Extras

Brad checked Emily’s dive mask. It was secure, but Emily’s pupils were large and black. She was high as a kite. He wanted to make sure the scopolamine patch was still on her arm, but Emily had already zipped up her shorty. No matter. Her eyes confirmed she was in no shape to dive. Do not operate heavy machinery, Brad had read on the drug’s information sheet. Scuba equipment wasn’t exactly heavy, but the intent of the warning was to keep people from doing dangerous things. Scuba diving can be dangerous.

Brad’s mind was clear and focused. He helped Emily into her buoyancy control device, looking every bit the conscientious dive buddy. “Mask—check! Fins, check! BCD— check!”

Emily smiled wanly, but Brad’s performance was really for the benefit of the other divers and crew. He then double-checked his own gear because his partner was too spaced out to help.

“Where are we?” Emily asked.

“Almost to Colombia Deep.”

“I mean . . . are we in Mexico?”

Brad glanced around, but no one had heard her over the roar of the motors. “Yes, dear. This is where we got married eight years ago. Good times, no?”

Emily stared at the tropical blue horizon. If Brad had asked that question yesterday before she’d applied the seasickness patch, she might have rolled her eyes because they were about to start the process of dissolving their troubled marriage. The only reason she’d agreed to accompany him on this trip was because she loved being underwater almost as much as he, and she thought it might be her last opportunity for some time. She loved it even though she often got sick and chummed the fish. Bonine just didn’t cut it, so Brad suggested she ask her doctor for something stronger. Her doctor failed to warn her just how potent scopolamine was, though, especially on one so slender. After a few hours wearing the patch, she was so stoned she didn’t know she was high.

The boat slowed and circled until they finally dropped anchor at the reef Miguel had promised. They would dive to ninety feet, swim along a wall, gradually ascend to thirty feet, ride the current for another twenty minutes, then slowly ascend and take the safety stop at fifteen feet to off-gas the rest of the nitrogen absorbed from the compressed air. Surfacing too quickly could result in decompression sickness, which might cause mild nerve damage or, sometimes, excruciating death.

Emily had been on enough dives that she rolled off the side of the boat into the water effortlessly. She then surfaced, deflated her BCD, and jackknifed downward to begin her descent. Brad watched her swim away from him, impressed by her form. But he saw she forgot to check for him. As buddies, they were supposed to be within ten feet of each other in case of gear malfunction or some other problem. She seemed to be shadowing the divemaster. Miguel had decades of experience, Emily had maybe six dozen dives under her belt. Brad leveled off at about forty feet and watched his buddy load up on nitrogen.

This isn’t on me, he thought. She got the patch. And she deserves to get bent for threatening to go after half my assets. That wasn’t really the case—California divorce law determined the financial outcome; Emily had threatened nothing. If anything, she wanted an amicable split so they could remain friends and continue to do things like go diving together. But Brad needed to win, and he wanted to cut her loose. Permanently. He watched her fin beside a hawkbill turtle. Pretty.

Pretty deep, he thought. She’s probably got nitrogen narcosis on top of the scopolamine high.

On the ascent, Emily lost control of her buoyancy. She’d sucked up so much air at depth that her tank was near empty and acted like a balloon. Brad saw her look frantically at her beeping dive computer and struggle to slow her rise, but she practically shot to the surface, blowing through the safety stop. Brad finned over, trying to appear as if he were helping her. Miguel caught up to them and pushed her to the boat. Beto hauled her up with one hand, ripped off her mask, and lunged for an oxygen bottle. Brad hoisted himself onboard and watched as his wife died. It was ugly.

On the ride back to shore, he buried his face in his hands as someone patted his back. He wasn’t hiding tears, though. He was smiling. He’d just committed the perfect murder.

Greetings, Terrans! If you’re from Proxima Centauri: “Gymkhana kelp scissor-pox!” Or if you’re reading this on Venus: “C-Can’t breathe! The air is made from *choke* acid!” Let’s unseal the air lock and review some books . . .

Edgar Rice Burroughs: Barstool of Jupiter

US Cavalry Officer John Barstool gets drunk and is mysteriously transported to Jehovis, “that plus-sized planet that astronomers and smarty-pants call Jupiter.” Here, he is befriended by the eight-armed, tangerine-colored warrior, Boris, and falls in love with Princess Dora Explora (“She was petite, generic, and dressed in a tinfoil swimsuit—just how I like ’em!—I was instantaneously smitten!”). But Barstool’s passion for Dora is unrequited. Before Dora can thaw, she’s abducted by air pirates in a flying tram-car and he vows to get her back—“Whether she likes it or not!”

