Trump Card

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

Let me start off by getting my disclaimer out of the way:

This entire book is a lie.

Call it fake news, propaganda, or whatever you want. Trump Card, the book you are currently reading, is a satirical take on the popular Young Adult Dystopia genre. It is based on current events taken to their logical and sometimes ridiculous extremes. You know – fiction.

I basically wrote this book on a dare. Not a dare made by anyone in particular, but rather a challenge I posed to myself. In the weeks following the inauguration of President Donald Trump, a popular meme was floated on Facebook with the tagline, Take that, Young Adult Dystopias! You may recognize it from my back cover blurb, or maybe you saw it when it first circulated on social media.

The year is 2017. Donald Trump is President. The Resistance is led by Teen Vogue, the National Parks Department, and the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary.

I decided that the meme really did sound remarkably like a setup for one of those YA Dystopia novels, and I figured I would see if I could write one based on it – a satirical one, of course, since as I see it the genre is clichéd, glutted, and due for a good lampooning. How many more stories can there be about special, chosen teenage heroes and heroines taking down massive, monolithic, militarized institutions with no real resources other than flat-out dumb luck?

These YA Dystopias all have specific, similar properties. First off is the Hero’s Journey (or Heroine’s Journey) structure à la Joseph Campbell, whose stages of the monomyth I employed as ham-handed chapter titles, complete with opening chapter quotes from The Hero With a Thousand Faces! For those of you keeping track at home, what I just did there is called hanging a lantern on it.

Second, nearly all YA Dystopias involve some sort of contest in which the hero or heroine must emerge victorious. Naturally, since this is a book about President Trump, that contest could only be some variation of The Apprentice, his popular reality-television series. Thus, much of the book consists of our heroine competing on the fictional Junior Apprentice, a reality-television series that stars high school kids, and is based on the original program.

Finally, in some of these stories the protagonist has some paranormal power based on the circumstances of their birth, while in others their superpower seems to be plain old dumb luck. I decided to combine those two, giving my protagonist as paranormal power that was entirely based on luck. And so, all the weird coincidences and hackneyed contrivances that move the plot can easily be explained by paranormally good luck.

My own daughter Sophia was born in 2001 and is currently in high school, so she’s about the same age as what I was looking for in my heroine. After I told her about the story, and she agreed it was funny, I asked if I could base my protagonist on her. She said sure, on the condition that she would get to punch Nazis. In fact, the first Nazi-punching scene fits into the Campbell structure perfectly. The others are there because, let’s face it, it’s hard to get enough Nazi-punching in any story.

For those who may be wondering about copyright and trademark issues, it so happens that the moment he was elected, Donald Trump and his family officially became public figures. Under the laws of this country, public figures cannot sue for damages in response to parody or satire that is clearly marked as such, or that no reasonable person would believe. With regards to the latter, I refer you back to the disclaimer:

This entire book is a lie.

So don't believe a word of it. If there do turn out to be legal issues, I will just go ahead and replace every instance of the name Trump with Drumpf and every reference to The Apprentice to The Acolyte in the text. Therefore, if the previous sentence reads replace every instance of the name Drumpf with Drumpf and every reference to The Acolyte with The Acolyte you can be pretty sure that I was already issued a cease and desist order, and that this substitution has been made. Parody of public figures should be protected speech, but really, in this day and age, who knows?

I think that’s about it. You should now have all the information you need to understand where I’m coming from, why I wrote this, and what I hope to accomplish. Attacking Trump hasn’t worked for any of his political opponents so far. My hope is that this ridiculous story will succeed where all those other attempts have failed. Vive la résistance!

Scott Michael Stenwick

Minneapolis, MN

0. PRELUDE – DEPARTURE

MY NAME IS Sophia Sanders. No relation to the senator from Vermont. I’m sixteen years old, and I live in Manhattan Valley. That’s on the Upper West Side of New York City. For most of my life, I’ve thought of myself as a pretty normal kid.

I discovered my talent for writing at an early age. I started a blog when I was eight years old, and by ninth grade I had quite the following. My online popularity led to an internship writing for Teen Vogue. I write a lot of political pieces, and I’m pretty critical of President Trump and his administration.

