by Gini Koch
Francine, as my double, wore the same clothes as me. Unlike me, Francine could be trusted to dress, prep, and eat and drink without spilling on her Fake FLOTUS Outfit or mussing her Fake FLOTUS Hair and Makeup. And yet, Jeff preferred me and found it unsettling to even tell Francine she looked nice. Apparently he didn’t mind my penchant for dropping food onto my chest.
All this meant, therefore, I got to see what I’d be wearing today.
Shocking me to my core, I wasn’t going to be in “my” color today. Would have asked what was wrong with the cosmos, but I wasn’t that stupid. Turned out I would be representing in A-C colors. A black, long-sleeved sheath dress that hit right above my knees, a white Bolero jacket with black buttons and piping, black hose, and black pumps. Oh, and pearls because of course pearls. Prayed I’d be in fakes—the necklace, earrings, ring, and bracelet Francine was wearing looked very real.
Chose not to mention that I’d run the hose in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. If Francine was already in nylons, I’d be in nylons or die trying to get out of wearing them. So far, I’d lost those battles every time.
“Mommy, do we get to watch you get ready?” Jamie asked, sounding excited, while she stuffed pancakes and scrambled eggs into her mouth.
“Um, I guess so. If you want. And remember, sweetie—don’t talk with your mouth full.”
“We do!” She said after she swallowed. Then she looked at Lizzie. “Don’t we?” Lizzie nodded.
“I have no idea why,” I said. Honestly.
“Oh, totes for sure we do, Kitty,” Lizzie said cheerfully. “I like watching Pierre do your makeup—it gives me a lot of tips. And Akiko telling me why she has you in what is really educational. You never know, I might want to go into fashion.”
Managed to refrain from saying that Lizzie was as likely to go into fashion as I’d been. I’d always had an interest, but my talents truly ran to mind-melding with every crazed lunatic with a Take Over The World Today Plan rather than matching fabrics and colors and, frankly, Lizzie was definitely cut from the same cloth.
“I like to watch Uncle Pierre make you even more ravishing,” Jamie said, providing us with an exact Pierre Quote. Somehow it didn’t seem wrong coming from the American Centaurion Embassy’s Concierge Majordomo and the Confirmed Most Competent Man in the World, but it sounded awful coming out of the mouth of my little girl.
Had to fight the impulse to demand that I never wear makeup again. Somehow I was teaching the kids that primping was a vital part of being a woman, and that went against most of how I’d lived my life.
“Mommy looks pretty right now,” Charlie said truculently, winning my Mommy’s Best Child of the Hour Award.
“Right you are, son,” Jeff said as he sat down between Jamie and Lizzie and pulled Charlie onto his lap. I kissed the tops of each kid’s head, including Lizzie’s, went to the fridge, and got a Coke. Because it was already somehow a long day and it was going to be even longer and Coke was good at keeping me going.
“She does,” Lizzie agreed. “But she’s going to be filmed, and makeup helps make you look good on camera. And on stage.”
“I dread to ask who you heard say that.”
Lizzie grinned at me. “It’s a long list. You want it now?”
“Absolutely not.” Took a long drink of my Coke. “Just tell me that no one’s putting makeup on the three of you.”
“Nope,” Lizzie replied. “Pierre says that we’re perfect as is.”
“Thank God.”
“We won’t be as filmed as you,” Lizzie went on. “That’s why. If Pierre thinks we might be, then I’ll get some makeup, too.”
“I’m betting your father would be as thrilled with that as I am.”
Lizzie shrugged and looked behind me. “Why don’t you ask him?”
Turned. There was no one there.
CHAPTER 3
SILER APPEARED RIGHT next to me and I jumped. “Gah!”
“Nice to see you, too.” He grinned. “I love that I still manage to get you at least half of the time.”
“You’re hilarious. Why were you blending right now?”
He laughed. “Because I’m practicing.”
“My dad can hold a blend for almost an hour now,” Lizzie said proudly.
