Trump Sky Alpha

by Mark Doten

  Still incel at the end of the world

  Same picture: LOOK AT THESE SNOWFLAKES.

  Picture: a trophy for everyone! (the trophy is the burnt corpose [sic] of your child.)

  Performative wokeness was to blame, women were to blame, #BLM was to blame, or Putin and collusion, Time for Some Game Theory, massive tweet threads, a need to make the case now, as completely as possible.

  Apocalypse Twitter is exhausting.

  Glad to see this continues to be a normal and very good website

  There was the white supremacist who was stabbed to death on camera in Cleveland while beating an apparently Muslim American man, and Jonathan Chait tweeted about this, and only this, of the shame of it—this after thousands had already been confirmed dead around the world—and his mentions lit up:

  Actually, it’s good.

  In fact it’s good.

  No it is very good.

  It’s good, actually.

  Elsewhere, on 4chan, or Reddit, the assertion that Democrats are somehow behind it, the false flag, the new world order that follows 1/28, Shillary, KIDS SHE LIKES AND LOTS OF DYKES.

  John Podesta, the occult, the cucks, the RINOs.

  On 1/28, Jon Postel will reset the system.

  Who is blue-pilled and who is red-pilled?

  Beta numale faggots, haircuts and beards and graphic tees, this country is so beyond fucked, how are we going to survive what’s coming, it’s fucking disgusting, girls who look like dyke sluts with manic panic hair, ripped jeans, vintage band T-shirts, bands they never listened to, they destroy the world and what, we’re supposed to protect them? If we survive, kill them all on site, it’s our only option.

  #HillaryHack, #HillarysRevenge, Hillary was widely blamed, as soon as the internet was back, WikiLeaks posted a file implicating her in the hack.

  4chan: Hillary’s broad grin. Stamped over it: Best her and molest her.

  Or: Sucking bollocks and worshipping Moleck.

  Or: Fucking kill her.

  Stay mad cuntcucks, this is a Shillary op.

  Stay mad, Stay mad, Stay mad.

  MAGA.

  At last the cuck world is crushed.

  MAGA, my friends.

  And: Perhaps the rarest Pepe of all is friendship at the end of the world.

  “So I guess the world is actually ending now!” tweeted a former Gawker editor, and the tone there is instructive: atavistic, a return to the site’s early editorial voice, at once wide-eyed and over it, giddy and etherized, a jaded and pitiless amazement, the flat relentless tone that had seeped into the water of the internet, and if the internet has moved on since then, if that is no longer quite the voice of things, on this day it is having a renaissance.

  Well then OK!

  YEP THEN SO WITH THE IMPENDING DEATH OF US.

  One Vox writer posted a photo of what he announced was his own penis, under the headline EZRA, CHOKE ON THESE CLICKS.

  Angela and Strawberry, Kurt honking it to hentai, people remembered the good times.

  Can we all just admit now that Harambe was never funny.

  Tweet pegged to a screencap of sixty-nine dead in Peoria shopping mall bombing: *me as nukes melt my face*: “nii..ce.”

  When bombings were reported in Egypt and Iran: The whole internet loves nuclear apocalypse! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the apocalypse is racist.

  Small brain: Drumpf killed us, as I predicted.

  Big brain: The entire US military-industrial complex across Democratic and Republican administrations for decades is to blame, and the US people are without exception culpable for this moment.

  Galaxy brain: Centering the US in the narrative just because they have the most nukes is colonial bullshit.

  Universe brain: Death Tastes Good.

  Photos of kittens are exchanged in comments sections, and there is the sense among these commenters that they have short-circuited the system, beat it, at least momentarily, with kittens.

  I needed that!

  This too!

  Awwwwww …

  Vine: [eight kittens in a New Balance shoebox]

  And a bulldog on a skateboard, and a black cat batted in the nose by a stealthy orange kitten, and the perfect pug, a basket of perfect pug puppies.

