The Royal Dream

  The Royal Dream

  American Royalty: Book #6

  Written by Laura McGehee

  Copyright © 2017 by Abdo Consulting Group, Inc.

  Published by EPIC Press™

  PO Box 398166

  Minneapolis, MN 55439

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  International copyrights reserved in all countries.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without

  written permission from the publisher. EPIC Press™ is trademark

  and logo of Abdo Consulting Group, Inc.

  Cover design by Laura Mitchell

  Images for cover art obtained from iStockPhoto.com

  Edited by Ryan Hume

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: McGehee, Laura, author.

  Title: The royal dream / by Laura McGehee.

  Description: Minneapolis, MN : EPIC Press, 2017. | Series: American royalty ; #6

  Summary: There’s a new King in town, his name is Hank and nobody knew he existed until now. As the presidential election nears and the Royal basis of power threatens to dissolve, the children reluctantly band together in an attempt to stop World War XXX. Sometimes, family is all you have even if you all hate each other. This climactic dissolution of societal order, Royal rule, and the very fabric of life itself hurdles the American Royalty into an uncharted abyss.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016946201 | ISBN 9781680764826 (lib. bdg.) |

  ISBN 9781680765380 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Washington family (Fictitious characters)—Fiction. | Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | Family problems—Fiction. | Interpersonal relations— Fiction. | Interpersonal relationships—Fiction. | Young adult fiction.

  Classification: DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016946201

  This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.

  To history, for not laughing too much

  when we repeat our mistakes

  “So then you just copy this bit of code right here, and paste, and you’re good to go,” Chelsea explained to Nathaniel Julde, her trusted intern. He was spry, young, passionate, and filled with the sort of fresh-faced idealism that fondly reminded Chelsea of herself at a much younger age. She had now lived fifteen tumultuous years on this earth, and was jaded by her many months of Service to the Cause. But when it came to Kennedy, no sacrifice was too great or too little. At least, that’s what Chelsea whispered to herself late at night, when thoughts of the treason she had committed made her stomach turn.

  “And then you just publish it?” Nathaniel Julde asked, his eyes eternally open way too wide.

  “Exactly,” Chelsea answered. It had been three months since Hank Washington-Abbott’s claim to the throne, and his story had dominated the RoyalChatterStream, while the Stream continued to dominate the lives of anyone with a functioning brain, and even a few coma patients as well. The peasants learned how he had been an inadvertent creation between Jonathan and a peasant lover, kept quiet for years. The baby had been quietly relocated to distant relatives, and Jonathan had been none the wiser. But at the Royal Summit, Donna had released the Royal documents that proved his lineage, and King Hank declared his claim to the throne. The peasant-raised Hank Washington-Abbot was now the ruling King of the United States of America, and Chelsea could not be more furious at the ineffective idiocy of it all. It was time to #TearDownTheWall.

  Nathaniel Julde hit the publish button, and they both watched as the Stream repopulated with thousands of false Chatters.

  @BrokeN4U: Can some1 tell me why we are just letting anyone be King these days? Seems like Kennedy is a much better option for ruler than any of these idiots. #TearDownTheWall

  @HowNowBrownCow: Kennedy’s reformation of the work week is something I will LEGIT die for #TearDownTheWall

  @QuestionEverythingPlease: So the world is fed Royal stories like Trevor’s stupid reality show, meanwhile, the Royals continue to own us? Wake up, Vote for Kennedy #TearDownTheWall #DeathToRoyalty

  @AnyoneAnyoneAnyone: why did we stop talking about that whole FAKE WASHINGTON scandal?? They are planting false docs and manipulating each other and we’re just supposed to let them play while we live in poverty??!! #TearDownTheWall

  Chelsea had been a major player in spreading the false revelation that George Washington did not have any biological offspring, which had overwhelmed the Stream during the Royal Summit. But then Donna had taken to the microphone and proven the documents to be cleverly falsified—while offering a larger, more distracting Washingtonian scandal: King Hank. This embarrassment had scalded Chelsea in the pit of her gut, and made her commitment to Kennedy and the Cause burn even brighter.

