THEN (June 2015)

For the next month, after being confirmed as Secretary, Wendy went traveling through the northeast (as the states permitted) checking in with estranged federal department offices and meeting a few governors. There was some skepticism of her appointment at first, but after meeting her, most folks said she made a good case. Getting the federal government back on its feet right now was more important than anything because a few foreign powers were starting to talk seriously about supporting this state or that one for independence. There wasn’t going to be a U.S. if someone didn’t do something, she would say. She helped the other departments slough off the shock and get mobilized.

In the various movers and shakers and places of power, the talk was whether to promote Wendy to President (which she could be, now, even if the internal promotion to Secretary was on shaky ground) or to quickly make a new House member to become Speaker and then President instead - a real President, versus some nobody ex-Librarian leftist.

There were still a lot of rumors that anybody who said that they were President would get glassed.

But on the other hand… people really did seem to like her. She’d only been on TV a couple of times, mostly to encourage government groups to get back to work (in the most pleasant way), but every interview ended up with whatever host or pundit turned to her side or thereafter being positive about the experience. It didn’t exactly come across over TV, or over the radio or the internet, but in person, supposedly, there was something.

A theme began to emerge (with a few of the same Governors and pundits parroting it from both sides of the isle): with the next election cycle starting and elections in a year, a succession President was mostly someone filling in, holding the fort so to speak, until there was a popular mandate. An organizer. Someone to just remind everyone that the U.S. was back in business, staff up the cabinet by promoting from diplomats and get the Federal Government back to work. Someone to provide a face for the Democrats to hold fundraisers with and get some much-needed money back in the war chest (and for Republicans to put a face to to run against.) A few names were floated, but one name kept coming up. She had really helped when people needed it, you know? It didn’t matter the politics. She just showed up - to newly staffed congressional offices, Department lunches, with morale-boosting smiles and suggestions that were just…perfect, really. In the succession chain now. A woman, yes, maybe in some conservative circles not so ideal, but married (and to a man), and we’re talking a few months before we’d probably elect a man again anyway, so it’s a nice bone to throw…

-

“Ok”, panted Xeniya, “something’s changed.” Xen levered herself up and off Wendy to face her. Wendy looked up at her, drunk on endorphins, and grinned. Both of them were shiny with sweat after a bout of particular energetic afternoon sex. “And I don’t mean Andrew,” Xeniya said, firmly. “I mean I do, actually, Andrew downstairs watching TV and all is pretty fucking weird, but… I mean in general.”

A surprised Xeniya had come over to find that Andrew had come home from the Bird Labs early. Inwardly Xeniya pouted. Lately she and Wendy had been really going at it in his absence, so with him here she assumed today would be just a friendly lunch hang with the three of them, talking about Princeton politics and certain stand-out students. Instead, Wendy explained that things had changed: She and Andrew had agreed to open up the marriage. And Andrew explained that he had realized Wendy (not Gwen any more) needed to express her sexual need for women as well, and he was really supportive, and you two go enjoy yourselves, g’wan, don’t worry about me.

All in all, pretty weird… but to Xeniya the fact that he had now started calling Wendy Wendy was extra suspicious.

“Andrew’s always been very supportive-” Wendy started but Xeniya cut her off. “Bullshit, Wend. C’mon. I’m not stupid. You were always well spoken, but people are just… agreeing with you a lot more often. What’s going on?”

Wendy wasn’t sure if she wanted to bring this up right now, but Xeniya solved that by pulling out her own notebook and continuing. “I’ve been thinking, too, “ Xeniya said. “I saw all your books on sacred geometry, and runes, and.. That stuff’s not my jam, exactly. But it sort of ate at me over time, you know? I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It’s like my brain just opened up.”

“Yeah, more or less the same for me,” Wendy admitted, glad to change the subject. “It’s like, I saw all the connections between the various knowledge trees I had studied before. All the places they connected, common points where they may have originated, where they were wrong. What did you see?”

