Archive of Our Own

A while back, someone in Doug Wreden's Twitch chat started a running joke that he kept all of his viewers imprisoned in his basement. That he kept them starving and crowded down there in the dark, forced to admit that he's good at 2D platformers.

That's not true…or at least, it’s not quite the truth. While he doesn't use it to imprison his own unruly viewers, Doug's basement is still far from innocuous.

In fact, his basement biomechanical laboratory is downright evil. It's dedicated to his true goals, and those aren't exactly benign. He doesn't want to do something like making ridiculous things happen in Skyrim or Grand Theft Auto, although those are great trial runs. No, his real goal is far more ambitious. He wants to make those things happen in reality.

Gravity, time, other people. It doesn't matter what- all Doug wants is absolute control, and people are the easiest force to start with. Today, Los Angeles, tomorrow, the world.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like today will be Los Angeles at all. His plans are still very much a work in progress, hence the messy state of the lab.

Time seems to melt away whenever Doug is in his laboratory. What feels like only an hour of carefully weighing and measuring out chemicals to prepare sample plates winds up being nearly seven hours and suddenly, it's well past when he said he'd stream today.

Programming the chip that will turn the population of Los Angeles into a population willing to do his bidding and execute his crazy ideas was the easy part. Most of his education was computer science, after all. The hard part is coming up with the perfect neurotoxin to make people not realize what's even happening when he starts rolling out his master plan. And a coating for the chip that will keep the body from rejecting it straight out. And a delivery mechanism that doesn't fail after a few tests.

And, and, and. He's only been getting further and further into the weeds, pushing himself to work faster, desperate to figure out how to make this work. Somebody's got to be getting suspicious of what he's doing...or maybe he's just paranoid of being caught. It's become a sort of obsession, and he'll either succeed or burn out and crash spectacularly.

Either way, he has to keep up some sort of normal persona, and he got lucky with the whole streaming thing. A job that has hours he sets, that he's good at (apart from the 2D platformers), playing video games...dream come true. Unfortunately, he still has to do that job, and he's an hour and a half late to the stream he said he'd do.

He practically throws a set of freshly prepared petri dishes into the incubator, setting the temperature and yanking off the lab coat and goggles on his way up and out of the lab. Thankfully, he thought ahead and did all the prep work for the stream yesterday, staying up until one in the morning to finish it (leaving him working on only a few hours of sleep) but his viewers are definitely going to realize he's late. He swipes a bottle of chocolate milk out of the fridge and turns on his PC to get the stream started.

Once everything has actually loaded, he takes a quick glance at the camera preview for the stream and realizes he has flecks of agar in his hair. Shit. He's been getting sloppy. Doug grabs a tissue and wipes as much of it out of his hair as he can, quickly scanning the rest of his body for any more lab detrius. Thankfully, his hair seems to have gotten the most of it, so he gives it one last wipe down, takes a breath to calm his nerves, and starts the stream.

"Right on time," Doug says, trying to even out his heart rate as much as possible. Five minutes from lab to live, not bad. Only ninety minutes late, and he can lie about that. There's been storms in the area, lots of lightning screwing things up, he can pretend he had an internet outage. Or something along those lines.

Thankfully, Twitch Chat doesn't seem to think anything is amiss, other than the lateness. They haven't cottoned on to any definitely illegal evil schemes, and with a little luck and a lot of work, they never will.

The first few minutes of any stream are thankfully predictable, with people rehashing the joke of the stream from the previous day. There's some funny messages, some sweet ones, some really terrible jokes. Par for the course.

Once he finally gets into what he prepared, a Skyrim mod he's been tinkering with for a while now that makes the entire game a complete mess (more than it already is- it is Skyrim, after all), the stream goes smoothly. No tech issues, only minor coding errors that actually get resolved in five minutes, and his chat actually tells some funny jokes. They also get obsessed with the way the green screen is a little fucked up in the bottom corner and start yelling about a "break in reality", which is a little annoying, but it's also kind of funny, and Doug's pretty sure he can fix it once he actually gets a chance to work on it.

Speaking of fixing things, while he's running around throwing magic at things that should absolutely not be solved with violence, he gets about a half-dozen new ideas for more tests to run. The notebook that perpetually sits on his desk by his keyboard fills up with his thoughts on what he's been doing in his lab lately. All it takes is a little distance, something else to occupy the front of his mind for his subconscious to come up with new plans.

The stream ends up going on far longer than he thought it would- just about seven hours, before he finally gives up on the challenge, still unsuccessful- leaving him drained. Three monitors of visuals constantly battling for his attention, plus all the auditory input, makes it so he's mentally exhausted by the end of a long stream. It's why he likes going for runs after streams- he can get himself moving and turn his brain off for a while.

But today there's still more that needs to be done downstairs. There's always more to be done, and it feels like a constant race against time- today, it feels even more essential for him to keep going. Surely somebody is noticing what he's doing. The Fedex guy has to be getting suspicious with all the packages Doug gets from Sigma Aldrich and Thermo Fisher, at the very least.

So once he’s done with his stream notes, it's back down to the lab for him. His stomach growls as he descends the ladder, and he sighs. Right, long stream, forgot to take a snack break. Good thing he keeps snacks in his lab, in the corner where he keeps things that aren't chemicals.

