As the Founding Fathers Intended

It was indeed a tumor, they said. Malignant. Inoperable. And this before the decamillennial.

Shit.

Their last visit had gone so well, too. More smoothly than most this century, and certainly more so than the one with the Brandts’ daughter. The politics weren’t as eventful since the incumbent President was getting reelected, but the festivities and other usual motions were held all the same.

The visit started out as always with the Aristocrat automatically signaling Mission Control that it was less than fifteen light minutes away from Earth, so detailed communication with the ship was once again practical. The Founding Fathers and their wives were still asleep, and would remain so for a week or two until their arrival.

None of the six passengers, of course, could be expected to possess any expertise in guiding the Aristocrat through reentry (they would have had to learn to do so in their precious free time), so its computer did so itself with some remote assistance from Mission Control. The passengers had been awakened in advance. None of them had any apprehensions about reentry for the last few thousand years. They’d gotten used to it.

After the Aristocrat landed, the passengers began to disembark. They were greeted by top brass, the President and Vice President, the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice, the Senate Majority Leader, and the House Speaker. If there were to be a change in administration, the departing President and Vice President would be joined by the incoming ones.

Completely enveloping this relatively small gathering of the elite were scores of law enforcement officers, some year-round Secret Service agents, the rest employed by other agencies but lent out for the occasion. The press and the general public were squeezed outwards to the fringes. Not even the smallest caliber bullet stood a chance of finding a clear path to the Founding Fathers through the thick mat of people who sure as hell weren’t about to go down in history as one of those assigned to protect the Founders when one of them was assassinated.

With the arrival came a snake’s nest of arms all engaging in or waiting for handshakes, after which the top brass walked, still surrounded by the agents like the eye of a hurricane, to the Inaugural Ball. While the President was the guest of honor and the cameras made sure to focus on her dances with her husband when they occurred, the Founders and their wives were never too far from the limelight.

And there were of course a number of speeches, though none from the Founders themselves. While they sat together in the front row next to their wives, none of them were up for the task of delivering a rousing speech. Had this been common practice, they would doubtlessly start struggling with new material soon enough. There are only so many ways to say you look forward to seeing what has happened in the past four years. And you couldn’t make much of a speech out of what you’ve been doing in that time.

In the following days there transpired the main reason for the Founders’ visit: A series of briefings and discussions concerning major news of the past four years and significant executive decisions made, laws passed, and judicial rulings issued. First President Middlehurst, First Vice President Ellsworth, and First Speaker of the House Brandt sat and absorbed all, irrespective of their past positions.

It’s a persistent rumor among the younger and less educated that the Founding Fathers have the power to veto any legislation that had passed in the last four years, and to nullify a ruling from the Supreme Court. Some say it would take a unanimous decision from all three; others, just a majority of two.

They don’t. Their job is to listen to recent happenings and the country’s progress, and to provide counsel. To clarify their meaning behind certain articles of the Constitution that they wrote. And occasionally, to admonish the country’s current leaders, although they themselves are well aware of the emotional toll it would take on the recipient when it comes from one of them. They try to frame it as constructive criticism whenever possible.

The day after, while the Founders mulled over what to write in their statements, they and their wives underwent their physicals. All the measures that could be taken to monitor their health, were. They were poked and prodded in every orifice and crevice known to science to exist on the human body. Samples were taken of their urine, blood, and anything else that could be extracted from them with relative ease. They have to endure this every one of their weeks, but they can’t deny their importance to their country of their physical health.

After they recovered from their probings, they paired off into couples and visited their respective families, although their so-called families at this point have become rather diluted. It was a large photo opportunity the first century or so, when they were tearfully reunited with their children and grandchildren, their nieces and nephews. (Their families, of course, shed the majority of the tears, as it was they who were separated for years.)

But now those closer to the roots of the family tree had perished long ago, and the only family to which they can return are a mass of descendants who regard them as relics at worst and status symbols at best. Even if they honestly don’t consider themselves cut from a finer cloth due to their heritage, they still have to deal with the sneers of those who assume they do.

