George Bush’S Great America [EN]: Chapter 193

< Episode 192 >

“Let’s talk over some tea. It’s been two days since I’ve been able to leave work.”

To be precise, he had gone home to shower. And that was it. He came back and overworked himself. He thought he was really going to die back when there was a forest fire and he had to work for three days straight. If he hadn’t been so rigorously trained at the gym, he would never have been able to do it.

What came in were two cups of hot chocolate.

“I heard it’s a folk remedy spreading around because of Super SARS. They say the warm energy of hot chocolate circulates through the white blood cells and overcomes the virus.”

When the world is chaotic, the most rampant things are always scientifically unverified folk remedies, aren’t they? The information that ‘hot chocolate is effective against Super SARS!’ was one of them. And the reason it’s ‘chocolate’ and not ‘cacao’ is simply because the people being swayed have no idea where chocolate comes from or how it’s made. Even with chocolate milk, most people in food deserts think it comes from brown cows.

A food desert refers to ‘an area more than 1 km away from a supermarket selling fresh food, where people have to rely on processed foods from convenience stores,’ which is one of the reasons for the rampant morbid obesity in the United States.

Back to hot chocolate, the federal government denied this folk remedy but didn’t deny that hot chocolate, which warms the body, is good for health. Whether a drink with plenty of sugar added to cacao is good for health was questionable, but he sensed that chocolate manufacturers like Hershey had done some lobbying and let it go.

“It tastes pretty good.”

In a complex and fast-paced modern society, there’s nothing as sweet as a leisurely break. That was no exception even in the White House. The White House was running so busily that an urban legend arose that screams could be heard from the White House every dawn.

Originally, it wouldn’t have been this busy, but since the owner was suffering like a dog, everyone else had to suffer together.

“You wouldn’t drink it so deliciously if you knew the truth behind it?”

Upon hearing that, the chief of staff twisted his expression as if he found it bizarre.

“Are you saying it was made in some unfair way?”

“That’s right. In South American cacao farms, black children had to work day and night more than children in the industrial era to meet their excessively large quotas. Oh, poor things. It’s truly bad chocolate.”

“Excuse me?”

“Haha! Of course, I’m lying.”

That’s more like it. Even so, it wasn’t something the president should say. But it also wasn’t a joke the president would usually make, which was possible because half of his soul was Eastern. As proof, the chief of staff looked quite puzzled even though he knew it was a joke.

“Don’t worry. The chocolate in this hot chocolate was made by abusing white children from wealthy families in New York City day and night.”

“Ah, I see. ···Excuse me?”

“Even though those kids are in their 30s and in graduate school, what can I do when they insist they’re eternal teenagers? If that’s what they claim, I have to understand and accept it. Isn’t this the land of freedom? Our America.”

Bush chuckled and drank the dark tea.

It was made by harvesting a small amount cultivated in an indoor cultivation site used for research purposes in New York. Each tree costs over $100,000. The equipment and maintenance costs to maintain them are more than double that, and the research results from them are worth more than double that.

“These days, it’s even harder to find such farms. Future food and genetically modified crops were things I was pushing for even before I became president. As you know, I like visible results, so I don’t prefer them that much.”

Apart from that, it wasn’t that he ignored the importance of future measures, so he was faithfully taking care of them. However, he was facing a chronic budget problem, but he somehow managed to solve it with some tricks. The Federal Congress had its own ways.

He couldn’t say, even if his mouth was torn, that the method was to squeeze out the remaining budget by pressuring them not to do reckless things everywhere. If power is abnormally strong, you can do things like this.

‘It’s not always good to have a lot without a plan. Isn’t the modern society about extracting maximum efficiency from minimum cost?’

If there was an achievement, or rather, a feat that Bush had accomplished while in office, it was this power. As of now, he could do anything within common sense. Conversely, the moment he crossed that line was the moment when that power turned into dictatorial power.

‘That won’t happen, though.’

“Still, isn’t this all necessary for the future? You never know how the future will change.”

“The future changes, huh? If the future has changed to the point where that becomes commercialized, I think humanity has either advanced tremendously or is after its destruction.”

True indoor cultivation of today can only be seen in movies or games. Maybe in about 20 years. Right now, it was only at a primitive and rudimentary stage like greenhouses. There are several graphic models like Green Towers, where an entire building is a field, but those are impossible in reality.

Therefore, for these to be commercialized, either the world has to be destroyed so that plants cannot be grown in any other environment, or it has to be the near future where there is no more land to cultivate.

“In fact, what good is the state at that point? The most you can do is summarily execute the politicians who made such a mess to the point where it got to that state.”

“Summary execution? That’s illegal.”