The bottle of olive oil on the shelf above the sink is about half full. Which makes sense- it's been three days since he opened it. Sure, people think he's insane because he gets a significant portion of his daily calories from straight-up olive oil. But it's convenient. It's easier and faster to take a shot or two of oil before starting work than it is to cook and eat a "real" meal. It's not that weird once he puts it that way- it's like making a smoothie, just even faster.

And it doesn't involve cleaning a blender. Which makes it even more sensible, really. Washing a blender is a pain in the ass.

So he downs two shots of oil, not even flinching at the taste, before washing his hands and re-donning his lab coat and goggles. Safety first, even when you're doing evil.

Most of the tasks he has to do tonight are upkeep on his experiment- feeding a long-running bacterial colony here, checking on a distillation there, interpreting some results he finally got back from the independent lab he has to send some samples to.

Nothing major- just things that need highly specialized, very expensive, very large pieces of equipment to run. And more importantly, nothing that he sends in for analysis can be entirely traced back to what he's doing. It's all puzzle pieces of a larger whole. Sure, it's stressful to keep track of what goes where- can't send everything everywhere, someone might figure it out- but it'll pay off. He has to believe in that.

The regular experiment upkeep takes a full hour, and then he's on to working on one of the ideas he thought of during the stream.

It gets later and later. There's no windows into the basement, and the only clocks are the tiny ones in the corners of the computer monitors (the one on the wall doesn’t count- it’s perpetually slow), so he doesn't even realize that it gets late enough to be the next day.

Not long after night technically becomes morning, the long hours start catching up to him. Doug's eyelids feel like they weigh a million pounds and his brain feels like a thick fog has settled over it, slowing every thought that goes through. He nearly adds water to sulfuric acid instead of the reverse, barely catching himself before nearly causing a lot of damage.

Getting sloppy. Again. He needs to focus better, not forget such simple things, especially things that would give him very visible chemical burns.

Actually, what he really needs is sleep, but he's so close to making a breakthrough. He makes a deal with himself- start a machine, and he can nap for as long as it takes for that test to complete. And would you look at that, a rack of samples ready to be spun in the centrifuge. He loads them in, sets the timer, and cleans off a section of the lab bench in the center of the room.

Just a quick nap- twenty minutes or so, and then the centrifuge will be done. A quick break to see if he can clear a little bit of the brain fog, and then it's back to work. He slumps forwards in his stool over the lab bench, resting his forehead on his folded arms, and falls asleep almost instantly.

The centrifuge doesn't stop. The samples in the incubator get too hot. The days-long distillation he's had set up goes too far. Lightning strikes and there's a power surge, followed by an outage- no more than a blink for each, but a blink is enough. After everything is over, Doug will spend weeks trying to isolate the why of everything that exactly happened that night. 

Because while Doug unknowingly sleeps for nearly eight hours, too exhausted to wake up after only twenty minutes, something in the corner of his lab starts sparking and smoking when the power surges. It's unobtrusively small at first, then builds up to a massive cloud that's slightly bigger than a person.

It smokes and sparks for about a minute straight, the smoke turning a darker and darker gray, before suddenly stopping.

When the smoke clears, the thirty-eighth President of the United States, Gerald Ford himself, is standing in the corner of his lab. Coughing, but somehow alive and well.

Ford finally recovers from his coughing fit and stands up straight, brushing some dust off his suit jacket, looking around the lab. His eyes widen as he takes it in. So many things compete to catch his eye that he merely mentally catalogs their existence as he gets his bearings, instead of examining any one element closely. 

And what he sees is incredible. He never was a chemist, so this futuristic laboratory is beyond anything he ever did in school. There's monitors thinner than anything he's seen, keyboards and mice in front without cables connecting them to anything. Shelves stuffed with empty glassware that gleams in the fluorescent light, bottles of chemicals with names he's not even going to try to pronounce, other small equipment he can't name. Large, square machines with dials and keypads and blinking seven-segment displays stand against one wall, their purposes completely vague. A sink in the back corner sits by a ladder up into the ceiling, with the smallest shelf in the lab above it, holding only a half-full bottle of olive oil, a folded lab coat, and a roll of paper towels- the brown industrial kind. The whole lab can't be more than five hundred square feet.

Then there's the man in the center of everything. Slumped over what has to be the one clear section of lab bench, he's softly snoring, his brown hair sticking up above where his face is buried in his arms. Gerald can't see his face, but he's clearly asleep. Deeply. He looks well built, yet his broad shoulders are slumped with exhaustion. That man must be responsible for why he's here, he should have answers of some sort. He is wearing a lab coat, after all- he's got to be the one responsible for this.

And considering how he's asleep in his lab, he must not have expected this to happen. Gerald's not a scientist, that's been well-established by now, but he's pretty sure they keep an eye on their experiments while they run. Particularly if they're doing interesting things. Like, oh, bringing him back to life.

Gerald looks around the lab again, and finds a second stool. It might be a while before the man wakes up, and while Gerald's not dead anymore, he's still not in good enough shape to sit on the floor. He sits down on the stool to wait, the soft bubbling of chemicals and humming of electronics providing a backing soundtrack of white noise for him to listen to as he waits.

Hopefully, he won't have to wait for long.

When he wakes up, Doug can instantly feel something is wrong. His back aches, like he was slumped over for twenty years instead of twenty minutes. Everything is stiff and painful to move- he needs to sleep properly on an actual bed at some point, but he's this close to a discovery. He can taste it. All he has to do is the best science of his life.

