Mated

Initially, the affair was almost entirely sexual.  They were both enrolled in an evening cooking class where students were there not because they wanted to learn cooking.  After the class started, he joined her at a counter and they baked a cake together.  They went to her place afterwards and did not sleep together, they stayed awake the whole time.

The following morning, it was still good.  Maybe better, because it was still good.  They met after work that day.  She wanted to see his place, so they spent the night there.  And it was still good the next morning.  By the end of the week, he moved in, her place was larger and cleaner. 

At first, it was entirely sexual.  But then they discovered each other’s interests and hobbies were complementary.  Without him quite realizing it, they began to plan their future.  They thought of each other when apart.  They met at the end of each working day with a passion neither had ever felt with any other partner. 

After a year, they married.  After another year, they had a son, then a daughter.  They bought condo with two bedrooms, and started a toy chest.  They still were in love, felt great passion, but there were new distractions.  Babies need attention. 

Their work changed, there were promotions and one relocation.  They found a small house near an elementary school.  They still had sex, when the children were sleeping and they were not too tired or preoccupied.  It was not the same.  It was mature.  Or, preoccupied.  They were comfortable with each other.  He missed the sudden lust, she did too but did not miss cleaning up the mess. 

There were problems as the children grew into adolescents, then young adults, then moved out.  They visited, stayed in touch, but after two decades focussed on their children, they now understood what empty nest meant. 

They ate lovely dinners together, sat on the couch and watched films or TV series.  They took weekend vacations, just themselves, in a resort on an island.  They took a small boat out on the lake stopped rowing in the middle to drift and watch the clouds. 

They sat in the boat, mated for life, making plans for the future. 

2084

Welcome to 2084.  It’s been a long haul–getting used to 6,900 sunscreen takes time.  I don’t go out.  Why bother?  What’s outside except dirt and cancer?  I live in a comfy apartment thirty feet underground.  Best protection against the tornadoes and storms and solar radiation. 

Only the poor live above ground.  The nightly news always ends with a positive human-interest story about them.  Everything is reported, nothing left out.  Yes, we have enemies all over the world.  But they buy our goods, we theirs.  Martial law is comforting and living underground never felt better.  The light, heat and air are controlled, the food tasty (although it took a while, getting used to dark brown sludge)–they make it from insects and our own waste.  

I work in my assigned job, stay at home or go to movies.  There are no shadows outside my apartment.  It is bright, you can see everything clearly, down to the end of every corridor.  I love my apartment.  On my walls I have posters of walls. 

The Cure For Boredom

Charlie was bored and did not understand why.  He had plenty of diverting toys.  TV, streaming, computer, gaming platform.  Books, magazines.  Two fish tanks, with guppies and cute cat fish.  But it increasingly was boring and felt wrong.  It was wrong to eagerly wait for the next TV show.  Video games were repetitive.  The fish?  Colorful idiots with limited attention spans, never cuddly. 

He should be happy enough.  His work was good, his family life good, they kept him occupied, and for his down time there were the diversions.  Anything else was sleep.  Why could he not relax?  Was he depressed?  Disassociated? 

Then he tried a virtual reality helmet. 

First, he was immersed in a world of dinosaurs, passing them while on a roller coaster.  He heard them, felt the coaster’s turns.  Then he entered an incredibly realistic city simulation, walking down a main street, talking to artificial people.  When he took off the helmet, he saw two hours had passed.  With no boredom. 

He ate something, then put the helmet back on.  Of the many programmes to chose from, he picked being on an alien planet.  There was new territory to explore, filled with wonders and monsters.  He emerged hours later, still excited.  Charlie quickly purchased all the add-ons possible, including electrodes placed around his body.  Returning to the alien world, his base only partly built after all, Charlie now felt pain when attacked, shocks when hit—and it felt incredible when he had sex with a voluptuous alien guide. 

Charlie had cured his boredom, but only while wired and wearing the helmet, in a game or simulation.  The cure was constant, mindless stimulation.  He had no time to be bored.  Yet, ironically, after a week he put the helmet down, bored by not being bored.  It was still all the same.  The only real cure for boredom was something new.  New and engaging. 

He realized now it started when he was a baby. 

