EPILOGUE 2.

A VULGAR DISPLAY OF POWER

Elon had been secretly working on his Mars project for a very long time. Over the course of the last few years he had been quietly launching robotics missions once a month and delivering packages to the same landing sight.

When they arrived, they found it stocked with the makings for a small colony. A small group of Wall-E like robots were already building a green house. Cots and rudimentary sewage were already in place.

They buried Bernie just outside their camp and named their new human colony Burlington, after the Vermont town where Sanders earned his come-uppance and gained popularity as a mayor.

Under the harsh landscape of Mars, the Wall-E robots had been carving out a cavern, creating the footprints of what would be the next step in human evolution.

And in the deepest darkest recesses lied their most valuable asset: an exact duplicate of Bernie’s iso-chambers. “Bernie and I have been working on this for quite some time.”

Barack and Michelle stare at it, dumbstruck.

Elon gestures to the three tubes. “Genetic material plus mental and emotional attributes equals human being. All we have to do is take the best humans the earth has to offer…”

Elon looks around the room at the three of them. “I guess that’s us.”

“Just the three of us.” Michelle nods. Joe was elsewhere, probably gazing out over the red planes and dreaming of a utopian society.

Elon continues. “This is how we’ll repopulate. We’ll grow the humans. One at a time.”

“One at a time.”

“And we’ll teach them. We’ll teach them new things. We’ll teach them brand new things and we won’t teach them the old ways. We won’t even tell them about earth or Donald.”

“Or Bernie.”

“Not everything about Bernie. We can tell them some things.”

“What if they ask where we came from? What will we tell them?”

“The truth. We came from the stars. We don’t know why and we don’t know how. But we know that when we stand together, we are stronger.”

That evening, after plenty of wine, Barack and Michelle go to their quarters and make love on Mars. They aren’t the first African American couple to make love on Mars. They are the first couple to make love on Mars.

 

 

Elon stands alone in the green house and watches the little Wall-E robots work tirelessly on his project as the red sunset burns through the window. He didn’t know what time it was anymore. His body said he was tired.

The robots worked endlessly and without complaint. They didn’t ask for a raise and they didn’t care if you beat them up or shut them off and they weren’t offended when you upgraded them.

Robots. He thinks to himself. Maybe they are the next level in human evolution. Maybe they lack the thing that ruins us. The thing that controls us. The thing that enslaves us.

Emotions.

Perhaps if I could tweak the code in the iso-chamber, just a little, we could produce a human that had less emotion. They would be a little more predictable. A little more tamable. A little easier to…

He catches the word on his tongue.

Control.

Elon turns and walks to his cot, contemplating his own selfish shortcomings as a human being.

 

 

Over Burlington, Mars, the same sun that set over Earth for a millennia, sets on the dusty red planet’s dead landscape and over four of the same people that it set on before.

And our new Martians didn’t live happily ever after. Nor did they live completely happily. Nor did they live ever-after.

But they did live.

And maybe things would be different this time.

Or maybe they’ll be the same.

But it would be a very long time before we discovered the answer.

 

The end.

 

 

 

 

 

EPILOGUE 1

A VULGAR DISPLAY OF POWER

Kim Jong Un floats through the distant cosmos for a very long time and he sees many wonderful and interesting things. Just kidding. Space is a black void. And if you don’t know where you’re going or how to get there, you’re pretty much boned.

Kim floated in space for the rest of his miserable life, unable to entertain himself and with nothing to look at. He had become his childhood nemesis, Jeong Rang, and had suffered nearly the same solitary fate.

Unrest was beginning to rise amongst the crew and Kim was beginning to lose control of them. He overheard someone suggest that they should eject him down the toilet in order to watch his face explode in the freezing abyss.

He wasn’t altogether sad to finally die. In fact, he had come to terms with it and had accepted his fate when, on a Sunday, or what would have been a Sunday (with no Earth or Sun there were no Earth days) a strange portal opened on the deck of his ship and out stepped a strange and hideous creature who went by the name of Wells Fargo.

Wells voice was unsettling and made Kim’s skin crawl. “Kim Jong Un. You have destroyed Pale Blue Dot.”