Doug sits up, back, neck, and hips protesting, pushing his goggles up to his forehead to feel the deep red pressure marks they've made around his eyes. Shit, that's going to take a while to clear up. Good thing he wasn't out for long. He looks up to the clock on the wall, blinking the last of his bleary sleep away and what?

He was asleep for eight hours? That explains the back pain, at least.

"Oh, excellent, you're awake," a man's voice says, and Doug jumps right out of his skin, smacking his knees hard on the underside of the lab bench.

"Ow! Jesus, what the fuc-" He catches himself short as he turns around on his stool to see the man standing in the lab. "Who are you? And why are you down here? Scratch that, how are you down here?"

"Gerald Ford," the man says like it explains everything, standing and extending his right hand for a handshake, and Doug's jaw drops.

It sure looks like the man is Gerald Ford, former President of the United States. Which is really weird, mostly because Gerald Ford is dead.

"You're supposed to be dead," Doug says, and instantly realizes that was definitely the wrong thing to say to the former US president standing in his highly illegal and unethical laboratory of evil science. "I mean, not that I'm disappointed you're here, I just don't know why you're here."

"That's a very good question," Ford says, hand still extended. Doug stands and crosses the lab to him, joints popping as he moves to finally shake Ford's hand.

He sure doesn't feel dead. The skin is warm to the touch, the muscles in his hand move fluidly, his chest rises and falls slightly with every breath.

But still. Gerald Ford died in the...early 2000's? Somewhere in there. And he's buried in, like, Michigan or something. Point is, he shouldn't be in California, he really shouldn't be in Doug's lab, and he absolutely shouldn't be alive.

"And your name is..." Ford says, looking down at where Doug is still grasping his hand.

Doug opens his mouth to say his name, then reconsiders. He could give a fake name- but then again, Ford is standing in his lab, and he still hasn't come up with a good evil alias yet. There's a whiteboard in his office, on the wall behind his monitors, with a list of ideas he's been throwing around. So far, none of them seem quite right, not even Diablo the Cheater.

"Douglas Wreden," he finally says, deciding on telling Ford his real name. "You can call me Doug, though."

He realizes he's been holding onto Gerald's hand for an uncomfortable amount of time and lets go.

"Nice to meet you, Doug," Ford says.

"Welcome to 2024," Doug says. "I promise it doesn't all look like this."

"Is that the current year?" Gerald asks. He doesn't seem all that disturbed by that revelation, thank god. He's not sure he could deal with a former president's temporal crisis, not on top of his own scientific one. 

Doug nods. "Yeah. What year do you, um, remember it being last?"

"You mean what year did I die?" Ford asks.

"Yeah, that." When Gerald gives him a look, Doug sighs. "Look, I don't know if it's, like, offensive to ask someone that. I've never brought someone back from the dead before."

"2006," Ford says. "That's when I died, December of 2006."

"Oh, so I was...fifteen," Doug says. "No wonder I don't remember it that well." 

Gerald looks at him a little funny, but it passes quickly. "So are you a scientist, then?" he asks.

Doug shrugs. "Sort of."

"This is a fancy laboratory for someone who's only sort of a scientist, then," Gerald says, looking around again.

"Well, I'm not exactly doing official research," Doug says. The less he can say about the evil part, the better.

"Then what are you doing?"

"Necromancy, apparently." Doug sighs. "And some other stuff." When Gerald actually looks like he wants to ask more questions, he deflects. "Look, there's some pretty delicate stuff down here that I don’t want to break- let's go upstairs, talk about stuff without inhaling fumes."

Gerald seems to be okay with that idea. Doug leaves his goggles and coat on the hook in the lab by the sink (he needs to wash this lab coat...actually, what he really needs is a shower and a change of clothes, but that will have to wait) and leads the way up the ladder.

The ladder comes up into the cabinet under the bathroom sink- Doug is briefly worried that Gerald won't be willing (or able- he doesn't look that old, but still) to crawl out of there, but he doesn't seem to give it much pause.

"Is your lab...illegal?" Ford asks once they’re sitting in Doug’s living room.

...dammit. 

"Why do you ask?" Doug asks.

"It's hidden,” Gerald says, like it’s obvious. “Most people don't hide things that are legal."

"I guess? I don't want to have to deal with OSHA," Doug says, and it's not even that much of a lie. Beyond all the blatantly unethical parts, he’s definitely violating some workplace standards on the side. "If I'm the only person working there, I can't sue myself for unsafe work conditions or breaking labor laws, so I'd rather skip the regulations part of everything. I guess that technically means I'm breaking the law, but I'm not hurting anyone with it. Besides me, but I try not to do that.”

Gerald considers for a moment. “And me,” he says. 

“Well, I wasn’t exactly expecting you,” Doug says. "And you're legally dead, so you can't sue me for it." With that, an awkward silence descends over the two of them. Gerald looks around Doug’s living room, taking in the casual clutter that's around. 

He tried for that clean modern look when he moved from Washington, but he’s accumulated too many random fidget toys and books he’s been meaning to read and various other odds and ends since then to be any sort of organized. And it's not like Doug was expecting guests anytime soon, so it's a little more of a mess than usual.

Though Gerald seems less interested in the random things scattered about, and more interested in the TV. It’s miles ahead of the technology that was around when he died- Doug can’t imagine how disconcerting it would be to see everything jump ahead by lightyears in the span of a few moments. 

Actually, now that he thinks about it, did Ford experience anything while he was dead? Is there an afterlife that he was unceremoniously yanked out of? Or did he just take his last dying breath, close his eyes, and then (to him, anyway) open them right back up again? Can he feel that over a decade has passed? Or is it more like waking up out of a long coma?

