The Mustang never reached the archway.
Instead, the road folded.
Not curved.
Not split.
Folded — like a map embarrassed by how often it had been opened.
One second, we were driving through Bright Malibu, wind algorithmically perfect, the ocean sparkling like a screensaver. The next, the car slowed on its own and rolled into a vast white parking lot that hadn’t existed a moment earlier.
No cliffs.
No ocean.
No sky.
Just white.
The engine cut.
My lover — his name suddenly mattered again — reached for my hand. His fingers were warm, human, slightly trembling.
“This is new,” he said.
Ahead of us stood a building that looked like a cross between a beachfront resort and a mausoleum. Columns. Glass. Flags that didn’t move.
Above the entrance, carved in immaculate stone:
THE AMERICAN FUTURE EXPERIENCE
He laughed softly, nervously.
“Of course it is.”
THE HALL OF ACCEPTABLE SELVES
Inside, the air smelled like carpet cleaner and history rewritten by committee.
We walked through a long gallery lined with mirrors. Each mirror reflected us — but not quite us.
In one, I wore a dress and smiled too confidently.
In another, he stood beside me, polished, silent, eyes obediently bright.
Labels beneath each reflection:
STABILITY VERSION
UNITY VERSION
ELECTABLE VERSION
NON-DISRUPTIVE VERSION
My lover stopped walking.
“They don’t want us broken,” he whispered.
“They want us useful.”
A door opened ahead.
Two men stood inside the next room, waiting as if they’d been there forever.
THE MEETING ROOM WITHOUT TIME
The room resembled a private club, with leather chairs, framed portraits, and soft lighting that made everything feel important.
One man stood near the window, gesturing broadly as he spoke — confident, theatrical, unmistakable in posture even as his face remained slightly out of focus.
The other sat calmly at a round table, hands folded, eyes observant — a quiet intensity, thoughtful, restrained, carrying the gravity of lineage rather than volume.
Mr. Trump.
Mr. Kennedy.
Not exactly them —
but the ideas of them.
Two gravitational poles of American myth.
The standing figure turned first.
“So this is them,” he said, voice smooth, performative, echoing just a little too much. “They’re very… aesthetic. California aesthetic. That’s good.”
The seated man studied us carefully.
“They’re fractured,” he said. “But fractures can be instructive.”
My lover stiffened beside me.
“This isn’t real,” he said.
Mr. Kennedy smiled gently.
“Reality is negotiable. Narrative is not.”
THE OFFER
Mr. Trump gestured to the mirrors behind us.
“You’ve seen the options,” he said. “We don’t erase people anymore. Too messy. We edit.”
Mr. Kennedy nodded.
“We guide,” he added. “We refine. We preserve the parts that don’t frighten the public.”
“And the rest?” I asked.
The standing figure shrugged.
“They become stories people stop believing.”
My lover stepped forward.
“And what version of us do you want?”
The two men exchanged a glance — not hostile, not friendly. Strategic.
Mr. Kennedy answered.
“You,” he said to him, “become the voice of reason. Compassionate. Measured. Someone people trust without asking why.”
Then he looked at me.
“And you,” he said quietly, “become the witness who knows when to stop speaking.”
Silence filled the room.
My lover laughed — sharp, sudden.
“No,” he said. “That’s not us.”
Mr. Trump tilted his head.
“That’s what everyone says at first.”
THE UNEXPECTED TURN
That’s when the building shuddered.
Not violently — subtly, like someone upstairs had dropped something heavy.
The mirrors cracked.
Hairline fractures spread across the walls, glowing faintly gold — the same gold as the skyquake.
My lover squeezed my hand.
“They can’t hold us,” he whispered. “Not together.”
Mr. Kennedy stood slowly.
“This wasn’t supposed to destabilize yet.”
The standing figure frowned.
“I told them Malibu was volatile.”
The cracks widened.
From somewhere deep in the building, we heard birds — thousands of them — wings beating against architecture that wasn’t meant to contain flight.
My lover turned to me.
“They didn’t account for one thing.”
“What?” I asked.
He smiled — wild, real, unedited.
“We never wanted to be the version they wanted.”
The walls split.
Light poured in — not bright Malibu light, not shadow Malibu smoke — but something raw and unfinished.
The American Future Experience began to collapse inward, folding like the road had.
As we ran, the last thing I heard was Mr. Kennedy’s voice, calm but strained:
“They always choose unpredictability.”
And Mr. Trump’s, faint but unmistakable:
“That’s never good for branding.”
We burst through a door —
—and fell back into the real wind, the real salt, the real broken coastline.
Malibu whole again.
Or maybe broken in a better way.
My lover laughed into the ocean air.
“What now?” I asked.
He looked at the sky — no longer perfect, no longer curated.
“Now,” he said, “we disappear before they finish rewriting.”
Above us, the birds scattered — free, chaotic, alive.
And somewhere behind us, the Bright Side quietly shut itself down.