The Beast Comes For Us

Victor usually wrote personal stories from his own life about what was important to him but, these days, he felt an obligation to write political satire—the anger demanded it.  Hatred was everywhere, promoted by the nation’s leaders.  The Beast appeared and slouched over the land, at first hesitant, increasingly relentless, lumbering towards where Victor lived, the land slowly ruled by the Beast. 

Citizens stood by.  The Beast was huge, impossible to stop, growing larger and more ominous every day.  It left scars in the ground from its claws.  Its growls rumbled inside the citizens’ bones.  As it grew closer, citizens offered sacrifices—TVs, cell phones, dishwashers.  It ate the appliances, then those offering the sacrifices. 

Most disturbing was that the citizens themselves had created the Beast.  It formed from their dreams and needs but especially their anger.  They could not fight themselves.  There was much discussion but no solutions.  All they could do was watch as the Beast lumbered into their city and began to destroy.  Its claws tore apart schools, research labs, information centres, churches.  Only rubble and scattered remains were left to remind the citizens of what they had built. 

Victor fled, hoping for a world where people understood their anger. 

Politics And Used Cars

The nation had been a world leader but its new President, a used car salesperson, saw it as an outdated older model which needed more than a paint job.  Living in a used car, like living in a democracy, can be comfy.  It is familiar, radiates shared history, and the seats eventually mold to fit your butt.  You smoke in it, eat fast food in it, toss garbage onto the back seat.  Citizens treated their country as their personal used car and eventually elected as President a used car salesperson (with a record of fraud, but in his profession that was difficult to avoid.)  Who better understood the nation? 

The country was used to its politicians being self-serving liars.  Voters felt they deserved a professional.  And they wanted entertaining politics–like a used car, undependable, but it was a new kind of democracy: on automatic, full of gas, brake pads worn.  And he was entertaining.  He strove to rebuild the nation, start new production plants, restore jobs.  True, his new policies eliminated green plans, further polluting the country.  He introduced pollution controls: face masks.  He also suggested it was better for the country if its citizens breathed a little less. 

It worked because folks were used to problems with used cars.  They only wished the country’s mileage was better.  Maintenance dropped, key parts became scarce and eventually the nation ended in a junkyard, where it was sold for parts. 

The President was by then living in his new estate in the Bahamas, where he only used bicycles. 

Conspiracies

In the early days of the pandemic Phil was returning home from a quiet walk when he saw his next-door neighbour.  She had just returned from picketing the local hospital.  The hospital had no overflow of covid patients.  It was lying, the media were lying.  Covid did not exist.  The whole thing was a conspiracy to reduce the world’s population because wealthy oligarchs thought the world was overcrowded. 

He knew of such theories, impossible for him to believe but neither proven nor disproven.  He read on the internet if it was not disproved, it was possible; if it was disproved, it might be a conspiracy to conceal vital information.  Was the Earth round?  Had a human landed on the Moon?  Did fluoride cause autism?  Facts were not always facts. 

Phil spoke with friends, family, colleagues.  No one admitted believing them.  The only people who admitted believing conspiracy theories were the ones promoting them on the internet.  Why were many people refusing facts?  There was one way to find the answer: Phil had to look into the human soul to understand the human need to believe in the unbelievable. 

Phil entered the astral plane and examined his soul. 

He looked into the souls of those nearby. 

All, including his own, harbored at least one extreme, unprovable belief which ignored facts.  Even if nearly unconscious, there was a belief in bizarre claims.  Phil needed to learn more, so he projected into the afterlife and spoke with the deceased.  They told him they had believed in conspiracies only when alive.  In the afterlife, there was no need for such beliefs. 

Phil realized people needed to believe in conspiracies only when alive.  The belief that something unprovable was responsible for their misfortunes kept people going.  It was better than religion. 

So Phil, to really help humanity, created the Church of Conspiracies, which listed in its scripture every conspiracy theory he knew of.  The Church rapidly grew, soon bursting at its seams.  Followers understood they needed to believe in a conspiracy to be happy.  A new conspiracy was described every Sunday service, followed by talk groups and, of course, Sunday School for the children.      

The Illegal Alien

A gentle alien from another galaxy landed on Earth, hid its spacecraft and got an apartment, a car and a job in a convenience store.  It was an explorer and would live among Earthlings and learn their ways.