Doug glances down at his nearly-dead phone (briefly noting in the back of his mind that he has a lot of missed messages to catch up on). Shit, it's nearly eleven AM, and he was planning on streaming today. At noon. He can't be super late two days in a row.

Thankfully it's only a casual coding stream, an hour or two at most, and he's got a decent idea of how he wants to do things, but still. Gerald Fucking Ford is in his apartment, and probably not going anywhere anytime soon, which means Doug has to figure out where to put him. It's probably a bad idea to have him go back down into the lab, especially when he still doesn't know why he's even here. And he definitely can't be in Doug's office while he streams-that's such a bad idea, he can't even begin to imagine the consequences.

Leaving him in the living room would probably be okay. He could watch daytime TV or something, or find something on Netflix while Doug goes and programs for a crowd.

"Hey, look,” Doug says, apparently startling Ford a little, since he sort of flinches when Doug starts talking. “I have this other thing that I do for my actual job," Doug continues. "I'm a freelance programmer, kind of, and I have to go do that. I probably won’t be too long, a few hours today, but you can feel free to, like, raid the fridge or watch TV or whatever. You remember where the bathroom is.” 

Gerald nods. Good to see that he seems okay with this, at least. "Where's your office, then? Is it much of a commute?"

"What? No, I work from home," Doug says. "It's the door right across from the bathroom."

"Can I see, then?" Gerald asks.

"Um..." Doug trails off. How does he explain that he needs to keep the two halves of his life completely separate- without actually admitting to what he's doing? How does he explain video game livestreaming to a man who has probably at most played Super Mario Bros...when it was new? "I'd rather you stay out of there. I have some confidential stuff I'm working on, y'know?"

As an ex-president, Gerald should realize the importance of confidentiality. He doesn't need to know that it's an outright lie, of course, but he won't know that it's a lie unless Doug tells him- and he's not planning on doing that.

He's not planning on telling Ford a lot of things.

"Alright," he says. "I'll just stay out here, then."

"Thanks," Doug says, and goes towards his office...before remembering that he's still wearing the same shirt he was wearing on stream yesterday, and it definitely looks like he's slept in it.

By the time Doug's showered and gotten a quick snack, it's almost noon again, which means by the time he's set up and hitting the Start Streaming button, it's slightly after noon, and Chat is yelling at him anyway. 

The stream is pretty unremarkable. It's only about three hours, which for coding, is about par for the course. He doesn't get entirely derailed, though he didn't exactly finish what he wanted to do. 

Which is understandable, considering his focus is split even more than it usually is. Most days, he's got enough to think about. Add on an undead former president sitting in the living room, and it's a miracle that he can get anything done at all. 

There's only one moment where he truly panics, and that's when he can hear glass break in the other room. (And then he remembers that the last time he did the dishes, he sort of booby-trapped that one cupboard by putting one too many glasses on that upper shelf- honestly, if Ford hadn't broken that glass, then Doug would have.) For a brief second, he worries that it was audible on stream, but nobody comments on it.

It just kept him on edge, that's all. He can only hope that he doesn't come across as anxious as he feels.

All that to say, it’s about five o’clock when he wraps everything up and leaves his office again. Ford has figured out how to use the TV (and found the remote, Doug was wondering where he had left it), the suit jacket he showed up in draped over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. 

He’s also loosened his tie, by the looks of it, and rolled his sleeves up to the elbows in order to watch what looks like…Breaking Bad. 

Of all the shows for him to watch, he has to pick the one about the secret illegal chemistry lab. It’s funny, if a little too on the nose. 

Doug recognizes this episode as the one where Walter throws the pizza on the roof- which reminds him, he hasn’t properly eaten since…yesterday morning, actually. Between the extra-long stream last night and hyperfixating multiple times on his lab work, he’s just taken a couple shots of oil and had a couple of chocolate milks. 

"So what do you want for dinner?" Doug asks. "I know it's early for that but I haven't really eaten much in the last couple of days."

"I'm not particularly picky," Ford says.

"Good, since I eat like, the same five things every day," Doug says, glancing into the fridge. Looks like he's pretty much out of those five things, too.

Hmm. He needed to go to the grocery store, like, yesterday- now that he's in the kitchen, he can see that he made a list and put it on the fridge and everything- but got distracted, and he obviously hasn't had a chance to do it yet today. "Well, then I'm going to go to the grocery store," he says. "Are you allergic to anything?"

"No," Ford says. "I could come with, though."

"I don't think that's a great idea," Doug says. "I mean, you're technically supposed to be dead.”

"I believe you've reminded me of that fact," Ford says somewhat coolly. "Several times."

"Sorry," Doug snarks, "I don't exactly perform necromancy every day." He takes a deep breath- he doesn't usually get hangry like this either, but it seems like there's a first time for everything today. "Look, I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just trying to, like, wrap my head around this. I don't want this to become a big deal. What if someone recognizes you, or me? And figures out that I've revived you? I don't think anything good would come out of that media frenzy. You'd be a lab rat and I'd be ruined. And I don't think either of us wants that."

"Most people aren't going to see me and assume I was brought back to life," Gerald points out. "It's been seventeen years. They’re going to see me and assume I’m a normal, older American man.”

“True,” Doug concedes. “People don’t see what they’re not expecting, and nobody expects you.”

"Then I can at least go to the grocery store with you. It's not like those have changed much in the last several years," Gerald says. "Unless I really did miss a lot while I was dead."

