Taft 2012 - Jason Heller [3]
Taft didn’t recognize the room, but he knew the smell of the place. It had filled his nostrils much as it had saturated his soul over the past four years.
He was in the White House.
No sooner had he spit-shined his shoes and curled the ends of what remained of his mustache, a knock came at the door.
“Yes, by all means, come in!”
The door creaked open, and a tall, thin man in a suit—also missing its waistcoat!—walked in. He crossed the room, smiled, and offered Taft his hand.
“Mr. Taft, please. Don’t try to get up. You’ve been through a lot in the last twenty-four hours.”
“It appears I have! And who might you be? Are you here to bring me my meal? You will be my eternal hero if you could run down to the kitchen and fetch me a ham or two.”
The man closed his eyes for a brief moment before smiling again. “Dinner will be coming soon. First, I need you to listen. It may not seem like you were sleeping for long, and Lord knows we have no idea how or why this happened. But you went missing from the White House … quite some time ago. This is not exactly the world you remember.”
Taft laughed. “Not the world I remember? Why, I’d have to agree with you there. Today I’ve been shot, assaulted with strange machines, and spoken to in riddles. I appear to be in a world where the president of the United States can be condescended to like a child. By a manservant such as yourself, no less.”
“Mr. Taft,” the man said, “I need you to keep an open mind here, today and in the coming days. There is a lot you’re going to need to adjust to. First of all, I am the president of the United States. Not you. Not Woodrow Wilson. Me.”
Before Taft could counter him, the man raised his hand and pressed on.
“You’ve been missing and presumed dead—one of America’s great mysteries—for a very long time. Don’t worry, the United States is still strong, still proud, still prosperous. But—” He hesitated. “Well, I’d better just say it. You’ve apparently been asleep for almost ninety-nine years. Today is November 8. The year is 2011. Mr. Taft, welcome to the twenty-first century.”
Transcript, Raw Talk with Pauline Craig, broadcast Nov. 9, 2011
PAULINE CRAIG: A giant beast of a man bursts into a presidential press conference, is shot by Secret Service, and now, two days later, the White House is telling us that this befuddled intruder in a carnival mustache really is the missing former president William Howard Taft. Almost a hundred years after he vanished. I’m used to the government telling whoppers, but come on, now! Well, one way or another, it’s history in the making, folks. You’re living it. And Raw Talk is here to break it all down for you. Our first guest today, with us via satellite, is Director of National Intelligence James Mackler. Director Mackler, you’ve come on Raw Talk, much to our amazement, to back up the president’s outrageous claim earlier today that the man who stumbled onto the White House lawn has turned out to be the real William Howard Taft.
JAMES MACKLER: Thank you, Pauline. Under normal circumstances, an ongoing national security investigation wouldn’t be something we’d publicly comment on so quickly. But with Monday’s bizarre incident happening live in front of cameras, and—and with the startling facts we’ve uncovered, the president wants to get the information out to the public as quickly as possible, to minimize confusion and head off any worries about possible terrorist threats. So, here it is. Let me first explain—there are many levels of government security. There’s secret, and then there’s top secret—
PAULINE CRAIG: And then there’s SCI, sensitive compartmented information, which is the very highest top secret.
JAMES MACKLER: Yes. We compartmentalize the