However, everyone around it quickly realized it was an alien, mostly because of the three eyes and four arms.  People became terrified.  Aliens wanted to invade the country and destroy civilization.  The alien was arrested by Homeland Security, convicted without a trial and put in jail as an illegal alien. 

It mixed with the other convicts and learned a lot. 

Eventually it was released on parole, reporting regularly to a NASA scientist to ensure it would do nothing “alienly.”  It was given another job in a convenience store inside the NASA building.  The scientist met regularly with the alien, including when buying coffee and donuts, and asked the alien to provide its technology.  The scientist said Earthlings were curious.  She said there was much to learn—how would it report back home?  Radio?  In person?  If the alien would divulge such information, including its communications technology, she would see that its job was upgraded to washing toilets at NASA.  If the alien refused, it would be exported to a prison in El Salvador. 

The alien had learned enough about Earth. 

It fled NASA and returned to its hidden spacecraft, taking the scientist with it.  On board, in space, plotting the course to the next habitable planet, the alien said the scientist was invited.  They would explore the universe together.

The scientist’s main job during the voyage, which took forty years, was to clean the zero gravity toilets.    

Its All About The New President

The New President believed life was all about him and believed now that he was elected he could prove it.  His first days in office were full of news reports about his flurry of executive orders.  The news was all about him.  As the months crawled by, the top news every day was about Him—his actions, speeches, diplomatic triumphs and disasters, trade wars, golf victories. 

None of it directly affected the average person until the Presidential order came one day that everyone had to wear blonde wigs.  And spend two hours a week in a tanning salon.  And wear a red baseball cap with the new President’s name on it, in gold.  People believed in him but became unsettled.  They grew more unsettled when paycheques had to be in the President’s digital coin.  When the digital coin’s value dropped, many folks declared bankruptcy (also a tradition of the new President.) 

Many people began to complain that something was horribly wrong.  The new President was important but it was not all about him–for each person, it was about them.  Yes, the new President was an extension of all of them, but beyond extreme.  To return their lives to normal, they had to rebel.  The new President was impeached, no one voting for him to remain in office.  The sycophants he hired were all fired, wigs were dumped, the Justice Department obeyed the law and paycheques returned to normal. 

The new President was delighted—the actions proved it was all about him, even in rejection.  For years he stayed in his mansion, delighting in TV shows about how bad his Presidency had been.  Even out of office, it was still all about him.    

Dream World

Anton put all of his valuable thoughts onto the internet: Substack, Patreon, his own website.  Each day he wrote something about the world he lived in, describing what was wrong and how it could be made right.  When he started uploading, he was quickly  thrilled, getting hits.  However, after a few months, the growth began to level off.  Worse, he received not a single response to any of his posts. 

If thousands of people were reading his posts, why did not even one or two respond?  It was not possible, yet each morning his inbox contained various pleas for money.  Nothing about his posts or thoughts.  Looking at his online stats, Anton began to think none of it was real.  He had Facebook “friends” he never met or heard from.  Something, Anton concluded, was very wrong.

He was an experienced hacker, and when he searched discovered there were far less hits.  Practically none at all, despite his counters showing thousands of hits.  Further investigation revealed he had practically no hits at all.  Indeed, when he searched through the stats for the leading influencers, he found the same—practically no hits at all.  No one was following them except bots and some insecure people who thought internet advice was a good idea. 

Anton realized he was living in a dream world.  Shocked, he continued his research and eventually discovered that a handful of influencers had large followings and earned a living from them, but 90% of the other influencers actually had virtually no followers at all.  It was all a sham.  Which was when two stern men showed up at his door and took him to a helicopter and flew him to a private island where he was taken to a mansion and into a large, ornate room.  Sitting at a table as Anton was led to the one empty chair were five men and one woman. 

He was told to sit and he did, and one of the men explained to him that, during the birth of the internet, the key power brokers believed people had to be encouraged to use the web, so they installed ongoing protocols that made people think their audiences were far larger than they actually were.  The plan worked, and here they were.  They were wealthier and more powerful than ever and Anton was busy writing posts that few read.  They said they would give him a huge, real audience if he shut up.   