"Okay," Doug relents. "You can go out along with me, but no driving." When Gerald looks annoyed, Doug rolls his eyes. "That's a legal thing. You don't have a driver's license, unless you want to go explain this to the DMV."

Ford shudders. "I'd rather avoid the DMV."

"I thought so,” Doug says. “Get yourself ready to go, I’ll grab my keys,” he says, and looks in the bowl by the door where he empties his pockets whenever he gets home. They aren't there, which means they're either in his lab coat pockets, on the bathroom counter, or in the deep freeze in the lab. (It was one time...okay, twice, but he hasn't been that distracted lately.)

It turns out they're on the floor in his closet, which is one of the less weird places he's left them. They probably fell out of his pants pocket at some point.

Ford's already waiting outside the door when Doug emerges with his keys. "What's this?" he asks, nudging the box sitting there with his foot.

"Oh, good, I was starting to wonder if the post office lost it again," Doug says. "Microwave meal delivery. I suck at cooking."

Ford looks...mostly unimpressed.

"What? I'm really bad at it, and I'm really busy all the time, so I don't have the time or desire to learn." He sighs. "Look, I'll try to cook dinner tonight, and you can judge for yourself."

"You can't be that bad," Gerald says as they get into Doug's car.

"I'm really not, but I just...don't want to spend effort on it, you know? There's about a million other things I'd rather do with my time."

This answer seems to satisfy Gerald, who then shifts to asking him a lot of questions about his car, most of which Doug can't answer. He's never cared much about cars, just if they can get him from place to place. They do see a cybertruck in the parking lot on the way to the store, though, and Doug takes great pride in listing its many, many faults. With each new stupid fact, Gerald gets a more incredulous look on his face, until he's laughing out loud.

It's a nice laugh.

Doug keeps up the conversation as they go through the aisles, trying to find other ridiculous future things to make Ford laugh, until Gerald stops short behind him.

"What is it?" Doug asks when he realizes Gerald isn't right behind him, following his gaze down the aisle, trying to figure out what it is he's looking at. Nothing seems off- there's an old lady looking at the label of a can of peas, a mom with a toddler sitting in her cart, the toddler reaching out to grab at something on the shelf, and a pair of men holding hands, one of them gesturing at the tomato sauce, the other carrying a basket.

Oh. Yeah, that'd probably be it. 

Doug didn't even think about that possibility. He lives in Los Angeles, lived in Seattle before that and San Francisco before that - gay people that are casually out aren't really that novel of a sight. To him, they kind of blend into the background. But to someone like Gerald Ford, who died years before LGBT rights truly got publicly acknowledged, much less legally recognized, it's probably a shock.

So instead of acknowledging it right now in public, where things could potentially go very badly, Doug decides to just be temporarily oblivious. "Did you want to get tomato sauce? I think I already have some," he says, and leads them right past.

They get through the rest of the store without incident, thankfully, even though Gerald doesn’t say anything much more than answering brief questions from Doug, or commenting on how much the prices of things has gone up in the last twenty years. (Doug just hopes Gerald doesn't notice the price of gas on the way home...he'll never hear the end of it. It's already one of the reasons he wants to take over the world. Everything's free when you're the king. Not to mention, if he controls everybody, he can control how much they do or don't drive, meaning he could make it so he's the only one that does so. Boom, global warming solved.)

When they've gotten back to Doug's apartment and unloaded the groceries, Doug gets started on dinner while Gerald peruses his bookshelf. Unfortunately, due to his aforementioned hatred of cooking, he's bad at it, and he winds up burning or undercooking nearly everything he tries to make. Gerald doesn't say anything when he gives it a taste test, probably out of politeness, but the look on his face doesn't lie. Doug has to agree- it tastes horrible.

At least he can make scrambled eggs somewhat reliably, so that ends up being what they have for dinner. They're both very quiet- Doug has no idea what to talk to Gerald Ford about. Most of the conversations he has with people involve modern things- movies, video games, recent and relevant pop culture. He doesn't even know if Ford is one of those people that would get mad if he swears.

Once they're done eating, Gerald sits up a little straighter.

"In the grocery store," he opens, and Doug mentally braces himself. "In the store. The two men together- that's legal now?"

Doug nods. "Nationally since 2015, in California since a couple years before that."

"Hmm," Gerald says, contemplative.

"Is there something wrong with that?" Doug asks, a hint of accusation slipping into his voice.

"I thought it would have happened a little sooner," Gerald says. "Was it a constitutional amendment, or...?"

"Supreme Court ruling," Doug says.

"Interesting. Well, it's good they finally got their heads screwed around right on that."

Of all the things for him to say, that...wasn't exactly what Doug was expecting. He's not disappointed- it's a good thing that Gerald Ford seems to approve of the gays- but it's not something he thought he was going to hear.

Well, it just goes to show, you should never judge a president by his era.

"Actually, the second attempt on my life was stopped by a gay man," Gerald says, almost offhandedly.

"Wait," Doug says, "what? People tried to kill you more than once?"

"It happens, when you're a president," Ford says. "The attempts were actually quite close- one within three weeks of the other. Oliver Sipple was the gay man who saved my life in the second- he passed some time ago, in the eighties."

Doug has no idea how to respond to that, other than "Damn, dude." For a president that Doug thought was boring, Gerald Ford is a lot more interesting than he previously thought. Maybe they will be able to coexist decently as roommates, at least until Doug figures out why the hell he has a ex-dead ex-president in his apartment at all.

