unnamednewbie13 wrote:
republicans in my living memory have always had a weird relationship with education. they'll pester and nag about student performance in school, nag kids they must go to college for
something, and bemoan the lack of educated people qualified for certain positions.
singularly unwilling to support measures to boost these numbers, begrudge and actually despise the college-educated liberal scum. at the same time, they'll find a way to blame biden if doctors become even more scarce. trump's doing the best he can but he's only president!
prompt for chatgpt wrote:
in the style of 1970s dystopian sci-fi, write a story that takes place in 2031. america is into trump's third term (4th, if people still believes biden stole 2020). the man, in rapidly declining health, weakly gesticulates in mockery of the american victims of the polio resurgence. the rally audience booms with the cheers of the poor, who just want to make it into the lower middle class, but are happy to wait as long as necessary until the last transperson is sniffed out and bussed away to camp. a gaggle of qanon shaman's disciples make a particular spectacle of themselves. ringed around the audience is the armed, jan 6 paramilitary who are there to escort dissenters into the back alleyway. kill orders are deployed via proud boy issue neuralink.
elsewhere, ailing americans beg and plead to stowaway aboard a flight bound for columbia to get their vaccinations. but it's too late for that. they already have The Virus.
mexico finishes the wall and stations troops there. canada, still on high alert from threats of annexation, builds their own. the world holds its breath in the hopes that the creaking american military will fall into ineffectual disrepair as funds are increasingly misappropriated for elon musk's side projects in his mysterious capacity as Unlisted.
**THE LAST AMERICAN**
The sky over Atlanta was an acrid shade of orange, a permanent twilight of smoke and synthetic clouds. The air hummed with the crackle of distant gunfire, sporadic and unremarkable, like the chirping of nocturnal insects in a world that had forgotten nature.
Beneath the glow of floodlights, the Georgia Dome—now renamed *The American Resurrection Center*—shuddered with the chants of the faithful. Trump, barely able to lift his arm, flicked a withered wrist, mocking the slow, clumsy movements of polio victims who had stumbled into frame before the broadcast censors could cut away.
A collective *hoo-rah* erupted from the stands. The poor, the desperate, the ones promised a return to greatness—though the exact mechanics of that promise remained elusive—cheered loudest of all. They still dreamt of clawing their way into the lower-middle class, even if the dream came with an asterisk. The conditions were clear: trans people were to be sniffed out and bussed away, their destinations a whispered legend of cold barracks and silent disappearances. The word *camp* was only ever spoken in conspiratorial tones, always with the modifier *processing* attached.
On the field, a pack of shirtless men draped in tattered furs shrieked and cavorted like medieval flagellants. They called themselves *The Last Sons of Q*, an homage to the long-failed digital prophet whose prophecies never came true—but whose spirit, it turned out, was more enduring than truth itself. One of them, a young man with a buffalo headdress and face paint thick enough to disguise his malnourishment, raised his hands to the heavens and howled, a religious ecstasy amplified by the chorus of AR-15s slung over their backs.
Ringed around the spectacle were the Jan 6ers, their paramilitary uniforms a disjointed mosaic of stolen police riot gear, militia patches, and weather-beaten MAGA hats. They carried shotguns and cattle prods, but the real weapon was the Neuralink implant fused to their occipital lobes. At a word from *Unlisted*, a Proud Boy-issued directive would fire into their skulls, instructing them who to kill, who to maim, and who to “escort” out the back alley, where the order *open casket optional* was the last thing dissenters would ever hear.
**—Elsewhere—**
At the edge of a crumbling Miami airstrip, families huddled in the shadows, desperate for a flight. Not just any flight. *The Flight.*
The one bound for Colombia.
The only place left where a polio vaccine could be had—if one was rich enough, or clever enough, or lucky enough to hide in the wheel well of a departing plane and survive the altitude.
But there was no hope for them. They had *The Virus.*
It was in their bones, their blood, in the way their arms had begun to stiffen and curl inward, in the way their children’s legs no longer worked. They begged anyway. Their money, their jewelry, their flesh—anything for a seat in the cargo hold of a jet that would never take them.
From the tarmac, a black-uniformed official waved the pilot away. “Contaminated,” he barked, voice amplified through a megaphone. The flight crew nodded grimly. The doors sealed. The engines flared to life.
On the ground, a woman fell to her knees, her baby coughing weakly in her arms.
**—Elsewhere—**
In the north, the final section of *The Wall* was placed, but the ceremony was muted. Mexico had long since deployed troops to keep Americans out, their rifles trained southward.
The Canadian border was worse. Where once there had been lazy checkpoints and quiet highways, there was now a sprawling steel blockade manned by uneasy Mounties. The Americans had threatened annexation more than once, and Canada was done gambling on their inaction.
Inside the Pentagon, the last remnants of the American military gathered in dimly lit rooms, their funding siphoned for projects that never materialized, their top brass desperate for a sense of purpose.
But Elon Musk had a purpose.
In his role as *Unlisted*, he no longer required a title. No longer needed a position in government. The money funneled into his enterprises made the old chain of command irrelevant. His projects—whatever they were—received priority over food distribution, over disease control, over *everything.* No one knew where he was anymore. The last time he had been seen in public, he was wearing mirrored sunglasses and a silver jumpsuit, mumbling something about *Mars or bust.*
But no one was going to Mars.
No one was going anywhere.
The world watched America’s decline in uneasy silence, hoping the beast would die before it thrashed too hard. Before its war machine, barely held together with duct tape and hubris, decided to lash out one last time.
But for now, the cheers from Atlanta still echoed into the night.
And in the dark, the Neuralink kill orders pulsed to life.
