FOR A SUN: FLICK SHOOTER

Bump: good evening, ladies and gentleman. let me welcome you to the world! i am the president and i combed my hair special for this occasion cos i'd know you'd be dressed to the tens. inflation. oy vey i'm a politician now ma. as President, Campaign CEO, and owner of Trickster News i set the agenda here but there's no agenda. it's fair and balanced and most importantly communal. this is the people's news for the people's republic. this is what i always wanted. i was born for this! i.......eh eh keep the camera on me......what do we have on the docket? i'm interviewing the fastest racewalker in the world, Carl. hello Carl.

Carl: hello...pardon my deep breaths, taking it all in one last time.

Bump: yous sweaty over here, ha. you Carl from Aqua Teen?

Carl: no, heehee, just look like him. that's how i bagged my girlfriend.

Bump: knew i liked you, Carl. i wanted to meet folk like yous, Carl, salt of the earth, too much salt on the earth now. yeah i was spitballin with my blonde the other day and i suggested a bus tour but she quickly shot down the idea. let them lead y'know what i mean, Carl?

Carl: yeah well i'm here promoting the last mission to end all muscular diseases. i racewalked the entire globe, even over water thanks to some Olympic-sanctioned drugs, to bring awareness. very unusual. y'know it's not just all muscular dystrophy, the muscle of your mind can get pretty fucked up, too.

Bump: yeahs i read that in the last paper. yous took over when that freethrow-shooting tour got canceled from lack of funds.

Carl: interest, really.

Bump: hey Carl promise me you'll lay off the Stones. don't ever get started with that stuff, take it from me, your mind starts to wander and you type late-night things you don't mean and get the sniffles. it's going around the lockerrooms. it's like a neverending cold. and they still haven't cured the cold have they?

Bump offers some snake wine to Carl who politely refuses.

Bump: *long meditative swig* down the hatch. get it? oh that tastes good........so good, so good. tastes so dangerous and refreshing. tastes like a woman's sting. tastes like pussy juice.

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the sandpiper lands on Hilary's head but she's too far gone to care about her hair. she has taken over Bump's job laying brick for the wall. but she walls herself in. so tightly-packed are the stones she can't hear a peep from the end of the world outside. not even her beloved Pope's entreaties to come in and stay with her.

the Pope: *knock knock* ow! ow! all i've ever wanted to do was die well. for you have to learn to die before you can learn to live.

Hilary had this all planned. since her girl childhood. she sets down her drill by her lounge chair, flips on her medicinal sunglasses and finally sleeps.

Madchen tried to reach her.

Madchen: i could just eat those two up!

she tried to eat Hilary and the Pope, swallow them to protect them, talk to them later when they lost the shock of being in Madchen's stomach.

Madchen: but i realize the strongest walls, the most impenetrable from outside, immune from drugs and special powers, are the ones people put up around themselves.

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Bona Dea is celebrated secretly somewhere around the world for the last time. but i got a feeling that will come back into vogue later on somewhere else. a desert tortoise drinks the last usable water on earth. he saves the last drop in his shell for safekeeping cos you gotta hope.

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the Shoreham PRT is the last functioning transit on earth. it rapidly halts and catches fire. there are no more peoplemovers. people must move themselves.

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"what up, Hamdog?"

they try to get Lieu to wake up. but he is asleep forever. just as he always wanted. in a psych-ward bed. in his dream, Lieu continues on:

"my name is Lieu. my code name is mud. that is, Nokiasa. from the Japanese. i love Japanese culture. NOKIASA=No One Knows I'm A Secret Agent. my name is Lieu and i have a toux. *coughs* "

Lieu tries to move his arms and legs but he is strapped down by his skin. the white walls are closing in.

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at the cloud-forest library:

GSF: as the last black man on earth, i demand that you tell me! we don't deserve to be in the dark anymore!

Cotard: *Saitama* OK. simple really. Codrus communicated the apocalypse to the people through his face on all the coins of the world, right?

