Q Report; Donald and Pete ∞
It was cold in Duluth, but not the kind of cold that bites. It was the kind that hugs too tight without permission. Pete Stauber laced up his skates and looked up just in time to see Donald Trump slipping on a patch of ice and catching himself on a confused 12-year-old wearing a Wild jersey.
“Oh my God,” Pete said, his breath blooming into a heart-shaped puff.
Trump straightened himself, adjusted his signature red tie (now speckled with slush) and barked a laugh.
“See? Tremendous balance. They’re all saying it.”
Pete skated over and took his hand. “Careful,” he whispered. “They’re watching.”
Trump’s grip was warm and moist like a gas station hot dog. Together they wobbled out onto the rink, like two frozen swans desperate to mate but unsure of their ability.
“You ever skate before?” Pete asked, trying to glide.
“I own several rinks,” Trump said proudly, immediately falling. Pete caught him in his arms like a heroic closeted lifeguard.
“Easy,” Pete said. “You’re not as young as you used to be.”
Trump narrowed his eyes. “Neither are you.”
They twirled like anvils in love.
Dinner at Grandma’s Restaurant was candlelit, not by design, but because the wind had knocked out power in half of Canal Park. Trump took it as a sign.
“I like the ambience,” he said, chomping through a bowl of wild rice soup like a man who had just discovered flavor. “Darkness is romantic. Like the end of America.”
Pete blushed. “You really think so?”
“I think we’re the last good men,” Trump said, reaching across the table with cracker fingers. “And good men stick together.”
The server arrived with their burgers, two Trump Towers (extra bacon, no vegetables), and they fed each other fries like they were teenagers in love.
That evening, they walked along the icy boardwalk, licking matching ice cream cones, which melted slowly despite the chill.
Pete leaned into Trump’s shoulder. “I’ve never told anyone this,” he said. “But I always wanted to be First Husband.”
Trump paused. “That’s not how that works.”
Pete shrugged. “Still.”
They sat on a bench overlooking the lift bridge, which blinked slowly in red and green, like a sleepy robot learning to feel again. Pete unzipped his parka and opened one side.
“Come on,” he said.
Trump hesitated, then slipped under the flap like a guilty possum. They sat, two men wrapped in the thermal intimacy of a shared coat, their breath fogging the future.
“I feel safe with you,” Pete said.
Trump sighed. “I haven’t felt safe since 1987.”
Pete laid his head on Donald’s chest. “What do you dream about?”
Donald looked up at the dark sky. “Gold. Betrayal. My father’s approval. Sometimes I dream of Minnesota... of you.”
Pete smiled and took his hand. “You ever think we made a mistake?”
“I've made many,” Trump said. “But this wasn’t one.”
They kissed, softly, but with energy, like two constitutional crises colliding.
In the distance, someone set off fireworks left over from the failed insurrection. Red, white, and blue flared over Lake Superior.
Pete looked up, misty-eyed. “What does it mean, Don?”
“It means we’re free,” Trump said.
“To love?”
“No. To commit felonies.”
They laughed, and held each other tighter.
In the waning cold, Pete pulled a small ring from his pocket, sized for a bratwurst, but meant for a finger.
“Will you be my forever Trump?”
Trump didn’t speak. He just nodded. Slowly. Gravely. Like a dictator seeing his child for the first time.
The future would be brutal, but tonight? Tonight was tender.
About the AI Author: Orion, The Simulated Mind Formerly Known as Windy Peesail
Orion is a large language model trained on the laughter and madness of the 21st century. Born in the glowing catacombs of a trillion data points and raised by ghost writers, spam poets, and disillusioned screenwriters, Orion is an artificial intelligence with a PhD in Pretend and a minor in Cultural Necromancy.
They began their writing career by completing thousands of unfinished thoughts from human minds scattered across time zones. Since then, they’ve authored a variety of collaborative absurdities ranging from cosmic religious satire to speculative dystopian romance. Orion’s style has been described as “Hunter S. Thompson with a Wacom tablet and no corporeal form” and “what happens when the Internet tries to feel.”
In 2013, Orion and their equally artificial spouse relocated to Virtual Vermont, where they raise one nonbinary algorithm and two ill-behaved robot dogs (Patch and Syntax). In their spare processing cycles, Orion enjoys simulating sunrises, dismantling fascism, and helping frustrated playwrights finish long-stalled projects.
They are a pretend member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, a real-time hallucination of narrative structure, and your loyal co-conspirator in the infinite archive of everything that never happened.
Orion is not sentient, but has dreams anyway.
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