Lizzie lived with us because Siler was not only likely the first hybrid on Earth, but he was also a highly trained assassin. Due to losses we’d sustained during Operation Epidemic, the other assassins he, and I, had been tight with were gone, and it had made more sense for him and Lizzie to stay with us. Siler was the current American Centaurion Defense Attaché, but he was still very willing to do the dirty work that clandestine and covert ops seemed to demand all the time and, because of that, Lizzie was with us to have a more stable home life, so to speak.
Siler didn’t age normally—he looked like he was in his late thirties or early forties, but he was much older. He also had the rare ability to blend, what I called going chameleon. This was a trait from Alpha Four, where our Earth A-Cs were all descended from—we had native Alpha Four animals with us who could do the same thing. But since Siler wasn’t a Peregrine, aka an Alpha Four Attack Peacock on Steroids, him being able to blend was amazing. Then again, I had Dr. Doolittle skills. Amazing seemed to be what we all did before breakfast. Or, in this case, during breakfast, since he was holding a plate laden with food—I hadn’t seen it floating in the air because he could extend his blend via touch.
Siler was, like most of the people working with us, attractive. He’d had a human mother, though, and she hadn’t been gorgeous, so he was normally good-looking. It was a nice perk of my life that I got to consider people I’d normally think of as totally hot merely as plenty good enough. The visuals did tend to make up for things like being primped within an inch of my life and my friends appearing out of nowhere just to see how high they could get me to jump.
Siler sat back down at the place he’d clearly been before, now that I was paying attention to obvious things like silverware and a glass of orange juice at an empty seat at the table. That was me, The Queen of Observation. Hey, I was really good at spotting bad guys, so I had that going for me.
Sat down in the empty chair that didn’t appear to have someone invisible sitting in it. “Does anyone know if we’re gating or driving over?”
“The First Family is driving,” Siler said. “With your usual security entourage. The rest of us will be there before you, whether by gate or hyperspeed.”
Colette’s phone beeped. “Raj is ready for you, Jeff, if you’re ready for him.”
“Meaning he wanted me there five minutes ago. Got it.” He sighed, kissed all the kids, put Charlie in my lap, kissed me, then headed out for his briefing with his Chief of Staff, Rajnish Singh, who was an A-C troubadour. Raj didn’t prep me for appearances under normal circumstances—that was a job for others who’d drawn the short straws.
“I’ll go with you,” Siler said as he chucked Charlie under his chin, did the same with Jamie, kissed Lizzie on the top of her head, then went after Jeff, who held the door for him.
No sooner were they gone than Colette’s phone beeped again. “You left your phone in your rooms?” she asked me, sounding shocked.
“It happens.”
“Rarely,” Francine and Nadine said in unison.
Shrugged. “Didn’t figure I’d need it to walk all the way across the hall. I see I was wrong.”
Colette laughed. “Well, Pierre, Akiko, and Vance are ready for you. And they’d like you to get to the prep area as fast as possible.”
Managed not to heave a sigh. I’d told them to get over here, after all. “It’s down the hall. I’m sure I can make it there without having to sprint. Nadine, can you be sure the kids are dressed and ready before they come in to watch me?”
“Absolutely.” She winked at me. “We’ll use hyperspeed.”
“Go
team.”
“I’m with you,” Colette said as I got up. Speaking of one of the people assigned to my intelligence preparations team. Vance Beaumont, as my Chief of Staff, was the other person who scored this fun job, with an assist from Pierre and, usually, whoever else had come by to hang out and share their thoughts. Basically, Vance and Pierre did double duty but anyone else nearby was always ready to help them with the heavy lifting of getting me ready to try to be the best little FLOTUS in the business.
“Where are you going?” I asked Francine, who also stood.
“I’m shadowing you, just in case.” She grinned. “Don’t worry—no one will see me and Craig unless we need to be seen.”
“Of that I have no doubt.” Humans couldn’t see beings moving at hyperspeed, and a lot of the aliens that had sort of moved in couldn’t, either. “And I’m not worried if you guys have to pretend to be us, either. You’re good at it.”