Xeniya showed her some sketches. “Some of it was just materials engineering. No surprise there. Ways of altering the chemical geometry of certain substances. These ring shapes in these runes I saw on your drawing board corresponded with these alloy’s electron shells - not in a way I had ever thought about before. I think some of the alien plastic analogs also use this in a limited way.” She fell back, letting Wendy page through her notes. “There’s a lot of possible applications there. But there’s also a suggestion of ways to alter material so it holds forms and channels fundamental forces that don't, well, exist in classic engineering. Or chemistry. Physics. Exotic energies. Anything normal, anyway…”

“This is all a little beyond me,” Wendy admitted. “But it’s similar. I guess deep structures in the brain get ‘tuned’ into understanding fundamental axioms in the Universe, maybe. Different structures tune into different things.”

Xeniya nodded. “And well… OK, this next part’s going to sound crazy, but… there were times when I caught you talking to some folks at the last Princeton alumni mixer when I thought I… saw something. Hallucinations. Something like this,” she said, indicating the pages. “Something you were doing… but you were doing something, right?”

Wendy nodded slowly. “...I’ve been experimenting. I’ve been careful.” She looked down at Xeniya’s hex choker, and poked it with a finger. “It started with these things.”

Xeniya pursed her lips thinking back. “I had the same thought. You should ask Andrew if anybody else is reporting any unusual side effects. It might be something we have to track.”

Wendy felt herself warming up again, watching Xeniya’s lips move. Xenia was built shorter and curvier than she was, and she loved the difference, tracing her hand along her hip, feeling the curve there, like a quick hike in a valley. Xeniya had short curly black hair compared to her longer red, but she liked feeling that too, as she ran her fingers through it. Then she thought about the feelings she had a bit more critically.

“You think our sex drives have changed, too?” Wendy asked. “I love your body, don’t get me wrong, but twice in a day is unusual for me.”

Xeniya smiled. “Bonus, maybe. But seriously. Are you going to keep using it? Should we take them off?”

Wendy touched her Hex gently. She did that a lot lately. “I feel great. Nothing’s wrong with me. You?”

“I feel great, too. And my work’s great. I just… I dunno.”

Wendy shrugged. “Nobody’s getting hurt. I helped a lot of people, Xen. I got departments back to work. I got grant money and donations flowing again. Everybody was wallowing until I gave the tiniest push. I mean… everything I’m doing is for people who’ve lost so much. I don’t think that’s bad.”

“Mmm.”

“Besides, what about all the marches? The women who’s rights we were fighting for? The equity issues? I spent half my federal career trying to get equity funds for schools. There’s widespread rioting without the National Guard mobilized and the economy is tanking. I can make things like that right, Xen. You know I can.”

-

Wendy was approached a few times, over email and phone calls, by the head of the newly-reconstituted DNC and a few Democratic governors, asking if she might be interested in the office of President. The position was still technically open - there were scheduled elections for House members now, soon, but if the party threw behind her right now, since she was in the succession, maybe? There was an understanding, though, that most likely it would be just a sort of acting president as an interim step to real elections. There were people clamoring for power who had the *real* backing - the business elite, the people in the wings who knew how the system worked and who the party would rather see in place - that would run and beat her in a primary eventually regardless, so as long as she knew she’d need to step down when needed, it could work.

Wendy always expressed a reluctance to talk about that kind of stuff over the phone, so arranged face-to-face meetings when she could.

-

Xeniya, when she heard rumblings about the overtures through her own sources, brought it up to Wendy. Wendy said it was true, but that it was only for a year, and most likely it would be the most boring presidency ever.

“They more or less said they would stick me in a protected bunker someplace,” she said to Xeniya, in the car behind the Shop-Rite where they parked to sneak a quickie in between Xeniya’s classes. “Said I’d mostly be appointing policy leaders, and emergency acting Cabinet members, and basically just getting the engine going. Super limited media appearances. For my safety, no official central government location until we know more. Cabinet offices all over the place.”

“Yeah, but… President?” Xeniya said, fretting. “I mean… Wend, that’s a lot. You never wanted to be… y’know… an actual politician before.”

“I don’t now, either,” she answered. “But I mean… I was in the government, Xen. I hate all the political favors and making nice and back-scratching, but it’s not like I didn’t do my share. I had hoped if we had another Democratic administration or two I could have maybe moved up to Deputy Secretary. I don't want to run things outside of.. of Education. “

“What about us?” Xeniya said, looking at her, then down at herself. “We won’t be able to do this.”

