The Candidate

Wilma sat waiting to meet the would-be President. Would-be and could-be. Surely all presidential candidates are “would-be” presidents, Wilma mused, nervously flicking her mind from subject to subject in order to occupy her time. In Wilma’s defence, the fate of the world depended on this meeting. And she should know; she’s from the future.

Wilma looked down at her hands, flexing her damp palms. They felt so exposed and empty. The only proof she had that she was a time-traveller from the future, the only proof she had of the horrific catastrophe she was here to prevent, was a stack of documents bound together in one huge, unimaginable tome of private information, personal records, news reports, intercepted messages, email leaks, and photographic evidence of monstrous war-crimes and political corruption.

Somewhere in this timeline, Wilma is a kid, she thought to herself, scoffing breathily. Now a “kid” in this instance was her nineteen-year-old self, but compared to what Wilma would witness in the next decade, her old life might as well be regarded as a childhood, spoilt with choice and respect. A time where people in government treated her like a human being feels like a foreign country to her now.

The door opened. Wilma jolted to attention from a mixture of anticipation and habit; life as a rebel in the future was filled with night-time raids, city-wide carpet bombings, and the odd crackle of government forces’ walkie-talkies above you as you hide under the floorboards. But all the trauma would have been worth it once she had warned candidate Michelle O’Neill of their impending doom and how it’s up to her campaign to stop it. But it was not presidential candidate Michelle O’Neill who entered the nearly unoccupied green room, unceremoniously converted into a holding cell for Wilma. Michelle O’Neill would never meet Wilma.

Wilma, on some level, knew this was O’Neill’s campaign manager, Eric Jackson, closing the door behind him, holding the evidence from the future in his grip, close to his chest. Eric looked at Wilma, allowing her face and hopes to sink further and settle before he finally spoke.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Wallace.”

Eric approached a side wall and pulled out a foldable chair, opening it in front of Wilma.

“Where’s Michelle?”

Eric took his time adjusting the chair, checking it was sturdy, wiping the seat of dust with an unused tissue from his pocket, finally sitting with a groan, smiling to Wilma, but not with his hooded and hanging eyes behind his sleek, gold framed glasses.

“Well, you tell me.”

Eric flipped open the thick tome from the back first, allowing the pages to slip from under his thumb and open before them briefly before they’re buried beneath the next five of so pages. Eric disinterestedly glossed over the paragraphs and images flashing before him, even looking at the clock on the wall in mild surprise at the time. Even though the pages were flying be, Wilma could still recognise what each was detailing; the scientific break-down of time travel, the election results that won’t become public for another week, the 2026 Cardiff Massacre, the military occupation of Iceland, the Shetland prison camps, the cover-up of the Pan-Eurasian Accords. Wilma looked up at the stone-faced and, frankly, bored Eric passing pages of scientific advancement, geo-political machinations, war crimes, and international controversies as though he was disenchantedly trying to find something mildly entertaining to watch on his phone.

Wilma, growing upset at the callously careless perusal, almost missed the page Eric was looking for, until he happened to reach the pages containing her own accounts of the dehumanising conditions of political prisoners under the administration of Supreme President McArdal; currently just candidate Cian McArdal.

“You skipped it!”

Eric stopped, only now returning his heavy eyes to Wilma, who repeated herself.

“You skipped it. About four pages back.”

Eric considered Wilma for a moment, staring, unresponsive, before he licked his index finger and slowly curled the pages. He stopped upon the fourth page, scanning the length of it, doing the same for the fifth, briefly glancing to Wilma from underbrow in annoyance, before finally turning to the sixth page, studying it, then sitting back to read at a distance.

“Right now, Mrs. O’Neill is holding a rally. You have here her husband is due to speak for thirty-six minutes before he introduces her onto the stage. He was only supposed to be scheduled for ten minutes… but try telling Michelle that. The doting wife image plays well to conservatives, I suppose, but we’re trying to steer clear of hiding behind a man; makes her look weak.”

Wilma watched as Eric thought aloud, evidently forgetting she was there for a moment before he returned to the itinerary.

“Before that you have her down making a photo-op visit to a café at eleven-fifteen this morning, and her radio interview at nine-ten. Most of this is just recounting our whole campaign, but what I’m interested in is how you have the line-up for tomorrow.

Eric flicked to the next page, tracing the details with his finger.

“Visiting a school, cute photo-op with some kids, lunch with a mothers’ union, door-to-door canvasing, photo-op and thanks with campaign volunteers, and then the evening TV debate. In fact, you have the next few days pretty well mapped. So well, I have every reason to suspect you’re working for the McArdle campaign… At least… that’s what I thought, until…”

Eric turned to the next page. Wilma became very preoccupied by the persistent ticking of the clock of the wall.

“I see you’ve done the same for their campaign. And you’re correct; Cian McArdle is indeed at a fundraising event as we speak. And he is scheduled for a zoom call tomorrow with the GH News. Tommy wasn’t too pleased I wouldn’t tell him who my source was when I asked him to confirm this.”

Wilma snapped back, confused.

“Who?”

“Oh, so you don’t know everything? Tommy Andrews; the campaign manager for McArdle. We went to college together.”

“Oh. Him. Thomas he goes by, in my time. He’s the-”

“The High Minister for Truth. Yes, I’ve read your little dossier here. It’s the stuff of science-fiction, but everything seems accurate; the stuff we can prove, anyway.”