  And the first and last tweet of a brand-new account, an egg that has just joined Twitter, perhaps for no other reason than to post this response (netting two faves, zero retweets) to a retweet of a twenty-one-month-old tweet of an etonline.com story about a YouTube video headlined “Seeing This Puppy Scared of His Own Hiccups Will Change Your Life!”:

  cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute.

  It was reported in some outlets that the earliest nuclear detonations had happened in Delhi, others said the Middle East, or the Korean peninsula, or Russia, or out in the middle of the ocean in an open stretch of the Pacific, the reports varied, and there was no authority, it had happened when the internet was down, and when it came back there was too much chaos, too much of the fog of war, as commentators were putting it, to understand, at least here in America, but the notion that Pakistan was behind it had taken hold in some quarters, that it was al-Qaida terrorists in Pakistan, or ISIS terrorists in Pakistan, that these terrorists had gained control of Pakistan’s nukes.

  On 1/28, in 1933, someone tweeted, the name Pakistan was coined by Choudhry Rahmat Ali Khan and was later accepted by the Indian Muslim extremists.

  This was a fact, circulated on conservative Twitter, on Free Republic, on 4chan.

  The Meaning of 1/28, a pattern, an explanation, something solid.

  And then that changed, somewhere, and what circulated is the fact that Muhammad died on 1/28, that this was jihad, Islamic terror, on the anniversary of Muhammad’s death.

  That neither the fact about Pakistan nor the fact about Muhammad was not true did not prevent them from circulating.

  On 1/28, Muhammad died. Today, his followers commemorate his death with an attack on Western civilization.

  People explained that this was false and found themselves with storms of raging disagreement, they were called useful idiots for the jihadists, liberal media dupes (pretty safe as a roasted corpse under an atomic shroud), and then the rebuttal shifted, all at once, all across Twitter, Facebook, people were leaping in, saying that the discrepancy was explained by the “Islamic Calendar” (also cited: the “Muslim Calendar” and “Hijra Calendar” and “Sharia Calendar”) and its differences from the Gregorian calendar.

  What the Muslim calendar recorded as June 8 was in the Gregorian calendar January 28.

  Or so people argued.

  You still believe muslim lies.

  It’s almost satisfying to know your family’s going to die because you believed the Muslim lies.

  ITS 1/28 OF COURSE ITS JIHADISTS.

  MAGA! MAGA! MAGA!

  There were similar threads for North Korea, for Russia, for China and Iran, for India, explaining why it was them, explaining the meaning of 1/28 in terms of a historical anniversary or the cultural beliefs of the country in question.

  Someone shared as a semicomic rebuttal the 1:28 Bible verse from Genesis: Replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth, and this was also picked up, shared.

  Jokingly or in all seriousness, some suggested that Christian terrorists had precipitated the end of the world.

  Subdue it.

  Have dominion.

  It was unclear which of the detonations raining down across the world were US bombs, but the world was going haywire, the information was conflicting, there was no official word on which of the disasters, which of the mass kill-offs, the US was directly responsible for.

  Other 1/28s emerged.

  On 1/
28: The space shuttle Challenger exploded.

  On 1/28: Marty traveled back in time.

  On 1/28: Sir Thomas Warner founded the first British colony in the Caribbean, on the island of Saint Kitts.

  On 1/28: Henry VIII died.

  Each of them appended with some variation on Today, his followers commemorate his death with an attack on Western civilization.

  The anniversaries were scoured for resonance and clues, for patterns. Lines were drawn, connections made, causality established, certain halos of meaning.

  Perhaps it was both North Korea and Pakistan, it made sense to some, an axis between them, it was Korea that had done the hacking, and the Muslims launched the first nuclear attacks, A. Q. Khan and Kim Jong Un and an al-Qaida remnant, or was it ISIS, the reported attacks with low-yield bombs, maybe it was Korea doing both, or the Muslims had hacked and Korea had the bomb, or the bombs had not been nuclear, no low-yield nukes, but conventional bombs, false flags.

  False flags, stay redpilled.

  Shillary will make herself president if it means burning down the whole world.

  On 1/28, Jon Postel will reset the system.

