“That’s exactly why we want you to run.”

“Me? I couldn’t. There’s no way. I wouldn’t win.”

“But that’s what the people want. Poll after poll shows us that the public is craving someone who will be honest, who will just level with them. That’s why we want you to seek the nomination.”

She thought about it for a moment as the two-member search committee, well-practiced in the art of not speaking first, enjoyed their meals. Both vegans. Trendy, or coincidence? No matter. She took a bite of her sirloin.

“Our state is hemorrhaging money. We can’t afford to fix the schools or the roads, homelessness is out of control. We have more people moving here to take advantage of our ‘safety net’ system than we can handle, and to make things worse, people are moving out in record numbers. I can’t fix any of that. I’m just a businesswoman, not a miracle worker.”

“You’re not ‘just a businesswoman.’ I mean, let’s be real here, you’re the youngest billionaire CEO in the country. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?”

“It means I excelled in STEM classes and got lucky. There were three other people at Stanford the same time I was there who were knocking on the same door. I just got mine to market first.”

“You see what we’re saying? That kind of self-reflective honesty will go over like crazy with the Flyovers. They’ll eat it up. All you have to do is be honest. Be you. You combine that with your academic and business prowess and you’ll be a juggernaut.”

“Be honest? Be me? Really?”

“Really.”

“And you think I’ll be elected to the senate?”

“We never say we’re certain of anything in this business, but we’re as close to it as we can get.”

“And I can be me? As I am? Truth telling and all?”

“Truth telling and all.”

She took a sip of the gin and tonic she ordered because she wasn’t a drinker and it was the first thing she thought of when asked. It was the cocktail people always ordered in old movies. Tasted like a pine tree. She was not impressed.

Other than being class President in high school, she’d never considered politics. A lot of kids at Stanford were at Stanford because they didn’t care about politics at all. If they did, they’d have gone to a school in the east; Harvard or Yale or Georgetown or whatever. Schools with centuries-old, established pathways to power. Stanford was for innovation, deep thinking, cutting-edge tech.

Though, now that she was considering it, it sounded kind of amazing.

Senator.

She shook her mind clear of the power component involved. The private planes to wherever, the staff doing her every bidding, the reporters hanging off her every word. No, she’d focus on the ways she could help. She could be on committees—that’s what they did, right, join committees?—and fight for the Little Guy and force the fat cats do ‘pay their fair share!’ She laughed to herself as she considered just how quickly she was willing to disregard her own path to being one of the fattest of cats. That was good, though, right? That she was already wealthy. Meant that she wouldn’t be beholden to any special interest groups, that no one could tell her to dance with a promise of some much-needed donations. She’d be her own person.

She’d run her own show.

She’d make real change.

She’d be the one to finally tell the truth.

She had almost forgotten that night in the three decades since winning her first election. How bright eyed and naïve she’d been. How silly.

She couldn’t remember when lying became simpler to deal with. It happened so subtly that, well, she never noticed the change.

She put the glass down on the counter, the ice cubes dancing to a clanky tune, free from the muting slosh of the third round of straight gin in as many minutes.

“Madam President, it’s time.”

“Thank you, Mike,” she said to her Chief of Staff. “Time to go tell those rubes that everything is going great and they’ll all die fat and rich many years from now.”

“Yes, ma’am.”