was precisely 10:34:12. He had guessed the outcome. In silence, he felt proud of himself. He was a movie producer sitting in front of screens with different outcomes as he imagined them. He learned to hide this gift. The smallest evidence of his talent, any sign of a premonition given to the other students led immediately to fear and ridicule.

Emilio mostly kept to himself until he became an adult. His only guilty pleasure was playing chess. Quickly, he became school chess champion and was so strong, he was paired by the teacher with a computer. He loved playing the machine, he could not use his curse to guess its moves.

One day the school's chess team went to a demonstration given by the champion of the world playing the best students of Mexico. Emilio's teacher and parents forced him to go. He needed little arm-twisting. They figured he would do well, and the young adolescent needed some self-esteem.

Each kid was placed in front of a board on the outer edge of tables placed in a large circle. The champion made his way around the inside of the circle, playing each child one move at a time. The champ played white. The tall man grabbed a piece on Emilio's board and moved it. Emilio was nervous. The man moved E2-E4. Emilio reached for a piece; all the possible outcomes, all the variants, began to flash before his eyes. In each scenario, he saw himself lose the game. He moved his hand above a different piece: again, in every scenario he could foresee that he would lose the game. There was no piece he touched that showed him any favorable outcome. He would lose this game; he knew it. Young Emilio panicked, began to hyperventilate, got up, and ran out.

His mother and his coach were upset and disappointed. His mother tried in vain to explain how he needed to lose for years to the man, study him from a distance before he finally could hope to beat the champion, but Emilio saw things differently. He was a fraud and a cheat. The only reason he was school champion was because of his curse. What was the point of playing, he wondered, and he resigned from the chess team the next day and began to pour gas at his father’s station after school.

As a teenager, Emilio was a distant observer of the world he lived in. Of the many things he could have done with his gift, he did none. His curse was also very problematic when it came to sex. When he saw a person that aroused him, his curse went into overdrive. Before he could even introduce himself, his mind would send him images of him in all types of positions having intercourse with the person. To teen Emilio, it proved too difficult for him to approach someone after having just watched a porn movie featuring that person. Emilio learned to keep that aspect of himself private.

Then, after adolescence, his brain still had tricks and tortures for him. It keep growing, as if he was watching a movie produced by someone else, his mind took on a life of its own. It began to show images it had selected for him. One day he saw a flash of a naked woman with a large shoulder tattoo. It was an eagle. Minutes later, on a beach he saw a woman remove her sweater and uncovering a tattoo, albeit slightly different. There was no way for him to have known she was there. From timed visions, his brain began to have premonitions, visions that most often proved right. The gift was growing, learning and structuring itself. With time, the accuracy of his predictions increased.

At twenty, he inherited his father's garage after a tragic family accident. He loved the job as a mechanic; it was simple and far from large urban centers. He lived peacefully without a television, taking care of his sister until she left for Japan. Drinking also slowed his demanding mind down. When intoxicated, he functioned like most people. But to him, this was cheating.

Today, president Emilio enjoyed walking around with a tumbler of Scotch at hand. It was the water which could extinguish the fire of his mind. Holding the drink was reassuring. A sip would stop his visions. The glass was his white cane. He did not care if others had no clue why he walked around with the drink, or better yet, thought he was a drunk.

Young Emilio could not imagine that his way of seeing the world was unique, but after his 2062 and 2068 victories, he was forced to conclude that he was alone capable to guess and see the future. He was a freak of nature, and there was no reason for him to reveal his gift. Playing the Electoral platform was second nature to him. The interface was a perfect fit for his premonitions. After he logged in, he could guess the game before he even began to play it. The Presidential Challenge was different. Everyone knew the scenario. He figured, for once, his gift would prove useless. Yet he'd easily won. Again.

He did feel, in his heart like the computer intelligence knew of his power and relied on it. Since the start of the year, the white plume of smoke on Mars dangerous terrorism was on the rise. He alone had already spoiled a handful of species-extinguishing events.

They all had one common tread, each was set up to be materialized on the same day, the finale of the damn game. He questioned many, none knew of the other plots or worse yet, why they had picked November 21 as the date. He was now the silent champion.