Written in 1934, the science is every bit as iffy as its depiction of women: “Being a large planet, Jupiter’s ground was spongier and its atmosphere thinner, allowing me to leap forty-eight feet into the air and skewer three of the pirates with a single thrust of my shishk—Jehovean for ‘a very long sword’!” Jupiter’s Great Red Spot turns out to be “an enormous button mushroom, but crimson and seen from above,” and Barstool battles a creature that is “part mountain lion, part owl; has blue, yellow and brown spots, fifteen legs, and a pair of little hands on its head instead of antlers.”

Burroughs’ popularity was waning by the 1930s, so to boost sales of Barstool he included cameos of his best-selling jungle hero, Marvin the Ape-Man, and dinosaur hunter “Tricky” Rick Dickens from his Peculiar books. “I’m a terrible, terrible writer,” ERB once confessed in an interview, adding with a chuckle, “But I recently bought Sacramento with my royalties, so.”

Philip K. Dick: The Bloodshot Red Eye

1985. The west coast of America is a surveillance state following a coup by the Fascist Bureau of Investigation. Downtrodden used-cushion refurbisher Ted Schlub is a virtual prisoner in his own apartment in the Greater Oakland Dominion (GOD), where he takes abusive video calls from his three vindictive ex-wives, repairs old pillows (there is a shortage of soft upholstery following an atomic war with Mao Bloc), and has convoluted metaphysical arguments with a bad-tempered talking kettle called Pete.

When an enormous, bleary, bloodshot eye appears in the sky over the Golden Gate Bridge, Schlub starts hearing telepathic messages in the music of Mozart. It seems the composer is alive and well and composing psi-arias in a nudist commune on Tau Ceti. Wolfgang Amadeus tells Schlub to quit taking his mandatory state-prescribed meds and start listening to opera, as they’re designed to make you crazy. The meds, that is, not opera. Though now that I think about it . . .

Can Ted make his alimony payments, lead a naked, Mozart-themed uprising against the FBI, and convince his kettle to boil? I’ve no idea—I never got to the end. And neither did PKD: he stopped writing it after he had a vision in which Green Martian Jesus joined him in the bathtub. His editor, Brian W. Walrus—and his loyal, out-there sixties readership—never even noticed the book’s abrupt ending on page two: “And with that, Wanda tucked my socks into her belt and evaporated.”

Like most of Dick’s work, this is a book so weirdly prescient that it could’ve been written yesterday, right? Er, nope.

Philip K. Dick: Hubris, Inc.

Written in six hours during an amphetamine binge, Hubris, Inc. has the exact same plot as The Bloodshot Red Eye, except the protagonist is a telekinetic plumber, Joe Bleek, who leaves his android wife for a sentient opera called The Goose of Cairo. Most of the dialogue is in German. Terrified that the authorities were using tiny robot grasshoppers to bug him and might consider the novel seditious, PKD tried to burn the manuscript. But he was so stoned, he set fire to a cookery book instead. Originally published as an Ace double paperback, paired with Panhandlers of Titan.

The unfit heirs unfolded on the city sidewalk under curdled gray skies, each springing from the open pages of the special pop-up books that comprised their very bodies and souls.

SPROING! Vertical Vic leaped to life, all scowling freckles, red crewcut, boxing gloves, and Cupid-print boxer shorts astride a multilayered cityscape straight out of New York City in the 1940s.

BOING! Treetop Tina shot up and outward, her mane of wild blonde locks quivering as she swung angrily in her leopard-skin tunic from a vine between towering jungle palms.

KER-DOING! Amid a magnificent Rube Goldbergian contraption miraculously flicking, ticking, and spinning after the pop, Dickory Dock the white-furred mouse was the first to squeak his fury. “What’s this we hear about us getting cut out of the will?”

The attorney and executor, Mr. Lattice, was magic-markered on the surface of a man-sized red balloon with cardboard feet and a little black derby hat glued on top. “All will be made clear.” His voice, when he spoke, sounded like air whistling out of the pinched valve at the bottom of a balloon. “The reading of that very will commences now, here at the site of my client’s tragic and untimely death.”

