'That diet didn't last, I see, Professor?'
'I tried. But...you know what they say, Bettina. One cannot simply turn a wrench and hope to create life. There must be chocolate.'
Professor Frank Smith barely glanced at his young, attractive lab assistant as he gazed, transfixed, at the thing taking form in the plastic tank, while absent mindedly fiddling with the wrapper of the Twix he was about to eat. The culmination of his life's work.
Bettina gave a shy smile, and stared at the being, hooked up to the machines which helped it breathe and kept it alive. An intelligent girl, yes, Frank thought. She would go far in life. Especially if tonight's experiment was a success, and he, Frank Smith, could rescue what was left of the good old USA from its five hundred year period of gloom and despair.
Bettina was staring at the tank. Frank turned to her and smiled fondly, like a kindly grandfather.
'It won't be long now, Bettina,' he said. He stroked his beard.
'You know, I was the only one willing to work on this project. The other scientists wouldn't take it. Frank, you're a fool, they said to me.'
Bettina nodded, her face blank. She waited patiently for her boss to finish. It was almost time to administer the creature's final injection. Bettina was partly working in this job to assist her own academic ambitions, partly as it provided her an interesting story to tell at parties. Wow! Frank Smith, the famous geneticist! What's he like to work with? His work is the best in the field. What's he like as a boss? It must be so exciting!
However, she had not shared this particular aspect of Frank's story with anyone.
Some things had to be seen to be believed.
'What do they think now, Professor?'
Frank took a bite from the Twix. 'They think I'm a fool,' he said, his mouth full of chocolate and caramel. 'I'll show them I'm a brilliant, crazy fool!'
'You're not a fool,' Bettina said, but Frank went on a tangent of his own. He gestured to a picture on the wall. The picture was of the 45th president of the US, who in Frank's view was the greatest of all time. Bettina had been a little taken aback to see the portrait on the wall at first, but had soon learned it was one of her boss's many eccentricities.
'One of the many, many things this man appreciated,' Frank said, gesturing to the smiling figure who was giving the thumbs up in front of the American flag. 'Was the fact you need madness in order to achieve greatness. Isn't that a very true statement?'
'I, er, guess so,' Bettina said. Frank stared lovingly down at his creation. Hanging from the ceiling behind them, a batch of yellow fibres was starting to grow towards the ground. Once Frank's experiment was complete, he would pluck some of these sand-coloured strands and begin to shape them into the distinctive hairstyle of the man in the portrait on the wall.
As a young boy Frank had grown up listening to stories of how this man had made America great again, how he had built a great, great wall on the Mexican border and created millions of jobs. Tragically, he had been assassinated by a rogue CIA spy, which had ushered in an era of doom and decline which had lasted a hundred years and showed no sign of ending. The president and his lost legacy had passed into legend, but it was a legend people like Bettina were too young to understand.
Now it was time to bring the legend to life.
It was time to Make America Great Again.
Suddenly Bettina jumped, a look of horror on her face, interrupting Frank's daydream about his hero. Her face was pale and her hands trembled as she stepped back from the tank as if she had been burned.
'What is it?'
'It's alive! No wait, sorry, it's just gas,' a shaking Bettina said, sitting down on the nearest chair and handing Frank the solution she had been making up for the last half an hour.
'Don't be nervous,' Frank said, as he prepared to give the creature its final dose and press the button which would activate it into life. He patted its bald head, his finger hovering on the switch. The memories and thoughts of the original Donald John Trump had been downloaded into Frank's creation three months ago. As he pressed the button and the machine's hum grew increasingly high pitched he knew all he had to do was wait.
His pulse racing, he turned around and saw Bettina had taken out a cigarette. As she stood up, Frank noticed her clothes were brushing against the artificial yellow fibres she and Frank had been working on in the lab to complete the look of the great scientist's finest achievement.
'Careful with that cigarette,' Frank said, his voice tetchy. The fibres he had created, an approximation of the original but the best thing he could do in the absence of an original sample, were highly flammable; he had discovered that to his cost last Friday.
'I'm going outside,' Bettina laughed.
'I'm not kidding. Don't get them on your clothes near a flame. Stand back! Wouldn't want that 'hair' to catch fire again.'
Bettina nodded. 'Of course,' she said, brushing the yellow strands off her clothes and walking out the door. The whole deal in this lab, Frank, the bald Donald clone, the strands of artificial hair hanging like icicles from the ceiling, all of it was just too weird. She would have to write a book one day.
