“Just a little further,” the scientist thought, willing himself on. He had been running all night. When he reached the gates of the White House, he collapsed. A police officer came over to make him go away.

“Please!” the scientist said. “I need to speak to the President!” The look in his eyes made the police officer gasp. The scientist pulled himself close. “Please,” he said. “I have reason to believe that coffee is about to stop working!”

“…And that is why I have called you here,” the President said to the Cabinet. “By this time next year, coffee will no longer work.”

The room was silent. The members of the Cabinet couldn’t believe it. They were also quiet, because it was early, and none of them had gotten any coffee yet. As usual, there was coffee waiting for them on a side table, but they weren’t sure if it was O.K. to drink it now. But then, the President stood up and got some, thank God, so everyone else did, too.

A little while later, they were sipping their coffee and feeling much better. They were all in their own little worlds. But the Secretary of the Treasury always drank his coffee annoyingly quickly. He really guzzled it. And now he was talking.

“So,” he said.

“Hmm?” said the President, looking up from his coffee. Then he remembered. “Oh, as I was saying, in the near future, coffee is going to lose its characteristic effects. It’ll still be around, it just won’t work on us.”

Two people committed suicide right then and there.

“You mean like hot coffee?” asked the Attorney General, after the paramedics had cleared away those bodies.

“Yes.”

“What about espresso?”

Everyone in the room looked up all hopefully, like, oh yeah, espresso’s not so bad. I could get used to espresso.

“No,” said the President. “That won’t work either.”

“But iced coffee will be O.K.?”

“Oh, great!” said the Secretary of Transportation. “I just started cold brewing my coffee! It works perfectly for iced coffee!”

“Listen!” said the President. “No kind of coffee is going to work!”

The room was silent.

“But how can that be?” asked the Secretary of Labor, after another quick round of suicides.

“We’re not sure,” said the President, “but we looked at the scientist guy’s papers, and there isn’t a shade of doubt. So what are we going to do about it?”

The Secretary of Agriculture stepped forward with a big briefcase. “Sir, I’ve spent years working to develop a synthetic coffee substitute for just such an emergency.” He pulled out a big test tube filled with liquid. “This little concoction is the answer. It’s just as good as real coffee.”

The room was silent.

“It’s orange,” said the President.

“Yes. That can’t be changed.”

“Does it have any other shortcomings?”

“It has been known to cause occasional…body-death.”

The room was silent.

“But it tastes like coffee?” the President finally asked.

“Moderately so.”

Everyone in the room nodded solemnly. It would have to be.

“I’d say the only real difference between this and real coffee is that it has no smell,” the Secretary of Agriculture added.

“Next!” said the President.

The Cabinet members strategized with one another in hushed tones. Suddenly, the Secretary of the Treasury had an idea.

“What about tea?” he said. “Maybe tea still works!”

Everyone looked at him for a second. Then they went right on talking. A little later, the meeting broke off for a bit so everyone could go to the bathroom. They had been chugging coffees for, like, the entire time. It was a subconscious thing. Several seats were newly empty when they returned.

“It’s like an Agatha Christie novel in here, except with suicides,” said the President’s jester. The room was silent. They hated that the President had gotten a jester.

The Secretary of State was doing some calculations on a piece of paper.

“Tell me,” he said. “How much coffee is there in the United States right now?”

The Secretary of Agriculture gave him a rough estimate. The Secretary of State thought for a moment.

“Well, Mr. President,” he began, “I can’t see any way around this problem. Except, that is, to seize all the coffee within our borders and transport it to a secure location immediately. After that, we can dissolve the Union and split the country into new territories, one for each of us. We go our separate ways with an equal share of the coffee. We’ll have enough for ourselves and our families, and we can dole out the remainder to the citizens of our regions as we see fit.”

The room was silent. Everyone looked around at each other. They had to admit, it was a sensible idea.

“Can we name our territories whatever we want?” asked the Secretary of Energy.

“Yes.”

“Even a swear?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it, but sure.”

“I call the military,” said the Secretary of Defense.

“No, we have to split that up, too,” said the Secretary of State.

The President had been sitting in silence, but now he spoke out, loud and clear.

“Mr. Secretary, we cannot consider that option.”

Everyone in the room glared at the President, pissed. But then, sort of low, the President said, “…just yet.”

Everyone in the room breathed a sigh of relief, and took their hands off their swords. All the cabinet members had these awesome mini-swords now. The President had given them as presents, for team building.

“Hey, where’s that scientist guy who told us about this thing?” the President asked. “Maybe he had some solution or something.”

It turned out that the scientist had been sent to a black site, accidentally. So that was too bad, but soon he was transported back to the White House, nothing worse for the wear.

“You don’t look any worse for the wear,” the President said. He turned to his Chief of Staff. “He really doesn’t look any worse for the wear,” he said to his Chief of Staff.

After a while, he let the scientist speak. And the scientist told them that there was a way to save coffee.

Coffee’s effectiveness, the scientist said, was declining because of global warming. They weren’t sure why, but the connection was clear, and soon it would be too late. But if they acted now, they could arrest the rise in temperature and save coffee. And the scientist said that the benefits would extend far beyond that. The oceans, for instance, would not sink any more cities where Americans had traditionally done business or had their stock markets. And there would be fewer summers like the summer of 2013.

“It felt like half the world died that summer,” said the Secretary of State, remembering.

“What was it, again?” asked an aide. “In the end, I mean. 3.7 per cent?”

The Secretary of State shrugged. “Estimates vary.”

There would need to be major changes, the scientist continued, but it could be done. Coffee—and the world—could be saved.

The room was silent. Finally, they looked at each other and nodded.

The President would think of that day often, later on—especially as he drank his coffee. Of course, he wasn’t the President anymore. Now he was just Military Governor of the Rocky Mountain Free State. He liked it better that way, really. There wasn’t any of that Congress business; he could just do things. And he never needed to worry about what kind of foundation, or whatever, he’d start when he was out of office, because now he got to be in office forever. Sometimes, though, he missed his old friends.

“What do you think, Motley Jack?” he asked his jester. “Does the Secretary of State ever look back on all the good times we had together?”

But his jester didn’t answer. He was too busy doing wheelies on his dirt bike.

The President laughed to himself. One of the things the scientist had told them was that they’d have to use their vehicles less. “Yes, even dirt bikes,” the scientist had said. “Stop asking that.” But the President kept not being able to believe that even dirt bikes wouldn’t be allowed! What was this shit?! Thank God they had made the scientist go away, eventually, back to the black site.

In the morning, the President’s forces would move against the band of marauders from New Buttland, which had crossed the border in search of coffee. Theirs had run out.

Hmm. The morning…coffee…It all reminded the President of something. But what?

Then he remembered: in the morning, he would have some delicious coffee. He smiled.

Illustration by Seymour Chwast