Mr. Lattice wobbled around, bobbing his head at the vast sinkhole before them, in the middle of the interrupted city street. Pavement fell away on all sides, dropping into darkness in the distant depths.

The executor and heirs were silent for a moment, solemnly gazing into that great pit—the last earthly remains of the pop-up store they had once called mother, teacher, and home. It should have helped put things into perspective, for such was the fate of every pop-up store—to someday become a sinkhole, collapsed in one place forever. The fate of every pop-up book, such as those gathered on the sidewalk that day, was not much better. It was to become a smaller version of the same dark chasm—not a sinkhole but a pothole.

“Like other pop-up stores, the dearly departed business known as Funfolded was never bound for long to any one location. She opened and closed many times in many places around the city,” explained Mr. Lattice. “Unlike other pop-up stores, her specialty was not personalized kite string or gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches or customized corn plasters, but pop-up books like yourselves. A pop-up store for pop-up books! Never has there been a more ingenious retail concept!”

The heirs rattled their pages in stiff applause.

“Now, we must honor the last wishes of this magical store.” Mr. Lattice bobbed against a thick, dusty tome resting at his feet, and the cover flipped open. Instantly, an ornately inscribed parchment scrolled up from between the pages to a height of six feet, its ancient amber surface rippling in the soft morning breeze. “I give you the last will and testament of Funfolded!”

“Just tell us if any of us got anything!” Vertical Vic hopped his cityscape closer to the popped-up will and testament. “Or God forbid, if we owe anything!”

“Here’s what it says, and I quote,” said Mr. Lattice. “‘Because the three of you saw fit to blow up everything I loved, I hereby bestow upon you the pop in the chops you deserve. May you feel the same horror you inflicted upon me as these shock waves engulf and consume you.’”

Treetop Tina’s book flipped to the next spread of pages. This time, in the scene that popped to life, she was riding a flamingo’s bright pink back as it flew above a vast emerald rainforest. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Mr. Lattice bumped the will and testament tome and another page turned, sweeping away the parchment scroll and unfolding a bold new spread in its place. This one showed a magnificently complex pop-up book within the pop-up will and testament, complete with exotic minarets capped with glittering gemstones, twinkling lights in an indigo sky, and what looked like a circus parade in full regalia, led by an elephant wearing a gilded scarlet turban. The book within the book was surrounded by cutout replicas of Tina, Vic, and Dickory, all looking sinister as they slid from carbon paper shadows with their covers ajar.

“This last will and testament tells the story of the greatest pop-up book ever to appear at Funfolded!” said Mr. Lattice. “It contained pop-ups within pop-ups within pop-ups, all the way down to the subatomic level. It was a miracle, a treasure beyond compare, and it would make Funfolded world-famous once word got out...especially when the world learned that it was born within the pop-up store herself, the product of immaculate publication! It was a messiah book that could save the planet, causing it to rise instead of collapse. At least that was what Funfolded expected, until the three of you got done with that one-of-a-kind masterpiece. Your jealousy drove you to ruin it!”

As Mr. Lattice told the story, a strange procession occurred. All manner of animate objects rolled and squirmed and wriggled and jounced from nearby alleyways to the rim of the sinkhole. Tina, Vic, and Dickory looked around nervously as the stuff collected on the brink—an odd assortment of items with one thing in common:

All of them popped in one way or another.

There was popcorn in an aluminum plate with a foil cover that grew into a shiny silver bulb when heated. There were coiled paper party favors that unfurled suddenly with a screech when breath blew into them. There was a jack-in-the-box, a metal cube that burst open and disgorged a jester-capped puppet bounding on a spring. There was even a bright yellow rubber raft that explosively inflated when its release valve turned.

All these items converged and assembled around the huge hole in the ground, crowding in so closely that the three pop-up book heirs had trouble flipping their pages.

“How did we supposedly ruin that so-called miracle book?” Vic’s voice quavered as he said it. Plastic two-liter bottles of soda pop—one clear and one dark brown—shook themselves vigorously on either side of him. All it would take was the loosening of their caps, and the contents would spray everywhere, perhaps with enough force to wash Vic over the edge.

