“Good morning, Your Majesty.”
“Ms. Saaret?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Good morning, ma’am.”
The elevator came. There were two Guardsmen waiting inside. The Emperor waved her in.
“After you, Ms. Saaret.”
“Thank you, Sire.”
They rode down four floors in silence, to the Emperor’s office floor, where he and the Guardsmen got off.
“Good day, Ms. Saaret.”
“Have a good day, Your Majesty.”
At dinner that night, Suzanne took it up with her husband.
“Geoffrey, you have a serious problem.”
“What is that, my dear?”
Saaret said it with the careful tonality of husbands everywhere.
“I should say that the Emperor has a serious problem, and that means you have a serious problem.”
Saaret relaxed. Imperial problems were much easier to deal with than marital problems. For Imperial problems he had staff.
“How so?”
“The Emperor is absolutely miserable.”
“Why do you say that? He seems fine to me. I mean, he has a lot of things on his mind. We’re rolling out the new management structure, which is not without its teething issues, and we keep waiting for the other shoe to drop with Catalonia and Estvia, but he seems fine.”
“Well, he’s not. I caught him this morning in the elevator lobby before he had his professional face on, and I just wanted to run up and hug him. He looked like a poor homesick puppy.”
“Puppies don’t have blue-white eyes.”
“Husky puppies do, and stop trying to change the subject. That boy is miserable. When he’s not engaged with everyone, in the evenings and on weekends, he is completely alone. You can’t just treat him like a vacuum, and roll him into the closet overnight.”
“What do you suggest?”
“He needs people. Not staff. People. People who call him Bob or Bobby or something like that, and not Your Majesty. He can’t leave the palace at all, and he’s become a creature of the corridors. Worse yet, he’s left alone to his memories – or his nightmares – on weekends and evenings. It’s unhealthy. It’ll drive him mad.”
“It doesn’t drive me mad.”
“You have me, dear, lest you forget. Didn’t you say he came from a small, close-knit family? And then he was here with his sister and her husband and his wife all those years. And now he has nobody. Absolutely nobody. For the first time in his life, really. You need to fix this.”
“I need to fix this?”
“Care and feeding of the Emperor. Wasn’t that one of the duties of co-consul you told me about? Perhaps I misremember. In any case, if not you, then who? Because this needs to be fixed.”
“I’ll talk to Daggert about it tomorrow. See if he’s noticed anything. Maybe we can think of something.”
“Be sure to do that. Tomorrow. I don’t know how long his fuse is.”
“General Daggert, do you have a minute?”
“Of course, Mr. Saaret. Come in, come in.”
Saaret closed Daggert’s office door before moving to one of his side chairs and sitting down.
“General Daggert, I have reason to believe His Majesty is suffering from both loneliness and depression following the deaths of those closest to him. I wondered if you or your men could corroborate or disprove that hypothesis.”
“Actually, I was working up to bring up the subject with you, Mr. Saaret. Several of the Guardsmen on watch have mentioned to me that he seems depressed. He will often send them out of the room for an hour or two, and, when they are allowed to return, he will appear to have been crying.”
“That can’t be good.”
Saaret sighed.
“So what do we do, General Daggert?”
“Well, there are a couple of things there, I think. One is that he has no one around to talk to other than senior officials, who are all “Yes, Sire” and “No, Sire.” He needs people he can just talk to, informally. The other part of it, I think, is that he never gets out. We encourage the sovereign not to leave the building, but he isn’t even using the rooftop gardens. He’s a creature of this building, and only two floors of it, at that.”
“Perhaps I’ll encourage him to use the gardens, then. As for having young people to talk to, informally, I don’t know what to do about that.”
“Why don’t you go talk to Valery Markov, Mr. Saaret. He has the biggest group of young people in the building. He knows how they think. Maybe he can suggest something.”
“That, General Daggert, is a splendid idea.”
“Come in, Mr. Saaret. What kind of new ideas do you need today?”
Saaret closed Markov’s office door, which got him a raised eyebrow from Markov, before he sat down in one of his side chairs.
“Mr. Markov, I have a little problem I would like your help with, not that of your group. It has to be our little secret.”
“Very well, Mr. Saaret. I can certainly accommodate that. What’s up?”
“It’s more a case of what’s down. Or rather who. The Emperor is depressed and lonely. He grew up in a very close-knit family, moved here with his sister and brother-in-law, and the three of them, together with Ms. Dunham, were together almost continuously for fourteen years. And now he’s completely alone.”
“There are thousands of people who live and work in this complex, Mr. Saaret. That is hardly what I would call alone.”
“Yes, Mr. Markov. And they all call him Sire, and Your Majesty, and he calls them all Mr. This and Ms. That. There is no one here he can just talk to. About anything.”
“Ah. I see your point. He has staff, but not friends.”
“Exactly. I was wondering if you had any ideas. You work with people the Emperor’s age every day.”
“Indeed. I have a whole virtual cafeteria of them. Whenever I want to be with young people, I can just go into the zoo.”
Markov considered, and then an idea hit him.
