Blimp's Point of View
His second term started with so much promise. Yes, things were really looking up for old Ronald Blimp! He'd won, even got the most votes this time! How about that? Then the snakes starting slithering out of the grass and whispering in his ear.
"We've got to get on top of this fusion thing," BJ Spence told him.
"Sure thing, Beej!" he agreed without really thinking about it. "That Russian girl is really something else, huh? Have you seen the photos?" He held up his phone. "Lovely young lady scientist, beauty and brains, very impressive," he rambled.
The Europeans wanted their share of the crystals since it was a joint project but fuck em! America first! Blimp made sure they kept all this tech to themselves by having the Department of Energy make a deal with the lady scientist herself. It was Beej's idea, one of his better ones.
Beej wasn't a bad guy exactly, but he'd always rubbed Ronald the wrong way, type of guy that would sell his own mother to get ahead. Where was the loyalty? Blimp was old school like that, make deals with handshakes and always keep your word! That was how a man should handle things. Patrick Teal wanted him on the ticket, though, and at least Beej was a slick talker, could handle interviews and debates, no problem. Yeah, BJ wasn't so bad, just a snake. Patrick Teal? Now that guy was a full grown lizard!
These techie types, always in his ear about terminators and skynet and the matrix, on and on. They watched too many movies! Maybe some of it was real; that Russian girl made some type of magic crystal that could create infinite electricity, real star trek stuff. He was just going to let her do her thing until Elron Trask walked into the Oval Office with his hand in a cast.
"She's crazy and violent," Elron complained. "And stupid, bitch doesn't know who she's messing with. We can't just let her run wild like this! It's a matter of national security!"
Privately, Blimp was laughing his ass off. Elron tried to grab her by the pussy and the pussy grabbed back. What a loser. But he owned Natter so Ronnie had to play nice. He terminated her agreement with the Department of Energy to try to force her to sell to Maxwell, Trask's company. No dice!
What was her name again? Roda? Rika? Anyway, she made a deal with George Stavros and Rainforest. That wasn't so bad. Now she wasn't just making her magic crystals but robots too. The economy was booming and you better believe Ronnie boy was right there to take credit. All that free electricity let them train computers how to do paperwork, save a lot of money. They had robots working in warehouses. Pretty soon they'd have robot construction workers, factory workers, robots that picked fruit, no need for immigrants at all! It was perfect.
That's when things started going wrong.
Elron went behind his back and had their golden goose arrested! And worse? She escaped!
Nobody had any idea how it happened but the lady scientist and her whole crew disappeared only to turn up in Hungary a week later. Guess she wasn't Russian after all...
Reka not being Russian turned out to be kind of a big deal. She overthrew Henrik Orszag and now he had his old pal Valentin Gratin blowing up his phone!
"Listen, Val, buddy, I know things are tense right now with the whole Ukraine situation, but Hungary is nothing to worry about," Blimp told him.
Val, of course, didn't see it that way. He turned out to be right. Hungary made the girl a queen and she started doing for them what she should've been doing for America.
That wasn't all, not by a long shot. Unemployment was up, what with all the warehouse workers and paper pushers out of work. "What do you want me to do?" he asked some journalist interviewing him. "Cars replaced horses. This is just the next step. Look at the stock market, booming, highest ever!"
Looking back, maybe that wasn't the right thing to say.
The next day, Blimp had a meeting with some representatives from the oil and natural gas industry. To hear them tell it, Reka getting Europe on fusion was bad for business. Well, good old American gas was something you could always count on, but Blimp didn't really know how he could help them out. Europe was still sore about being cut out of America's first deal with Reka. They weren't in the mood to listen to him.
Then Reka started helping the Ukrainians. It was the perfect excuse! If Val took her out then that would be problem solved! Only it didn't work. The Europeans were royally pissed! He sent Beej over there to smooth over their ruffled feathers but it wasn't enough. Half of NATO, practically all of eastern Europe, had given America the finger. After that, things started getting scary.
Elron Trask disappeared in Prague, never to be heard from again, and a month later that mad scientist queen had somehow built an army of terminators and tanks that shot star wars death rays. Even getting nuked didn't stop them! Big bad Russia wasn't so big and bad anymore.
Worst of all, she made some kind of deal with China to carve up Russia like a Thanksgiving turkey. Things were getting out of hand!
"We need to face reality," said Secretary of Defense Hexdeath during a meeting with his national security advisors. "RECA is now a rival power bloc with advanced technology we don't understand. This is a serious threat to our influence in Eurasia."
Blimp was shocked to hear what Hexdeath sounded like sober. Geez, the guy could actually string together a couple of coherent sentences. Ronnie had no idea.
"And they're way too close with China," BJ added. "What happens if the PRC moves on Taiwan and they have those plasma cannons covering their landing? Our planes won't be able to get too close."
"It's worse than that, Mr. Vice President," said some general, Air Force maybe. "RECA leads the world in militarizing space. We're way behind! Those Damocles satellites can intercept ICBMs. Our nuclear deterrent is now worthless."
Hoo boy, this was some heavy stuff. "Give me something, people," Blimp was fishing for something, anything to unfuck this situation.
He looked around. Silence.
Can't find good help these days...
That wasn't the end of their troubles. Hungarian factories didn't need workers. They were pumping out phones, electric cars, and more, selling for a fifth or even a tenth of what they cost in America. You better believe the CEO of Apricot was leaving him panicked messages begging for tariffs.