“Business at the pop-up store was up a thousand-fold thanks to the miracle book.” Mr. Lattice skidded back from the rim on an errant breeze, then steadied against a folding chair that had just spread itself wide behind him. “But the three of you, as jealous as you were, couldn’t stand for that. One night, you set up a chain reaction in the store, like a domino show with pop-up books—each book popping at just the right angle to trigger another pop-up and so on.

“When Funfolded opened for business the next morning, the store was filled with a terrible racket of covers slamming, pop-ups springing, and die-cut dioramas colliding like the clatter of a thousand mousetraps all going off at once.”

“No need to get nasty about it!” shouted Dickory Dock.

“When it was all over, that miraculous book was crushed and broken, its spine snapped, its magnificent pop-up magic forever flattened.” Mr. Lattice bobbed from side to side as if shaking his head. “In abject sorrow at the loss of her golden child, Funfolded died of a broken heart. But she managed to leave behind one last gift, one great secret that will forever prevent wickedness such as yours from enfolding all there is.”

Tina perked up, opening to a new spread that showed her standing high atop a mountain range holding aloft a roaring lion cub. “A gift? So she did leave us something after all!”

“It’s a gift, all right, but not for you.” Mr. Lattice wobbled in a circle, looking around at the poppable objects ringing the crater. “Or haven’t you wondered why all these kindred poppers have gathered for this solemn occasion?”

“Aren’t they just random curiosity seekers?” asked Vertical Vic. “Here to rub elbows with celebrities like us?” He flipped pages to a spread in which he flexed his biceps over Radio City Music Hall, still clad only in heart-print boxer shorts and looking especially pleased with himself.

“They care nothing for the likes of you.” As Mr. Lattice bumped the pop-up will and testament tome, the elaborate spread of the miracle book folded away, replaced by a bouquet of a dozen open parasols emblazoned with black-etched spirals that seemed to wind inward as they turned. “They are only here to grant the last wish of the great pop-up store they all idolized for popping out a child of the divine.”

The parasols spun faster, and the spirals blurred hypnotically. Everything arranged around the rim edged closer to the precipice.

“You mean these...things are getting the bequest?” Dickory Dock looked more outraged than ever as pages turned to unveil his latest spread. This time, the contraption in which he posed was whirling with wedges and wheels of cheese, propelled by gears and levers powered by the swishing tail of a sleeping cat. “But that’s not fair!”

“You could not be more wrong.” Mr. Lattice laughed. “They aren’t getting a thing. They are giving.”

As the words left his lips, the poppable things left the rim, dropping into the blackness of the sinkhole. The popcorn, jack-in-the-boxes, and party favors spun down into the void, whirling past the inflatable raft, mattress, and love dolls as they floated gently through the darkening depths.

Still more objects hurled themselves into the crater, dozens at a time, all popping, expanding, and unfolding as they went. Inner tubes, umbrellas, pool toys, and pop-guns tumbled downward, flowing in a great cascade amid currents of rice cereal, candy rocks, and carbonated beverages.

Even as the flow continued, a thunderous roar rumbled out of the hole, and the ground began to shake. Tina, Vic, and Dickory Dock hopped back from the rim, even as it fractured and widened, threatening to swallow them whole.

“What’s happening?” Dickory Dock sounded terrified.

“Something you should appreciate!” Mr. Lattice wobbled on the edge of the pit, dangerously close to the drop-off. “Fueled by the power of the poppers’ sacrifice and the remains of our dearly departed, the whole world is popping up! Reality is unfolding into something entirely new!”

Suddenly, the pavement under the unfit heirs crawled with fissures, like a pane of glass about to shatter. The three pop-up books flapped their pages frantically as if they might somehow fly away from their impending doom.

But it was too late, and the street crumbled beneath them. Screaming, they tumbled into the thundering darkness along with all the other popped and popping things, adding to the glorious downpour.

Which then paused, falling silent and still for one very pregnant moment.

Mr. Lattice teetered a final time on the brink, batted by the breeze. “You see, all reality is just a pop-up book that has never been opened...until now.”

Even as Mr. Lattice fell over the edge, everything inside the hole poured up all at once, stabbing into the sky with such force that it turned all the world and reality itself inside out.

SPROING!

BOING!

KER-DOING!

Leaving something indescribably new and beautiful unfolding in its place, like the blossom of a flower that’s never been seen or even dreamt of before.

