My frustration swelled: “Pull what off?”
Donald Duck Trump did not look at me. Instead, she looked at her partner and put her hand on his knee. “It’s like Patti Smith says: ‘When you hit a wall, just kick it in.’ ”
The hologram changed. I admit, I’d always thought of Donald Duck Trump as something of a lightweight besotted with her own popularity, appetite burning for historic importance, sated only by headlines and pundits proclaiming such. I’d expressed this sentiment to Seth on more than one occasion, and here he was running off behind my back to join her. As soon as I understood what she wanted to do, I understood why Seth had been recruited, and a mauve-tinted darkness filled me. And here is where I must elide my account of this meeting. What was displayed in that hologram and what Donald Duck Trump and Erin Brockovich went on to describe seems both fanciful enough that you need not concern yourself with the details and dangerous enough that, were I to include it here, it could put your political career at grave risk. Your plausible deniability, Congresswoman, will remain the operative principle going forward in this account.
After the nearly thirty-minute presentation and explanation, I felt the four of them looking at Mr. Blonde, Ned Stark, and myself because, clearly, we hadn’t been included in whatever previous scheming had occurred. Ellen Ripley and Seth had been privy to at least part of this information. We were now expected to swallow this grenade whole, so to speak. Donald Duck Trump said:
“This is normally the part where you tell us what you think.”
Mr. Blonde was the first to respond. “Are you two fucking crazy?” His gaze traded between Donald Duck Trump and Erin Brockovich. “You’re going to start a war, you assholes.” He pointed at Ned Stark accusingly: “Why isn’t your daughter here? Why haven’t you brought her in on this lunatic plan?”
Ned Stark sat with his legs crossed and his pant leg riding up to reveal one sock, all the elasticity gone, drooping low on a varicosed ankle. He bobbed his liver-spotted head: “Well. I don’t want her involved in this.”
Mr. Blonde grinned enormously. “Right. Exactly. Because this is fucking insane.”
Erin Brockovich glared at her former coworker, tight-lipped. Her hands remained calmly folded on her lap as she said: “Like the lady says, we’ve got a plan. It’s only crazy if they expect it. They won’t be ready for a stunt like this.”
Ellen Ripley spoke up for the first time: “ ‘Stunt’ is not the word I’d use. We could all go to prison.”
Donald Duck Trump had not taken her hand from his knee: “And we’re thinking ahead to that too.”
Seth, perched forward in concentration, targeted Donald Duck Trump with his pool-blue eyes: “This is a lot riskier than what you first outlined to me. But it’s not impossible. I’d be willing to consult, work through some of the pragmatic questions. This app you’re talking about—it sounds somewhat chimerical.”
Erin Brockovich laughed: “Chimerical? No, I don’t think so.”
We waited for more, and when she didn’t volunteer anything further, Seth said: “Perhaps you could elaborate.”
“All the technology has existed dating back to like 2010. Did you ever use a dating app before you met Ashir? Ever use Grindr? That’s more or less what this is, just, you know, focused on different goals. Do you understand satellites?”
“Forget the fucking app,” said Mr. Blonde. “How am I supposed to not tell [name redacted] and [name redacted] and everyone else? Do you get the position you’ve put me in with this, [Donald Duck Trump]?”
Ned Stark said to Mr. Blonde: “Son, you guys long ago stopped working for the cause. You’re kidding yourself if you think getting in bed with the Sustainable Future Coalition was anything but a castration.”
“Fuck yourself, asshole.”
And then it was all so much cross talk, the sound I most abhor, and I knew I had begun tapping my fingers in the air, this childish tic I could never eschew, but the noise was simply so awfuclass="underline" Ned Stark and Mr. Blonde shouting at each other while Erin Brockovich accused Seth of not understanding satellites, and Donald Duck Trump trying to calm everyone with a voice like the noise a car makes when it skids through gravel.
Finally, Ellen Ripley muttered something low and fast, Donald Duck Trump the only intended audience, though I overheard. He said: “I almost want it to be too late to do anything. That way you’ll just stop.” With that, he pulled the VR set from his head. His entire body dissolved like pixelated ash into the verdant grass of an Irish cliffside, none of it carried by the wind. They all stopped arguing. Donald Duck Trump seemed unsurprised that he had stormed out of the worlde.
Ned Stark appeared unperturbed by the departure. “I’ll say now what I said back when you two approached me: If you think this could work, I’ll be there. Whatever I can bring to this.”
Donald Duck Trump nodded and her eyes moved to Seth. He looked at me, but not to ask for my permission. He said: “Of course, I’m in. However I can help.”
Then she looked at Mr. Blonde, who still sat with his arms folded over a swollen chest, gnashing the tobacco like a predator masticating tough game. “You’ve put me in a real fucking spot here.”
She said: “I know, [Mr. Blonde]. You promised us [Ellen Ripley and Erin Brockovich] you’d hear us out.”
“Yeah, [Ellen Ripley] looks real fucking keen on this, doesn’t he?”
“You also promised to keep this quiet. Even if you can’t be a part of it.”
Mr. Blonde reached to lift his headset off. “No, I can’t be a part of it. Not by a fucking long shot.”
And he too dissolved into gray pixels. The rest of them looked to me. I was not sorry to disappoint them. “You’ve put me in a very difficult position as well. Now that I have knowledge of this, you’re asking me to essentially hide an action of great significance from the agencies I’m bound by law to work with. Protocol tells me I should report this.”
“Goddamnit, Ash!”
Ned Stark stood and wagged his finger at me, only because he couldn’t leap through space and actually stick it in my face, I suppose. His kinetic motion detector picked up the moist pepper of spittle fleeing his mouth: “You of all people, Ash. You of all goddamn people. You look right at the models. Right at ’em! How can you turn your back on this?”
I nodded to the assembled. “They’re fantasists.”
“Sure they are! But people like you and me, we’ve been sorely lacking in imagination for a long time.”
He paced away, then back, then away again, making a series of motions. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his jacket. He stuck one in his mouth and then just as quickly pulled it back out and reinserted it in the pack, like he’d been rewound.
I continued calmly. “Furthermore, I have great skepticism regarding the logistical components of this plan. It requires a vast number of interlocking features.” I nodded to Erin Brockovich with what I hoped was appropriate scorn. “An untested app notwithstanding.”
Ned Stark returned to his seat, though his lips maintained an angry and contemptuous moue.
Donald Duck Trump spoke softly. “Ash, I hear what you’re saying. I’m begging you, though, if you can’t be a part of this, stay silent. Give us a chance. Brave people are going to put themselves on the line.”
Seth watched me, and I pretended to consider this. I allowed enough time to make it appear as though I was wrestling with the decision, though I already knew precisely what course I would take. “Seeing as how you’ve involved my partner, you’ve ensured that I won’t betray your confidence. That was clever.”
With that, I became the third person to remove my headset.