It was as if time had never been allowed inside the room. There were no windows and no pictures on the walls. Cream wallpaper stretched up to the ceiling, then broke into the circular pattern of shadows projected by the hanging lamps. The synthetic fur covering the floor purred along with the movements of the President’s feet over it. The President looked around the room, then towards a point right a couple of metres behind the screen of his computer. The muscles in his shoulder relaxed, lowering his elbows just below the edge of his desk. He wished that his were still the times of ticking clocks, counting the cascade of minutes as mothers repeat their lullabies night after night. But sound also seemed to have sunk silently into the rug, in the pores of the wallpaper. It had to look like his decision had been taken through doubt and suffering, and he needed the proof of passing hours.
The President run his hand along the balding top of his hair. The foundation was wearing off, and the edge of a scale rubbed against the tip of his fingers. He kept playing with it for a while, running it under his nails, one after the other, as deep as it could go without hurting his flesh. Social etiquette was an unnecessary concern in the depth of his underground bunker. There was no need to conceal his nature any more than a man would silence his bowels in the privacy of his bathroom. After all, it was only a few years earlier that his mutant nature had won him millions of votes during the elections. He had to tame it down to the minimum necessary visual proof, so to appear as reassuring to pure-breed humans as he was to the mutant underclasses. Hence the foundation, the human mannerisms and the elocution classes to help him control the intonation of his speeches – only dropping the mutant accent when required.
