Lord Vetinari, Meet George Dubya

Part of the Third

By: Twist

A/n: Hello, my peoples! And how are we today? *muttered chorus of responses* Good! Sadly, I am stuck in my house this beautiful day because of a rather high fever! But do not let that fool you! I am still perky! *growl* Damn right I am. *brightens slightly* Anyway, after being stuck at my Grandmama's house for several days I would love to eliminate your horrid suffering of waiting for the next chapter and giving it to you. Huzzah. Please read, review, and do whatever else you feel like. Just don't tell me about the nasty things.

Disclaimer: I own the Oval Office. Our tax dollars paid for it so I own it, dammit! It's mine, all mine . . . Other than that I own absolutely nothing!

Vetinari riffled through the small pile of papers on the desk. It was really depressing, to him, how little the president actually did. Controlling the army and such, but other than that he did virtually nothing. Carrot had left a small amount of time ago. Now all he had to do was look at this massive law Congress was trying to pass and read several reports on this 'war on terrorism.' Then he was absolutely purposeless. What fun.

So he decided that since he had three times this amount of work in Ankh-Morpork he was owed a break and it would probably be alright to wander around the White House for a small amount of time. Getting up from his desk, he discovered something. Underneath the bill from Congress was a thin, black, hard thingy. He extracted it carefully, and turned it over several times, wondering in a rather vague way what it was. As he turned it upside down, it unfolded.

"Interesting . . ." he muttered as he saw for the first time a laptop. "How does it turn on?" He played with some buttons on the keyboard for a small amount of time. When finding that they did nothing, he started to prod some of the buttons closer to the fold. One of them caused the top half of the thing to turn on and flash 'Dell Computer Corporation'* at him. After a small amount of time, it brought him to a screen that asked for a password. By now he had figured the concept of the keyboard out so he tried several passcodes. All failed.

"What would Bush put on this thing?" He asked himself. He resorted to words that he hadn't used ever in his life. Examples are "y'all", "Howdy", and "Texas." None really worked. Casting his mind around (because now he was actually curious about the laptop) he tried the one thing that seemed to feature largely in Bush's life. "Pretzel." There was a small series of musical notes played, and the computer spoke. "Welcome, Mr. President, to Windows XP."

"Sir?" An attendant poked her head into the room. "Mr. President, your daughter is here."

"Which one?" Vetinari asked, looking up.

***

George leaned back in the uncomfortable chair. He hadn't done a thing yet and was determined to keep up this trend. Whenever one of those bizarre clerks came into the room they would stare at him like he was some sort of freak or something. George despised the clerks.

"Sir?" The leading clerk stuck his head through the small opening he'd permitted in the door. "Sir, there is someone here to see you. He does not have a scheduled appointment, but he demands your audience. What should I do?"

"Send him in," George said cheerfully. "No use turning people away. Dissent is not treason here, right?"

"I can be, sir, if you would like it to."

"It isn't."

"Very good, sir." Drumknott left the room on that ending sentence. As he walked down to the Patrician's audience chamber he had a strange feeling that all was not right with his master. It was almost as if . . . As if talking to the man presented no mental challenge whatsoever. And he was so likeable . . . Had he always been that way?

In his office, George smiled the happy, faintly stupid smile of the ignorant. He didn't know there were Assassin's after his head. Luckily, some of the memories from Vetinari had been allowed to stay, and the few Assassin's that had seen George so far had wondered vaguely how a man of that intelligence had managed to fend off countless Assassins before.

"It's a mister . . . Mister Dick Cheney, sir," Drumknott said, almost sniggering at Dick's name. In Ankh-Morpork, if you were named Dick, you were immediately a laughingstock of the whole city.

"Dick!" George exclaimed, leaping to his feet. "Uh, he can come in as fast as y'all want him to . . . but watch him, on account of his weak heart." Drumknott gave Dubya a confused look. He let Cheney into the room and walked off muttering "Y'all?" to himself, all the way back to the clerk's wing.

"George?" Cheney asked, staring in disbelief at his partner. "What are you doing in this god awful toxic waste heap?"

"Some insane child and her little friend got a harebrained idea to switch me an' the ruler of this city. But it ain't too hard."

"There's a crawling mass of crime out there, George. I was robbed on my way here. It was an 'official' robbery. They guy tried to explain something called the Thieves' Guild to me . . . But that had to be a joke."

"It, uh, it wasn't, Dick. There is a Thieves' Guild. There's also an Assassin's Guild, Beggar's Guild, Seamstresses' Guild, and Alchemists' Guild." George shifted uncomfortably. "I've had the privilege of meeting several Assassins already. Scary individuals, they are."

"George," Dick said solemnly. "We need to turn this city around. Try a few things you tried with the terrorists. The old 'Axis of Evil' speech was accepted well even by people from Montana**. Everyone liked it except for those hooligans on Saturday Night Live."

"At least there's no SNL out here," George said, sagging a little bit. Then he glanced at the papers. "Isn't there a Congress to handle this stuff?"

"I wouldn't know, George. I'm not ruling the city."

"Dick, this bites."

***

Back at the White House, Awesome Dude wandered the halls. He wondered where those nice girls who rescued him from the horrors of Horatio Sanz† were. With an adorable little doggie sigh, Awesome Dude padded back to his master's office.

*Honestly, like the White House would use Gateway? Don't make me laugh.

**No offense, no offense. You were just the unlucky state.

†I don't like Horatio Sanz. Get over it.

A/n II: Ah, the beauty of being ill. I missed school again to day, but that's not necessarily a good thing, as we are taking State Assessment Tests this week. Now I have to make them all up . . . Poot. Anyway, since you have read 'tis time to say goodbye and review. I certainly feel that this chapter was not up to par but . . . Whatever. Review, tell me if you liked it, you know the drill.