When Anton was flown back home and sat at his desk in front of his computer, he thought of the huge audience available to him finally.  What would he tell them?  Should he tell them the truth?  That they lived in a dream created so billionaires could profit? 

Anton sat at his computer, staring at the monitor and the blank page.   

Fake News

Woodrow was fed up with the plethora of fake news—not fake news, exactly, but none of it was real news.  The media and web fed on politics and disasters.  A fireworks factory exploding was certain to make the nightly news.  So was a big flood.  The political stuff was full of distortions, the disaster stuff taking only one element from a disaster—the immediate destruction. 

The real news for Woodrow was how many homeless there were in his city, how the food banks were doing, potholes in the streets and whether his food or water was contaminated.  Local crime was not a big issue but air quality was—Woodrow lived near one factory.  What was truly news for Woodrow was both the good and bad of what was going on around him.  The rest was fake.  People were influenced by fake news, Woodrow believed.  And he determined to stop it.  How, may you ask?  Not a difficult question when you are a psychoneurohackerphysicist.    

It is not a well-known profession. 

Woodrow figured the media played to what the public wanted: political fireballs, disasters, threats.  “Bread and circuses,” he muttered, assembling his devices.  Folks needed to know the real news, but Woodrow knew people still needed their diversions.  Woodrow turned on his devices and waited, believing it would take a week to work.

It took two days. 

That night, on the evening TV news, Woodrow saw a report on food contamination, one on air quality–with the rest of the news a situation comedy.  Woodrow switched to highly charged political websites.  One had a background report on what climate change was, with a fiery columnist writing about living expenses.  Another dropped its focus on past political issues and hunting down culprits and instead ran crosswords, the first having a theme about political witch hunts.  There was no longer fake news but real news with entertainment. 

The reality of citizens’ lives began to sink in.  Disgusted and frightened, about half the population built rocket ships and evacuated to the Moon, where they built a colony where the only news was whether a meteor would wipe them out.  The situation comedies remained popular.

The evacuation was ignored on Earth until the meteor hit, then the disaster was covered.      

The President Meets The Mole People

He saw the world as a stage, he its star.  The new President went to the United Nations and, wanting to impress everyone, told the nations they were all losers.  He said the U.N. was corrupt, he was giving it far less money.  It was a proud moment for the President, telling other nations they were corrupt.  Some of what he said was even true, in its way. 

The next week the Mole People burrowed up from underneath the nation.  The President could stop them, he could not build a border wall on the ground.  The Mole People stated it was time to climb to the surface and get work, maybe in mines or the service industry and on farms.  The Mole People were eager to work and send some of their earnings back home. 

The President was in a quandary.  He was not certain where he could deport the Mole People.  Worse, the service and agriculture industries said they desperately needed Mole People to replace deported immigrants.  The President decided he had to meet a Mole Person, so he invited several to his office.  Over diet cokes, the Mole People convinced the President that life underground was wonderful–they only surfaced for the work. 

In fact, they were encouraged by outraged U.N. delegates to finally emerge from underground—of the President’s nation.  Impressed by the descriptions of underground life, the President declared a national emergency and forced all the citizens to move underground.  Now they lived in the Mole Peoples’ abandoned cities and the Mole People lived on the surface.  Living underground was barely bearable (it was dark and the only food was mold.)  The Mole People discovered cheeseburgers (and restored U.N. funding.)    

Pigeonholed

Some societies have a name for every type of relative, some a word for every type of cloud.  Melvin’s society had names for every type of person, based on politics, placing people in pigeonholes.  Everyone had a label for what they were.  It was so comfy!  You were conservative or liberal, rich or poor, one race or another, on the top or the bottom, aggressive or placid.  It was comfy, everyone having a label–even though underneath their label everyone had complex, conflicting opinions. 

George was very concerned.  Everyone discussed but got nowhere.  You were a worker or home maker [often both], a doer or follower.  Most did not mind being slotted, they grew up with it, yet at times it felt confining.  Like-minded groups connected in coops.  George saw how society struggled.  One group or another got power and used it to push their way, in roughly ten year cycles.  George found the current cycle concerning–the new President came from the rich, authoritarian, climate-denying Epstein pigeonhole.