I’ve always felt drawn to activism. I want to see America be a fair and just place for everyone, not just the rich or well-connected. But I never set out to become a hero or a symbol of the Resistance. I practically stumbled into it, actually. And as it turns out, I wasn’t such a normal kid after all. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

I didn’t join the cast of Junior Apprentice to become famous. I joined because I knew millions of people would watch. It was a bigger media platform than my blog or articles could ever provide, so my criticism of Trump could jump to the next level. And when I say that I couldn't lose, believe me, I literally couldn't. But I’ll tell you more about that too.

Let’s just start at the beginning.

1. THE CALL TO ADVENTURE

The first stage of the mythological journey - which we have designed the call to adventure - signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown.

– Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, 58.

ON NOVEMBER 8TH of 2016, Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States.

President Trump lost the popular vote by three million or so. He spent his first week in office complaining about the news media and locking down the government. He called stories of low attendance at his inauguration fake news. He shut down Twitter accounts belonging to many government offices. He fired every staffer left over from the last administration, without naming replacements. In response, his political opponents organized the biggest protest in American history.

The National Parks Department went rogue, and started tweeting climate change facts. Staffers at the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary called out Trump’s people for trying to use their own definition of facts. Memes related to alternative facts and punching Nazis showed up all over the Internet. George Orwell’s 1984 and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale became the top-selling books on the world's largest online retailer. Looking back, the signs of dissent were easy to spot, but at the time it all felt pointless.

Between watching cable news, sending out tweets, and signing executive orders, President Trump started taking apart the modern world. He pulled out of trade deal after trade deal. He began constructing a massive wall along the border, and insisted that Mexico would pay the taxpayers back. He banned immigration from several Muslim countries, which was ruled unconstitutional. All along the way, the same harsh social conservatives Trump told everyone on the campaign trail not to worry about became bold and started acting out against their favorite targets: women, gays, brown people. Trump offered little more than half-hearted denunciations in response, days after the fact, if he bothered to say anything at all.

And the Republican Party went along with it. Republicans refused to investigate any of Trump’s shenanigans, despite his lack of civility, decorum, and integrity. Every so often, one or two Republicans would make a weak public statement criticizing some action of the administration. But all those ever prompted were flailing social media attacks by Trump himself. After all, talk is cheap, Twitter doubly so.

So like I said, I’m Sophia. I live in Manhattan and my family is well-off, but I’m nothing like those super-rich New York kids you see on television. I’m a good student, a lousy athlete, and I hate being bored, so I do my best to keep busy writing articles for my blog and for Teen Vogue.

My father Scott is a writer, too. He’s a pretty well-known author and the family name helped me gain an audience in the beginning. But by the time I was thirteen, my blog had more followers than his blog did – which he found quite amusing. And as for Teen Vogue, the magazine’s a lot less fluffy than you might otherwise think since it’s got the name of a fashion journal. It’s pretty great, as a matter of fact.

My mother, Maureen, is the rich one. She comes from an old Boston family and she met my dad in college. Mom’s undergrad degree is in biology, but over the years she’s worked an amazing assortment of jobs – everything from high-end computer support to courier work. Just like me, she likes to keep busy, and there’s always plenty that needs to get done in New York City.

Anyway, my story with the Resistance began on my sixteenth birthday, about nine months after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. I don’t like to tell people my birthday. I was born on the morning of September 11th in 2001, during the 9/11 terror attacks, right here in Manhattan. My birth certificate shows the time as one minute after the second World Trade Center tower collapsed. People get this look when they see the date, and I understand why. The attacks were a tragedy, for everyone killed that day and for everyone killed in the wars that followed.

On September 11th of 2017, I arrived home from school to find a strange man sitting in our living room. He was talking with my parents.

That’s her now, I heard my father say.

What’s up? I asked as I stepped into the room.

The man rose and offered his hand. Hello, Sophia, he said with a smile. My name is Dr. Edmund Chase. It’s nice to meet you. He wore a plain, medium gray suit and wire-rimmed glasses. The outfit and glasses made him look like a garden variety nerd minus the pocket protector.

It’s nice to meet you, too, I said, I took his hand, a bit warily. Who are you, and why are you here?

Direct, he noted. I like that. But I suppose that’s stock and trade for a journalist.

Columnist, I corrected. Anyway, I’m just an intern. What’s all this about?

