Sam- Generative Art

He looked around the room. He was supposed to go in today. They were all supposed to go in today. “Go in”. As if they had been allowed to leave the building. He insisted. He gave a short sad laugh. God what he would give to have it back to what it used to be.

The great Cheeto fucked it all up. In all honesty he had always allowed himself to think about him like that. A fucking joke. The only reason anyone ever went with him was his weird rabid following. Some of those same magats who prowled the halls of Congress now, dressed in their black rags and face masks. Carrying weapons. Fucking weapons in Congress. He allowed that. He commanded it.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that. In the beginning it was just about the transfer of wealth. Of having more control over a country heading to hell in the proverbial handbasket. Trans gender fucking whatever. He scratched his head and carefully smoothed down the remaining bits of hair he had left.

The world changed too fast. If it had gone more slowly. If people had been given time to get adjusted. He tried those thoughts and then almost spit on the floor. That was bullshit. They were never going to allow anything like that. He was part of that group that was never going to allow the changes. Or he had been.

Oh god how he loved seeing it all. It was even better than the first time he had gotten married. Better than the first time he had had sex. Spreading out over the country, the best fucking country in the world, seeping down into the neighborhoods and school districts. Putting all those things in place so that the enemies’ votes counted for less than nothing. So that they could get rid of all those shit children’s books. Two daddies shit. Two mommies crap. All that shit that should stay under the covers. No one should see it.

For a second his thoughts flashed to a night that seemed so long ago. A lithe lean body. A young boy.

He turned away from the mirror. Turning on the water he rubbed his finger over his teeth, scooped up water in his hand and slurped it, swished it around and spit it out. He only had a short time. They had to be in their seats before the guards were let loose. No one wanted to be out then. If they valued their life.

There were rumors, he had heard them whispered, that the great Cheeto was dead. He didn’t know if it was true. He knew that those in charge, and it wasn’t the Cheeto at least he was sure of that, would hold on to that corpse for as long as possible. Because his followers didn’t like any of the rest of them.

He had seen their brutality in action. He had seen them kicking one of the other senators, one of the good ones, before shooting them in the head. That was last night. He had been prowling the corridors looking for something to eat when he heard a commotion. As quickly as he could he tried to run in the opposite direction but somehow he had ended up turning down a hallway that led right to the guards. He stopped when he saw them and ducked into the nearest doorway. He could hear their voices, taunting, laughing. And then he heard the impact of a boot into a stomach. It wasn’t a noise he was familiar with. Other than through movies. It was much more frightening in real life.

Somehow, thank the gods, he had made it to a safe place. But an idea began forming in his mind. If he could find proof of the Cheeto’s death or incapacitation then he might be able to stop this madness. He might be able to turn the tide of history before anything worse happened.

It took him several minutes to calm down after that thought. Anything worse. The laughing took on a life of its own. Anything worse. Hackers infiltrating the federal reserve. Fires in the White House. Guns and terrorists in the halls of Congress. And who knows what was happening outside. He didn’t have any idea any more.

It seemed so long ago. He almost felt as if he had been naïve. His expectations of wealth and power almost brought him shame. Because now he was hiding in a bathroom stall hoping that the magats wouldn’t find him. Wouldn’t decide to kick him in the stomach and then shoot him.

He had to get out. He thought there was a way if he could get down to the basements. He had never been in the basements before but he had heard rumors of someone getting out that way. If he could get out and make his way to the White House, he might be able to find proof of the Cheetos demise.

After this session he would at least try.

It was a long night. One of the longest he had ever had. It took hours to find the right stairwells that led him down into the depths of the building. And then roaming through the rooms and halls of the basement. A lucky turn. An unlocked door. He didn’t think the magats came into the basement very often. They were too busy having fun upstairs.

Occasionally, when he passed by a set of stairs he would hear gun shots and shouts. He always ran. As fast as he could through the nearest doorway. And crouched down, cowering until he stopped shaking enough to move again.

