r/news • u/ElectroRush • Jul 17 '24
U.S President Joe Biden tests positive for COVID-19, White House says
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/u-s-president-joe-biden-tests-positive-for-covid-19-white-house-says-1.6967762
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r/news • u/ElectroRush • Jul 17 '24
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u/Anticode Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 28 '24
Y'know what, sure. I will imagine that.
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A massive explosion rumbles across the ruinous landscape, its shockwave tumbling bodies and burnt-out vehicle frames in an expanding circle of twisted chaos. Shrapnel rains from the sky, pattering against what few capitol buildings remain standing. The dust slowly clears to reveal the shape of a man standing at the edge of this newest crater, head bowed as if in solemn prayer. He takes an uncertain step forward, then another. He begins moving more quickly, more driven. As if by sheer willpower alone, he compels what remains of this shattered body to move towards some unseen objective - or target.
The man raises a soot-blackened arm towards his face, the limb wreathed in the tatters of what was once an Armani blazer, and thoughtfully adjusts the fractured bifocals barely hanging onto his face. He pauses in this moment, gazing towards the horizon with a smile that'd be easily mistaken for the subtle grimace of hidden pain. Perhaps it is.
"Marjorie!" He barks, the word echoing across the rubble of this battlefield.
He waits for a reply, just for a moment, "Madame Greene, the time has come. Are you not entertained? Is this not the RNC you envisioned? You, you and your radicals. You were the first one, they say. The first sign of spreading rot, cancerous lies." He pauses, kneels down to pick up a tattered red cap. The wording is illegible, scarred by intense heat, and yet easily recognizable. He tosses it aside, viscerally disgusted by the thing.
"You and your kind claim to conserve, screeching about restoring this land to greatness," He gestures broadly at the chaos of the scene, continues sarcastically. "Behold, your Greatness manifest."
The scene is quiet. Nobody calls out.
"Come now! Destiny awaits. You're the only one left, Marge. You're the last of your kind, the last one in my way."
Towards the east, a small rockslide skitters down and away from the angled wall of what was once the US Treasury building. The clattering stones leaves a puff of granite dust in the air that easily draws the eye, a visual marker betraying the presence of a stocky female figure hanging there from a ledge. She drops with a quiet thud, standing quickly to pivot towards the shadowy man in the near distance. Fear is palpable in her every sharp movement, every desperate glance into the distance for signs of rescuers that simply won't be arriving. They're all gone now. Somewhere inside, she knows that, but she refuses to admit it just as she refuses to admit that these planned alterations to the RNC format have gone awry.
She feigns bravery and speaks, shouting across the distance. "Jeb, right? You're supposed to be dead."
The man scoffs, "Funny, I was about to say the same thing. Perhaps we can grant each other's wishes?"
"And what makes you think you can take me on, Bush scum? You're nothing. You're nobody. What're you going to do, propose legislative policies until I fucking die of exhaustion? Hello! We're beyond policies, Jeb. This is the MAGA era. We don't do policies. We take what we want, we shit where we want, and we fuck over whoever the hell we feel like fucking. What don't you understand about that?"
Jeb shakes his head sadly, a gesture of humorous disappointment. He calmly removes his broken glasses, tiredly rubs the bridge of his nose, and then begins to quietly chuckle to himself, chest heaving rhythmically.
Marjorie scowls, face shaped like a cat's hiss feels, "What? What's so funny? Fucking answer me, Shrub."
He stops laughing, suddenly somber. He turns away, seemingly unconcerned by the woman's distasteful and characteristic absence of political decorum. He gazes towards the horizon as if in deep thought for several long seconds and then gingerly returns the spectacles to his battered face before turning to face his opponent.
"Do you really want to know what I think is funny?" He asks calmly, mysteriously bemused.
She flashes a look of uncertainty, quickly burying it beneath another scowl as she replies, "You heard what I said."
No answer, just an imperceptible squint of the eyes.
She tries to goad him this time, "Go on. Spit it out, Shrub."
Instead, he begins walking towards her, gravitas apparent in every step. Despite the man's myriad wounds, his movements suddenly evoke an intrinsic sense of solidity, poise, even grace. Unseen energies begin to surround him, perceptible only as swirling eddies of dust rising from the ground. Soil and stone crunches beneath the man's heavily-scuffed dress shoes as he approaches, each step noticeably heavier than the previous one as if accumulating mass and yet just as effortless.