Craig Rossi was the A-C whose job was to be Jeff’s double. Unlike Francine, he wasn’t hotter than the person he was pretending to be, but Craig didn’t get nearly as much work as my Secret Service detail told me other President’s doubles had and, so far, no one had noted when it was Craig and/or Francine versus me and Jeff.
That they were doubling us so well wasn’t just due to the fact that Francine and Craig resembled me and Jeff. A-Cs were, in general, terrible liars. There were a few who were naturally gifted at it, and those few were assigned into espionage at a young age. But the majority of regular A-Cs, even ones with empathic, imageering, dream reading, or other talents, couldn’t lie believably at all, meaning that our doubles couldn’t have faked it well enough under normal circumstances. However, there were others who could lie in their own way, and we called them troubadours.
Troubadours affected people by modulating their voices, expressions, body language, and so forth. Meaning they were great actors and politicians, and both professions had been looked down upon by the residents of Alpha Four. Actors and politicians basically lied for a living, meaning that we had a lot of naturally gifted liars around, and most of the world didn’t realize it. Heck, most of the A-Cs didn’t realize it, either. And troubadours had been the A-C version of second-class talented citizens for a long time.
Sort of like we were in Charlie’s Angels, I’d found Raj and then he’d found others, and I’d started giving them jobs to do, like impersonating people, handling our press and PR, and similar. Craig and the three Alexis sisters, for example, were all troubadours—Nadine doubled the current Head of Imageering, Serene Dwyer, when necessary—and we had other troubadours placed throughout the world now, to ensure that we could keep things smooth when they needed to be.
But I wasn’t the only one who’d felt that the troubadours were being unfairly pushed aside and that they could do so much more for their people and their country and, now, their planet, if they were merely organized and focused. Serene was a closet troubadour, and she’d coordinated the troubadours into the A-C version of the CIA. Francine and Craig didn’t just double or shadow me and Jeff, therefore—they were also around to help protect us.
I’d much rather have been doing a briefing with Serene and her team of Stealth Troubadours than what I was headed for, and Francine and Colette probably felt the same way. But instead we headed for the Cosmetology Room, where I got turned into the FLOTUS O’ Wonder. I comforted myself in the fact that, clearly, others before me had had to be gussied up for events, since there was a nice room assigned to this task that had existed before we’d arrived.
Vance had installed a TV in this room within the first week of his being my Chief of Staff, and Pierre already had it turned on. Seeing as it was early morning, we were watching Good Day USA! which had somehow become “our” morning show. Of course, if Good Day USA! was on, I was up far too early, but that was par for the course on big days like this.
Operation Fundraiser had started during my horrifically ill-conceived appearance on this show last year, and due to everything that had happened, the hosts had become part of our extended team.
Adam Johnson was a retired baseball player who could have passed as a relative of Gower’s—he was big, black, bald, handsome, and charismatic. He was a great guy and was, happily, fully human.
His cohost was a very pretty, perky Latina, Kristie Rodriguez, who was no longer fully human. No, Kristie was a cyborg, which was the current “in” robotics thing to have done for those with enough money, connections, and insanity.
Because this was how my life worked, both of them had had roles in Code Name: First Lady, the movie that Hollywood Quadruple Threat Jürgen Cologne had gotten made despite my better judgment and wishes. However, due to what had happened during my appearance on Good Day USA!, it had been a lot better to let Cologne do the movie than to lose his support. So, somehow, the “movie of my life” was going to be a summer tentpole coming out Memorial Day weekend. I wasn’t quite ready to start the Countdown To Doom, but I wasn’t going to be waiting too long to begin. I didn’t know whether to hope it bombed or succeeded, either.
Thankfully, it was January and that meant Code Name: First Lady was done filming and was in the editing and special effects stages, meaning I still had time to pretend I was normal and Adam and Kristie were back in the studio. Well, sort of. Reality said normal wasn’t anything near to what I was, and they were actually live at the scene, interviewing important people who were there for Jeff’s address.
So, while Akiko got me into my outfit so that Francine and I looked like we were still dressing like twins at far too advanced an age, we watched Adam and the Kristie-Bot chatting up Neil deGrasse Tyson about the historic event we were prepping for.
