Angel was uncharacteristically silent after Voltaire left the office. His eyes were distant, face serious…almost stormy. Pneuma was equally not her usual bubbly self. I looked at both of them unsure of what to say. 

“Well…that was…interesting.” I sighed. 

“Very informative.” Pneuma agreed. Angel still sat in his chair stony and silent. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought he was a statue. “Madame President, I’ve set up the tours for you this afternoon. What more do you want me to do you need from me before you go?” 

“You know…I realized that I forgot to ask Voltaire about the frayed wiring in the Library’s control room. Can we get an electrician you trust to look into that? I know the Library staff could have called for one, but I want to make sure we get the best of the best electricians on that.” 

“Of course, Madame President.” Pneuma jotted the request down on her phone. “Anything else?” 

I leaned back on the couch in thought and then looked over at Angel. So still. Incredible. “You alright, Angel?” 

“Hmm…” he looked up as if he was rattled from sleep for a moment. “Oh, yes. I’m here, and alright.” 

“What’s on your mind?” I asked. 

Angel waited to speak for another solid half-minute. “I don’t know. I don’t like the options.” 

“What? The mining for FEAR part?” 

“All of it. But especially that part.” 

“Should I decline the meeting?” 

“Well…no.” Angel’s eyes looked up at the ceiling as if an answer could be found there. “You already agreed to a meeting. No one likes following a leader who agrees to things to be friendly but doesn’t really mean it. BUT… I think you need many eyes on this one. Not just yours. Not just mine.” 

“Or mine?” Pneuma chimed with humor. 

“Yours definitely count, Pneuma.  But Madame President, does your cabinet know about this?” 

“My cabinet?” 

“Your trusted advisors. Do you remember who they are?” Angel sat forward in his chair. 

I was racking my brain. Why couldn’t I remember anything?  Taking Angel’s advice, I exhaled, paused, long inhaled, paused, slow exhaled…”And…I got nothing.” 

“It’s alright, Madame President!” Pneuma chimed in with her usual cheery voice. “That’s why you have me!  Here’s your current cabinet.” 

She walked over to the large oak desk, opened a drawer underneath, and pulled out a thick white binder. She flipped to the middle of the pages. “Here they are!” She brought the binder over and laid it in front of me on the coffee table. 

“Uh…what’s this?” 

“Your emergency President’s manual. In case someone had to step into your shoes. Or in this case, if you forgot how to be one.” She chuckled. 

“Wait…I had one of these the entire time? Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“Well…” she scratched her head. “I was about to tell you about it as you were sitting down at the desk when we first walked in here. But you were about to hyperventilate and got up before we could even show it to you. I didn’t want to freak you out even more with a 500-page manual.” 

“FIVE HUNDRED PAGES!?!” 

“Ha ha… yes… and exactly my point. This would have made you run out of the room.” 

I gripped the edge of the couch. Trembling. Five hundred pages just to tell me how to do my job. “If it makes you feel any better, it really should have been 1,000 pages, but I edited out a lot.” Pneuma continued. 

“You…edited out a lot? Pneuma, did you write this for me?” 

“Uh…no. You had an aide before me. He wrote it and it was well over 1,000 pages of instruction.” 

“I had ANOTHER aide?” 

“Oh yes. He was a bit of a stickler for rule-following. Had no personality at all.” 

“What happened to him?” 

“Oh…well…” she put on an innocent smile. “You met me and let him go. He’s off advising some other President in another country now.” 

“Wait? I did?” 

“I know right? So unlike you and your policy. You hardly ever say no. That’s why everyone elected you!” she chuckled. 

“Wait… they elected me because…” I gasped. 

“Mm-hmm! You said yes to all their demands! You’re just the nicest person in the entire country. You’re definitely an anomaly because you never officially ran for the Presidency. You just happen to know a lot of people and make friends with just about everyone. You spent a whole lot of time looking at the previous Presidents saying, ‘You know what I would do if I was President?’ and then whoever you were talking to, you’d just say whatever they wanted to hear. So people started listening and they were like, ‘You know what? You should be President.’  One of these listeners really believed you and campaigned like crazy for you with the slogan, ‘Brittany will always please!’ and because you’re half-Sheronite, half-Almite and spent a TON of time (like most of your life) climbing Mt. Harri and befriending the angel-folk, the majority of the country wrote your name down as a write-in. And here you are, President of USAR!” Pneuma lifted her arms in as if to say hurrah for dramatic effect. 

