Catch Me If You Can

Chapter 2 (Irene)

I was the most important sixteen-year old in the American Empire.

That is not my huge ego speaking, though I’ll admit to having one of those, too. It’s simple fact. There are teenagers who would have killed to be me. Who would have sold their souls for my education, my lineage, my inheritance.

Those teenagers were so naive.

“Are you sure you can handle this?” my father asked, his brow creasing endearingly. Quickly spotting his mistake, he attempted to correct himself, with all the silver-tongued slickness of a politician, born and raised. “Not that I think you can’t. The press is just an extremely delicate instrument. The gentlest nudge could upset the balance of–”

I smiled and landed a quick peck on his clean-shaven cheek. “I can handle this, Daddy. It’s not even my first press conference.”

It wasn’t even my second conference, or my third, or my fourth. I had been attending these conferences since I was old enough to walk. I was born for the camera, raised in the spotlight. But this would be, of course, my first conference alone.

My father smiled bitterly, and tweaked my chin affectionately. “That’s my girl. Knock them dead, Irene.”

I smiled, though the expression was forced, and stepped beyond the curtain, into the line of fire.

These conferences were typically held by my father, Richard Anderson. The darling of the American Empire. We did have a President, of course, but what good is a democratic office anymore? The old system was gone, replaced by only one rule: If you want to run the show, know how to manipulate the system.

And my father was, without a doubt, the best manipulator in the Empire.

I couldn’t see beyond the stage, which, for such a large event, was actually quite small. A podium lay in the center of the stage, like a boxer squaring up for the fight. Beyond the cliff of faux wooden flooring, a thousand camera lights flashed as one, capturing every angle of my entrance. The glare was blinding.

I stood at the podium, my smile plastered to my face.

“Hello,” I greeted the world, through clenched teeth. “You all know me, I presume?”

I won only a few nervous chuckles from our audience, but that was fine. I wasn’t here to crack jokes and make friends.

“My father, unfortunately, has another meeting to attend at the time being, so I’ll be conducting the conference this week. To be honest, there’s not very much ground to cover. Little has changed in the last seven days, but we are on the verge of finding the alternative energy source we have all been so desperate for.”

This was a line straight from my father’s conference just last week, and the week before that, and the week before that. We were always just this close to finding the energy we were all so hungry for, just this close to going back to the Old Way of life. Unfortunately, no matter how many times the phrase was repeated, it was never made any clearer just how close this breakthrough was.

“Dr. Barnes and his team are as persistent as ever,” I recounted, drumming my fingers on the podium’s edge, “and they have renewed faith in the idea proposed to harness wind energy. We currently lack the funds to set up extensive research on the countryside, as Dr. Barnes has requested, but we hope to remedy this soon.

“I will now open up the floor to audience questions, as per tradition.”

A moment passed. Two. I stood patiently, waiting for someone to ask the inevitable question, the one never failed to come to the podium. The one that was constantly in everyone’s mind, that itched in the back of your consciousness, demanding explanation.