The Time: The first and last day of World War III. The End of Life on Earth As We Have Come to Know It. Armageddon.
The Setting: A cramped, claustrophobic space, dank and dimly lit. The walls are vague and ill-defined, covered with odd patches of glistening ooze and pulsing bumps. The atmosphere is steamy; an acrid haze hangs in the air. We are inside Donald Trump’s asshole. The source of his every idea. Stage left is the entrance to his upper colon. Stage right is his anus.
As the curtain rises, the walls are shaking and the air is filled with the muffled sounds of huge explosions. The room is a beehive of furious activity.
STEVE BANNON, White House Chief Strategist, is perched on a ladder, stage left, trying frantically to shore the ceiling up with odd bits of planking.
KELLYANNE CONWAY, the secretary of defense, sits at a small desk downstage surrounded by a tangled array of telephones, "hot lines," and radio receivers. She wears a headset, listens intently and desperately spins dials on the radio set.
DONALD TRUMP, the president of the United States, sits in an easy chair, stage right, browsing Twitter and occasionally glancing at a highlight reel of Super Bowl LI which plays on a TV in the corner.
As the tights come up, there’s a tremendous explosion. The room rocks, and a slab of semi-digested burrito falls off the ceiling and knocks BANNON off his ladder. On the TV screen, Julio Jones leaps for a pass, grabs it, then drops it as he's upended by a Seahawks defender.
BANNON: Shit!
CONWAY: Golly gee, that was close!
TRUMP: (chuckling) They can jump like monkeys, but they hate to get hit.
BANNON: I thought the F-35’s were supposed to knock those bastards out!
CONWAY: They were. They will. The boys at DARPA have a few more kinks to iron out, then— (reacting to her headset) Incoming! Get down! Get down!
(BANNON and CONWAY jump for cover as another enormous explosion rocks the room. TRUMP frowns and adjusts the vertical bold on the TV)
BANNON: What the hell was that?!
CONWAY: Judging by the impact, I'd say it was a Dongfeng-41, launched from Beijing.
BANNON: I thought they offered to dismantle those.
CONWAY: They offered, but we turned them down. Cheap Commie trick.
(Another thundering explosion. Sparks shoot from the TV and it blows up. TRUMP smiles)
TRUMP: Must be halftime. So! How're we doing?
CONWAY: Mr. President, the tide of battle has begun to turn our way. The forces of Globalism are in disarray. It is true, of course, that every American city larger than St. Augustine has been destroyed. It's true that France and Britain are no more. It's true our gallant allies in japan have sunk beneath the waves. It's true—
TRUMP: How bout Putin—did we get him yet?
CONWAY: (smugly) The line of death now runs right through his bathtub, sir
TRUMP: And the uh... footage?
CONWAY: Gone. Completely wiped out.
TRUMP: (triumphant) Wait till ol' Dubya hears that! Say, can I get a call through to the Zeta's? Do they have a locker room?
CONWAY: I'm afraid that they've been wiped out too.
TRUMP: No!
CONWAY: Yes Apparently we overshot Austin, Texas with our first wave of Drones.
TRUMP: What did we hit?
CONWAY: A little bit of everything
BANNON: Texas now shares common border with Guatemala.
TRUMP: (thoughtfully) That makes Guatemala a BRIC nation. I wonder—
(CONWAY'S radio begins to buzz and click)
CONWAY: Hang on. There's something coming through! (she listens intently then pounds the desk triumphantly) We've done it! We've stripped them bare! The last flight of Chinese ICBMs have been knocked out! The bastards are defenseless!
BANNON: Now that's what I call disarmament!
(CONWAY rises and holds out a box with a big red button on it)
CONWAY: Mr. President, you stand at this moment on the very threshold of the future. With one bold stroke you have it in your power to eradicate forever the pernicious threat of Marxist tyranny and Chinese expansionism. By pressing this button, you can unleash one last barrage of Titan missiles, which will destroy the Communist Republic of China now and forever more.
(A momentous pause)
TRUMP: What does 'pernicious' mean?
CONWAY: Just push the button, sir.
(TRUMP reaches for it)
BANNON: Wait! I've got a better idea! They don't have any missiles left? Let's sell them some of ours!
(CONWAY looks at him as though be lost his mind) Don't you see? They're desperate! We can charge them anything we want!
(TRUMP beams and shakes his head with admiration. CONWAY pumps BANNON'S hand)
CONWAY: You can take the boy out of Harvard, but you can't take the Harvard out of the boy!
(They laugh and embrace, and crack open a bottle of Old Grand Dad. They are passing it around, sucking down enormous slugs of bourbon, when the "hot line" phone rings. CONWAY answers it.)
CONWAY: Boom Boom Room! This is your Cap speaking.... Oh hiya, George! (to TRUMP and BANNON) It's Bush. (Back into the phone) Where are you, pal? I can hardly hear you... Oh, yeah? Hey, that's great! (to TRUMP and BANNON again) He's in Saudi Arabia. He says the oligarchs are shitting bricks, they'll cut back production, increase production, they'll stabilize oil prices anywhere we want 'em, just stop the goddamn bombs.
(TRUMP chuckles BANNON jumps with glee and grabs the phone)
BANNON: (into the phone) George? This is STEVE. Yeah. Tell 'em we gotta think it over. Tell 'em we're gonna put a bunch of dish towels on our heads and cat a bowl of camel shit with our bare hands while we discuss it. (Through the reciever comes the sound of a distant. muffled ''boom." BANNON winces and holds the phone away from his ear then speaks back into the receiver) George? ...George, are you there?... Hello? (He turns solemnly to CONWAY and TRUMP.) The vice president is dead.
TRUMP: Does that mean I'm King?
CONWAY: (shaking her head with awe) Incredible. Saudi Arabia is gone. The greatest oil producing nation in the world is no more .
TRUMP: (chuckling again) Well now. I guess that makes us number one.
(They all consider this then...)
CONWAY: Christ, Texaco stocks are going to go through the roof! (She lunges for the 'hot line" and barks into the phone) Quick! Get me Merrill Lynch!
BANNON: (grabs at the receiver) Gimme that! Hello, Lehman Brothers?!
TRUMP: How 'bout me?!
(TRUMP pulls the phone away from BANNON, who grabs it back. BANNON shoves him away and the three fall to the ground struggling for the phone, punching and kicking in a Dagwood-Bumstead-style fight. They shout and snarl then, offstage right from TRUMP's lower colon, comes a rhythmic, thumping thud. The sound grows louder. The walls begin to pulse. They stop fighting and cock their ears)
BANNON: What's that?
TRUMP: Sounds like it's coming from my lower colon. (The sound grows louder as if it— whatever it is—were coming closer. CONWAY crawls over and peers into the murky tunnel)
BANNON: Can you sec anything?
CONWAY: I can't....It's too dark, it ...Oh, my God!
BANNON: What is it? (peers over CONWAY'S shoulder) My God, it's horrible!
CONWAY: The stench!
BANNON: It's grotesque!
TRUMP: Hillary, is that you? (He crawls over next to them and takes a look He frowns then beams.) My tumor... It's my tumor!
CONWAY: It must have been irradiated by the bombs' It's glowing!
TRUMP: Look at the size of it!
BANNON: It's getting bigger!
CONWAY: And it's coming toward us! It's alive!
BANNON: No! No!
(The pulsing sound becomes deafening; the nails begin to buckle and an orange glow shines from the tunnel)
TRUMP, CONWAY and BANNON: Arrrrrgh!
BLACKOUT