“What about the zoo, Mr. Saaret. Why don’t we throw the Emperor to the lions?”
“Excuse me?”
“Figuratively speaking, of course. We can just have the Emperor be a new guy in the zoo. He can hang out in that virtual cafeteria of mine and talk to anyone he wants.”
“Won’t they recognize him?”
“Probably not. The Emperor’s image is not well-circulated, after all. They do not consider themselves public figures, but public servants. Until the official portrait is released after the coronation, no one who doesn’t work directly with him will even know what he looks like. None of my people have ever been on the Emperor’s office floor, for instance.”
“We probably need a solution that will last longer than a couple of months, Mr. Markov.”
“But that’s the beauty of the zoo, Mr. Saaret. We can disguise him a bit. Not too much, because the computer has to handle the simulation, and a completely different avatar in simulation takes an abominable amount of computer time, but we could, for example, change the color of his eyes and his hair. His own mother wouldn’t recognize him.”
“Isn’t that frowned on, Mr. Markov? Using an avatar – I mean a different avatar – in VR?”
“It’s generally considered impolite. We don’t allow it here in the palace VR settings. But that is a setting for which you can authorize an override, Mr. Saaret. We have one such already, for an employee who’s paralyzed from the waist down, but in the zoo he’s not.”
“So how would this work, Mr. Markov?”
“I would just introduce Bob Furlan, say, a new employee in the new ideas group. Let him go in and discuss new ides with everyone else.”
“Same first name?”
“Yes, Mr. Saaret. So he would instinctively answer to it. Besides, he could tell people to call him Bobby. That was his nickname, right? Hearing that will be good for the soul, after all the Yes, Sires, and No, Your Majesty’s.”
“That could work, Mr. Markov. It truly could.”
>
Saaret stared off into the distance for a few seconds.
“All right, Mr. Markov. I’ll be in touch.”
An Existential Solution
Tuesday night at dinner, Saaret told Suzanne about his conversations with Daggert and Markov.
“So Daggert’s people were already noticing the same thing, and he was working up the nerve to bring it up to you?” Suzanne asked.
“Basically, yes.”
“Well, I like Mr. Markov’s idea. Get him in among his own. That has got to help. I also think he should be using the rooftop gardens. Get out of doors. Get some sunshine. Smell the flowers.”
She stopped, then tipped her head.
“There’s one more thing we can do, I think.”
“What’s that.”
“Consider. While you and I are eating here, what’s he doing?”
“Eating, I suppose.”
“Eating alone, in the same dining room he shared so many times with his wife and his sister and her husband. Looking forward with dread to another evening alone before he can have some purpose again.”
“And the solution?”
“We should have him to dinner a couple of times a week. Maybe once during the week and once on weekends. On the weekends, it could even be breakfast or lunch. Oh, it would be dinner with the grandparents, but even so.”
“Not with the grandparents, surely, Suzanne.”
“Think again, Geoffrey. You’re sixty-nine years old. He’s thirty-three years old. A difference of thirty-six years, divided by two is eighteen years. And he’s from the country. Wasn’t the Empress herself already married when she came to Sintar at age seventeen?”
“Point taken.”
“So now what?” Suzanne asked.
“I have to decide how best to approach him on this matter. And if I am even the best choice. Perhaps Daggert.”
“Who bells the cat, eh? Very well. I shall bell the cat.”
“You?”
“Of course. I am the one person whose relationship with the Emperor is not absolutely essential to the running of the Empire. If I step in it, I haven’t broken anything. And if I do well, he has yet another person he can talk to.”
Despite the Emperor’s habits being pretty precise, Suzanne Saaret missed him on Wednesday morning. He didn’t spend much time waiting in the elevator lobby, after all. Just however long it took the Imperial Guard to commandeer a car in response to his call and come fetch him.
She caught him waiting for the elevator on Thursday morning. He already had his professional face on. He wouldn’t make Monday’s mistake again.
“Good morning, Your Majesty.”
“Good morning, Ms. Saaret.”
“Sire, could I have a few minutes of your time?”
“Of course.”
The elevator showed up then, and the Imperial Guardsmen held the door for him.
“Alone?”
“Certainly.”
Dunham turned to the Guardsmen.
“Leave us.”
The Guardsmen stepped back into the elevator and the doors closed.
There were two sofas facing each other over a low coffee table opposite the elevators. Suzanne walked over to them and sat down on one. Dunham followed and sat on the other, facing her.
“Your Majesty, this is a difficult conversation none of your advisers knows how to have with you. As the very least of them, I volunteered to bell the cat, as it were.”
“I understand, Ms. Saaret.”
“Sire, people are worried about your health.”
“My health is fine, Ms. Saaret. The doctors checked me over quite thoroughly after I was knocked unconscious in the elevator.”
His eyes strayed over to the elevator, the very place that had provided refuge from the explosions that had killed his family.
“Your mental health, Sire.”
His eyes snapped back to her. She pressed on before he could say anything.