  “So that’s it, then?” Nathaniel Julde asked.

  “That’s it,” Chelsea affirmed. Nathaniel Julde nodded. She knew he would go far in this organization—with the election only four weeks away it had become increasingly important to find the peasants with the right mixture of angst and intelligence to fight for change, for Kennedy. This bearded kid, with his crooked smile and gap teeth, had proven to do just that, time and time again.

  “I never expected it to be so easy to hack the Stream,” Nathaniel Julde mused. Chelsea shrugged.

  “Listen, kid, when you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ll realize that anything is possible if you try hard enough.”

  “I think I’m older than you,” Nathaniel Julde pointed out.

  “You see,” Chelsea said, shaking her untamed half-shaved head of brown curls and affecting her best impression of Miranda’s aloof intelligence, “Kennedy knows the right people to make things happen. He brings people together, and he dismantles the infrastructure of life as we know it.”

  Nathaniel nodded, and she could tell by the flush spreading across his cheeks that she had caught another one.

  “Thank you,” Nathaniel said, blinking his owl-eyes rapidly. “For everything. For the opportunity, for the job, for everything.” Chelsea patted him on the back brusquely. It would do no good to get emotional—he must learn that political campaigns had no room for joy.

  “Don’t mention it,” she said with a smile, but then she leaned down close to Nathaniel Julde’s face. “Seriously. Do not mention this to anyone, or it’ll be both of our heads.”

  He nodded earnestly once more, a tiny owl bobble-head. Chelsea gestured to the GlassTop™ in front of him. “Well?” she asked. “What are you waiting for? Get to it!”

  He nodded and dropped his head down, furiously typing code. Chelsea slowly stepped back to marvel at her rows upon rows of interns publishing false Chatter after Chatter. She was doing something incredible, even if it meant cutting off all contact with her family, dropping out of school, and committing GlassNet™ treason. She was changing the world, and that trumped everything. The whole youthful team of vigilante freedom fighters lived, breathed, and Chattered in the harmoniously amorphous desire for revolution—everyone, except for that one empty chair that marked the most recent sacrifice in her life. She couldn’t help but wonder where Samantha was right then, and if she was thinking about Chelsea, and the Cause.

  In fact, she was, because just at that moment Samantha walked through the door, high heels clanging loudly through the room. The slew of interns looked up, and then hastily averted their collective gaze. Chelsea’s heart surged with alarm, and she mentally ran down the checklist of how she looked. Hair: artfully disheveled, half of it shaved. Face: tastefully smudged with make-up, à la Miranda, accentuating her light brown skin, paled considerably by months spent underground. Clothing: thrift-store attire purposefully purchased to be several sizes too large. Com
posure: blank, as if seeing the former best friend you had fired just two days ago did not even register. Chelsea was ready to face Samantha, even though she saw the hurt, pain, and betrayal vividly in Samantha’s brazen eye contact.

  “Hello, b-b-boss,” Samantha said with her trademark stutter, spitting out the words as if they were poison. “Or should I say, former boss.”

  “You should,” Chelsea said carefully, “because that is what happens when you get fired.”

  “D-d-don’t worry,” Samantha snarled, pulling out her access badge with a clang. “Just came to return my affairs, as ordered.”

  “Thank you,” Chelsea said, but then she looked into Samantha’s eyes and saw the friend she used to have—the one who would share late night snacks of peanut butter and barbecue chips crunched together in one large bowl. In spite of her resolve, she felt herself weaken. That was a damn good snack, and an even better moment of salty-sweet intimacy.

  “Listen,” Chelsea said quietly, drawing Samantha away from the prying eyes and ears of the interns pretending not to pay attention. “I’m sorry your employment had to end the way it did. But I hope that you learned a valuable lesson, and that you see it’s all for the best.”

  In Samantha’s trembling lip, Chelsea very briefly saw the friend she knew and loved, and then Samantha’s lip steadied, and she wheeled around to address the room at large.

