“Mr. President?” The voice behind me said.

I turned around in my swivel chair and looked at the lady, who was seemingly reluctant to be here, that approached me.

“Yes?” I sighed.

“The meeting has started.... Err... Sir.”

“Fine. I'll be up in a moment. Fetch me a coffee, won't you?”

She nodded and scurried off like the mouse she is. So easily manipulated. Just like the rest of them..

They're all in the palm of my hand.

Like all of these monthly meetings, there will be a large oval table with 12 chairs around it and a chair at the head – my chair. There is no chair at the opposing end of the table – just 6 on each side, and my chair at the top. It helps feed my god-like complex that I try so hard to maintain.

Everybody in the meeting room is anonymous. They all just have numbers. Except for me, of course. I felt a bit threatened by this for much of my first term in office, but after a while, I realized it was for the better. If anyone was to discover the location of these monthly meetings, they could easily discover all of the members names and cause trouble. With this number system in place, not even I know their names, so their identities are totally safe, while mine is publicly known anyway so it's no more of a threat to me.

The meetings take place in the third floor below land, whereas my secret office is four floors below. The oval office is just for public broadcasts and tours and the like. All of my real work gets done underground, where I have the utmost privacy, short of the lackeys that get sent to me every now and again to remind me of my already known obligatory meetings, press conferences, public appearances, etc.

As I make my way up the 17 stairs leading from four floors below to the third (my OCD tends to kick in when I'm climbing up stairs... I step on every other step, and count all of the steps as I go), I ponder what we'll discuss this month. Last month we covered our current state in the War on Terror, and how it still doesn't have an end in sight. All the better, I say. After all, what is war but a lucrative method of bonding the nation together?

As I finish my ascension up the flight of concrete stairs, I ponder the possible topic for todays meeting. I mean, we haven't covered everything there is to be covered, but nothing really seems relevant this month. I hope this isn't just one of the boring ones where we sit around waiting for something to come up.

In the meeting room, everyone seems to be set up except for the king of the crop, yours truly. I quickly shuffle to the end of the table dedicated to myself, and get some papers out of my suitcase. It's nothing to bring up discussion about, just the same papers we hand out every meeting, wherein the members autographs swear them to secrecy every time we meet, to keep these get-togethers absolutely confidential.

After the papers make their way around the table and back up to myself, I finish them off with my signature on the top, claiming that I also agree to cohere with all the rules contained in the packet.

After that's all done, we all settle in for the meeting.

Number 3 raises a few fingers, and when acknowledged by myself, queries “President Tryl, do you have any information that could be useful to discuss in this meeting?”

“No, I'm afraid I do not. Everything seems to be going well.”

We sat in silence for another 20 seconds or so, until Number 7 spoke up.

“Mr. President, I speak for all of us when I say that I'm sorry for the silence. You see, we do have a topic of discussion... We're just a bit... Hesitant.”

“Well, don't be. I'm an open-minded person.” I said back to him. He still looked very reluctant to speak up about it, and I guess Number 9 noticed this as well, as he stood up and spoke quickly.

“President Michael Tryl, would you be interested in provoking less deep intelligent thought in our nation, to keep them from revealing The Truth, now and in the future, thus providing us with a layer of protection when we perform risky dealings and situations?”

When he said “The Truth,” he, of course, meant our frowned-upon way of getting things done in a profitable manner for our own benefits. We're only human, right?

I was interested, but I wasn't sure how we were going to pull this off.

“What do you have in mind?”