I was stunned. What did I get myself into? Angel sat there slowly shaking his head as if I made a really dumb mistake. “Told ya… President sucks. Shoulda chosen Queen or something like that… even a dictator…” 

“Angel!” Pneuma lowered her arms and tsked at him. 

“What!?! Now she has to fulfill all her little promises that she made to these people. And that’s nearly impossible! At least as a Queen or a dictator, she doesn’t have to make any promises to anyone at all. She just does whatever makes her happy and the country just has to deal with it. Easy.” 

“Ugghhh!!!” I yelled. “What the heck was I thinking!?!” I punched the couch cushion below me. 

“You weren’t. That’s why I’m sitting here with you now. That’s why you wanted to die. You can’t do everything they’re demanding of you right now.” This was the first time I heard Angel sound annoyed, but he wasn’t wrong. 

“Alright, alright… now..now…” Pneuma attempted to lighten the mood. “Back to the original question. Your cabinet. They’re listed right here.” 

I looked down at the book. The names of thirty people I most certainly did not remember or know.  The only thing that was helpful to me in this moment were their roles. I recognized Angel’s name on the list along with Voltaire’s. Then there were the names of two secretaries of agriculture: one for Sherah and one for Alma. Then one for the Department of Commerce, then Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, and Treasury… the list went on. 

“What… do I invite them all to this meeting then?” I asked. 

“Do you wanna do things by the book? Or do you wanna do things by your gut?” Pneuma asked. 

“What does the book say?” 

“Well, let me see…” she started flipping through the massive binder. 

“For Most High’s sake!” Angel blurted out. “Blessed be His Name,” he quickly whispered after, “Brittany! No, Madame President! Which roles would be the most helpful to you right now? Don’t overthink it.” 

I shrank a little at his outburst. He softened his tone, took another breath and said, “All I mean is that no one is going to walk away from this meeting fully satisfied. Not you. Not me. Not the entire cabinet. Everyone will want you to approve something from this.” 

I watched his eyes and thought that I could read that there was deeper meaning behind his observation.  “Are you hinting that I’ll need to make a decision after this meeting?” 

“Not right away, no. But here’s the full situation, alright. You said yes to everyone’s demands. And like a good little President, you started fulfilling their promises.  And it looked like it was working in the beginning.  You know, we made a promise to reinstate a Senate and a House of Representatives to balance all of your yeses?  Well, the previous leader dismissed them all and decided to rule things on his own. When you took office, you started with all of the fun promises like free education for all and free public services for everyone…whatever it was… and then… we ran out of money. So when it came time to reinstate the Senate and the House, you couldn’t. And that’s when things fell apart. Majorly.” 

“So, wait? If we ran out of money, how are you getting paid? How is anyone here getting paid? How do I have a nice house like this and such.” 

“Sorry to break it to ya, Madame President, but I have another job. I’m a dual citizen of both this country and the UKH, so I take orders from Most High in the UKH. Almost everyone on the Cabinet is volunteering to help advise you, but they’re not getting paid for their work. They either have another job working for someone else, or they live on the money they inherited or created in the past.” 

“So this is more like an Advisory Board of a company than anything else?” 

“More like an Advisory Board of a charity. But we gotta break the truth to ya. This ‘yes we can!’ mentality has cost us a lot, and I’ve had to work overtime because of it. Your popularity is at its lowest point in any President’s history because you said you wanted to make everyone happy and you couldn’t.

“And truthfully, we’re on the brink of much worse consequences than just low coffers if we don’t figure something out soon. If we don’t fix something soon, I’ll be reprocessing an entire nation, and that’s much harder work than reprocessing a single soul. My advice is do you have anyone in that list who is impartial but can speak truthfully from the perspective on their role? You already know I’m biased because I just can’t get behind Lew. My opinion is that everything he gets his hands into has an ulterior motive that ultimately serves himself. But that’s me.” 

I let his hard, but true words sink in. “Angel. Thank you. I needed to hear that.” I looked him directly in the eye. “I don’t remember or know any of the people on the list other than you and Voltaire, and it would take forever to get to know all of them. Why don’t we do this: Pneuma,” I turned to face her, “Invite everyone. Then send me a bio on each one of them. On the ride over to the dam and the other sites, I’ll study each bio, so I can at least follow along in the conversation when we meet later today.” 

“Sounds like a good plan, Madame President,” said Pneuma as she pulled out her phone. 

“And Angel,” I said as I stood up. “Thanks for being you, despite your biases. I need to hear tough love sometimes.” 

Angel bowed, presented the three-finger salute, and said, “That’s what the Cabinet is for, Madame President. We’re always here for you.” 

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