The Media Candidate Read Free

Primary
with singular intensity.
    She didn’t care about choosing a candidate or
playing the games everyone swilled. Her focus slashed through the
peripherals, digesting every facial expression, every movement,
every shadow. She wasn’t just watching; but dissecting,
penetrating, analyzing. Her attention spotlighted the details,
looking for flaws, searching for any glimpse or clue to support her
belief.
    She’d developed a simple but controversial
theory with painstaking research. But her effort had been met first
with an artificial indifference that intellectuals reserve for
issues that offend their faith, but which they hope will just
wither with neglect. This seeming indifference turned into
hostility by the university administrators as it became clear that
Professor Halvorsen wouldn’t just go away.
    Professor Halvorsen nudged Samantha, and the
black and white ball turned her head sideways and looked up at her
with one eye. She nudged her again. “Come on, Sammy. I have to get
up now. Vamoose.”
    Samantha stretched one paw far up her robe until
it came to rest on bare skin. “Ouch! Not with your claws, Sammy!”
She stood up with Samantha who jumped down in displeasure.
     
    * * *
     
    The sudden movement caused a pair of eyes to
retreat quickly and silently from the skylight. A dozen feet over
the professor’s head, this pair of eyes had watched the scene
intently. The brain behind these eyes, however, was assimilating
data in a different way and for a different reason than was
Professor Halvorsen. Although this being was as intent on her as
she was on the candidates, it had vastly different motives. With
the stealth of a cat, it repositioned three of its legs on the
wooden shakes. The two eyes telescoped forward again until they
could once more observe the setting below. It was trained to be
exceedingly cautious, and it carried out its missions with
diligence and tenacity. It had been an A+ student. A “jaw” was
carefully tucked beneath it like a napalm bomb beneath an attack
plane. It would be called on at the proper time.
    Its control system continually checked the
status of each critical subsystem, maintaining a readiness for any
eventuality. A single drop of venom fell on the roof, and as if
embarrassed by this tiny infraction of robotic protocol, it
adjusted the pressure on the injector to prevent another such
occurrence. Meanwhile, it resumed its surveillance on the target
human.
     
    * * *
     
    Professor Halvorsen’s hair was long and blond,
like her name. Though in her late forties, she had no trouble
avoiding accumulations of fat since she subscribed to the latest
regimen of drugs that sculpted her body chemistry to her desires.
Her slender legs rose like saplings into the terry cloth attending
her. She brushed her hair behind her right ear and walked toward
her study where she sat down before a computer. Her hair slowly
regained its desired position, strand by strand, like a child
testing a distracted parent.
    The dormant computer surged to life with a
touch. With a few glances at icons and some verbal commands, she
had ultra-high-resolution images of the three candidates from the
Primary at her command. Now she could examine them again, but at
her leisure and with all the power of the best image analysis
software at her disposal.
    She had worked at the University for nearly
twenty years, though they’d not been easy ones. The problem wasn’t
lack of publishing. She had seventy presentations and journal
articles to her credit. She’d chaired numerous symposia and
co-edited two books, one of which became a popular text book early
in her career. The problem wasn’t her relationship with students or
lack of teaching ability. The undergraduate course she had
regularly taught was popular and received the highest grades from
her students.
    The University, however, hadn’t allowed her to
teach a course for years. She was told that many of the students
completing her class had “demonstrated an