There's only a couple problems that Doug can foresee, and one of them comes up fairly quickly. Once it gets to be about nine o'clock, both of them start nodding off on the couch. Which brings up the question- not exactly where Gerald will sleep (he's still got his spare bedroom- Doug thanks his foresight for taking down all the Fat Albert posters and getting rid of all the ball-pit balls two weeks ago. Otherwise, this could have been much more awkward than it already is. As it is, the Bee Movie poster is still in the closet, so he just has to hope that Gerald doesn't go in there), but what he'll sleep in, since that suit doesn't exactly look comfortable.

They're about the same height, and Doug's a little broader than Gerald, so they can probably share most of the same wardrobe. It's a good thing Doug remembered to do laundry the other day, so everything is clean now. And when he brings up the subject, he seems amendable to it, as long as it's only for a few days (and as long as they don't share underwear or socks, which, ew. Doug'll drag him to Target tomorrow or something for that.)

If Gerald ends up living with him for longer than a week or so, they might have to think about more serious living arrangements. But they should be able to get by for a little while.

Gerald looks a little out of place in plaid pajama pants and an IKEA shirt- like taking off his suit softened all his metaphorical sharp edges. It suits him, though. He looks comfortable, which is probably a good thing. He also seems a little shier- maybe the suit is like a self-confidence thing.

"See you in the morning," Doug says, and heads to get ready for bed, even though it's much earlier than usual. 

Despite the fact it's only about 10 PM, he's asleep nearly as soon as his head hits the pillow.

Doug wakes up the next day with a stress headache. He's not unused to them, but they really do suck. He downs a glass of water and some ibuprofen, which should theoretically help somewhat, but from experience, he knows the only true solution is to get rid of some of the stress in his life.

It's too bad he has a resurrected president living with him that he can't tell anyone about. Secrets are stressful, and this is one hell of a secret to be keeping.

At least he's not going to stream today. He wasn't planning on it pre-Ford, but he's definitely not going to be doing it now. Today, he's been planning on editing, doing some meetings with potential sponsors, some general life-maintenance tasks, and maybe attempting to tackle the garbage fire of unread emails that is his inbox.

Ford is already awake (old people- they get up at the crack of dawn) when Doug leaves his room, and he's making breakfast.

"After last night," he explains in lieu of a good morning, "I think I'd rather make my own food."

"Can't blame you," Doug shrugs, and grabs the olive oil Gerald's using.

Ford stares as Doug downs three shots of olive oil in quick sucession, stunned into silence. 

"What?" Doug asks, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "It's easy calories."

"You really will do anything to avoid cooking, then?" Gerald asks.

"I did say I hated it," Doug says.

"Any plans for the day, then?" Gerald asks.

"I figured I'd run some errands, if you want to come along-" Gerald nods "-and then I have more work I have to do."

"It's the weekend, though, right?" Gerald asks.

"I don't really follow a traditional work week- stuff needs to get done, I do it," Doug says. "There's perks and downsides to being freelance."

"Do you mind if I go out and explore the area, then?" Gerald asks.

"I mean, go ahead," Doug says. "This area of town isn't super walkable, but knock yourself out."

"Is it dangerous?" Gerald asks.

"Nah, more like there aren't really very good sidewalks or anything," Doug says.

"Maybe I'll stay in later, then," Gerald says, and that's the end of that conversational thread.

After running a few errands with Gerald, Doug goes into his office again to keep working. Time slips by without him even noticing as he checks tasks off his to-do list.

A knock on the door startles him out of his focus. For a moment, he completely forgets that Gerald Ford is living with him, his mind instead thinking that him and his lab have been found out.

"Are you okay, Doug?" Ford asks, snapping Doug to the present.

"Yeah, why?" Doug replies, trying to calm his suddenly-spiked heart rate.

"Well, it's nearly seven o'clock..." Gerald trails off. It is? Holy shit, it is. Time blindness is a real bitch sometimes. At least he got most of what he wanted to do done for the day, so he doesn't feel too bad about stepping away for the evening.

"Alright, let me just finish this up first," Doug says, although considering he's right in the middle of the project, he just takes a couple notes for things he wants to do later and closes the program.

When he leaves his office five minutes later, Gerald's watching some sports game on the TV. It's just focused on the announcers, so Doug's not sure if it's football or baseball. This time of year, it could be either one, and either way, he doesn't follow sports very much. Instead, he grabs some dinner and the book he's been reading for the past couple days (Project Hail Mary, and it's really good so far) and sits next to Gerald.

"You follow sports much in your day?" Doug asks after a moment, mostly ignoring the game on the TV in favor of his novel. (Now that they're actually showing the game, he can see that it's football. But he doesn't really care more than to tell that one team is wearing the ugliest eye-searingly neon-yellow uniforms, and that whoever's mixing the sound really likes the marching band.)

"Football," Gerald says. "I played in college, you know. University of Michigan."

"You did, huh?" Doug says. He didn't know that. It kinda makes sense, though.

"Sure did. I was a damn good center when I was in school."

It takes Doug a moment to remember what the center actually does, so he can determine whether or not he should be impressed. He's still not entirely sure if he's gotten it right, but he decides to be impressed anyway.

"So you were a strong guy then?"

"I was."

"Prove it," Doug grins.

“Do you have a time machine, then?" Gerald asks. "Do you want to mess with time travel to see me play football?”

