What will the animatronic Trump say when it is installed at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom later this year? It is a question on everyone’s mind. Since winning the presidency, President-Elect Trump’s rabid disciples have produced a litany of potential sound bites:
“Knock the crap outta them, would you? Seriously. Okay?”
“What’ve you got to lose?”
“We’re gonna build a wall!”
Walt Disney Company CEO Robert Iger is unsure how to proceed. In today’s America, a delicate dance is done whenever discussion lands upon this problem. Journalists, activists, the aggrieved of every color and stripe–all find themselves variously harassed: followed home by unmarked cars, slapped with malicious litigation, or simply bleeding from the mouth–-even at this administration’s embryonic stage of development. The President Elect’s swift action against its foes, political and otherwise, gives pause to denigrators and proponents both.
“Certainly the lion’s share of what President-Elect Mr. Donald J. Trump is known for saying is perhaps unsuitable for your average family’s ears. We might have to just make something up. But then, the backlash from his supporters--they’d never stand for that. They can smell a liar from a mile away,” Mr. Iger said.
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Robo-Donald itself stands six foot, two inches, must as its flesh-and-blood doppelgänger, though at 375lbs of cable, latex, and horse hair, it is actually a bit lighter, and surprisingly, much less dense.
“The problem is,” one lead engineer, who wished to remain anonymous, informed me, “how do you inspire wholesome, American family values in park visitors from someone elected on a platform of--greatness?” He looked apprehensive and sleep-deprived as we strolled through Epcot Center’s forthcoming Russian entry to the theme park’s World Showcase–-a huge swathe of grounds currently undergoing a renovated expansion-–whose plans have been approved to annex significant square footage from the adjacent China, heretofore the attraction’s largest exhibit. It has also been Epcot’s biggest draw to date. However, at a recent ceremony unveiling the plan, at which The Donald was invited to speak, he gravely asserted, “That’s all about to change, I promise you.”
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I took a tour of Disney’s internal R&D facility just outside Orlando. Deep within the bowels of the main animatronics wing, Paul Ryan nervously tweaked the vacant hulk leaning in the corner. Bundles of wiring, run like IV tubes into and out of an assortment of electromechanical equipment, and the figure’s dead-eyed squint into space, gave the impression the thing upon which I gazed was the unhappy result of Robocop interbred with Early Man.
As the House Speaker, safety-goggled and clutching a titanium clipboard, made one calibration after another with meticulous care to the President-Elect puppet slouching (nude, save a discreet fig leaf of bubble wrap tucked like a napkin into the profound gut) before us, I posed the question to him: What will they have the animatronic Donald Trump say to visitors, when it takes its place in the mildly-popular ‘Hall of Presidents’ exhibit?
“We’re working around-the-clock to iron out all of the kinks,” went his ambiguous response. “He can’t say anything right now; he just vomits hydraulic fluid.” Speaker Ryan gestured at the crusting slime dribbled from Donald’s mouth and puddling at the statue’s feet. “Consensus is it looks like urine, sorta smells like urine, though down here we prefer the generic term, “liquidity.” he laughed. “Sorry, bad joke. It’s just simpler! Anyway the big hurdle isn’t what he says at all. It’s getting the voice right. It’s gotta be believable. ‘Plausibly Human’ is our mantra. Few of the software guys call him the Terminator. The tone, the depth, the pitch. It’s all wrong right now.”
Indeed it is.
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As I left, another figure caught my eye, draped in a tarp, standing dormant in the hall. I stopped a passing scientist and asked about it. “Yeah, that one,” he said, “It’s a shame. She was...uncanny. Very lifelike. Would’ve been real nice to show her off. But,” he concluded, “What can you do? She was just a prototype. Proof of concept. Wasn’t built to run.” With that, he scuttled away, leaving me to ponder his words, and the coming spectacle, in the hall’s pregnant silence.
“Knock the crap outta them, would you? Seriously. Okay?”
“What’ve you got to lose?”