Have a seat, said the man as he sat back down.

My father smiled. Don’t worry, he said. It’s nothing bad. It’s quite interesting. You should listen to what he has to say.

Really, added my mother with a nod. His idea sounds fascinating. Or at least, it will be if it works.

I shrugged. Okay, I agreed, sitting down next to my father.

As I said, my name is Dr. Edmund Chase. I’m with an organization called the Noetic Sciences Institute. Have you heard of it?

Actually, I had. Parapsychology, right? There’s an article about you guys on RationalWiki. They don’t have a high opinion of your work.

Dr. Chase chuckled. That, they do not, he agreed. Some of their skepticism is warranted. We’ve done a lot of experiments that have produced positive results, but we’ve had trouble coming up with a reliable, repeatable methodology. Still at the proto-science stage, I’m sorry to say. And in a way, that’s where you come in.

Do you want me to write an article? I asked. I wasn’t sure if Teen Vogue would be interested in an article on Noetic Science – whatever that meant – but I was thinking about branching out and submitting work to other publications.

No, he replied. I want you take part in an experiment. Maybe it will work and maybe it won’t. To tell you the truth, we’ve tried the same thing with a couple of other people and they didn’t notice anything unusual. But it’s possible that you’re different. Special, I suppose you could say.

You mean like ‘handi-capable’ special?

No, repeated Dr. Chase flatly, rolling his eyes. Special-special. One of the research projects we started back in the nineties was the placement of quantum diodes, small devices that we call ‘eggs,’ around the world. The eggs are basically tiny random number generators. The idea was that if consciousness interacts with the quantum environment, we should be able to see distortions in the otherwise random series of numbers. And we did, just once. On September 11th of 2001.

My birthday, I noted. Sixteen years ago today.

We don’t know what it was about 9/11 that triggered the eggs. It was the first significant disaster that happened after the network was up and running. We were initially very excited and thought that we might be able to correlate the egg states to catastrophic events of various kinds. But we never saw a similar result again, even when much bigger disasters struck during subsequent years. Some of my colleagues now think that the skeptics are right, that it may have been just a fluke. But still – it mapped to 9/11 so closely.

Okay, I said with a nod. So once again, no reliable results. How can I help you?

You see, I have a different hypothesis, Dr. Chase explained. I believe that the exact conditions of the attack may have produced a paranormal effect that we have not yet observed. So I want you to help me with a test. He reached into his bag, took out a small box, and handed it to me.

Inside the box was a necklace, a pendant hung from a fine silver chain. The pendant itself looked less like a piece of jewelry and more like a tiny, intricate machine. It consisted of a clear crystal in the center surrounded by twists and coils of silver wire. Despite the complexity, it was still very small – maybe half an inch across or so. What do you want me to do with this?

I want you to wear it, and make note of anything unusual that happens to you. That’s the whole experiment. You don’t need to wear it in the shower or anything like that, but it would be best if you could keep it on while you sleep. Is that something you would be willing to do for us?

I suppose, I said with another shrug. It’s kind of pretty. I’ve always liked silver better than gold. I looped the chain around my neck and clipped the two ends together in back.

Splendid, said Dr. Chase with a broad smile. Then I won’t take up any more of your time. It was nice meeting you, Sophia. I hope you will call if you experience anything unusual. Here’s my card.

Okay, I replied slowly as I took it from him. I still wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about.

You know, my father said after Dr. Chase had left, I studied some of that stuff back in college, when I was thinking about becoming an experimental psychologist. I don’t know how much there is to it, but I’ve always thought the quantum diode thing was a real phenomenon. That’s how all the magical stuff works in my urban fantasy novels – probability shifts.

It is fun, I replied, but do you think it’s real? Did you catch that even Dr. Chase’s woo-woo colleagues think he’s wrong? I mean, I like the necklace and all, and I’ll wear it. But do you really think anything weird is going to happen to me?

Probably not, he said thoughtfully. The shifts they measured in the experiments that I studied were very small. If it’s similar, it might do something like make you a little luckier. But even if it works exactly that way, I doubt you’ll notice it.

I’m glad it’s pretty, I added with a smirk. If it were ugly, I think I would have just told him no. My parents both chuckled.