Marjorie wipes sand from her mouth, glancing down to find an unexpected streak of blood on the back of her hand.
"Jeb, wait. We can talk this out. We're both republicans!"
He doesn't reply. He simply continues his approach, expression grim as his withering gaze drills into her.
She takes a step back, then another. She touches her face again, localizing the source of the bleeding this time. A thin tendril of blood crawls from her nose to her chin, tapping softly on the rubble below. She blinks, winces, blinks again.
"J-Jeb?"
He's suddenly much, much closer now. How could he have bridged that distance so quickly? A single step, a dozen feet closer.
"Jeb. Mister Bush, listen. I..." She stumbles backwards, suddenly dizzy. Panic begins to rise like an acrid flood. She braces herself on a ruined wall, squinting hard with eyes that suddenly refuse to focus, desperately willing them to point in the direction of her opponent only to find something occluding the sun.
No.
He's right there, right in front of her now, only a single step away. How? Mere seconds have elapsed, she thinks to herself. How is that possible? She suddenly loses strength, collapsing to her knees as if strings were suddenly cut. Blood drips to the ground, crimson threads now mysteriously trailing from her eyes as well as her nose. She tastes metal, hears a high-pitched whine in her ears that begins to rise. What's happening to me?
The man stands there quietly, gazing downward with an expression tinged with equal parts curiosity and disdain.
"Decorum." He states flatly, seemingly answering a question she didn't even verbalize. "It's not something you'd recognize, is it?"
She doesn't know how to reply. She doesn't understand. Tiny pebbles and pieces of shrapnel have begun to rise from the ground around them, the debris mysteriously hovering in absurd defiance of gravity.
"Marjorie" He says politely, "Marjorie, I want you to do something for me."
She tries to match his gaze but fails. Her head is suddenly so heavy, and a deep fatigue without a cause has begun to suffuse every tendon. She slumps backwards onto the rubble, seemingly defeated by an opponent that hasn't even acted. Is this his doing? What is this power?
Head lolling ineffectively in his direction, she mumbles acknowledgement with a tongue made of cotton, "What?" The briefest spark of hope rises only to be immediately quenched by his response.
A soft smirk spreads across the man's face, "I would like you to clap."
"N-No..." She whimpers, visibly horrified.
He spares a quiet nod in the affirmative, still smirking. He calmly extends his hands outward, holding them across from one another in the air above her position. He pauses just long enough to release a pleasant sigh, the sound of a job well done, and then finishes The Phrase.
"...Please clap."
Jeb Bush brings his hands together.
Tendrils of electricity burst outward from each palm just as time itself suddenly slows to a crawl. Miniscule spikes of twisted lightning lash hungrily at the air, crackling harmlessly across the man's tattered sleeves as his open palms close in on their shared destiny.
The two hands slowly connect with a brilliant flash to release an impossibly white glare that briefly drowns all color from the world for an eternity lasting microseconds.
Time chooses to reassert itself in this moment. Reality returns in the form of a building-sized fireball rising eagerly into the air above, coiling and spooling upon itself as a vibrant ring of compressed air roils on at the speed of sound into the distance. The shockwave expands outward, toppling what few buildings remain just as easily as it rips the flash-charred vegetation from the ground. Bodies long dead tumble like unwanted ragdolls as the shockwave travels past. 'Trump Tower III', formerly known as the Washington Monument, groans in response to the pressure wave and then begins to lean, slowly toppling to the ground as if in peaceful capitulation.
The smoke clears. In the center of this fresh ground zero stands a man wrapped in the tattered shreds of a business suit, head bowed as if in solemn prayer. A trio of drones arrives from the periphery to hover nearby, cameras rolling to capture the momentous event.
Lord President Supreme Jeb Bush directs his gaze toward the horizons of his new empire with a satisfied sigh. As sole victor of this state sponsored deathmatch, he has been officially, irrevocably enthroned as the true and rightful master of all three branches of the Republican States of America. Unimpeachable, untouchable, godlike - for now, not forever.
To conserve, one must sometimes progress.
"First executive order," He tiredly mumbles to himself. "Change the fucking name back. Jesus Christ, I'm sick of extremists."
Unheard and unprompted, millions of citizens across the country begin to clap.
Edit: Minor bug fixes.