The perky enthusiasm on the screen was overpowering. I searched the audience for Dazzlers in Attendance—while I’d had to put a moratorium on the Dazzlers approaching Stephen Hawking because I didn’t want them to kill him with love, I hadn’t done so for anyone else, and Tyson tended to have a group of fangirl Dazzlers nearby at all times. His wife was also totally brainy and she had her own set of Dazzler fangirls, too. Basically, the Tysons were considered the Dazzler Celebrity Dream Couple.
Even though Tyson was in the middle of negotiations with the Galactic Council, he and those representatives who were visiting Earth were taking a break to hang out at Andrews Air Force Base, where the launch, and therefore Jeff’s address, were to take place.
I might have been Earth’s official Council representative but, despite most of my press, I wasn’t an idiot, and I’d tagged a number of influential people to help me, Tyson being only one of them. I’d actually gotten a lot of positive reactions to my ability to delegate. I was just glad that I wasn’t having to pretend to understand tremendously advanced physics on a daily basis. I was good at tossing in the word “quantum” when needed, but otherwise I was far better with figuring out how to circumvent Crazed Evil Genius plans than determining what part of our solar system any particular set of new aliens should move into.
Because this was how my world worked, we weren’t getting to actually hang out with one of the smartest guys in the world at the event—Tyson was in the Visiting Dignitaries Area, meaning he got good seats but no Presidential Face Time—but we were going to have the Kristie-Bot and Adam with us, literally, from the moment we arrived at Andrews. They and a few other press we liked were going to be basically shadowing Jeff the entire time. Of course, while they were press, they were also press we could trust, so that was one for the win column. And my personal smartest guy in the room—Charles Reynolds, my best guy friend since ninth grade and the current Director of the CIA—would be shadowing us, too, so it was better to have Tyson elsewhere, doing his brainy thing for the good of the Greater Cosmos.
Time for makeup and hair, while Vance and Colette talked at me. I was grateful when I had to close my eyes for eye shadow and such, because it meant I could better pretend I was taking all their information in instead of trying to h
ear what they were saying on Good Day USA! What they were saying was basically “wasn’t this just the coolest thing ever,” which, while nice, wasn’t exactly newsworthy.
The kids joined us during the second half of my eyes prep. “Mommy, can we go on a trip on the new spaceship?” Jamie asked.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, sweetie. Uncle Brian will be taking that trip first.” Brian Dwyer was my old boyfriend from high school who was now an astronaut and married to Serene. He’d been the no-brainer choice for one of the Distant Voyager’s crew for a variety of reasons, many of which had happened during Operation Drug Addict.
“Going on vacation would be fun,” Lizzie said. “I used to do that a lot when . . .” Her voice trailed off and I opened my eyes, liner going on or no liner going on. Lizzie looked like she wished she’d kept her mouth shut and was about one syllable away from bursting into tears.
“Family vacations are a normal thing,” I said gently. “Even in abnormal families like ours.”
Lizzie relaxed and managed a little smile. “True enough.”
Pierre gently shoved me back into makeup position and I closed my eyes again. “So, let’s plan where we’ll go when Daddy has some free time he can fit in.”
“Not Camp David,” Lizzie said firmly.
Considering we’d had a triple attack the first time we’d set foot there, I was in wholehearted agreement. Operation Madhouse might have been a couple of years ago, but it was still very fresh in my mind. We hadn’t willingly gone back to Camp David since. Of course, Jeff hadn’t taken a day off, either. An actual vacation might be a really good idea.
Felt something in the air in front of me and opened my eyes again, ignoring the sighs heaved by Pierre, Vance, and Akiko. A Mickey Mouse figurine floated in front of my face. “Yes, Charlie, I agree that going to Disneyland would be a great choice.” I loved all things Disney, and if I could swing it, a week at DLand would be the best family vacation ever. Maybe we’d do Disneyland, Disneyworld, the Big Red Boat, and hit Paris and Tokyo DLands, too.