Once I was in my room, I booted up my computer and checked the Internet. My blog hits were doing well, and my latest Teen Vogue article, Why Donald Trump is a Whig, was stirring up some conversation on my social media accounts. I was proud of the piece, since I had done a lot of research on the conservative and protectionist Whig party from before the Civil War. Writing it, I felt like a real investigative journalist.

As I looked through the social media comments on the article, a breaking news item came across my browser. I clicked on it, and my eyes widened.

TRUMP ARRESTS MERRIAM-WEBSTER STAFFERS

The Justice Department arrested three Merriam-Webster staffers today. The staffers operated the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary’s Twitter account. According to sources inside the department, they have been charged as enemies of the state.

The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary account is best known for tweeting the definition of fact in response to a statement from President Trump’s chief counselor, Kellyanne Conway. In her statement, Conway referred to falsehoods repeated by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer as alternative facts.

Since that time, the White House has accused the Merriam-Webster Twitter account of links to the anti-Trump resistance. According to sources, the breaking point came when the account tweeted the definition of smart at the president. President Trump has insisted over and over again that he is a smart person.

In another tweet, the staffers claimed that nothing President Trump has done since his inauguration fits the definition of smart. They then questioned both his education and his intelligence.

I gritted my teeth, shook my head, and said the first thing that came to mind out loud. Seriously? Who does he think he is? The intensity of my voice surprised me.

The first two articles I wrote for Teen Vogue advocated for free speech. I suspected that sort of advocacy would be especially important if Trump won the election. Part of me thought the conspiracy folks online had to be wrong, and the man couldn’t possibly be that bad. I mean, nobody could be, right?

But here it was – the beginning of full-on censorship and repression. It had only taken President Trump nine months to get to this point. I had to do something.

I brought up my word processor and began typing fiercely. I knew that the president closed down all official e-mail channels months ago. Politicians usually ignored anything electronic, anyway. This letter would not be e-mailed – or mailed, for that matter. I was going to walk it over to Trump Tower myself and hand-deliver it over the weekend.

I figured that the president probably wouldn’t be there, but the letter would still be placed with his personal correspondence. It would be much more likely to be seen there at the Tower than if I mailed it to the White House, where it would be mixed in with the mountain of other letters sent to the president every day.

I knew that I probably wouldn’t change President Trump's mind, but I was going to do everything in my power to try. It was the least I could do.

2. REFUSAL OF THE CALL

The myths and folk tales of the whole world make clear that the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one's own interest. The future is regarded not in terms of an unremitting series of deaths and births, but as though one's present system of ideals, virtues, goals, and advantages were to be fixed and made secure.

– Campbell, 59-60.

I WORE THE pendant for the rest of the week and didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. My Whig article about President Trump did attract a lot of hits, and my blog got more popular. I figured those two were related, and people just liked the article. Nothing unusual about that!

Looking back, my academic performance also got better, but it was hard to see at the time. The effect was subtle, shielding me from careless mistakes. Everybody makes those from time to time. I also felt driven to follow the news with an unhealthy intensity. Now I see that might have been part of it, too.

So, is it working? asked my father, as I came in the door Wednesday afternoon. He was sitting on the couch with his laptop, typing away on his latest novel.

I’ve only been wearing it for a couple days, Dad, I replied. I haven’t seen anything weird, if that’s what you mean.

Well, let me know if you do. I think I’ve come up with a way to work a magical pendant into my story here, and more details from real life always help. He grinned conspiratorially.

I’ll do that, I replied, as I crossed to the hallway and retreated into my bedroom.

The following Saturday I planned on delivering my letter to President Trump. That morning the light streamed brightly through the blinds, waking me early. I got myself ready to go and tucked the letter into my bag. Checking the weather on my smartphone, I saw that it was unusually warm for mid-September. I wouldn’t even need a jacket for the half-hour walk through Central Park to Trump Tower.

Some news pundit once said that Donald Trump was a poor person’s idea of a rich person. That characterization came to mind whenever I passed the shiny golden sign and sleek, semi-reflective glass of Trump Tower. Apparently, even the restaurant in the building favored style over quality. A Vanity Fair columnist gave it a bad review right after the election. President Trump struck back on Twitter at the failing magazine and no-talent columnist.

Vanity Fair turned the