Kim is silent. The crew watches in rapture. Kim wants to unleash his men on this monster, unleash the righteous fire-power of his wrath but he isn’t completely sure that they would follow orders.

Wells continues, unfettered, “You destroyed Pale Blue Dot. It was not for you to destroy. It did not belong to you. Consequences must be met for your thoughtless actions.”

“Do not touch me, monster.”

“Do not tell me what to do, biped.” Wells slurps forward and reveals his broken teeth. Kim feigns bravery. Kim’s bowels release. His mother runs to him and cradles her sweetie in her massive bosom. Wells blasts them both with his quantum-revolver and they both drop to the ground, conscious but frozen. The effects would wear off in a day or two. He drags them through the portal and takes them back to the land of the Kardashians. He planned to make Kim his pet. His children had always wanted an Earthling.

And this one had a cute little haircut.

The mother could potentially be bred out. If not, they could send her to the glue factory with the rest of the callused herd.

For the rest of Kim’s life, he lived in a cage. His owner made him take behavioral courses and they eventually took.

His new pet name was Cookie and he would speak only on command.

Tomorrow brings us to our final ending: EPILOGUE 2.

THE SECOND BIG BANG. CHAPTER 19

A VULGAR DISPLAY OF POWER

The roof of Elon’s mansion folds back, revealing a magnificent launching pad. The countdown clock hits zero and the rocket containing the PSA fires them into space, propelling them away from the cradle of mankind in a fury of rocket fuel and human ingenuity.

Elon takes a moment to consider that in the next 30 minutes he will be the smartest man alive. And also the tallest.

As the violent atmosphere rocks their ship, Michelle pukes into her space helmet and Barack has a powerful spiritual out of body experience.

Bernie suffers a stroke and dies while passing through the final layer of atmosphere into outer space. They don’t discover it until it’s too late. His body is placed in the freezer and they plan to take care of it as soon as the proper opportunity presents itself.

Joe feels like he’s lost his father.

As they rise up, they see the great and glorious expanse of space open before them. “The cosmos,” Elon says mystically before unbuckling himself and doing weightless somersaults towards the fridge. He snaps open a vitamin water and thoughtfully sips it. “Well, I suppose I should ask. Are we planning to watch the explosion or should we kick it into Tesla Speed?”

Elon plugs his stereo in and begins to play Amazing Grace. Then he plays Highway to Hell. Then he plays Rocket Man. None of them feels right. Finally he just turns on white noise and listens to its calming hiss as the missile, which they can now see, moves slow motion through space and time towards Pale Blue Dot.

Elon begins to recite a mantra from memory, spoken by one of his heroes.

“That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there – on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturing, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

Elon stops talking and the group sits in silence as they watch Kim’s Power House missile slam into Earth and kill everyone they’d ever known.

Their planet was gone.

 

 

Tomorrow is our EPILOGUE part 1 followed directly by EPILOGUE part 2.

 

 

JOHN McCAIN’S FIRST THOUGHT. CHAPTER 18

A VULGAR DISPLAY OF POWER

John McCain awakens in a golden room, tied to a golden chair with, what appears to be, a golden lasso. He squints against all the shine.

“Mister McCain.”

John opens his eyes fully and allows them to adjust. It’s just he and Donald (in Kardashian form) and Melania in the room. Donald is making love to Melania on the desk. “Love” was a strong word. From John’s perspective it looked more like Donald was making hate to her.

Melania looks like she’s been drugged. She isn’t even blinking.

John’s body is broken. Everything is broken. All he knows is pain.

Donald pulls his green penis, covered in boils and slime, from the inside of his robotic wife.

“She came here to kill me.” He wipes his wet dick on her dress. “Did you know that she was created by Bernie Sanders?” He throws the soiled dress over her soiled face. “Many years ago I found this out. I’ve been waiting for her to make her move. In the meantime I’ve been -” he signals to her robotic vagina.

He glances at her. There is no emotion in his face but within his eyes there is sharp hatred and a shadow of hurt.