GSF: yes. it was a frightening sight. you know what it's like to reach into your pocket not knowing what's in there? that's scary enough. talk about nothing in the dark. it's one thing to lose the world, it's another to have that smug mug informing you of it. since all coins are now chiseled from the same slab of Stones located at the U.S. Mint, even rare valuable global coins, even Pokemon Go coins, the people of the globe were easily controlled. o how those coins stunk of golden corruption! like Limburger. rotten Limburger. how ignominious the whole thing is. we lose ourselves when we lose our dignity.

Cotard: except for pennies which my brother deemed worthless. which they are. or were. he's a sharp one unfortunately. he figured that everyone has coins lying around their house cos no one uses coins anymore. they're right there for the taking and mastering. now do you wish we returned back to Rod Serling childhood times when you could actually rid yourself of a coin and get an ice cream cone? i countered Codrus's spell by making anyone on earth who still had a penny in their possession the real rulers of earth, cured of the hold of the pandemic of the Stones. the perfect penny palliative. this is god-level divine war stuff, you wouldn't understand.

GSF: how dare you, good sir. this is the kind of dismissive attitude that creeps into our discourse and soon becomes legal discrimination. wait, CODRUS IS YOUR FUCKING BROTHER!!?

Cotard: you should see who our mom is. my plan hatched brilliantly. and hilariously. the curse was reversed. the power dynamic disintegrated. the ingrained structures in place in the world for centuries suddenly tumbled with one tumblr stroke. most everyone was free, i only had to deal with a few thousand or so pennygrubbers. i mean suddenly anyone who flicked a penny with their right thumb became a world king: grifters with plaid porkpie hats, confidence men with slicked-forward hair parts, and petite pompadoured short Johnny Bravos. stay-at-home moms who used pennies to scratch their lottery tickets still stayed at home but they were bigger homes. there was an indiscriminate run not on the banks which long since abandoned pennies but on the arcades with those cute little duck games. speaking of water, wishing wells and koi ponds were drained clean.

Codrus: very funny, brother. are you not entertained?

GSF: AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

Cotard: nice of you to join us, brother. or maybe not. on the other end of the long table like old times.

Codrus: *checking off his checklist and not checking it* check! yep yep yep yep yep nothing else to do. bored. the only mystery left was whether the October surprise would be Democrat or Republican. it's not nice to keep secrtets from your dear brother, dear brother. you should have told me Mother of all beings was into horoscopes.

Cotard: oh yeah, so...where'd the indian dude run off to?...anyway yeah so you never knew that story, huh? i guess i was mom's favorite. she was having trouble getting pregnant so she sought the advice of a female soothsayer with long silken balayage hair who lived on the open space of Mama Fuerza's left palm. the psychic predicted that mom would conceive only if she ingested five pennies a day. even after you were born, Codrus, mom's little miracle, she continued feeding you the pennies a day to make sure a curse wouldn't settle in the spell.

Codrus: that's why to this day sour and sweet taste the same to me on my tongue. but i got the last laugh. i figured out what you were doing and went along with it. that's the key, make 'em think they're important. all you did was make me stronger you dolt!

Cotard: o but no, all the loose copper change rattling around in your stomach wasn't rolled. *Cotard breaks the fourth wall* folks, remember, for it to work all your pennies must be rolled. that's the only way you can buy a pizza with pennies, they have to be rolled. not all over the floor. and certainly not swallowed. everyone was too lazy to roll their pennies so nobody won.

Codrus: blast. it all comes down to paper.

Cotard: still with all that indigestible copper in you you won't be as powerful a god as you could have been. it acts as an independent stopper. you're not pure, you have foreign bodies objecting. thank god. you still have to respect your mother.

GSF: this all seems rather silly, gentlemen, all higher-up nonsense. i'm more an Aristotle pointing even than a Plato hands up. let's get back down to the issues that really matter, the ones on earth.

Codrus: how's it being President?

GSF: it's not the years in your life but the life in your years. *deep external sigh* it sucks.

Wolf throws his headset at the camera.

Wolf: goddamnit, it's a 5!

Codrus: hurricanes are magnificent bastards aren't they? i could never shape one as craftfully as mother. hers were so perfect, the eye was a superspeeding single edgeless dot of flawless fury. i tried with this one but i wasn't into it anymore.

