Page 22 - Unlikely Stories 4

The President’s New Birthday Suit

the rest. It wouldn’t hurt for the videos to be a little grainy or out of
focus, either.
Three weeks later, shortly after the president’s nomination by
acclaim at his party’s mid-summer convention, he was ushered into
the White House Family Theater for a private viewing of his outdoor
athleticism on a larger screen than it would be seen by the public. He
was amazed to see himself—a slimmer, stronger-looking self—briefly
wrestling bare-chested with a tame tiger, paddling a canoe down a
rushing river, running up and down the steps of the Capitol Building,
playing catch with children in an inner-city neighborhood and
shooting hoops one-on-one with a well-known but recently deceased
NBA player.
“Wait a minute,” he said, when the clips had ended. “That’s me,
but I don’t remember doing any of those things.”
“Well, sir,” said his chief advisor, “you must have, because here
they are, recorded for posterity. Most people never see this side of
you, but now we’ll give them the opportunity in your new campaign
ads. We’ve shown them to a random group of undecided voters, and
they are a hit. Both sexes expressed increased approval for you after
seeing them. And they cannot be challenged: perhaps in five or ten
years the mapping and rendering software that produced them will be
available for home or commercial use. Right now it requires a
supercomputer and a programming language unknown to anyone
outside DARPA.”
The president approved, his lackeys breathed sighs of relief, and
soon the apparently amateur videos taken by his intimate circle of
friends and family began to surface on the internet. Their source was
effectively concealed, and the White House demanded to know who
was responsible for leaking the president’s personal files. The imagery
with greatest traction was then picked up and integrated into
professionally-produced campaign commercials by an unwitting
agency given permission to use them: after all, they were in the public
domain now, anyway.
By early October in that election year, the Committee to Re-elect
the President was riding high: his polls had never been better. His
opponent was suspicious of the fortuitously-leaked videos, but the

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