George believed the pigeonholed had to flee their coops.  No one should be trapped in who they were supposed to be, disparaging or ignoring other opinions.  Argument and constant debate from opposing sides made society better but in his nation, no one compromised

George’s own pigeonhole–computer nerd—kept him out of sight, allowing him to create a Device.  He was North American and to solve problems creating devices was what North Americans did [pigeonhole.]  He created a broadcast device using cell towers across the nation and turned it on.  His device had only one impact: everyone forgot they were in a slot. 

George settled into his favourite armchair with a beer and pizza and turned on the TV.  On station after station he saw the broadcast studio empty or reruns being played.  George went on the web and found some sites frozen while others burst with activity. The next morning, the TV outlets broadcast only static but he found news on the web.  Instead of seeking compromise, civil war had broken out.  Opposing groups physically confronted each other, demanding compliance. 

George turned off the Device. 

He sat thoughtful as he finished the pizza [as befitting his computer nerd pigeonhole] and watched TV recover and people return to their normal roosts, thinking what he achieved was demonstrating how important to some people their politics were.  Why?  Because, he concluded, of the lives they led.                

Cancel Culture

The President had heard a great deal about cancel culture, and he agreed it if was the proper culture it should be cancelled so he ordered all the nation’s labs to stop growing improper cultures.  No one knew what improper cultures meant (and their funding was at stake) so they stopped any cultures in their labs except the President’s culture, which they adopted. 

When he asked an advisor, the President was told that the practice once was called shunning and went back to the beginning of people gathering in groups.  Shunning was always practiced but, with the internet and current politics, shunning had escalated dramatically.  Especially aggrieved were conservatives who had been shunned themselves, and at least some of whose concerns had proven true. 

When the new President was elected, with an understanding of cancel culture, he went after his enemies and shunning became official national policy.  The President then sent troops into the streets, stating that crime was a culture which desperately needed cancelling.  The troops arrested many and those who were not citizens were deported to either Africa or South America, areas the President thought corrupt.  The President then decided that there were whole cultures he did not like, starting in Africa, and so he cancelled them (with nukes.)  He wanted to cancel some Asian countries, but they also had nukes, so he focussed on Mexico and Central and South America.  He had more than enough nukes and in his national statement declared no one would miss those countries, their food gave people diarrhea.    

Citizens believed the President right.  The society was full of groups and those which were not already cancelling enemies now began in earnest.  There was no reason to tolerate different opinions when they were perceived as a threat.  Eventually enough negative energy was created that the entire nation cancelled itself by transporting into another dimension.  Unfortunately, in that dimension where accepting differing opinions was the norm so the nation was transported again and in this dimension people were did not understand the concept of arguing, and for decades the nation transported through dimensions, unable to find a home so it returned to the Earth and settled on the far side of the Moon where it unfortunately made space suits with oxygen illegal as they were not natural and might give people autism.

Woke?

There were woke and anti woke.  Arnold felt both extremes needed some sleep.  Both misrepresented information, both knew they were the only way The nation, torn apart, was falling apart.  People were actually killing each other.  Political assassinations, school shootings, blowing up speedboats.  Arnold longed to hear snores.  But he heard only shouting and gun shots.  Could he help the nation heal?  One side wanted to change society, the other to move society back to apparently simpler times. 

One side wanted change, the other to reverse change.  How could he give both what they wanted?  Each wanted the opposite.  Satisfying both was impossible—for anyone but Arnold.  He was an exceptional neurobioastrophysicist.  Recently, his funding had been cut—too much science.  Arnold had an additional reason to see the woke disaster resolved. 

People were used to thinking they knew what they had.  Through drugs in the water and air, subliminal messages on their phones and increasing internet service to everyone and using military satellites—simple enough–Arnold was able to convince the nation everyone had exactly what they wanted.  Everyone now had the same religion, even atheists.  The specially abled stayed out of sight and were given employment.   Women stayed at home and raised families and continued working and being promoted.  Science and vaccines continued to be denied and were better than restored. 

Most important, nonwhite groups kept affirmative action, a ladder towards success, while white groups believed they had shut them out—because everyone was now white (as far as the white people were concerned.)                   