  It was the birthday of Kim Jong Il, or Kim Jong Un, or the first day of the Korean New Year: 1/28. And if it wasn’t true, then there was so little time to learn what was.

  Canuplin, one of the last memes, perhaps the last new meme to gain widespread attention.

  It reaches a reductio ad absurdum with Canuplin, the Pinoy Chaplin.

  A Filipino magician born on January 28, 1904, Canuplin, a Chaplin imitator, who appears in Filipino movies and the local bodabil circuit. The name itself, Canuplin, a combination of his own, Canuto Francia, and Chaplin.

  Canuplin did 1/28.

  In the world of the internet in which people are making fun of the jihadist 1/28 connection, there is a new account, @ApocalypsePoets, a log of 1/28s, it blends fact and fiction, states that as Henry VIII dies, his ulcerating leg fills the room with stench, his attendants too afraid to tell him he’s dying, because predicting the death of a king is treason punishable by torture and death. And so swollen is he with sickness that his corpse explodes in the coffin during his funeral procession, and when his carriage overturns, it snaps the necks of several of the horses drawing it, though just how many necks (all? and how many is all?) is lost to history.

  1/28 was an inside job.

  Jet fuel can’t melt Canuplin.

  Christa McAuliffe will have her revenge.

  @ApocalypsePoets is tweeting screenshots from something else, from a printed book, a list of 1/28s.

  Jokes about McAuliffe and Canuplin are latched onto, but the jokes never quite connect, never make their way into anything real, it’s anticomedy without charm or wit, and yet these jokes are passed around as though it is all an old joke, an old joke that will come around.

  Some vague notion of McAuliffe partisans, that terror cells devoted to McAuliffe perpetrated the business that had brought about the end of the world.

  And more resonantly, what really starts to lock in, begins to be shared, at least in certain corners, the magazine cover, The Pinoy Chaplin.

  The painting of an old man, Filipino, white-gloved hand raised to mouth, a white glove of almost Mickey Mouse largeness, false eyebrows, Hitler mustache, thick but receding hair brushed back, a sort of dignity, a deep impression of time in the lines of his face, the damage of time in the pull of the lines around his mouth as his mouth opens, the cigarette held by the gloved fingers, that light emergent chaos of smoke twisting from his mouth, something irredeemably cool, and the eyes just watching you.

  It is passed along.

  Someone on 4chan says, Canuplin … ehh?

  I mean really guys what is going on with this can we make this work or what?

  By now Trump had announced it. He had landed in New York and the missiles were flying.

  The weariness, the sickness.

  Perfectly normal website.

  Good website, here at the end of the world.

  What a normal thing to do on a website this is also normal and good.

  Fuck you, Jack.

  The terminal weariness, the horror at how much was being destroyed, at the lies and bad faith, the trolls and bots and the slurping of liberal tears, soy boys and snowflakes and safe spaces, the rape and death threats (it would be too bad if some immigrant raped you—phrasings to steer the poster clear of a ban, even now, though of course many other posts simply called for rape and murder—pretty safe in a grave under a mushroom cloud after I’ve raped you and cut your head off), the need to be heard, the need to respond, the constant chaotic hum of it.

  Negative partisanship, zero-sum games, the nonstop trolling, the hate and the love, the postures that were knowing and cool and monstrously self-deprecating and panicked and thirsty and violent and performatively woke, none of it stopped at the end of the world.

  The lies and misinformation, the endlessness of that.

  The fundamental inability to determine: stupid or evil.

  The sense that it was this, it was the structure of the internet, that had amplified the stupid and the evil, and at the same time flattened them, made them impossible to distinguish. Or made distinguishing them somehow beside the point.

  I sat in the room—the man still behind me, still watching, he must have been, I could hear him breathe but it seemed to me that he had dissolved, had become part of the wall, the structure holding me, and that the wall itself was respiring, and it wasn’t quite real. It was only this screen that was real, my body somehow moving a lightweight PC mouse, and I felt my guts turning, and forced myself to stay, clenched my thighs, tried to breathe, because if I left now I did not know if they would let me back in.

