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disagreed upon. Their marriage was not a good one by conventional definition, but it was fruitful. It was powerful. Their children would be very successful, given the gene pool from which they were spawned. (Marcus knew this because he had their genomes mapped.) So, they called a truce on the paper stacking. Pick battles, not wars.
    "Dinner is just about ready," Ariel, the head nanny/cook, said. She stirred a pot of red sauce. Marcus stopped to smell.
    "Then you can get the children."
    "Yes, sir."             
     
     
    Marcus closed his office doors. The wall along the back was curved with a mahogany desk centered in front of a bay window. The heavy curtains, drawn. Shelves lined the walls with classically bound books that were authentic, but never read.
    He checked his emails while sipping a freshly pulped glass of carrot juice. He didn't answer any of them, but glanced through the headings before stripping off his clothes and changing into a pair of shorts and t-shirt folded neatly in the bottom desk drawer. He mounted a recumbent bike tucked into the corner to the right of the desk and eased into an exercise routine. He didn’t like exercising on a full stomach, but there wasn’t much choice. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t exercise at all.
    The television flickered to life. There was only one channel he watched: news. All day news. As he dug into the next level of resistance—his empty glass flecked with orange spots—he watched protesters march around the Capitol with signs that condemned the Halfskin Laws. They were always out there.
    Change is difficult.
    To lead a nation, one accepted protest. People do not like change. They want things to stay the same, forever. Whether they're suffering or not; whether change is logical or absurd, they want things to stay the same. They will hate you for it. Sometimes kill you for it.
    The television went to commercial and came back to Marcus's press conference following Albert Gladstone’s shutdown. He touched a button on the exercise bike, brought the resistance up another level while he watched himself climb to the podium. He hated seeing himself on television. The lights made his skin ashen and always seemed to catch his left eye, the slightly misshapen one. If it weren’t that, it was from an angle that made him look like a hunchback.
    Damn liberals. Always showing my bad side.
    "It is with regret that I hold this meeting..."
    Empathy. Sorrow. He nailed every emotion, dead-center perfect. He wasn't lying, he did feel for the family of Albert Gladstone. They had to watch their beloved father-husband-son destroy himself. Marcus was not to blame. He was innocent of such malevolence, just a man helping humanity—infantile in their desires and bottomless in their greed—save themselves from themselves.
    "How do you respond to critics that this is government-sanctioned murder?" he was asked.
    And he answered with a stern expression. "We're simply shutting down biomites that have reached a threshold of willful domination in Albert Gladstone's body. The human body is an organic being, not a computer. If it cannot survive without assistance of bionanotechnology, then it has reached its end."
    His empathy waned.
    If the reporters all dropped dead simultaneously, he wouldn't show sorrow. He doubted he could even suppress a smile. That would be sinful, but nonetheless. Some of those rats with a pen were direct descendants of Satan. And that, he felt certain, was a fact.
    He watched the rest of the conference, suppressing the urge to vomit.
    God didn't make machines. Man did.
     
    His office doors opened. Janine slung her briefcase over her shoulder. "Office called, I'll have to go."
    "It's almost 10:00."
    "Deadline is tomorrow and the world is ending."
    Marcus climbed off the bike and mopped his forehead with a towel. He wished for another freshly-squeezed juice. Ariel was most likely gone.
    Janine pursed hair pins in her lips while she fixed her hair back. Her face was