Wilma smiled. It hurt slightly. Her aged face, shaped by hardship and disappointment in her cracked brow, had forgotten how to show joy, but her fleeting sense of hope had come racing back to her now, flushing her face with optimism.

“You believe me?”

“As I said, at first I assumed you were a plant for the other side. Then I just thought you were some nut. But… this is all too crazy to be crazy. What exactly was the plan, Ms. Wallace?”

Relief. Sweet, rejuvenating relief flooded Wima’s body. A hot, painful wad of emotion sat in her chest, fighting against composure, threatening to dissolved Wilma into a hysterical heap. The last few years that have yet to come had taken a draining tool on her sanity. Finally, she’ll be able to save the girl she was.

“The plan is to share this everywhere we can. The campaign can give it to the media, post online, share at rallies. Hell! Put copies in everyone’s hands if you have to, just get it out there. Everyone needs to know what McArdle is capable of!”

Wilma, in truth, had fabricated this plan on the spot. Yes, she had always known what she had hoped would happen, and what it would take to show the world the destructive force Supreme President McArdle would become, but, really, she didn’t think she’d get this far. She was so focused on just getting here, and so prepared for the disbelief that she was a time-traveller from the future, warning about a celebrity politician becoming a dictator, that Eric’s detatched response was underwhelming disarming.

Wilma waited, expecting Eric to explain how they would progress, maybe even say that Michaelle will be in after her speech to thank Wilma personally for saving the world. Instead, he stared, as if waiting for something more concrete, clucking his tongue once he realised she wasn’t going to continue.

“We’ll share the details about McArdle’s undisclosed finances. That’ll hurt his poll numbers, especially this close to the election. Then, in the final debate, we’ll reveal their text messages arranging a rendezvous with their mistress.”

Eric snapped the dossier closed, jolting Wilma, who remained silent in confusion. Now it was her turn to silently wait for more, but Eric was already up on his feet, folding and returning the chair to the wall, and heading for the door, once again clutching the thick binder to his chest. Wilma finally felt a surge of urgency lift her to her feet, calling out after him.

“You don’t believe me!”

Eric was just about to reach for the door when Wilma spoke. He lowered his hand and turned around to face her, waiting once more for her to continue.

“That man… that… monster becomes a tyrant! He does unimaginable, unspeakable things! He decimates any semblance of democracy we once had. He disbars and removes any opposition to his power! He organises a coup with his mob of supporters, he criminalises basic human rights, imprisons journalists, and plunges the world into needless war! It’s all there! Read it! The future is so terrible we had to create time-travel just to have a chance of stopping it! Think! The last scientific minds alive and free worked for months just to explore the possibility of time-travel! The fact I am here now, talking to you, is both a miracle of science and a damning indictment of how desperate we are!”

“Do you know what the world hyperbolic means?”

The impatient rush of the question from Eric winded Wilma a little. For a second, she wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly. She was discussing the fate of democracy, yet he was quizzing her on the definition of words.

“What?”

“Hyperbolic. Do you know what it means?”

“Yes!”

Wilma was unable to keep the note of insult out of her voice. She thought better than to give Eric the satisfaction of explaining it.

“It means to exaggerate. Something that is said extremely but not literally to get across the point. Why are you asking?”

“If we came out, all of a sudden, and had this never-ending waterfall of hyperbole, do you think-”

“But it’s true!”

Wilma failed to contain herself. The once overwhelming sense of relief was smothered out by a heavy depression of righteous anger and belittling disgust. This wasn’t making any sense. Every single piece of evidence she needed to back up her extraordinary claims were in Eric’s hands. Why? Why was he denying the facts literally within his reach!

“Ms. Wallace, I believe you. I have read all this. Everything you’re claiming is correct. But this is politics. Politics has nothing to do with the truth. That’s why everyone gets a say. What matters is what people believe, and no one in their right mind will ever believe the truth. People believe what they need to. It’s as simple as that. You could show irrefutable proof that McArdle is the monster you say he’ll become, and it’s simply unbelievable because of how bad the truth is. There is such a thing as so horrible it’s laughable. If we came out with these claims, even with all this evidence, we would still not be believed. It would seem far-fetched, desperate, and ludicrous. We are better off trying to damage his public image with something believable, and that, for now, is dishonesty. That is believable.”

Eric turns to the door, grasping the handle, signalling the end of their discussion. Wilma, seething with indignity, isn’t done.

“You did this.”

Eric stops, looking back to Wilma, balling her trembling fists.

“You did this before. In the future. You leaked the story of the undisclosed funds, and it does nothing. It doesn’t affect him in the slightest. But you already know that. You’ve read the dossier, and you know everything you’re about to do. And you know you’re one of the first, along with the rest of the O’Neill campaign, to be executed under McArdle’s orders. Why are you just going to let the future repeat itself?”

Eric stares back, knowing what Wilma is saying is true, but also knowing what people will believe.

“Put it this way, Ms. Wallace; if you know what I’m about to do, doesn’t that mean I’m destined to do it? Doesn’t that mean you’ve already done this before, and it still didn’t work? Aren’t you yourself acting on belief that you want to be true? What did you think was going to be different this time?”

With that, Eric left Wilam alone with two discomforting thoughts; that he was right, that she knew time-travel if only possible in a closed cycle, with no way of ever changing past, and that her mission was exercise in desperate denialism, and, with no way of returning to the future, she had sentenced herself to relive the dystopia she knew was coming.

#HI