Miss Mordicant’s School for Pestiferous Youth

Reforming the villainous, vile, and uncouth

A is for Alice, igniting delight

She burned down the town to light up the night

B is for Brandyce, sent there to dwell

For stuffing his family into a well

C for Cordelia, lost in a pique,

Who stitched Nanny’s mouth so she couldn’t speak

D is for Dillon, for choosing to give

A few local fellows the end of a shiv

E is for Elsinore, now in the mew

For ladling arsenic into the stew

F is for Fenrir, precocious and small

Who punctured his great-uncle Max with an awl

G is for Gladys, admitted the day

She pushed granny’s wheelchair straight into the bay

H is for Humbert, who needs to reform

After tying his Pop to a pole in a storm

I is for Izzy, hauled off in a huff

For marching her siblings straight off of a bluff

J is for Jasper, mischievous lad

When sharing contagion, gave all that he had

K is for Kate, (the Duchess McGannon)

Caught shooting step-siblings out of a cannon

L is for Lemuel, sly little fox

“Inflated” his grandfather’s life vest with rocks

M is for Myrtle, who one afternoon

Bludgeoned her math tutor with a bassoon

N is for Nevin, who garnered reproach

For trampling friends ’neath the wheels of his coach

O for Octavia, frail and asthmatic

Caught storing bodies in trunks in the attic

P is for Paul, choleric and lean

Roasted his kin and picked their bones clean

Q for Quintessa, both lovely and fair

She finished her grandparents off with a scare

R is for Reese, who liked to disport

In casualties of the asphyxiate sort

S is for Stella, who thought it a ripper

To feed all her cousins into a wood chipper

T is for Thaddeus, nimble and quick

Walled up his kindred with mortar and brick

U is for Uli, who took inspiration

From Robespierre’s method of exsanguination

V is for Vlad, a gadabout heller

Mowed half his classmates down with a propeller

W, Walda, gave Auntie the blight

By lacing her corset a little too tight

X for Xavier, a grim little chap

Doffed Papa’s head along with his cap

Y for Yolanda, so helpful, so nice

Directed her fellows straight to the thin ice

Z, Zacharias, achieved all his wishes

By sending his household to sleep with the fishes

Miss Mordicant takes them, no matter their sin

Redirecting their passions to something akin

She carefully molds them all, grim, sly, or raucous

To fill corporate boards and political office

**BZZZTTTT**

And so, as our power dwindles to zero, this will be the final transmission from the SS James Cameron of the Western Earth Spacefleet, Captain Calvin Walters reporting. I'm sorry that we on the Cameron were interrupted in our mission by tragedy, but we knew what we signed up for. We knew there was risk, but the pursuit of peace and scientific knowledge was more important. We have no regrets. Fortune favors the brave. Signing off.

**BZZZTTTT**

This is Captain Calvin Walters again, of the SS James Cameron. An update: Turns out our power situation was not as dire as estimated. I'd forgotten that, just as a car's gas tank is not bone dry when the needle hits E, there are extra power supplies when our indicators read 0%. Just to dummy-proof things, I guess. Which makes me the dummy, since I'm the one who cut off the life support of the rest of the crew some time ago, hoping to save power for a last-minute rescue. Listen, we all forget things, right? We're still at the end of our power, just not the end end. Crap.

**BZZZTTTT**

Which means we are still open to the idea of rescue.

**BZZZTTTT**

This is Captain Calvin Walters of the SS James Cameron. At this stage of our mission, I would like to recommend citations of valor and meritorious service, posthumously, to the entire crew of our ship. They gave their lives for the good of humanity. I'd also like to recognize Lucy and Charlie Brown, the naked mole rats who kept us company through so many long days in space.

**BZZZTTTT**

To clarify, I am not recommending citations of valor for the mole rats. That'd be crazy. Sorry to disappoint the critics out there.

**BZZZTTTT**

I'd like to send my warmest regards to my wife, Dr. Avni Joshi. Ours was a marriage of convenience to advance our careers, of course, but she was a good sport, and always upbeat, and a damn good scientist. I wish her well.

**BZZZTTTT**

And I apologize for letting the rumors about a girlfriend named Tiana circulate without my stopping them. It was just a macho thing among some of the flyboys, and I regret if it caused anyone pain.

**BZZZTTTT**

Boy, this is way more power than I thought I'd get.

**BZZZTTTT**

I regret also those long hours I wasted reading Master and Commander and the other novels of Patrick O'Brian. The British Imperial Navy holds few lessons for our work in space, but it looked kind of captain-y, so I kept it up. Same with the fake pipe.

