The corridors of the White House were his. Rommel wandered unhindered from room to room, desk to desk. Everything flowed around him like a rock in a stream, a Republican at a Grateful Dead concert. Out of place but unnoticed. Even the Secret Service left him alone. They knew when they were outclassed. Rommel wasn't there for trouble anyway. The tour had just been boring. That's where the fate of the world is decided. Over there the president takes a shit. Sometimes both places are one in the same. Rommel couldn't appreciate a place only by a description of what happens. How it happens is more important, and the tour guide was sadly lacking in how.

He reached a quiet section, a hallway with a row of doors on either side. He proceeded to open them one by one. Generic rooms furnished for various purposes, probably dusted daily even though they hadn't been used since the second Cleveland administration.

He paused by the seventh door on the right side. Running water, though it sounded more like rain. He opened the door.

Rain poured out of the ceiling or so it seemed. It actually materialized an inch below the ceiling and vanished as each drop exploded on the floor. The walls were indistinct and bluish-white, some distance away but also right in front of him. He could reach out and touch one but touched nothing at all.

A young girl sat in the center of the room, back angled towards Rommel, underneath a tattered umbrella. She glowed soft orange with peach-colored hair. Look close enough and he could see through her. The umbrella was a wash of soft colors, like an old tie-dye t-shirt stretched thin. The rain dripped off it in impossibly huge drops that floated too slowly to the floor.

“Who the hell are you?” asked Rommel, unimpressed.

“I'm the President's daughter,” answered the girl.

“You're dead?”

“Maybe.”

“I'm pretty sure you're dead.”

“Then let's operate under the assumption that I'm dead.”

“Operate on what?”

“You're the living one, you decide.”

Rommel sat down Indian-style in the phantom rain, and was displeased when it actually got him wet. The little girl turned to look at him, but she looked through him instead. He checked to make sure that he hadn't turned translucent, too. As she turned, the umbrella angled away from him, and underneath was a window into a lush valley, sunny and green. A fresh breeze blew from the valley through the underside of the umbrella and stirred the rain. He'd seen the valley somewhere before and later he'd see it again.

“Nice valley,” said Rommel.

“Are you coming on to me?”

“You're eight.”

She looked down at herself. “So I am.”

Rommel asked, “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Taking a tour.”

“Likewise.”

Hours passed, and Rommel sat unmoving. The little girl again turned away from him to stare at an invisible spot on the nearby distant walls. The patter of the rain almost hypnotized him, but just as he was dozing off the little girl looked up.

“The sun's coming out,” she said.

Rommel only saw ceiling, but took her at her word. As predicted the rain slowed then stopped, but as the last drops fell in the room, it began raining from inside the umbrella. He caught a glimpse of the valley covered by fluffy spring clouds.

“Shouldn't you get out of the rain?” he asked.

“No, this is the good kind.”

She folded the umbrella around herself and disappeared. The umbrella, suddenly black and ordinary of the type a businessman would carry, fell to the floor. Rommel thought to open it, but knew there would be no valley in an umbrella like that. He propped it against the now ordinary white wall, and shut the door behind him.

Time to go to the Lincoln Memorial.

-----

Next: perfect sphere