On the third floor of City Hall, the door to the Mayor's Office was shut.
The clamor outside, the reporters' camera flashes, the praise from left-wing academics—all of it was sealed away behind that heavy door.
Quiet returned to the room.
Ethan and Sarah had already left to handle the follow-up press releases and scheduling.
Leo was now alone in the office.
He walked to his desk, where two starkly different documents lay.
One was the folder Ethan had been holding, containing the documents originally prepared for briefing the media on the model project's finances.
Its charts were brightly colored, the growth curves soared upward, and every data point celebrated the great success of this social experiment.
And next to it lay another document: an unadorned internal financial statement.
Leo picked up the real report and stared at the "-65%" input-output ratio.
Leo began to speak slowly, as if to himself, or perhaps to the Roosevelt in his mind.