Doug thinks for a second. “I mean, I’ve already done the impossible. Might as well.” 

"Aren't you worried about the repercussions?" Ford asks.

"Nah," Doug says. "In fact, while we're messing with the space-time continuum, we should kill my grandfather and get the ticket with today's lottery numbers too," he says. "Go big or go home, right?"

It takes Gerald a moment to realize that he's just messing with him.

"Nah," Doug says. "We'll arm-wrestle for proof."

Gerald grins and rolls his shoulders back. "You're on." 

They go to sit at the kitchen table, the football game still playing in the background. Gerald reaches across the table and grasps Doug's hand. Like yesterday, Doug marvels at how Gerald's hand still feels so lifelike. It should be impossible, but no, he's here, arm wrestling a dead guy. It's like something out of a myth- Doug half feels like he's supposed to be making a deal for his life. 

It's a good thing he knows how to win.

Doug laughs as Gerald's hand hits the kitchen table. "Best of three?" he offers.

"Best of three," Gerald agrees, and promptly loses the second round too. "Best of five?"

"Sure," Doug says, and decides to go a little easier on the former president. It’s not entirely fair to completely beat a guy way older than you, right? It seems wrong, at the very least. 

Of course, he's not going to actually let him win. That would be rude, and besides, he's evil. And letting people win is for good guys.

"Gotcha," Doug laughs, staring at where he's pinned Gerald for the third time in a row.

Gerald's face is already a little red from exertion, but he turns even redder as Doug looks up. Their eyes lock, and only then does Doug realize that their faces are maybe six inches from each other's.

His eyes are a deep blue, his gaze surprisingly shrewd. Except he looks away as Doug holds his eye contact.

Doug finally backs away, letting go of Gerald's hand. "That wasn't entirely fair," he admits. "My older brother taught me a long time ago how to set up a match so you literally never lose."

"And how's that?"

"You have to sit kind of sideways," Doug says, "and try and bring your wrist up , like this."

He demonstrates, and when Ford attempts to replicate it, he sighs. "No, no, like this," he says, standing and going around the table to move Gerald's shoulders into position. For an old guy, he’s still got a shocking amount of muscle definition. "There you go. Now it'll be a fair fight. Best of three?"

"Sure," Gerald accepts.

Doug, of course, proceeds to beat him in two rounds. It's a little harder this time, now that they're on even footing...but not all that much harder.

"I'll believe that you were strong seventy years ago," Doug concedes as they go back to the couch, picking up his book again. "How about that?"

Gerald agrees.

They spend the next two days mostly exploring Los Angeles, doing things like seeing a Dodgers game (which is pretty boring, right up until Doug discovers that it makes for excellent people-watching),  going to a modern art museum because Gerald wants to know more about the 2020s (which just leaves the both of them even more confused), and even taking a day trip up to the Monterey Bay Aquarium (where Doug is sure to show Gerald the otters, pointing out and naming each one swimming around). Doug takes Gerald out to some of his favorite restaurants in Los Angeles, each one being proclaimed as "better than your cooking," which feels like it's become their inside joke.

It feels like a vacation, honestly, as Doug actively avoids thinking about both his ethical and unethical work. Sure, they spend a lot of time sort of hanging out in Doug's apartment, but even then, he doesn't spend as much time at his desk or actively working as he usually does. 

He’s still working, of course, his work never stops, but it’s not quite all-consuming. He sets aside chunks of time to actually do that in the afternoon, which isn't enough time, but it'll have to do. It’s the best work-life balance he’s had in years. Sure, it's more life than work, which is unsustainable from a practical point of view, but Gerald isn't going to be around forever, probably. They can have fun for a week or so before they have to seriously think about the future.

Of course, that's when things start to hit the fan. Life can never be that simple.

Gerald wakes up with a pain in his chest, just like he did the day before, when they went to the aquarium. Except today, it feels almost like he can't catch his breath because of it, like there's something preventing him from drawing a completely full breath. And it doesn't go away in a few minutes like yesterday's did.

It feels like it did about two months before he died.

Something like this was inevitable, he figures, living on borrowed time. But it's deeply disconcerting to feel himself dying again. He sits up, and the pain gets worse, like a dull ember has settled into his chest and every movement stokes the fire again.

This is bad. He should really tell Doug about it, except they had some other stuff planned for the day, and he really doesn't want to ruin Doug's plans. There's nothing better than seeing the authentic happiness and hope in Doug's face when he shows Gerald something he enjoys- even if Gerald isn't a fan, he'll still try to enjoy it, even if just to make Doug smile.

That's what's been getting him in so much trouble, really. Doug's smile. There's something to it that makes Gerald want to see it more and more, want to do whatever he can to make Doug happy.

Except Doug would hate it if he hurt himself by trying to push further. 

He's not sure how much Doug cares about him as a friend, versus as a lab rat, but from his perspective it's definitely weighted heavily towards friend. Or at least friendly acquaintance.

Either way, friend or not quite, he'll tell Doug about it, and they'll decide what to do from there. He gets dressed slowly, gingerly, to avoid making anything worse. (At least he doesn't have to wear a suit- Doug seems to prioritize comfort in his wardrobe, which makes sense for someone that works from their home. Is it common these days for people to work from home like this? Doug speaks of it like it's no big deal, but then again, he also speaks of his laboratory as no big deal, so Gerald's not quite sure what to think.) 

He has to tell him. "So," Gerald starts when they're both sitting at the table, "I've been having this chest pain when I wake up," he says.