The President’s Thin Skin

The President’s political advisors worried that he was too thin skinned, reacting excessively to criticisms of him and his actions.  He thought he was fine and you never told this President he was wrong.  Therapy was not possible with this President, nor could they find effective drugs.  He had everyone terrified of saying or doing what the President considered wrong.  How could they make him have a thicker skin?  His physical skin was already tough, hardened by years of tanning.  His wife thought he was just fine, provided he stay away.  It was up to the advisors. 

Because the President stated everything he did was transparent, they had his doctors turn his skin invisible.  However, the President never left the lab, it was too gross.  They restored his skin and concluded their only practical solution was to influence his thinking. 

One afternoon, as the President lay on his tanning bed listening on headphones to his music, they played subliminal messages he did not consciously hear under Inna Gadda Davida.  Following was The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, because it was about how sad it was the Confederates lost the war. Then Pink Floyd’s We Don’t Need No Education.  All the while, the subliminal messages played.  The President came out of his tanning sessions feeling full of heavy metal, angry about losing a war and upset about public schools.  He increased military funding, put troops in the streets and eliminated the Department of Education.

Then it really fell apart when he started listening to Tom Lehrer and began poisoning pigeons in the park, then poisoning the food at state dinners and school lunches, then marketed his own brand of the poison as a soda, with a gold label.  Soon half the country was dead but it was half dead already anyway and the rest of the world did not miss it.      

The Bone Spur Cavalry

The President did not like horses but did like riding, as it involved telling the horse what to do, giving him a sense of power.  Galloping into a fight also appealed to him (as long as he did not fight himself–he had bone spurs preventing military service.  During the one war where he was eligible for the draft, the President’s podiatrist ruled him ineligible for military service because he had bone spurs.  The bone spurs did not prevent him from spending decades on golf courses–he used carts, although on his own courses uses horses, wrecking the greens.)

Horses and bone spurs led to the President one day, while watching TV, to create the Bone Spur Cavalry. 

He offered spots in the Cavalry to rich and powerful folks who had bone spurs, at least during wartime.  He put a cavalry officer in charge who had a really great mustache, like Theodore Roosevelt, also once in the cavalry.  None of the Bone Spur Cavalry rode horses.  They piloted fighter jets with lethal weapons against which no enemy had a chance.  They were first sent to intercept speedboat drug runners, blasting them to bits.  Which they were able to do sitting down in their pilots’ seats so their feet would not ache. 

The President celebrated his Bone Spur Cavalry’s victories, giving them medals and pardons (technically their killing was illegal.)  The Bone Spur Cavalry grew and soon the President had it interdicting drug runners on the nation’s highways, then in the cities (collateral damage was a handy catch phrase when describing the lowering of illegal drug use.) 

All of which enraged the nation’s illegal drug users.  Which were about half the country.  Some supported the President’s policies but now he was stomping on their turf.  Furious, they formed DOPE (Drugs Over People Everywhere) and launched counter attacks, blowing illegal smoke at the fighter jets (quickly abandoned) and progressing to drugging the water supplies of the local bases (very effective.) 

Soon the Bone Spur Cavalry refused to fight, preferring to watch TV and eat salty snacks, especially after some of them tried to fly but crashed.  The Bone Spur Cavalry became history and the President sulked, but within weeks unveiled the Sycophant Swashbucklers.  As for the President, he revelled in ordering killings without having to even leave his office.      

Late Night Blitzkrieg

The President was angry when comedians on TV made jokes about him.  He did not mind private criticism–he just fired the disloyal subordinate (criticism was disloyal.)  He was used to being criticized publicly and, technically, he believed any publicity is good publicity.  While it always got under his skin befored, he could do little about it.  Now he was President. 

Ridicule meant weakness.  He could never appear weak.  Tanned, yes, but never weak. 

He met with his officials and gave them a chart showing different criticisms ranked one to twenty, one being tolerated and twenty totally condemned.  Jokes one through five required administration officials to condemn the comedian with snippy remarks.  Six through ten required sarcasm and threats of an investigation.  Higher than ten required the COCK. 

The Central Order of Comedian Korps (COCK—the President had a very large COCK, he bragged about it) was authorized to act on jokes eleven through nineteen.  Jokes eleven through fifteen required legal action if the jokes were not modified.  The networks bowed to the pressure.  Jokes sixteen through nineteen required legal action to take the shows off the air.  Again, the networks caved.  Jokes in the twenty category—about the size of the President’s penis—required COCK to either put the comedian in jail or be disappeared. 