“You suffered the loss of your entire family and closest friends while simultaneously acceding to the Throne. You have no one you can address by their first name, no one who can just call you Bobby. You have no confidants, no close friends, no family, and no way to replace them. You have no intimates, and no prospect of any. For a person who grew up in a close-knit family, and who has been surrounded by close friends and family ever since, that is, quite simply, not healthy.”
He just looked at her, saying nothing, but his jaw worked and his mouth quivered.
“You are exhibiting signs of major depression, Your Majesty, and your advisers – your friends – are worried about you.”
“Ms. Saaret,” he choked out, but he could not finish, and a tear ran down his face. His face started to crumple as she watched.
Suzanne, who was already a grandmother several times over, responded as any grandmother would. She got up and walked around the coffee table to sit next to him, took him in her arms, and held his head to her shoulder while the absolute ruler of three hundred trillion people cried uncontrollably.
“Oh, Bobby. My poor, poor Bobby.”
When Dunham’s tears and sobs had begun to turn to sniffles, Suzanne let him go and pulled several tissues out of her pocket. She handed them to him and slid to the other end of the sofa while turning sideways to face him. He was looking down at his hands.
“Ms. Saaret, I –“ He stopped and looked up at her. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Everybody needs a good cry once in a while.”
“But what am I to do?”
“Your advisers and your friends have some ideas in that regard. Mr. Markov suggested you could, with a few minor tweaks to your avatar, spend some time working in his new ideas group. Be the new guy in the zoo. Bobby Furlan, or some such name. No one will know who you are, you’re just another person working on ideas with the group.”
“That could work.”
“And it would put you among people your own age for an hour or two a day, as a peer. General Daggert suggests you use the gardens. Get up there and smell the flowers, walk in the sunshine, get out of these corridors.”
“The rooftop is fraught with memories.”
“Good memories, though, right? You have to face them sooner or later. Get up there. Remember them. Honor them. But don’t crucify yourself on their memories. It’s the last thing they would want.”
“That’s probably fair.”
“And I have one more suggestion. What did Dee and Sean and Cindy call you, up here in the Imperial Residence?”
“We all used our first names, like before. Never on the lower floors. But up here we did.”
“As I thought. Very well, then. My name is Suzanne, Bobby. Up here, let us use those.”
“Very well, Suzanne.”
“And my husband’s name is Geoffrey.”
“I couldn’t.”
“But you must, Bobby. You must have something of a normal life, live like a normal person, or it will kill you. You have responsibilities enough. Crushing ones. There is no need to make them worse.”
“Very well, Suzanne.”
“Lastly, I’d like to invite you to dine with us tonight. Sure, it’ll be like dinner with the grandparents, but it will give you another social outlet.”
“I’d enjoy that, Suzanne. Thank you.”
“All right then, Bobby. I’ve kept you long enough. You go run off to work now. And talk to Mr. Markov. Today.”
“Yes, Suzanne,” Dunham said with a smile as he got up. “And thank you.”
Suzanne shooed him off toward the elevator, and Dunham laughed as he turned toward the opening doors.
“Be seated, Mr. Markov.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
“Mr. Markov, my advisers tell me I need more, and more informal, interaction with people my own age for my own mental health. I understand you discussed one possible method for doing that with Mr. Saaret.”
“Yes, Sire. The idea is to introduce you as a new member of the zoo – the new ideas gro
up – and let you work in there for an hour or two whenever your duties permit. We could tweak up a new avatar for you, disguise you just a little bit. And we would tell people you had some other big project going on, but you had some spare time to help out.”
“That works for me, Mr. Markov. I’m looking forward to it.”
“All right, Sire. Let me go ahead and tweak the avatar myself, so no one else knows, and let’s plan on tomorrow for a first run in the zoo.”
“Very well, Mr. Markov. Let me know when you’re ready.”
“Mr. Markov requested authorization to modify one of His Majesty’s avatars today,” Saaret said. “I understand he was called in for a meeting with the Emperor this morning. Whatever you did, my dear, it worked.”
“Yes,” Suzanne said. “I won’t break the Emperor’s confidence, Geoffrey, but I will tell you he was much closer to breaking than even I feared.”
“Really.”
“Yes, and he’s coming to dinner tonight. Now, he and I have already agreed that, on this floor, the three of us are on a first-name basis. So he’s Bobby here, on this floor, when it’s just us. And no talking shop.”
“What else is there?”
“I’m serious, Geoffrey. No talking shop. Tell each other about your backgrounds. That would be much better.”
“Very well, dear. This is your show.”
Saaret consulted his VR for a moment.
“I’ve just gotten a message from the Guard that he’s on his way. I’ve let the Guardsmen in. Shall we, my dear?”
He held out his hand, and Suzanne took it. He led her out into the hall as the guard was letting the Emperor in from the elevator lobby.
“Bobby, how nice of you to come,” Suzanne said. “And of course, you know my husband Geoffrey.”
“Yes, Suzanne. Hello, Geoffrey.”
“Hello, Bobby. Let’s be seated, shall we?”
Suzanne led them into the dining room, where there were three places set. The fourth chair, the one that would have its back to the view, had been removed. The window wall was completely open to the warm, pleasant evening.
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