Sophie Rothschild Swain

Machu Picchu

Sophie Rothschild Swain was the second wife of Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain. Nearly five decades his junior, she was twenty-three when he was running for his first term for President at age seventy. Swain bought her a wheelchair one Christmas for use on days of heavy gravity. She was strongly against his scheme of producing artificial extended families in the United States through new, government-issued middle names, going so far as to wear a button for the opposition movement reading "Lonesome Thank God!" Her own assigned name, which she refused to use, was "Peanut-3".

Although aware of the mental issues of his late sister Eliza—with whom in their childhood he developed the idea of artificial extended families—she did not believe he would actually implement their plan. She was particularly disturbed by the crowds congregating outside the White House made of people now claiming to be their relatives, saying she hated them, comparing them to earwigs, centipedes, slugs, and worms "crawling out from damp rocks". Swain said there was little harm in hating them and if that's how she felt, she could move to Machu Picchu where many of the rich of the world had fled. She did so, divorcing him and taking her wealth to live among her already distinguished relatives. She was presumably killed when Machu Picchu was destroyed during a night of exceptionally heavy gravity.