“I think a lot of Presidents did ‘this’,” Wendy said, slightly smiling.

“I guess… but not if you’re in a fucking bunker somewhere.”

“It’s just for a year,” Wendy said, rolling over and back into Xen’s embrace. Face-to-face. “Afterwards, I’ll have money, and connections, and… maybe I can really get something accomplished.”

“These special interests, and the DNC, and the other people in power - they’re going to own you, Wend.”

“I’ll be OK.”

-

A few days later, she and Andrew had what she remembered as “The Fight”. They had never really argued before. Andrew was conflict-avoidant but this time there was no getting around it. Wendy had noticed a secret service car now in attendance outside, and things were coming to a head.

“No,” said Andrew, folding his arms. “I’m not going back to the Bird Labs! Wendy, c’mon.”

“Andrew, I just -”

“I said no. It’s fucking two hours to drive back down there. I just got home!”

“If you’d checked your messages you wouldn’t have had to go back. This is important.”

Andrew angrily stomped around the house as Wendy watched him stomp. This wasn’t going as smoothly as she’d hoped. He generally deferred to her ideas these days, especially with all the attention she was getting by the political pundits lending more and more weight to her ruminations, but this seemed to rub something in him the wrong way.

She’d even been intimate with him a few hours before, but the glow from that encounter seemed to be gone. And it wasn’t like she had thrown him a bone, either. Her sex drive seemed so amped up these days, her attitude towards hetero sex seemed to have rotated from ambivilent back to enthusiastic, like it had after college. Usually she went through periods where she preferred one gender over the other, but lately she was just horny for anything. She had found herself drooling over a female attaché to a diplomat a few days ago and had to stop herself from trying to get her number. Odd. Not bad. Just odd.

“It just seems stupid. We’ve got the money to send a courier. You’re the head of the Department of Education, get a flunky! Get one of the Secret Service jerks hanging around. Also, why do you even need them?”

“Andrew.” She glared at him, letting him feel her getting stormy. “I’ve had friends in the sciences and the military ask to see them. I don’t trust anybody else. I trust YOU. We’re not at a point where I have to get clearance for you to travel, but I will soon. You’ll be back in four or five hours. Just go get them! I swear, Andy, this is important.”

He glared back. “Friends, you mean Professor Raptis! She’s got one, I noticed. Are they worth something? Besides, more than a few have gone missing, I’m sure. If I snuck one out and she snuck one-”

Wendy hated to do this, but she couldn’t afford someone else derailing her agenda, or using the discoveries she and Xeniya were making against the people she wanted to protect. She couldn’t go herself. The Authority spell worked a lot better with someone who agreed on some level, or with something rational, or if it was carefully cast over time… but she didn’t have an option now. Every day there was a chance someone else would figure it out and they’d be gone, doing who-knows-what damage to the world.

She turbocharged the spell as much as she could on the fly and popped him square in the face with it.

“Uh… ow.” Andrew’s rubbed his temples.

“Andrew. I NEED ALL THE HEX FASTENERS.”

“Unnn…bbuttt…Oww.”

“You need to drive to the Bird Labs right now. Don’t speed but don’t waste time. Take every hex fastener from storage, and put them in your car. If you have to sign them out, try to sign someone else’s name. Do a quick sweep for any extras still on a workbench or in any visible equipment and put them in the car too. Don’t tell anybody, but if someone sees you and asks, just make an excuse that there’s toxicity concerns and you are rounding them up. Bring them back here. Tell nobody. Call nobody. This would make me very happy. OK?”

“Uh,” he grumbled, confused. “Ow…o..OK babe. I.. uh.” He stumbled to get his keys, and careened out the door.

When Andrew returned five hours later, he whined about his head, and being tired, and how he was starting to hallucinate on the drive back - night blindness but with colors, he said. He said when he looked up he saw alien circuitry patterns in the constellations. Also, he had a nosebleed.

Wendy assumed it was due to close proximity to the hexes for a few hours and would wear off. She suggested it was just his anxiety talking, which he agreed was likely, and put him to bed, then buried the hexes down in the basement.