So they still arrive to the great halls to meet their hallowed ancestors, at least most of them. Some have started to decline, and it’s difficult to blame them. A solid portion of the reunions now involve the Founder and his wife hugging children who have never met them before, or had been too young to remember their first meeting. Their eyes are often glazed over, clearly wishing to be somewhere else, and pretty much everyone agrees they’re too young to realize the gravity of these reunions.

The biggest scandal that ever arose from this practice came courtesy of two of the Middlehursts’ great-great-grandchildren, who collaborated to supply them with a few great-great-great-grandchildren. The fact that they were merely third cousins meant little to the tabloids, and though those in power stood mute on the topic, rumors persisted the couple first met at one of these reunions.

The next evening the eponymous three arrived at the Great Founders’ Hall to deliver their official statements. It was mostly a rehash of what was said to the current leaders beyond closed doors, but these statements are a matter of public record, in the interests of posterity and transparency, and as such had been edited and polished that morning.

As expected, they discussed the major events and challenges to the nation in the past four years of which they’d recently learned, of the potential watershed moments caused by new laws and Supreme Court verdicts. And as expected, all their speeches ended with declarations of their undying loyalty to their country and its people, and of their confidence those people could surmount any obstacle faced by that country. If they ever divert significantly from their standard template, they surely know, they might create an expectation of something notably different in each new statement — a reputation impossible to maintain for millennia.

The largest challenge the Founders ever faced when writing a statement was after the War of the Exclaves. That had been the only time they had to analyze the last eight years, since it came four years after the only time to date the President ordered their visit be canceled, wary of guided missiles targeting the Aristocrat (in spite of our country’s insistence that such an action would constitute a war crime). Compounding that was of course the fact that those eight years to analyze had been unquestionably the most epochal yet. But behind visible rivulets of sweat, they pulled through nonetheless, fully aware of the people’s dependence on their steadfastness, or at least the appearance of such.

Inauguration Day was next, the event where the President and Vice President took center stage and the Founders could enjoy a brief respite from it, accompanied by their wives on the sidelines. The cameras made sure to cut away to them on occasion, but that was mainly to provide a reminder to the public that they were present to oversee the proceedings, and would also oversee a transfer of power if one had occurred.

After the formalities came what many suspected to be what the Founders had been looking forward to all along, though it was taboo to suggest that it was: the only leisure time afforded to them, when they were transported to a beachfront property to relax and swim and (presumably) make love to their wives. These couple days before their departure may not seem too crucial to their well-being, before one considers that it is the only source of free time they have left.

When all was said and done, the six passengers returned to the Aristocrat amid a jubilant sendoff. The President, her husband, the Vice President, his wife, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Senate Majority Leader, and the House Speaker were all photographed waving one last goodbye before the Founders and their wives entered the ship, after the President gave a short speech on how she planned to shape the country in a way that would make them proud.

In the Aristocrat, after the passengers endured liftoff, they doubtlessly went to sleep to pass the nine hours’ time they would have before the next reentry, nearly four years later. Such accuracy of the degree of time dilation can be attributed to the Aristocrat’s automated piloting system, which takes both velocity and distance into account as it zips around the nearby portion of the Milky Way until it circles back to Earth. Whenever the Aristocrat needs to maneuver around a celestial body unexpectedly, it will adjust its route and speed accordingly to ensure it stays on schedule.

One week of their time, four years of our time. That should, in theory, allow for the Founders to provide much-needed guidance for our nation for a long time to come.

The plan for these quadrennial visitations was devised shortly after First Vice President Ellsworth ended his second term as the second President. First Speaker of the House Brandt agreed to retire prematurely, after he determined that his remaining time alive would be spent in better service to his country if he were to join Middlehurst and Ellsworth in the mission.

