“In retrospect, the disaster we experienced that day was but a foretaste of the much more devastating events of the last week—events that have among other sad outcomes led to the fall of the government. We must now look ahead to a period of at least several months during which a caretaker cabinet will look after the day-to-day running of the country while a new governing coalition is organized. It is the tradition during such periods that the caretaker government should avoid making major policy decisions or budgetary commitments. That is all well and good—in normal times. These times, however, are not normal. The nation is in the midst of a crisis that cannot be addressed
Willem, aware that all eyes were upon him, took the risk of checking his phone. He had silenced it completely. But the sheer volume of messages was proof that they weren’t just imagining this. It wasn’t just a dream. Looking at the screen of the device was like staring into the chute of a slot machine that had just hit the jackpot.
“We have to release a statement—” Saskia was saying.
“To the effect that the totally convincing apology we just watched is actually a fake apology for the earlier totally convincing video that was also fake?” asked the streamer.
Maybe it was just his imagination, but Willem couldn’t help feeling that some of the eyes now upon him were less than entirely friendly. He had felt a bit of this yesterday in the SCIF. To some Dutchmen he would always be an inscrutable combination of American and Chinese. Being gay didn’t exactly help. His family links to China, his fluency in Mandarin, his recent interactions with Bo—which he had been at pains to put on the official record, to avoid the slightest hint of undue influence—all these could suddenly begin to look suspicious now that this second deepfake had been released.
His ID—the credential that got him through the gates of this palace, and many other secure facilities in the Netherlands as well, was hanging around his neck on a cloth lanyard that was riding up above his collar and touching his neck. It was suddenly feeling heavy. Before he’d even really had time to think about it he reached up and pulled it off and let it dangle from both outstretched hands in front of him. “Until this matter is resolved,” he said, “to avoid even the appearance of any impropriety, I am placing myself on leave.” He dropped the credential on the table and turned around. As he did so, his gaze swept across the queen’s face. She looked stunned, stricken. Willem’s impulse, born of habit, was to offer some advice. To coolly analyze the situation, make suggestions, execute a plan, smooth it all over. But there were situations that arose from time to time when the monarch actually did have to be the monarch. Alone. This was one of those. “Nice enough afternoon,” he said. “Can I borrow a bicycle?”
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
There was an old joke about a man who is driving somewhere with an accordion in the back of his car. He parks the car outside a diner in a sketchy part of town and goes in for dinner. When he comes out he sees that the rear window of his car has been smashed out. He runs up to it and discovers that, while he wasn’t looking, some miscreant has thrown a second accordion in there and made a clean getaway.
During Rufus’s past life trying to operate a farm, he’d learned that this actually explained a lot about farm and ranch life. As soon as someone found out you had fifty acres, they’d remember a nephew with a dog that had outgrown his apartment, or nipped a child, and suggest that your farm would be the perfect place for it to live. Or they’d start talking about an old car that was taking up space in their garage that they’d been meaning to fix up one day and just needed to park somewhere for a spell—and a car wouldn’t really take up that much space on fifty acres, would it?
