Mark

Washington. 2040AD

As I sat waiting in the car, it began to rain.

“Thanks for driving me” Karen abruptly said as she opened the passenger door to the car. “I don’t trust myself”

Her tone was cold and remote, probably rehearsed. She had come from her home to my car, a grand total of sixteen steps, but was already soaked with rain.

“It’s no problem” I replied, mimicking her voice, as if we were two self-serve check-outs talking to each other. I wanted to tell Karen that she looked lovely in black, but thought myself out of it. Given the circumstances, it seemed in rather poor taste.

“I miss him” she sighed. “He didn’t really like me but he was my dad”

“Understandable” was all I let myself say. It is difficult to know what to say to a grieving child, but to the daughter of the president it is almost impossible. Treading eggshells wouldn’t begin to cover how careful I was.

“Even though he was a bit of a bastard…” Karen sniffed twice and wiped her nose with a tissue from her purse. “Well…a lot of a bastard”

“Well, it’s not every man who abuses his multinational corporations to become President of the United States” I shrugged, saying one of those stupid things that I always regret later. “You have to be impressed”

Karen threw the tissue into the ashtray, “he never blamed himself for what he did; that is what annoys me the most. He always said that he was telling people what they wanted to hear, because they were telling him what they wanted to hear. One man tried to shoot him and he just didn’t care. He was shameless”

“I’m sorry” I said. I was sorry that she would have to walk through the crowds of protestors at the funeral, sorry that she had been caught up in her father’s mess, and sorry that she had lost her father. I decided to drive the long way to the cemetery to give Karen a chance to change her mind about going. For a while, there was nothing but the sound of rain to break the silence.

In that silence, I thought about how we had first met. Karen had first lay eyes on me at the White House Correspondence Dinner. I had first seen her through the various newspapers and political campaigns. It was her father who was the star of such publicity but it was Karen had always caught my eye. Our romance was unlikely, me being a simple civil servant, she being the daughter of a presidential candidate. We made it work. Paparazzi only became a problem after “Mark”, as he insisted on being called, became Mr. President.

After Mark became the head of state, Karen and I suddenly had to become respectable people. We had to dress appropriately at all times and couldn’t be seen indulging in “improper” things (whatever that means). Sometimes we quarreled but nothing could ever really come between us at that point. We were too happy for that, but our happiness was not destined to last.

When the scandals came out about Mark, things quickly soured in the world. America had decided that the Commander-in-Chief and everything around him was toxic, and the press jumped upon this idea like flies on dead men. As “Markgate” came out, everything got turned up to eleven and I couldn’t cope. It was only after Mark passed away that Karen and I rekindled our bond.

“He was only fifty-six” Karen said finally. “That’s too young for anyone these days. He didn’t get to do anything that he really wanted to”

“The whole world knew his name by twenty-three” I tried to be comforting but sounded dopey instead, “and Jesse Eisenberg played him in the movie- well, the first movie about him. That has to be an achievement for the both of them”

As we approached the parking lot, we could see that, despite the White House secretaries organizing the event in absolute secrecy, that word had got out and that a mob of angry American citizens were blockading the cemetery. One group had already started defacing the cemetery’s wall. They had packed in their numbers, even in the Washington downpour. Karen and I sat in the car, waiting for the courage to move through such a crowd.

“Nothing brings people together like a common enemy” Karen ran her fingers through her hair. “It looks like dad helped people find friends one last time. He would have liked that”

“I thought this was going to be private”

Karen chuckled softly but there was still a lump in her throat, “I think it was dad who taught people that there was no such thing as privacy”

“Are you ready for this?” I faced Karen and saw her trying to stave off a fit of anger, or maybe sadness.

“These people didn’t even know him” Karen breathed. “How can they do this?”

“They knew who he was. Everyone in the world knew who he was” I took her hand. “He was Mark Zuckerberg”

As we sat waiting in the car, it kept raining.