It was videos that gave him the idea of the Cheeto’s death. During their sessions they all had to watch videos of Cheeto and the little mouse and all the others as they signed papers and gave speeches. And lately, when he watched them, he noticed a gradual change. The Cheeto looked slightly slimmer. Not a lot but just a little. His loose skin looked tighter. As if he had gotten a neck lift. He had an idea that those videos weren’t real any more. He didn’t know how long it had been since there had been one that was real. Definitely the first failure of a parade showed the real thing. God he couldn’t think about that without cringing.

He slid down a hall, his back against the wall and peered around a corner. There was a short flight of steps and then a door. It looked like an exit. Breathing heavily he listened and then ran up the stairs. Pushing against the door he was surprised that it actually opened. For a moment he felt a rush of warm air on his face. And then his stomach cramped.

He had gotten used to the feeling of hunger. Used to his stomach growling at all hours. But stepping outside for the first time in weeks suddenly made his stomach pains much worse. He ducked towards the nearest sheltered spot and waited until he could stand up straight.

When his attention moved from his stomach to the world around him, he realized the outside was just as dangerous as the inside. All around was the scent of smoke. It wasn’t just the White House that had been set on fire. There were shots in the distance. And he could hear the heavy footsteps of people running. He crouched down and waited, thankful for a place to hide.

It was less than two miles from Congress to the White House. But it took him over a day. All the noise was bewildering and he took several wrong turns trying to escape what sounded like gun shots.

He crept down a street, pausing at the corner to peek around and make sure the way was safe when something exploded. Dust and dirt fogged the air. For a moment his ears rung. He froze not knowing which way to go.

In the dark cloud he saw movement. He took a step forward and fell to the ground. All around him everything went dark.

A brown face hovered over him. He squirmed and tried to scoot back but he was lying on the ground.

“Don’t hurt me,” he said before he could think of anything to say.

The man shook his head and said, “I think you fainted. I’ve got some water here if you want it. You might be dehydrated.”

The senator took a sip of cool water. It was clean and fresh. He could feel it all the way to his stomach.

"Don’t move. Let’s make sure you aren’t hurt any where.”

He waited like a baby while the man gently checked for broken bones and bruises.

“Anything hurt?”

He shook his head.

“Okay let’s get up, you can call me Frank,” the man stood and held his hand out. The senator took it and was helped up off the ground.

“This way,” Frank said, guiding him through the streets and into a white stone building. Two people stood on either side of the entrance and nodded to Frank as they walked in. Both of them were armed.

Passing the lobby they went down a long hall and into a large room. There were tables set up in the center of the room and several people were sitting and eating.

“Here,” Frank said, “Get yourself something to eat. And then we can find you a bed.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head and holding out his hands, “No I’ll eat but I have to go. I can’t stay.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded, “There’s something I have to do.”

“If there’s someone you’re trying to help just tell us. We can find them and get them to safety.”

“No it isn’t that. It’s something else.”

Frank looked at him for a long moment and then nodded, “Okay. Well get some food before you go.”

He went up to the line and took a plate. There were sliced tomatoes and a peanut butter sandwich on wheat bread with a piece of  yellow cheese on the side. There was a small hard cookie that was the sweetest thing he had eaten in months. There was clean cool water. It was the most food he had seen in a long time. He had no idea where it came from.

All around him people were talking in low voices. Two children were sitting with their parents at a table. The kids were eating and whispering. Sometimes they smiled and laughed.

Long after he was finished eating, he sat at the table and just watched. He didn’t even notice when he pushed his plate out of the way and leaned his head down on his arms. When he opened his eyes again it was dark. There was only one other person in the room. His plate was gone and there was a sandwich wrapped in paper towel on the table next to him. Seeing it made him feel as if he was in grade school again. A child. Being taken care of. A lump formed in his throat and he shook his head.

Grabbing the sandwich he stuffed it in a pocket and headed out to the hall. It took him several minutes before he found his way back to the entrance.