“We’re gonna build a wall!”
Walt Disney Company CEO Robert Iger is unsure how to proceed. In today’s America, a delicate dance is done whenever discussion lands upon this problem. Journalists, activists, the aggrieved of every color and stripe–all find themselves variously harassed: followed home by unmarked cars, slapped with malicious litigation, or simply bleeding from the mouth–-even at this administration’s embryonic stage of development. The President Elect’s swift action against its foes, political and otherwise, gives pause to denigrators and proponents both.
“Certainly the lion’s share of what President-Elect Mr. Donald J. Trump is known for saying is perhaps unsuitable for your average family’s ears. We might have to just make something up. But then, the backlash from his supporters--they’d never stand for that. They can smell a liar from a mile away,” Mr. Iger said.
------
Robo-Donald itself stands six foot, two inches, must as its flesh-and-blood doppelgänger, though at 375lbs of cable, latex, and horse hair, it is actually a bit lighter, and surprisingly, much less dense.
“The problem is,” one lead engineer, who wished to remain anonymous, informed me, “how do you inspire wholesome, American family values in park visitors from someone elected on a platform of--greatness?” He looked apprehensive and sleep-deprived as we strolled through Epcot Center’s forthcoming Russian entry to the theme park’s World Showcase–-a huge swathe of grounds currently undergoing a renovated expansion-–whose plans have been approved to annex significant square footage from the adjacent China, heretofore the attraction’s largest exhibit. It has also been Epcot’s biggest draw to date. However, at a recent ceremony unveiling the plan, at which The Donald was invited to speak, he gravely asserted, “That’s all about to change, I promise you.”
------
I took a tour of Disney’s internal R&D facility just outside Orlando. Deep within the bowels of the main animatronics wing, Paul Ryan nervously tweaked the vacant hulk leaning in the corner. Bundles of wiring, run like IV tubes into and out of an assortment of electromechanical equipment, and the figure’s dead-eyed squint into space, gave the impression the thing upon which I gazed was the unhappy result of Robocop interbred with Early Man.
As the House Speaker, safety-goggled and clutching a titanium clipboard, made one calibration after another with meticulous care to the President-Elect puppet slouching (nude, save a discreet fig leaf of bubble wrap tucked like a napkin into the profound gut) before us, I posed the question to him: What will they have the animatronic Donald Trump say to visitors, when it takes its place in the mildly-popular ‘Hall of Presidents’ exhibit?
“We’re working around-the-clock to iron out all of the kinks,” went his ambiguous response. “He can’t say anything right now; he just vomits hydraulic fluid.” Speaker Ryan gestured at the crusting slime dribbled from Donald’s mouth and puddling at the statue’s feet. “Consensus is it looks like urine, sorta smells like urine, though down here we prefer the generic term, “liquidity.” he laughed. “Sorry, bad joke. It’s just simpler! Anyway the big hurdle isn’t what he says at all. It’s getting the voice right. It’s gotta be believable. ‘Plausibly Human’ is our mantra. Few of the software guys call him the Terminator. The tone, the depth, the pitch. It’s all wrong right now.”
Indeed it is.
------
As I left, another figure caught my eye, draped in a tarp, standing dormant in the hall. I stopped a passing scientist and asked about it. “Yeah, that one,” he said, “It’s a shame. She was...uncanny. Very lifelike. Would’ve been real nice to show her off. But,” he concluded, “What can you do? She was just a prototype. Proof of concept. Wasn’t built to run.” With that, he scuttled away, leaving me to ponder his words, and the coming spectacle, in the hall’s pregnant silence.
Tariq Shah is a writer living in New York, and a student in the St. Joseph's College Writers Foundry MFA program. His chapbook, a sedge of bitterns, was a finalist for the 2015 No, Dear / Small Anchor Press chapbook contest. He was born and raised in Illinois, and has works appearing or forthcoming in King Kong Magazine, Denver Syntax, TASTY Magazine, BlazeVox, The Rampallian, and other publications.