All three Founders, together with their wives, had pledged to change their lives as they knew them, to ensure that future generations of their nation’s government and citizenry were adhering to their principles as they had envisioned them.

They were well aware of what was being asked of them, not just as Founding Fathers but as people with families. The family reunions helped to assuage their reservations in this regard, but they knew that their families would age far more rapidly than they or their spouses could ever grow accustomed.

Tensions were high the first time one of the Founders and his wife would return to Earth to news that one of their children had died. Travis Middlehurst had passed most unexpectedly after the briefest of illnesses, and slightly over two years later the country’s citizens watched the Aristocrat’s reentry on the news with dread.

There was no firsthand footage of the First President and his wife when they were informed of Travis’ passing, as it was policy not to have cameras anywhere near the Aristocrat’s passengers after landing (possibly in anticipation of occurrences just like that one). The first time the Middlehursts’ feelings became known to the press was during the Inaugural Ball, when Mrs. Middlehurst made an announcement that she and the First President were deeply saddened to hear about their son. That was all.

They knew to keep it short. They could not have expounded any further about how proud they were of him, or how much they would miss him, or anything else, lest they start a tradition that would lead to them repeating themselves over time. After all, the Founders had many children.

The worst thing to come out of the Founders’ dealings with their families since they started these voyages, nobody would disagree, was the debacle surrounding the Brandts and their daughter Constance. As misfortune would have it, the Founders’ visit had coincided with Connie’s time on her deathbed.

As this had been back when the families were still reasonably manageable in number, the Brandts saw fit to visit their daughter personally in the hospice. However (and it’s said that in retrospect they should have been prepared for something like this), Connie was not content with an hour’s worth of visitation time from her parents. She had grabbed the First Speaker of the House by the wrist with the remnants of her strength, and begged him and her mother to stay by her side while she died.

She died two weeks later, in the presence of nobody but her own children.

Everyone agreed that was the reasonable choice to make. The Founders had a schedule to keep. If soldiers were expected to die for the sake of this country (as they did by the thousands, a few millennia later in the War of the Exclaves), a woman could be expected to have her request for company after a lengthy and comfortable life denied for the sake of this country, daughter of one of the Founding Fathers or not. At the very least, her mother stayed with her while her father was off delivering his statement, and they had both spent their time off with her.

Still, it was a time that twisted the stomachs of the nation. For all the practicality of the Aristocrat departing as it usually did, with no extra expenses or planning needed for an extended stay, people couldn’t help but imagine what had happened beyond the doors of the hospice. A withered centenarian, imploring her own parents, whose own hair had only started to gray, for a favor that would have easily been granted by anyone else. . .The fact that it was being denied by two of the country’s paragons must have been salt in the wound.

The upside to it all now is, that can’t happen again. The Founders’ children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are all dead now. Their surviving descendants would not demand their presence by their side any more than they would a distant relative’s, because that is what they are.

But now there’s this tumor in Ellsworth’s brain, found in the MRI from his physical and determined to be malignant a few days after the Aristocrat’s departure, even though it had not been detected one of his weeks prior. Everyone knows the Founding Fathers wouldn’t be around forever, but prefers they stay for a while longer, or at least until after the nation’s decamillennial celebrations.

It will take Ellsworth himself and his wife nearly four years to find out, or at least he will according to us. As for the rest of us waiting down here, we’ll need to get used to the prospect of facing the future with one fewer Founding Father. Just as we will of course need to reckon eventually of a life without them at all, nobody but ourselves to rely on and make sense of the Constitution and determine how to run the country as the Founding Fathers intended.

After the oncologist issued his prognosis to the rest of us on the medical team, the less essential of us were dismissed, the most important duties of our jobs concluded for the next four years or so. I took the maglev down to the coast, and watched the sun set over the ocean.

Around the horizon was where the country ended and international waters began. I was at the edge of what I’ve always been told was home. I felt like I was on the bridge of a ship.

The rest of the beach was empty.