**BZZZTTTT**

In retrospect, installing the slushie machine in the galley was a mistake. It ate up a huge amount of power, and the crew was over the novelty quickly.

**BZZZTTTT**

From the perspective of space, with near-infinite darkness in every direction, you gain a bit of wisdom about the struggles we have on Earth. What we let divide us is so miniscule, tragically. Donuts and crullers are good. And so are cronuts. It almost doesn't need to be said, but sometimes it does.

**BZZZTTTT**

Baseball was killed by robot umpires. We scientists have to own that. Also, the many killings committed by the robot umpires in the final weeks of October last year. Our fault.

**BZZZTTTT**

Don't ask me how I got "Electric Avenue" stuck in my head. Haven't heard that one in years.

**BZZZTTTT**

The worst thing about space? Government-issue Q-Tips. Seriously. The worst.

**BZZZTTTT**

Scientists are focused on details, systems, and patterns, but up here in space, to convey the majesty and power of everything we behold, it would take a poet. Too bad I cut off his life support system with the rest of the crew. If I find Patterson's notes, I'll send them along.

**BZZZTTTT**

Ringo Starr was Earth's luckiest person of the 20th century. Come at me.

**BZZZTTTT**

Can you remember your high school fight song? I can't. Am I losing my mind?

**BZZZTTTT**

Shit. Power keeps increasing. I feel like I'm trying to leave a party, y'know, jingling my keys.

**BZZZTTTT**

Where's the “delete” button? Isn't there a . . .

**BZZZTTTT**

This is Captain Calvin Walters of the SS James Cameron. I have just received word that our ship will be rescued in six hours by the SS Octavia Butler in the Western Earth Spacefleet command. Please disregard all transmissions that may have been received in the past 30 minutes. They were notes for a novel.

**BZZZTTTT**

Once upon a midnight dryly, while I pondered Bill O’Reilly,

Raging at the media’s crimes, the failing Times, with rhymes, unsure,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a slapping,

Like Jake Tapper, crudely rapping, tapping towards my chamber door.

“Some reporter,” muttered I, “a loser that we should deplore,

“Only that, and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly, I remember; as we’d shambled toward November,

A candidate for head of state, a fate I didn’t rate before.

Here was I, the leader Trump, but on this stump, in deep a slump,

Against old Crooked Hillary, no artillery, in a losing war,

Among the proles, I’d dug deep holes; and all the polls were rightly sure

That I’d become the next Al Gore.

There and then, I flung the shutter, to hear a cryptic Russian stutter,

In swooped a quaintly face, a tainted gaze of stately yore.

Not one to fear a food with gluten, he, a shirtless cowboy mutant!

T’was the Putin, highfalutin, hooting with a garish roar,

Perched upon his stallion, a battalion, at my chamber door!

There he sat, and nothing more.

“Sir,” I cried in rapt delight. “What swift boat brings you here tonight?

“What lures you to my doorstep, here in lockstep, in these times unsure?

“Ruler of the Russian nation, master of assassination,

“King of Pandemonium, and polonium - that fatal spore:

“I need a break, some news that’s fake, to stake the Clintons to the floor!”

He just smiled and nothing more.

In my keenly altered sanity, a time I should be watching Hannity,

There came, in stages, Facebook pages, rages like none saw before,

Great waves of made-up Clinton news, long lists of phony Clinton views,

Conveyed by bots, a million clots, projecting plots from Manifort,

And hackers, young attackers, truth-hijackers in a cyber war

Shouting, “Lock her up... forevermore!”

To win my electoral fight, there came dark billions from the right,

And stolen mails, with cruel details, cold entrails on a killing floor.

They came in peaks from hacker geeks, with foul techniques, on Wikileaks,

We won the day, though facts still say, our rivals scored two million more.

The Putin grinned, my fealty pinned, to win our electoral score,

“Quote the Putin: Evermore!”

And now the Putin, ever seeing, guards his tapes of myself, peeing,

While Democrats, the filthy rats, fling brickbats at my White House door,

Beyond the cheering, and the sneering, four years of electioneering,

A prisoner’s life, a furious wife, as critics pound upon my door

The Putin waits, with darker fates, to boil my name down to its core,

And own my soul... forevermore.