  “Listen up!” Samantha shouted loudly. “Kennedy is a fraud. What he’s asking you to do is illegal, and wrong! Don’t let him take advantage of you! Get off the Stream! It’s poisoning your brain! They just want to control you—”

  And then Samantha was gone, pulled into the corridor by the security guards who had been ruling Kennedy’s campaign headquarters ever since Hank became King. Chelsea faced the door for a few weighty moments—she had never heard Samantha talk for so long without a stutter. Then, when she had taken four deep breaths, she turned around to find the interns staring at her.

  “Back to work!” she shouted, masking her feelings as quickly as she could. Chelsea slowly sank back down behind her GlassPad™ and tried to pretend as if Samantha’s words weren’t bouncing around her head.

  What he’s asking you to do is illegal, and wrong. But Samantha didn’t understand that laws didn’t always equate with what was right and what was wrong. And the Stream most certainly wasn’t poisoning anyone’s brain; to the contrary, it gave the peasants the information they needed to live their lives. The Stream would help to rebuild the society that the Royals were in the process of destroying. The Revolution was in the Stream.

  “Hey,” Chelsea said to Nathaniel, “send this one out: The Revolution is in the Stream.”

  “Oh, man,” Nathaniel said with a smile. “That’s good.”

  Three hours later, as the night shift was ending and the orange glow of the rising sun was just beginning to color the horizon, Chelsea made her way home. She walked along the Royal/peasant Wall, tracing her fingers over the rough, misshapen indentations left by hordes of protesters trying to claw their way into the Royal enclave. She finally reached her home—or more accurately, a home. Nothing was permanent, these days. She stood in the urine-scented hallway of her decrepit walk-up for just a moment, noticing with vague interest the slight tremors rippling through the crumbling walls in a hypnotic, mesmerizing rhythm. Miranda was undoubtedly hard at work.

  Chelsea turned the doorknob and was confronted with a blast of crunching techno, the kind of music that fills the gut from the bottom up. Miranda was hunched over a GlassTop™ at the dining room table with her back to the door, sitting next to a small, dark form that Chelsea didn’t recognize from Miranda’s usual pack of antidisestablishmentarians.

  “Hello?” Chelsea shouted to her roommate, boss, and sometimes friend, Miranda. She did not turn around.

  “Hello?” she screeched again. The music was deafening. From the looks of the steaming cups of coffee and crumpled candy bar wrappers, they had been up all night. She walked over to Miranda and tapped her on the back tentatively, and Miranda jolted out of her chair in alarm. The music cut out abruptly.

  “Oh, sorry, just saying hi,” Chelsea murmured.

  “Shit, man, you don’t have to be so weird about it,” Miranda said irritably. Chelsea looked from Miranda’s blood-shot eyes to the woman with short hair sitting next to her. She had a striking tattoo of a pack of wolves emblazoned on her upper arm, and averted eye contact.

  “‘The Revolution is in the Stream,’” the unknown woman quoted. “Good one. We like it.”

  “Thanks,” Chelsea responded. “I’m Chelsea,” was all she could think to say next. The woman nodded.

  “Daisy,” she responded, the dank smell of sleeplessness mixed with Earl Grey tea wafting out of her opened mouth.

  “Well, goodnight,” Chelsea said abruptly, hurrying to her tiny crevice of a room as Miranda fired off an ironic salute. She closed the door behind her and emitted one tiny giggle. How silly that such a dark, intense woman claimed such a delightful name.

  Emma tapped her foot reflexively in her room while her fury burned brighter with every passing moment. The sun had fully dawned; an entire night had passed without the release of the tension that had been building for months. Emma looked down at the documents on her GlassPhone™ and swiped through them once more. She needed to do this. She couldn’t keep living with her eyes shut, not when they were straining open. She looked at her tawny cat, Brandy.

  I told you so, Brandy said with a blink of her cat eyes.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” Emma responded. She turned on her GlassTV™ to bide the time, and found yet another episode of Trevor’s absurd show that had seemingly taken the peasant world by storm: Reality Bites!