“Oh, does execution matter when the world is in that state?”

After 5 minutes, the sweet break with sweet tea was over. He could feel the caffeine kicking in.

“So, what happened with that case?”

‘That case’ referred to the sniper John Doe. Anyone else would have asked what ‘that case’ was at least once, but now, they understood each other perfectly.

“The report says it’s on hold, but I actually consider it a failure.”

This was truly regrettable. He was greatly disappointed because he thought he had finally found the key to get a piece of the action in western Iraq.

“What about her?”

“Her?”

“I’m talking about the CIA agent who handled this.”

“Ah, you mean the personnel you directly appointed.”

Perhaps because her impression in England was so strong, he judged that she had a talent for infiltration and entrusted this mission to her as well. He didn’t even know her name, but since she was said to be a female investigator from England, they understood everything and the CIA took care of it.

“Besides, why do you say it’s a failure when it’s on hold? We offered everything that western Iraq could achieve for its revival or on an individual level?”

The whole story of the negotiation is as follows.

Her mouth began to open. She laid out everything that the United States could promise the old man. Economic support to check Iran and eastern Iraq and even achieve independence, massive military support to be classified as a military powerhouse in the Middle East right away, or even luxuries that the old man could imagine on a personal level.

She certainly thought the old man would accept these conditions. And the old man replied to the American proposal like this.

“There’s nothing I want there.”

“Nothing?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. There’s nothing I want there.”

“You seem to have misunderstood, but these conditions are the most generous conditions that a modern person and a politician can imagine. I hate to say it myself, but you can throw million-dollar liquor into the sea with women on either side on a luxury yacht, you know? Your back can be fixed as the top VIP in a better hospital than here. ···Unlike this shabby hospital where the staff gets fish and chips for lunch.”

“Ah, I see. Are you done talking?”

“Uh, maybe?”

“Then get out.”

Unlike before, his fingers weren’t trembling, and he was overflowing with imposing energy.

“No. Well, let’s start with a personal question.”

“You’re really persistent.”

“For now, it’s temporary, but I also have duties as a nurse. I even formally took the Hippocratic Oath.”

She didn’t forget to add, ‘The certificate is fake, though.’ She decided to do what she had to do as a nurse. This time, unlike before, she inserted a proper checklist into the corkboard.

“Why on earth?”

“I’d be more surprised if you knew the reason. More ridiculous are you guys who bring such a proposal to an old man whose life is hanging by a thread.”

“Do people all turn into old men when they get old? Are all your old man friends like that too?”

“I don’t know. My friends didn’t live long enough to get this old. They all died in the war.”

In this long life, there were only about three people who could be called true friends. One died in an explosion while working behind the front lines, one died in the war after showing off his bravado, riddled with bullets all over his body, and the last one died peacefully in a tent during the Mujahideen [Islamic guerrilla fighters] days, but that was at the age of 75.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

She covered her face with the corkboard as if she was truly sorry.

“Hmph, insincere words.”

“Check’s done. If anything happens to you, or if you want to tell me the reason for refusing, please call the nurse call.”

As she was about to leave the private room, the old man’s mouth, which seemed like it would never open, opened.

“Ah, I see. Let’s make one thing clear.”

“Yes?”

“The reason I’m refusing.”

Bush, who had read the entire report, couldn’t help but smile bitterly.

“Isn’t it a failure since you couldn’t even find out why he refused?”

“But didn’t we find out one thing?”

The chief of staff snatched the report from Bush’s hand and tapped a part of the report with his palm, protesting.

“This?”

In one corner of the report, it was written like this:

‘Beauty trap doesn’t work: He’s impotent.’

“Oh my god, impotent. The reason he’s refusing is because he’s impotent?”

Bush couldn’t hold back any longer and was chuckling.

“If you can call this ‘finding out!’, that is. And I don’t consider it finding out.”

“It’s fun, though.”

“Is politics something you do for fun?”

The chief of staff was serious. Unlike Bush, he didn’t seem to find it fun.

“Don’t be like that. I think I know why. Let’s aim for a higher target.”

“You think you know why? More than that, a target?”

The chief of staff’s expression changed strangely. Why does this person know so much on his own? There were times when the chief of staff couldn’t understand what Bush was thinking. And this was one of those times.

“Give up on that ‘old man who has no intention of doing politics’ and switch to that young friend who sponsored him.”

“We are in contact, but didn’t the President clearly say that the old man is better than that friend?”

He certainly did. That’s why the CIA bothered to stick to this one old man.

“I can’t help it. I found out that there’s really no hope for that old man.”

“I don’t know what you found out, but I’ll proceed that way.”

“More than that, what happened to Riga?”