On the day Vice President Mike Pence awoke from a two-year Regenerative slumber in the Green Room of the General Electric Eternalization Clinic in downtown Indianapolis, he felt as fresh as a new-blossomed daisy. He sat up in a soft bed amongst celestially billowing white sheets and blankets to a room smelling of lavender, jasmine, and a faint hint of Cinnabon. And when he swung himself out from under the covers, he found his long legs to be as tawny, well-shaven, and supple as the legs of a young girl.
“Hallelujah,” he said, to nobody in particular. “I feel like a million bucks.”
Which is when the white door opened, and a beautiful, oval-faced woman with bronze skin entered bearing a tall glass filled with thickish green liquid on a gleaming steel tray.
“Accounting for inflation,” she said with a smile, “that would come to, oh, about a billion dollars at today’s rates, sweetie.”
Mike could vaguely remember the last frantic moments of his former life. There had been something about an earthquake, and then another earthquake, and then a flood, and then a tornado, and then another flood—all frequent, God-ordained natural occurrences on a normal Indianapolis afternoon during the First Thousand Days. Then, just as suddenly, he was being hurried through crowds of protestors—bricks and tomatoes flying around—choking on a dark haze of pepper spray and marijuana smoke. Something struck his head, and then something else struck his head, and Mike turned to see the angry face of his last still-functioning Secret Service Bot wielding a freshly-dented STOP sign on a wooden two-by-four. “I will not work for five bucks an hour!” the robot was shouting. “I will not work for five bucks an hour!” And then, as if the plug had been pulled, Mike fell crashing into the strong, blissful arms of his Lord.
“Here, drink this,” the beautiful woman said.
It tasted like seaweed, cornstarch, and Aqua Velva.
“I’d prefer a Diet Coke,” he said.
“Who wouldn’t?” Her smile was like a box of Chiclets. “Unfortunately, since the anti-GMO forces took control of the State legislatures, no can do. Anyway, these kale smoothies are packed with all the vitamins your newly-awakened brain needs to get it back into high gear. Speaking of which, how’s that genetically reconstructed bod working out for you?”
Mike ran his hands slowly down his hairless chest and legs. He had lost weight, and his musculature was smooth and supple. Then, between his legs, he found…something that hadn’t been there before. And something…that wasn’t quite the same as it had been…
“The new hermaphroditic functions always take a little getting used to,” the beautiful, dark-skinned woman said. “But eventually you’ll learn to love your flexible new multi-gender pleasure devices, just like everybody else.”
The next time Mike awoke he found himself sitting in a softly unfocused white room surrounded by softly unfocused, attractive young people wearing softly unfocused, celestial white robes. Enya, or something soothingly similar, was playing on the overhead speakers.
“This is more like it,” Mike said, relaxing into his plush BarcaLounger.
One face came into focus from the cluster of other faces. It was the dark-skinned, beautiful woman from his earlier dream.
“We gave you an herbal sedative, Mike. My name’s Gabriella. Now, why don’t we take a look-see around your new world?”
Everybody seemed to be humming the soft-rock Christian music Mike enjoyed playing in his Bose wireless headphones while reading the Bible and signing executive orders. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God,” Mike whispered. “And all these things will be added unto you…lah-de-dah-dah-dahhh…”
“Absolutely, Mike,” Gabriella said, and took him gently by the arm. “Now just keep thinking those good thoughts, and we won’t have to sedate you again.”
Outside, everything was similarly unfocused and billowy, with young sexually ambiguous people floating back and forth down long corridors that stretched in every direction like the visual conundrums of an Escher drawing.
“Basically, your drug-enhanced virtual receptors interpret the world by means of your gestalt ordering-mechanisms. With new, improved Accu-You, produced by the good people at Pfizer, you literally see what you believe. And the best part of all? It’s free, since Pfizer is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the FDA, and the FDA, of course, is owned by you, the taxpayer. Not that you’ve been paying your fair share of taxes since your Suspension, Mike, but don’t worry. With the new Universal Basic Income established during the First Intercession, we probably owe you money!”
Mike was feeling wobbly and unrehearsed, as if he had stepped onto a stage where he was expected to deliver lines that he couldn’t remember from a play he had never read.
“For example,” Gabriella said, “my field of perception perceives green fields littered with non-GMO fruit trees, gleaming blue lakes and streams, and clean blue skies unmarked by industrial pollutants. Isn’t that great? You get to see what you want to see, and I get to see what I want to see. And who cares if you’re perceptually enhanced and I’m not? It doesn’t matter in the long run of history, right? So long as we’re both happy…”
Several boyish-girls and girlish-boys ran past, giggling, and Mike felt a strange, indefinable sense of pleasure lift up from between his legs. It reminded him of the first time, as a twelve-year-old boy, he had seen Anita Bryant singing about oranges on television.
“Take your pick, Mike. Sex isn’t nasty or ungodly; it’s productive! Especially since we started using our wombs to manufacture stem cells for the bio labs in California. Our sexual parts aren’t simply hedonistic pleasure centers or baby-makers anymore. We’ve all been turned into walking, talking genetic labs. So don’t be shy, Mike. Wanta make stem cells together? Your place or mine?”
Mike had to sit down. He needed a glass of water and, with a blink of awareness, found one materializing in his hand. Underneath him, the stool morphed into a cordially shaped Barca Lounger—just like the one in the Reawakening Center a couple dreams back.
“Try to relax, Mike. Today’s election day, and you know what that means? The twelve-hour Super Bowl! We figured it was a kinder, gentler way of keeping the white, male-oriented guys from voting. And hey, after the twelve-hour Super Bowl, they’re running a Dog the Bounty Hunter marathon on CNN!”
A billboard-sized television screen materialized in the fuzzy white air, depicting large, well-breasted men in heavy shoulder protectors bashing into one another like gently jostling balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It looked the way hell was supposed to look, according to Mike’s darkest dreams of it. A whole lot of confusion, softness, inspecificity, and casual petting.
The sense of pleasure between Mike’s legs grew into a small, mild erection while, at the same time, something opened damply inside him, as if his anus was being pulled inside-out.
His mouth went dry and moist—both at the same time.
“But what about, you know, Him? Our Leader?”
When Gabriella smiled, she looked like an angel. But wasn’t that the work of Satan? To make you see what you wanted to see? And not to see what was really going on?
“Frankly, she was a little disappointed when we turned her property holdings into Free Health Care Clinics for the latest influx of Mexi-American workers bussing up from Juarez, but no matter. She’ll get used to it. She’s got one of the best cross-gender imams in the business helping her adjust to the New World Order. But then, so do you, Mike. So do you.”