Cotard: yes i see you've moved on to volcanoes. for some reason.

Codrus: smallerscale. easier to manipulate. you know all about that.

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at the Melbourne Bone Bed on the Last Cove

ON THE LAST PLOT CONCERNING EARTH IN WRITER VALLEY ON THE LASTLANDS OF THE FELL, CLICK HERE, RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK

is where we find our fond heroes. they are quickly eating communal green papaya salad except for Lysander who lunches on a Banquet frozen-dinner. the last remaining humans, the thousand or so, all gather one last time, sitting down, careful not to let their bony toes get too sunk in the cold red sand, staring off into the abyss of space which is right on the nose. there's no more Space Coast, only space. no more contraflow. Atalan the sperm whale is the first mammal to break loose from the confines of this earthly blue and battering-ram floatily his oceanic shackles and swim into the black of space.

Lysander: omg look at this goop. it tastes okay but it looks ugly! i mean this is depressing sucking down a frozen salisbury steak and a few peas and frozen mashed potatoes on a thin black tray. this is so single. i am so depressed.

the ladies: yes macha!

Lysander: what? what was that? i didn't catch that. my hearing is going as i get hungrier......wait.....WAIT! WAIT FOR ME! DON'T LEAVE ME BEHIND!..............AT LEAST CAN WE TAKE OUT FOR PIZZA????????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

with the last strength in her toes Madchen flicks the rocketship carrying Carmen, Herlina, Harfi, and the cats into space. Madchen disappears and the glued earth rumbles. not an earth quake but an earth whimper.

offscreened: there's another rocketship called the cocketship at day and coketship at night that escapes view. it is filled with all the elites. the Hollywood elites: Meryl Streep who has successfully fused with her doppelganger Glenn Close, Robert Redford who guzzles down Paul Newman salad dressing to keep his skin clear, M. Night, Lucas who ate Spielberg, Idris, Lin-Manuel, Raul Esparza, Priyanka, and that dude who's a star in India and also a world-champion cricketer. and the president of China who's also like the Chinese Spielberg, he makes all the movies they see over there. the bogan who wears the spectacular mask is an australian-rules god. all the gingers are used for fuel except Christina Hendricks who cushions the fall for everyone...................distraught over the gingers. Caitlyn Jenner steers them but there's a question of captaincy. Cheryl Boone Isaacs claims it but CCH Pounder takes her by the neck and demands she be seen in the blackness of space. Oprah decided to stay and leave her legacy with all the Cove inhabitants. she ground up all the big Stones inside her frame and gave it all away, sprinkling it all over the area like the fairy godmother she was.

CCH: *taps on the tin side of the vessel* ya herd? CCH stands for Captain of this Cold Horse, bitch.
Cheryl: *Saitama* OK. you don't have to be rude.
CCH: sorry, i sowed my oats on FX.

Wolf was just barely able to jump and land on the tail of this ship, his thick beard acting as his space helmet. nobody talks to him out here so he entertains himself during the long trip.

Wolf: hey i got a crackship.........Bump and Ivanka.

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Bump sees in front of him the specter. he raises up an invisible lowball glass of old-fashioned orange wine. the red on his cap turns into a red C.

Bump: here's to us. cheers. buena serata. Eamus Catuli!

planet earth silently explodes.

Frank Caliendo: *doing a Bump impersonation* hey Mickey Bump, you're all right. you're a good guy. you're a gentleman scholar and a benefactor with your billions. you're a good priest and the real-life version of Rich Uncle Pennybags with the long hat and short pants.

Bump: *looking inward* i was the King of Earth...

everybody laughs, including Hilary and the Pope. Frank assumes his new position as President and steps onto the raised dais.

Hilary: how'd you free me? i thought i had the only drill.

the Pope: *firing up her own drill* o honey, we're a couple, remember? matching drills. matching everything.

Bump gets up and puts his arms around Hilary and the Pope making a sandwich with him as the middle meat.

Bump: come on, girls, we got dance practice!

Hilary puts a blonde wig on Codrus before they leave.