  “Man, reality sure does bite sometimes, doesn’t it?” Trevor asked the camera, as they looked at blurry bodies moving behind a blinded window. “And it will most certainly bite the handsome Mr. Tristan Hamilton in the ass tonight. He is supposedly dating Duchess Sardine, and yet here we have him fraternizing with another woman entirely. Let’s go!”

  He walked up to the door and held up his freemasonic ring. He winked into camera.

  “Gets me in anywhere,” he whispered, and then pressed his knuckle to the door in one fluid movement. The cameras rushed in to find the confused faces of two lovers caught in what should have remained a private act. Trevor leapt forward and bit Tristan Hamilton on some flailing body part that was certainly unsanitary.

  “Well, at least I didn’t end up with him,” Emma remarked.

  He has a very good voice, Brandy said. You could do much worse.

  “I didn’t ask you,” Emma snapped, and Brandy meowed plaintively in response. Emma watched Tristan’s naked and confused form for a few more minutes, and then turned the television off in a huff. Silence would be better than that filth. She had already seen the Tristan Hamilton with a Peasant Lover episode six times, and pretty much knew it word-for-word. But not even the reassuring imagery of Tristan nakedly begging Trevor to turn the cameras off could soothe her now. Nothing could.

  Just when the wait threatened to consume Emma entirely, she heard the unmistakable sound of the secret passageway opening. Daisy pushed through the portrait of Martha Washington with a rush of frenzied energy, and the smell of bagels.

  “Hi honey,” she said, in the placating tone that had lost its effect when used so constantly.

  “Hi,” Emma said, as coolly as she could muster. Brandy meowed loudly, and Emma pushed her off the bed. Emma turned to Daisy with a flurry of gut-wrenching nerves. Despite the evidence, the betrayal, and the fury—Emma still softened when she saw the freckled face looking back her.

  “I know I’m late,” Daisy said. “Took me longer than I expected to get here without anyone seeing. But I brought breakfast!”

  “We were supposed to meet for dinner yesterday,” Emma said flatly. “It’s nine in the morning.”

  “I know, I know,” Daisy repeated. “I’m so sorry. I got caught up, you know, with all the
planning going on, and the election so soon. I really have to—”

  Emma had heard these words far too often over the past few weeks.

  “But you had time to get that stupid wolf tattoo?” Emma asked quietly, gesturing to the most recent addition to Daisy’s arm: an impressionistic rendering of a pack of wolves, howling at the moon.

  “Hey,” Daisy responded. “We already talked about that. You know that body art is important to me.”

  “What is this?” Emma asked flatly, holding up her GlassPhone™ with determined accusation.

  “The newest GlassPhone™?” Daisy asked. Yes, it was, but that wasn’t the point. Daisy stepped a few feet closer, and Emma watched her face intently for a flicker of something, anything, that would betray her.

  “Oh!” Daisy finally exclaimed. “You found a childhood picture of me! How cute.”

  The picture on Emma’s GlassPhone™ featured a rosy-cheeked Daisy with long, flowing hair flying in the breeze as she rode on a carousel. It was indeed cute, but that was not the point either.

  “What’s the big deal?” Daisy asked. Emma pointed to the kind-faced man and the smiling woman in the background, many years younger but still undeniably recognizable.

  “Who are they?” she asked, but she knew. Daisy looked up at Emma, and in the moments of hesitation that followed, Emma longed for the simplicity of ignorance.

  “My aunt and uncle,” Daisy said softly. Emma nodded, feeling the blow of the statement not as a crash, but as a soft trickle that would build to an uncontrollable wave soon enough. Two days ago, an anonymous RoyalChatterStreamer named @JonathanLuvr452 had Direct Chattered Emma this picture. Emma had not grasped the gravity of the image until @JonathanLuvr452 followed up with an image of Donna on her recent trip to Belgium, with the same ageless man and woman.

  “The King and Queen of Belgium,” Emma said. Daisy nodded. For a few terse moments, they stood in silence. The distance between Emma and Daisy seemed to span more than just a few feet. It spanned all the nights of unanswered questions, all the favors asked of Emma that had crossed more and more lines, and all the countless hours Emma had spent in the past few months struggling to stay connected to a woman who had seemed to be growing more and more distant.