The President’s approach indeed shrank political humour to the most harmless, inoffensive jests, which still frightened them.  However, his supporters were happy.  Eventually, the President’s critics shrank, eventually becoming only a foot tall and needing highchairs in restaurants. 

The President was happy he had everyone’s support and next went to work on tragedies, demanding better killings.

Presidential Halloween

For his first real Halloween in office, the new President had something special planned.  It filled him with glee.  First, Halloween night festivities, then his speech—at the end of which he would introduce his new Bible. 

Halloween arrived.  Candies were handed out, contaminated with smallpox.  ICE agents went from door to door, arresting suspected illegal immigrants, children returning home with their candy bags to find their parents gone.  Soldiers marched on city streets, shooting rubber bullets at anyone suspected of being anti-Halloween.  People the President had fired for not being loyal enough received a trick when police arrived at their doors and arrested them.  The solar and green energy industry also received a trick when all its grants were defunded and solar panels declared illegal.  As did countries around the world, as tariffs against them went up. 

The President appeared on national TV and made a speech celebrating his administration’s achievements while wearing a Halloween costume—a priest, holding a pitchfork.  “Trick or treat!” he began with a huge smile.   “You voted for a new kind of President,” he told the nation.  “You rejected traditional politics.  You elected someone outside the swamp who would change it all.  And I’m doing just that. 

“I said I’d work on trans rights and I have, by eliminating them.  I like coal and gas, so I’m defunding all the green power silliness.  And some vaccines probably do cause autism, so I’m stopping them all to be certain our children our safe.  I’m afraid of science, frankly.  It’s all too woke.  That is why I’ve defunded research, from outer space satellites to health on Earth. 

“And we are surrounded by enemies.  Terrorists in speedboats smuggling drugs into our country.  So I’m killing them.  Our so-called allies have taken advantage of us since World War–was it One or Two?–so I’ve slapped tariffs against them.  And if Russia wants to take over Europe, that’s history, isn’t it?” 

The President concluded, “From now on, every day will be Halloween.  We’ll all wear funny costumes, except for the military.  I’ll have legislation passed making me President for life.  Servers will still get breaks on tips because I like people who serve.  And I am introducing tonight my new Trick or Treat Bible.”  He held up a thick gold embossed book, with himself on the cover, brandishing a sword.  “Pray using this Bible and you get the opposite!”      And so it was that, for the nation, every day became a holiday. 

How The New President Will Dominate The Midterms

The new President knew he was not popular.  Mid-term elections were due in a year and he needed to control the legislature.  Already tax increases and health care cuts had been delayed until after the midterms.  What would swing more voters his way? 

He needed voters to feel afraid, he decided.  They would rally around him.  So he sent armed troops into selected cities (to stop crime.)   He had the military destroy speedboats (allegedly running drugs into the nation.)  He deported less illegal immigrants (businesses dependent on migrant workers complained about disappearing workers) although he publicized the deportations more.  He ensured most health and science research was defunded.  He limited vaccines.

Within a few months, as the midterms neared, there were national outbreaks of polio, smallpox, measles and chicken pox (on top of the ongoing covid variant pandemic.)  As parents saw their children sicken, the new President promised he would fix this if he completely controlled the legislature, blaming the disease outbreaks on biowarfare from foreign terrorists.  At the same time, he announced concerns about outer space terrorists and organized a civilian UAP Defence Group.  Citizens totally supported the military fighting an alien invasion. 

The new President knew his tariffs meant higher priced fertilizer, crippling crops.  The Summer harvest was terrible and food imports extremely expensive.  Voters entered the fall season hungry—and worried about terrorists smuggling drugs, crime, the outbreaks of infectious, deadly diseases and, of course, a possible invasion from outer space. 

“These are not good times,” the new President told the nation in an announcement, “but vote to give me the government I need and it will all come together!” 

Huge numbers of citizens voted–89% of the electorate.  The new President sat watching the results—and was stunned to see 85% of the vote go to: Cartwright from South Park. 

Voters blamed the new President for their problems and believed a cartoon would do better.  Ironically, being a media creation was the former new President’s background.  Voters assumed an actual cartoon would do better (and Mickey Mouse was retired.)