Four-thirty A.M.

Only seven days as President of the United States, and Michael Strauss was already starting to wake up before his bot tried to wake him. The South Lawn and the Ellipse stood between his bedroom and the rest of Washington, magnifying the darkness and the quiet of the pre-dawn hours. Now that the survival of the country was truly and squarely in his hands he needed the time alone, in silence and darkness, to plan and think.

Almost reflexively, Michael ran a hand over the silken sheet on the other side of the bed. The fabric was cool, unrumpled, unused. Without meaning to, Michael’s mind went to Susan. She would have loved the President’s bedroom: the wide bed; the thick curtains; the high pile rug. Susan and Michael would dream about this very thing in their Maryland fixer-upper, their first house, back when he was just starting out in politics. They’d lie on their creaky old couch, sipping cheap, terrible wine. They were happy, imagining their future together.

That first house, as it turned out, would end up being their only house. He’d sold it after her accident for a fraction of its value, leaving half of the roof leaks unpatched and the baby room unfinished. Friends and political advisors alike had urged him to remarry, but he had instead buried his pain in work. And here he was, in 2053, the work of burying his pain unfinished.

The pre-dawn hours were always the most difficult to keep old memories at bay.

He sat up, willing the ghosts away. No use dwelling on past events that he could do nothing about; better to focus on what he could do today. He could not save Susan, but he could still save others.

He dropped to the floor, got on his hands, and began his morning pushups. His piling responsibilities had made his long morning runs impossible, yet he remained resolute about the pushups. He needed exercise to start the day calm about the problems awaiting him in the Oval Office.

The problems, he knew, could not be more dire. Hurricanes had obliterated the Gulf Coast from Houston clear to New Orleans, leaving thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. Heat and drought had rendered the Southwest uninhabitable. Everywhere else, floods and fire were so common that people were living almost like nomads. There were no climate havens to move to.

Michael had run on a campaign promise to meet the climate collapse head-on, with a concrete plan to relocate the country’s population to the Underground Cities. Construction had been going on for years, but moving people in was a gargantuan task of almost unimaginable complexity. And, as if the relocation weren’t enough, Michael had to somehow deal with the gray people problem. They were a small fraction of the population, but an oversized headache for Michael. Two decades earlier, a virus released by a melting glacier in Alaska had turned the skin of some people gray and coarse. Although the number of cases eventually dwindled, those who’d been affected stayed gray, and soon became society’s untouchables. Now, nobody wanted to be near, much less live next to them in the Underground Cities. He would never admit it publicly, but Michael empathized-- he himself felt visceral disgust whenever he had to shake the hand of a gray person. In these moments, despite his politician’s smile, Michael had to admit they really did look like gargoyles, as people derisively called them. Gray and scaly and gross.

Michael pumped through his pushups, feeling the endorphins lifting his mood, the serotonin calming him and focusing him. He pumped harder, running in his mind through the meetings and calls he had lined up that day. Each meeting and call, he reminded himself as his arms burned, was scheduled to tackle one aspect of one problem.

One step at a time.

One pushup at a time.

Finally exhausted, Michael finished his push-ups, put on his slippers, and made his way in the dark toward the bathroom. His movement triggered the bathroom lights as he stepped towards the sink.

In the mirror, Michael suddenly caught sight of someone, a gray man, standing in the bathroom with him. He screamed and fell backward, shielding his face with his arms.

He couldn’t help the thought. How did this fucking gargoyle get into my bathroom?

"Please don’t hurt me," he pleaded.

As Michael lay on the floor, arm over his head, silence enveloped him.

He realized he was alone.

There was a sharp knock on the bedroom door. It was his personal security detail. “Mr. President! Are you all right?”

A cold realization seized Michael. He looked at his hands. They were ash gray. Scaly.

“Mr. President!” the voice repeated. More knocks on the door, louder.

Michael pulled up the sleeves of his pajama top. His brain tried, but failed, to reconcile what he was seeing.

The voice from the outside again. “We’re coming in!” Michael heard the bedroom door unlock; the light above the door turned green, bathing the darkness of his bedroom in a sickly light.

Michael slammed the door of the bathroom shut just as security stormed in.

He found his voice. “Don’t come in! I’m fine.” He pushed his back against the door, still staring at his forearms and hands. They were shaking.

“Mr. President, we heard you scream and fall. We need a visual check.”

“No!” He had to think of something. “I’m naked.”

“We’ll wait until you’re decent, Mr. President.”

“Go away!” He yelled. “That’s an order, dammit.” He hoped they wouldn’t hear the trembling in his voice.

There was silence on the other side of the door.

“Very well, Mr. President,” the voice finally said. He heard the steps retreating, and the bedroom door open and shut again.

Michael put a hand on the sink, shut his eyes tightly, and lifted himself up in front of the mirror. He took a breath and opened his eyes.

He could recognize his own features in the mirror— blue eyes, high cheekbones, dirty blonde hair now streaked with white — but Michael Strauss was staring at someone else. His entire face and neck were gray. He felt his cheeks, his nose, and his forehead gingerly with trembling fingertips. His pores had enlarged, giving him the rough, uneven skin characteristic of gray people. His lips twitched, and his eyes welled up with tears. Michael touched his face again, trying to recruit his sense of touch to process the visual input that his brain was pushing away. His still unbelieving fingers ran down the skin of his neck. He gripped the lapels of his pajama top and yanked them apart. A button flew, and he only saw more gray. He ripped his top off. Neck, shoulders, chest, arms, stomach. All gray, with enlarged pores, and a cracked reptilian texture.

He couldn’t push the epithet out of his head. Gargoyle.

How was this possible? Gray kids were now being born to gray parents, yes, but there had been no new cases of people turning gray in over fifteen years. What were the chances of him, the President, being the first natural victim of a fresh wave of the graying epidemic? Plus, people didn’t turn gray overnight; it began with small blotches that grew larger and eventually covered the entire body over a couple of weeks.

Bioterror was the only explanation. And whoever did this had successfully targeted him, the President of the United States.

Michael turned away from the mirror and vomited into the toilet bowl. He put his arms around the rim, heaving, trying to think of a plan.

Ten minutes later, Michael’s mind was still blank: he had no ideas, no solutions, only fear and uncontrolled shaking. He stumbled out of the bathroom and sat down at the edge of the bed. Reaching for a pillow, he punched it blindly, then threw it across the room. He leaned over and covered his face with his hands, stifling his sobs.

In a corner of the giant bedroom, the Presidential bot, a stocky, wheeled box the size of a bulldog, blinked to life. It rolled on the carpet over the plush Presidential Seal and stopped three feet from Michael’s leg.

“Good morning, Mr. President. Is there anything I can do for you?”

Michael looked up. A light at the front of the bot blinked yellow, waiting for his command. Michael took a deep breath, wiped his eyes, and cleared his throat. His esophagus burned with vomit.

“Yes,” he said. “Put me through to Nisa Choudhry.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 2