Three

It was almost predictable that the Jack would shut down the news, but the swiftness with which he struck was incredible. Within a week newspapers and television stations were shut down, and within two months there was no more mainstream internet. Smaller, more maneuverable sites could evade him for a little while, but servers all over the U.S. were being shut down.

Protests turned to riots quickly. The recently set up government TV stations were burned to the ground.

The police broke the riots up with rubber bullets, mostly. I remember in Los Angeles there was a riot broken up with live rounds.

It was reportedly an accident.

The Jack needed a new PR man.

I went to my cabinet and pulled out and old pack of cards. They were very old, but somehow I knew it had to be these. I took out the cards and wrote in the idea that I had written on the napkin inside my pocket.

"The world doesn't need another king."

I sent it to the Red House.

The day after the Jack used it in his speech, I went to Washington again and waited behind low concrete barriers to see him. I told Lucy to stay at the Hotel.

"You'll be safer here," I said.

As the Jack stepped out of his limousine and walked past me, I reached my hand out to him, holding in it the deck of cards minus the jack I had sent him. On the cover of the cards I had written my name and number. He looked at me and took the cards, pocketing them after a hesitation.

I heard the riots outside my hotel from two blocks away.

I was already too late.

Two

It was the shots that led to the downfall of the internet, of media, of almost all broad-audience communications.

It also destroyed the Jack's persona: the laughing, folksy Midwesterner who could plant a field in the morning, win a debate in the afternoon, and still have time to sit down with his family for a barbeque.

The shots were leaked two months after the painting of the White House, but it was only two weeks after that that the Jack turned the country into a police state.

They were a video of two men practicing free throws in a gymnasium. No one really knew why it was filmed, but there it was. Shot after shot, the two men laughed with each other as they sunk their throws.

And then there was this disturbance. The second man was distracted; the ball bounced off of the rim.

The audio became distorted with the noise of three gunshots. The camera dropped to the ground.

The Jack walked onto the screen, wiping the gun off. He slipped it into his pocket, glanced around, and straightened his tie. He walked off.

Two men came in, cleaning up the mess the Jack had left. They cleaned up the blood from both of the men, and presumably also from the cameraman. They picked up the bodies, and then the agent pocketed the camera. That was wear the footage ended. In the warm, cozy pocket of an associate to a murder.

Things changed.