Two different people were standing on either side of the entrance this time.

“I… I have to go,” he said, his voice cracked and thin.

“Are you sure? It’s dangerous out there.”

He nodded.

“You could stay and sleep the night and then go in the morning.”

He shook his head, “No, I have to go.”

He waited and watched while they shifted their weapons and then pushed the door open for him.

“Take care.”

“Thank you.”

The air was hot outside. The scent of smoke was strong and made it difficult to breath. It took several minutes of wandering for him to orient himself. But then he understood where he was and where he had to go.

The food and sleep gave him more energy than he thought possible. As he walked he thought of the man’s kind face. Frank. That was his name. It had been a long time since he had seen someone who was just being kind. Although he hadn’t been out in public in years. It felt like a different world.

The halls of congress were like a dream. All the magats dressed up in black, slivers of white skin contrasting against their rags and masks. Some of them wore gloves and some of them didn’t. Carrying weapons. Shooting people at will. Did the Cheeto order that as well? He wouldn’t put it past him. If he was even in charge any more.

The White House loomed up before him. Lit by the glow of a building on fire nearby. Smoke obscured some of the upper windows. The ones he could see were dark and curtained. It looked like a haunted house. It wasn’t empty. It was full of something. And he was going to find out just what was going on inside.

Getting over the riot fence was the most difficult thing. But once he was on the grounds it was easy enough to skirt around the abandoned construction site that the white house lawn had become. All the green was gone and in its place was yards and yards of concrete. It was the ugliest thing he had ever seen. He felt as if he had never noticed the world before.

It took quite a while to find a way in. All the doors were locked. There were no guards. He wondered where they went and braced himself for what he might find when he finally broke a window with a piece of broken concrete and crawled inside.

It was dark and quiet. He peered around corner after corner. Through doorway after doorway. Scuttling noises made him jump but he never saw who or what was scurrying away. A few lights were on, enough so that he could see to walk but he wasn’t tempted to turn any more on.

There was a hush in the air. It felt as if the house was breathing.

He tiptoed from one room to another. Looking through doorways to find out where the great Cheeto was keeping himself.  

Through a door and suddenly he stopped. Although there were noises far away, almost like the baying of animals if he had been able to pay attention to them,  but the closer noises, the regular beeping of machines was what caught his attention.

There was a bed in the middle of the room. A large bed raised up. A hospital bed. And next to the bed were several box type machines on rolling stands and an iv pole with a long narrow tube running from a bag hanging on the pole into the arm of the man on the bed.

He recognized him of course. Even without the orange makeup he normally wore. But there was no recognition in his eyes. They gazed dully forward, phlegmy and pale. Snot dripped down over his lips and mingled with the drool which seeped out of the corners of his mouth. The great mound of his stomach, on which his veiny hands were folded, gently rose and fell.

For a moment all he could do was stand and stare. He felt both vindicated and frightened in equal measure.

He had been right. All the new videos of the old Cheeto had been doctored to make it look like he was still cognizant. Even though, by all appearances, he was nothing of the sort.   

A noise behind him made him jump. A man was pushing a mop in a wheeled bucket into the room. He was fairly tall with sandy brown hair, dark blue eyes and a muscular physique. His skin was pale but not sickly. He glanced up and smiled.

“You made it,” he said, as if he had been expected.

“I…I just found it,” the senator replied, “I wasn’t…”

Chuckling the man walked over to one of the machines and pressed button. There was a loud beep and then it fell silent.

“Should you be doing that?”

“Who else is going to?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m the only one down here.”

“Where is everyone?”

The man frowned, “I don’t suppose you’ve been outside have you?”

The senator nodded.

“Well, there you go.”

He pulled the mop out of the bucket and began mopping beneath the bed.

“What…”

There didn’t seem to be anything to say.

For a moment the man mopped and then he looked up.

“You can take a look at the others if you want.”