It all came to a head when they heard about the space elevator about to be built in Kenya. Why there? Blimp would've put it somewhere nicer.
"If RECA takes control of space we're completely finished," Hexdeath told him.
Had this guy gone to Alcoholics Anonymous or something? Hexie used to never not be drunk. Were things that bad?
"I'm all ears, buddy," Blimp was honestly willing to try anything at this point.
"After the fall of Moscow, some Russian officers accused of war crimes managed to flee the country," the Secretary of Defense said.
"Falsely accused?" Blimp asked.
"Does it matter, sir?"
"Not really," Blimp admitted. "What can the Russians do? They got their clocks cleaned by those terminators."
Hexie leaned in conspiratorially. "They managed to smuggle out some wrecks of the Hungarian drones, not the terminators, but the flyers, multiple kinds, some nearly intact. We can't duplicate every part, and the AI is way too advanced for us, but it's something."
Something, huh? "What do we do with them?"
"Weapons are one of the few things we still make in this country, sir. Our own versions could be a strong seller. Combat drones are the only thing RECA isn't exporting."
"Export where?" Blimp questioned.
"Everywhere, sir," Hexdeath looked a little crazy. "But especially Africa. Give Reka a taste of her own medicine. Plenty of groups over there would be interested."
"Groups?"
"You know," Hexie said smoothly, "rebels, freedom fighters. Let's see Queenie build her highway to Heaven when every extremist with an axe to grind has a big ass stack or murder drones."
Well, it was better than nothing, so Blimp signed off on it. Big mistake.
Two months later reports of "shortages" started coming in. At first, it was just was stuff like "cobalt". What the hell was cobalt? Turns out, cobalt was in a lot of things. It was the same story for a dozen other metals he'd never heard of but were supposedly super important.
That wasn't even the worst of it. One by one, countries made deals with RECA to kick out American companies. No more WacArnold's, no more Rainforest. Corporate profits sank like a stone and the layoffs began. Midterm elections were an absolute bloodbath. The threat of civil war was the only thing keeping him from being impeached again. Say what you want about Hexie, he kept the Army loyal. Blimp wasn't going anywhere without a fight.
So the country limped along. More countries refused to trade with them, and the ones that still did raised their prices by a lot. Suddenly, American dollars weren't good enough anymore! They had to barter with corn, oil, coal, whatever they had. Bad deals, very bad!
Reka Reka Reka...this lady really had it in for him!
Shipments of American drones were even being seized before they could reach their customers. It was their one reliable seller! That couldn't stand, so he'd ordered the Navy to start escorting the container ships.
Washington was barely a city anymore. Just a few blocks from the White House people could barely keep the lights on. Only the military contractors were still eating well.
Blimp needed something, anything, a big win! The WacArnold's burger on his desk just sat there, half-eaten. He wasn't hungry for once.
BJ Spence came in, more bad news for sure. "Go away Beej," Blimp said. "I'm not in the mood."
Beej adjusted his tie with an angry look on his face and Blimp could've sworn the man was about to tell him to fuck off. Spence bit back whatever he was going to say and schooled his features.
Nope, pussed out again, he thought. Hey, I don't like you either, pal!
"Mr. President, the Spanish have just sent us an ultimatum. We have two weeks to evacuate our naval base in their country."
"We have a naval base in Spain?" Blimp honestly didn't know.
Spence's eyes twitched. "Yes, sir. We can't afford to lose western Europe. This demands a strong response."
Strong response, huh? "What do you recommend?" Maybe this could be the big win he was looking for.
"We should send the fleet, dare RECA to stop us."
Blimp snorted. "And get blasted by her death rays? How'd that work out for old Val Gratin?"
"The Russian officers we've offered asylum to know how her weapons work, sir. As long as we keep out of range, she can't touch us. A navy takes years to build, decades even. Queen Reka is overconfident. Her ships can't possibly be on the level of ours after so little time. If we give her a black eye then maybe we can convince her to lift this boycott."
What choice did he have? Hamburgers cost a hundred dollars now. Something had to give. "Okay," Blimp agreed. "Do it."
***
"Where did it all go wrong?" Blimp asked nobody in particular.
He was playing golf right now, on vacation down in Florida. His phone? Thrown away. It was too tempting to watch the video of his aircraft carriers blown to bits again.
Stock market, what stock market? Dollar, what dollar? His money wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. People were calling for him to resign, to nuke Hungary, both, neither. What did it matter? Gratin tried to nuke her too. It didn't work. Nothing would work. So he just left to play golf. Fuck it.
"Shit!" his ball went into the rough. What did Ronald Blimp do to deserve this?
A secret service agent ran off to find his ball and came back with BJ Spence.
"What the hell are you doing here, Beej? Can't you see I'm on vacation?"
"Mr. President, the economy is on the brink of collapse!"
"Who cares?" he asked lightly.
"Ronald, if you're going to run off like this then you might as well resign," Spence said tiredly.
"And what? Let you take over? You'd like that, wouldn't you, Beej?"
Beej sighed in exasperation. "You're not making this easy. Take him," he said coldly.
Two secret service agents grabbed him. "What the hell? I'm the President!"
They put something over his face. He couldn't breathe! He couldn't