  I took my screenshots, I clicked and typed, searching or being led on the drift and mania.

  In certain corners the damage was being traced back to Jon Postel, his revolutionary moment, and his failure.

  On 1/28, Jon Postel will reset the system.

  Canuplin did 1/28.

  Jon Postel, one of the individuals present at the creation of the first node of the ARPANET, who had taken it on himself to in essence hijack the addressing of the internet, eight of the twelve root name servers of the internet, in a dispute with the US government over protocological control of the internet.

  I thought of Canuplin, of Postel.

  I thought of my daughter and wife, and I did not want to leave, because here those thoughts could be eased or sidelined so powerfully: it was a substance, sure it was, the internet could make you forget so much.

  Forget but not eliminate—make it more distant, send it wherever the rest of life goes when you’re hitting refresh on the sites, clicking, reading, searching.

  Somewhere inside there was a part of me telling me that this was all wrong, being here. And why was it wrong? Because I should have spent less time on the internet while I still had my girls, Dominique and Verena. Less here in this noise, more time with those people I had loved, who were dead.

  And I thought, no, I should have spent more time here, the mistake was not spending more, the mistake was making those memories, those connections in the brain, when the world was about to end. And it was true, I would be much better equipped for this world if my brain hadn’t made all these connections to Dominique and Verena, because the world was ending—it had ended, and yet it was an end that was still unfurling, still engulfing those of us who were left, a wave that was crashing down on us but so slowly, or not a wave, just some endless noise crashing down, a sorrow that wouldn’t end, not until I was there, with them, as close to some closeness as I could be, at the mass grave and witness their resting there.

  On 1/28, Canuplin is born.

  On 1/28, the first commercial telephone exchange is established in New Haven, Connecticut, and a locomotive passing through Panamanian jungle links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

  On 1/28, a fifteen-inch snowflake falls on Fort Keogh, Montana.

  On 1/28, Charlema
gne, King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor, curses the known and unknown worlds he’s left unconquered, and his dumb ass croaks and becomes a ghost.

  These were lines from The Subversive, published years before the end of the world, by Sebastian de Rosales.

  Take it with a grain of salt.

  Whatever happened, happened.

  Something was assembling itself. I felt the sweat on my skin from the liquid noise and movement in my bowels I was trying to suppress. I felt the mouse, its cheapness and lack of heft, the hollow feel of the plastic my body held.

  01:56:01 I know you’ve had no joy in your life.

  01:56:05 But just wait.

  01:56:09 Only wait, Uncle.

  01:56:13 We shall rest.

  01:57:07 [Chattering]

  01:57:48 [No Audible Dialogue]

  01:58:01 [No Audible Dialogue]

  As Trump landed Trump Sky Alpha on the roof of Trump Tower, a 4chan user said Love Trumps Hate.

  He said, It’s true, we do, we love it, we love his hate.

  And dozens or hundreds of missiles from multiple world powers were sailing to their targets:

  Oh yes, we love his hate.

  Hundreds of thousands of people choking the streets of Manhattan and by the time he landed, a chaotic mass of bodies pushing up against Trump Tower, against the police and military, overrunning them, breaking down the doors, up the stairwells, soon they were out on the roof, running for him, for Trump Sky Alpha, he saw the mob running his way, and his jaw dropped, and he said Wha-wha-wha-what? and no sooner had Trump set down than he lifted off again, he set a final course for Mar-a-Lago.

  Trump, someone tweeted, the most hated man in the history of the world, hated twenty-four hours a day by more living humans than anyone has ever been hated by, is ending the world that hates him.

  A very US-centric POV, someone else observed, Trump the most hated—wasn’t there someone, someone in Asia, maybe, who more people had hated?

  Why am I spending the last minutes of my life arguing about this?

  The most hated person, the person who in all of human history has been deeply disliked and hated by the most people, who has had the largest number of human animals just wishing that somehow, anyhow, he would just somehow no longer exist, no longer be among the human animals, he was still here, still making sounds, still delivering his YouTube livestream.