The senator looked around. There was no one else in the room.

“The others?”

“Down the hall to the left.”

As quietly as he could the senator shuffled back through the door and into the hall. Turing left he noticed a set of double doors. Behind these doors were the noises he hadn’t been able to pay attention to earlier. They were louder now. He stood with his hand on one of the doors. It should have been easy to just push open the doors. Just push them open and see what it was the janitor meant. ‘Look at the others”. As if they were in a zoo.

He would have stood there forever if the janitor hadn’t rolled his bucket out of the hospital bedroom and down the hall.

“Ready?”

The janitor pushed open the door next to the one the Senator was holding on to and disappeared. There was nothing to do but follow him.

It was a long hallway, dimly lit. There were a series of rooms leading off the hall on either side. Each door had been removed and bars had been installed. Like a zoo. The senator clenched his jaw and stepped forward.

The light was on in the first room. There was a bed in the corner with a ragged blanket that looked as if it had been chewed. A desk was pushed against the wall and a chair was tipped over in the middle of the floor. A man was crouched on the desk rubbing his hands together and cackling softly to himself. He was muttering.

At first the senator couldn’t understand what he was saying but then the words grew louder.

“MineminemineMINEMINEminemine…..”

With each iteration of the word he worried his hands even harder.

“All MINE, all Mine. All mine. AllmineALLmineallmineALLMINEallMINE…”

He snickered and chuckled and snorted. He turned pale wild eyes towards the senator and leaped off the desk.

“NOT YOURS!” he screamed and began banging on the bars of the room.

The janitor hurried over and smacked the handle of the mop against the bars.

“Watch this,” he said leaning over until his mouth was close to the man’s ear. The vice president stood very still, his hard blue eyes focused on something the senator couldn’t see.

“MEOW!” the janitor shouted.

The vice president leaped backwards and then tumbled onto the bed, pulling the ragged blanket up over his head. He shrieked and cried but no words came out.

“Gets him every time,” the janitor chuckled and walked back over to his bucket.

Turning the senator looked down the long hallway. From every room there came noises that  sometimes sounded like words and sometimes did not.

“I’m not gay, I’m not gay, I’mnotgay…,” once voice kept repeating.

“It’s a stupid question it’s a STUPID question,” a young woman’s voice repeated, accompanied by regular thudding noises as if they were striking their head against the wall.

A long low moan rose quivering in the air and then a sob. Farther down someone was, as quickly as possible, repeating the Lord’s Prayer over and over. But there was no inflection in the words. No emotion behind them. It sounded like a speech they were being forced to copy.

All along the hallway rooms were barred and behind the bars were faces he recognized. None of them seemed to recognize who or where they were.

They cried and bellowed and shouted. They defecated on the floor. And smeared food against the walls. More than once the senator watched while the janitor took his mop into a cell and cleaned up a mess. None of the prisoners tried to exit, in fact most of them cowered on the bed or in a corner.

One man, his tattoos visible despite the scars and scabs all over his skin, stood up when the janitor entered. Slowly he turned and watched while the janitor cleaned and then, walking backwards until his back hit the wall he opened his mouth and screamed until his voice was raw. The janitor took no noticed. He cleaned and walked out, locking the bars behind him.

“What happened to his skin?” the senator whispered. His voice didn’t seem to be working properly.

“Him? He keeps scratching and biting himself. There’s not much I can do.”

With a glance back at the man the senator turned and followed the janitor. They passed a cell where a small walnut of a man hunched close to the door.

“I was right, I was right. I was right. It was Biden, Obama, Kamala, they were wrong. I was right.” His hissing whisper almost inaudible against the other sounds.

The senator paused.

“What? How… is everyone here?”

The janitor stopped and looked back at the senator.

“Everyone who isn’t at congress. They’re here.”

“Who’s running anything?”

A chuckled escaped the janitor’s lips and then he opened his mouth and laughed out loud. All around them the noises died down while the janitor laughed and laughed and laughed. He wiped his eyes and looked at the senator.