“She’s not asleep, if you’re wondering. She’s dead. If she was ever even really alive. I destroyed her charging station.” He touches her face and then pushes her off the desk and onto the floor like a dirty Kleenex.

Human life. Just some piece of meat. Just a thing to pussy-grab when you wanted. An object to be used.

Donald pours himself a bowl of cereal and sits down in front of John. “It’s a real shame it’s got to end like this, both of us getting fried in a nuclear holocaust.”

“My name is John McCain. And I am a hero.”

“Seen a mirror lately?”

“My name is John McCain. And I am a hero.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Donald pulls a dollar bill out of a golden kleenex box and blows his nose in it. Another bill magically pops up.

John begins to struggle against the rope. The pain is tremendous. Every bone in his body is broken. Every movement is shattered glass on raw skin.

“My name… is John McCain… and I am… a hero.”

A tear rolls down his cheek and he shakes it away. Tears were for mortal men. And John McCain was not a mortal man. He was born for more. Destined for greatness.

“My name is John McCain.”

His left hand, wrist and all five fingers broken, becomes free. But it’s all he needs because, “I am a hero.”

Donald Trump begins to load a hooka full of Godplex. He plans to make the next hour take quite some time. He’d smuggled some in from 5-Points years ago and has had it on top of his fridge since then. He took a hit before his State of the Union Address. Big mistake.

Big mistake.

He lights up and inhales deeply. The burn is deep and fierce and loud and ugly and then tiiiiiiiime sloooooooows dooooooown. Behind Donald Trump, John McCain stands up and approaches him. Donald is caught in a daze of ecstasy.

John McCain is a limping and garbled mess of flesh and bone and muscle and sinew.

Donald turns around just as the bruised and bloodied face of a monster bears down on him. The teeth are all missing. The nose is twisted to the side and gnarled into a fist. One eye is swollen shut. His cheek and jawbone are broken, making his previous chants sound far less coherent.

He grabs Donald’s cheeks in his broken hands and his nerves scream in pain. “Mer nohm iz Jhon MuhGain. ‘N I em a herro.”

He screams. And his spittle flies into Donald’s face. And Donald is terrified. He quivers back in fear and releases his bladder, spilling golden urine onto the fine golden carpet. He shouts for Paul Ryan but he’s nowhere to be found. He goes through his list. Everyone is dead or fired. Some are missing. I’ve run my agenda into the ground. I’m never going to get my wall built!

For the next five years, Godplex time, John McCain merciless beats Donald Trump. He throws him around the room in a fantastic rage. A rage that held no consequence for this was The Great Ending. A rage that held nothing back for there was nothing after this. A rage that was equal parts want and need. He knew he shouldn’t find enjoyment in this but he did. He didn’t want to, but he did. And this was the end, so he embraced it. He allowed himself to be nothing but Man. Not Civilized Man. Not Modern Man. But Primal Man. He allowed The War Machine to take over.

He let out Mad Dog McCain. And it was Mad Dog McCain that carved his initials into Donald’s forehead with his thumbnail over the course of a long fall season in Donald’s time perspective. It was horrendously painful and Donald wept until he was dehydrated and choked with exhaustion.

 

KIM REMEMBERS WHAT HE FORGOT. CHAPTER 17

A VULGAR DISPLAY OF POWER.

Kim Jong Un sits on the deck of his spacecraft, The Nobility, with his mother, and stares at the blur of the missile’s tail. “I really did it, mommy. I really destroyed Earth.”

“You sure did, my beautiful little baby. And Mommy is so proud of you for standing up for yourself to that mean old bully. He got what he deserved. He and all of them.”

Being around his mommy always made Kim feel better. Even when he felt guilty for killing billions of people, many of them children, his mother knew how to turn his day around and make him feel great about himself.

Mom’s were magic like that.

“What should we do now?”

Kim thinks, “Did we bring any DVDs?”

His mom shakes her head. “I don’t think we packed any.”

Kim races from room to room in a panic. It was true. They had become so consumed with packing food and weapons of mass destruction that they had forgotten to pack any DVDs, video games, books or activities. There weren’t even any coloring books.

“What have I done?”