“Oh that was good. Thank you.”

He turned and kept walking. For a moment the senator stood frozen. A small sniveling voice wound its way into his ears, “I was right I was right I was right.” He ran forward just to get away from it.

“Stop!”

The janitor paused.

“I want to know what’s going on here. Who’s running things? How is anything happening?”

The janitor turned and looked him full in the face. He spoke slowly, as if to someone who wasn’t understanding the simplest of things.

“No one is running things. These whack jobs gave it all up in their never ending search for power and wealth. That’s all that ever mattered to them. They got what they wanted and then they became what they are now.”

“How…how…,” the senator forgot what he was going to say.

Watching the janitor push his mop farther down the hall forced him to move.

“How do they make the videos?”

“What?” The janitor looked back at him.

“Who’s making the videos?”

“That. Yeah. It’s an AI algorithm. It puts them together from other videos that have been taken over the years.”

“No one is telling the magats what to do?”

“Magats?”

“Those followers. You know. With the guns.”

“The ones with the guns? In the halls of congress? Oh I suppose some of them a magats. But most of the magats are cowards you know. The ones with guns are drug dealers and criminals. Rapists. Child molesters. I mean magats might be those things as well. I suppose there’s no way to know now. There might be a few cult leader too. I don’t know why you didn’t know that.”

“But… but…”

He watched the janitor turn away and continue mopping.

“But he was telling them what to do…”

The janitors voice floated back and came to him clearly, despite the moans and shouts around him.

“He isn’t. No one’s been telling them what to do for a long time. They’re just doing what they want to do.”

Suddenly the senator’s legs gave way. He fell to the floor. All around him the noises increased. Shouted words, mumbled phrases. Baying and bellowing. As if he was surrounded by wild animals.

No one ever recorded who actually instigated burning it all down. People had been talking about it for such a long time but no one remembered the name of the man who led them to the places. Put the chains on the doors and showed them the best places to set bombs and light it on fire. Both places. There were rumors that he made them wait at the second place while he ran in and returned with what looked like a janitor. But those were only rumors. Never confirmed.

The buildings burned for weeks. There was no fire department to put out the fires. And it didn’t help that people kept adding things to it. ‘The Great Bonfire’ it was called. There were no official numbers of how many were killed in the fires. No one ever looked. When it was down to ash people began throwing their garbage onto it. As if to bury the memory of what it was and what it had become.

There were no garage collectors any more. No fire fighters. No anything.

It was up to the people to make those things for themselves. Which they did. They built communities and neighborhoods. They defended themselves against the white terrorist organizations, which, for a short while grew stronger but then, without the support of the government, and in the face of well armed opposition, lost their focus.

The military formed and reformed over and over. Breaking into factions and offshoots like an inheritance divided so many times it lost all its former value.

There were so many pieces to pick up.

But in each and every neighborhood, in each and every community, people came together to help each other. Building up what those in charge had tried to tear down. Taking care of what those who used to have power could have easily taken care of but chose not to.

Making sure every child had food and clean water and a safe place to sleep. Making sure the elderly and sick were safe and protected from the elements. Making room in their communities for each and every person.

And in one particular neighborhood, not very far from the ‘Great Garbage Dump’ was a rather skinny man who some called the prophet because of the black robes he chose to wear. People said they were battered and torn court robes and when they tried to give him newer clothes he always refused. Said it was to remind him of what used to be. What he used to be. He didn’t want to forget.

He was always on hand to help someone. Sometimes even giving up his own plate of food for someone else. He worked endlessly repairing houses, building infirmaries, gardening and serving food. He was even seen washing the feet and clipping the toenails of the elderly and infirm who could not do those things for themselves.

And when ever someone thanked him for his service, when ever someone gave appreciation for what he had done he looked at them for a moment and then it seemed as if he was looking through them at something else. And with that far away look in his eye he gently smiled and nodded and said,