Doug looks up, immediately serious. "When did it start?"

"Yesterday," Gerald says, "although it wasn't that bad."

"And you didn't think to tell me about this yesterday? This is serious, don't you realize that?" Doug asks. "C'mon, meet me in the lab once you're finished with that." With that, he gets up from the table and practically runs to the entrance of the lab, muttering under his breath something about

In Doug's lab, Gerald is then subjected to just about any test Doug can think of and also perform in a very much non-medical lab.

Gerald attempts to ask why Doug has an EKG machine and an X-ray and blood testing supplies in his lab, but he just gets a look in response. Yeah, Doug's definitely hiding something down here, but Gerald can't put his finger on what it is. It can't be that bad- he doesn't have any other test subjects down here, unless Gerald's really missed something- but Doug refuses to talk about it in public at all. Hell, he doesn't talk about it much even when they're just upstairs.

Most of the test results are apparently fine, which only serves to make Doug more annoyed.

"Isn't it good that my blood is fine?" Gerald asks.

"No," Doug sighs as he prepares electrode leads. "It means that I still don't know what's going on. You can't treat a mystery. Here, lie down."

Gerald does, and Doug starts attaching the sticky-pads to his mostly-bare (Doug had him exchange his t-shirt for his spare labcoat, which hangs open) chest. "These aren't going to hurt when I take them off, right?" he asks.

"Not too badly," Doug says, almost absent-mindedly. "At least, they shouldn't. But don't do it yet. I'm starting the test now."

They go quiet as the machine does its thing, Doug crossing the room to go throw away the backings from the sticky pads.

Doug sits down and glances down at where the machine is starting to spit out readings.

And then he does a double take, paling when he looks at the readings in more detail. "Shit," he breathes, not even realizing that Gerald can hear him. "That's not good."

"What's not good?" Gerald asks, twisting upright to look at the results. It's not like he'll be able to interpret them, but he wants to see anyways. 

"Lie back down, and don't move. I'm running this again." His voice has gone terse, so Gerald doesn't argue. The tension in the lab ratchets higher as the machine does its thing again, clicking and whirring.

The second set must be worse than the first, since Doug curses aloud.

"What's going on?" Gerald asks.

"Give me a minute to look at it," Doug snaps. Gerald lays back down. "Sorry, I- I'm not sure, okay? I need some time to figure out why this might be happening."

"I'll be right here," Gerald says, and keeps laying down on the table as Doug starts doing something on one of the lab's computers. At least Doug's lab is a reasonable temperature. Every few moments, Doug mutters something to himself that Gerald can't quite catch. Occasionally he stands up and paces, drawing connections in the air with his hands. Gerald wonders what's going on inside his brain right now, what sort of brilliant connections he's making.

"Alright," Doug finally says. "Sit up, you can take those off and put your shirt back on."

Gerald does so. The electrode leads sting a little, but he doesn't really care.

"I think I've figured this out. But it's not good news."

"That's okay," Gerald says. He can handle just about any bad news, right? He handled his own terminal diagnosis years ago, this is just a reprise of that.

"I think..." Doug hesitates, looking downwards. This is going to be hard- might as well rip the bandage all the way off. "Well, for starters, you're probably only going to be alive for the rest of the week."

Gerald blinks. "I'm sorry?"

"Your EKG has some really weird results- hear me out, okay? The electrical signals in your heart are weaker across the board than they should be. The really strange thing is, it's not any particular part of the rhythm, it's all of it. It's almost as if your body's battery is starting to run low, and it's affecting all parts of the signal. I presume. I know we don't really have results from you specifically from earlier this week, so this isn't strictly a scientific hypothesis, but compared to results of other men your age, it's lower across the board. I'm going to need more tests over a longer period of time- like we'll retest tonight and again tomorrow morning- but for now I'm going to assume that you're running out of electrical signals pretty quickly."

"Can you do something about it?" Gerald asks. "Isn't that what a defibrillator is for?"

"That's for correcting abnormal rhythms," Doug says. "And your heartbeat is about as normal as can be- just weaker. And I don't think defibrillation is really going to do much." He sighs. "Honestly, it's not looking good. Considering how little I know about why you're even here, I don't think I can confidently tinker with anything regarding your lifespan. I'm not a doctor."

"That's okay," Gerald says after a long pause. "I'm living on borrowed time anyway, right?"

He stands and leaves the basement slowly, shoulders hunched, leaving Doug to watch him go.

Doug spends another hour or so downstairs, double checking the results just in case he missed something big. He hasn't. It really doesn't look good for Gerald Ford's lifespan. Eventually, he closes down all the windows on the computer and heads back upstairs.

Being in the lab is a little too depressing for now. The smoke from the emotional bombshell will take a while to clear, even with the excellent ventilation he has down there. 

There's a note on the kitchen counter when Doug leaves the basement in Gerald's up-tilted cursive. It takes him an embarrassingly long amount of time to comprehend, mostly since he hasn't had to deal with cursive since learning it in elementary school.

I've gone for a walk. I'll be back in a couple hours.

Doug decides not to go looking for Gerald. It's a lot to process, mentally, and Doug isn't even the one to be dying (again). He’ll give the former president some space to wrap his head around it. 

While he's out, Doug might as well get some other work done, right? He hates to admit it, but Gerald being out of the apartment means he can probably have a decent, less-stressful stream. No weird background noises to distract him. No worrying about anything breaking. He leaves his own note on the back side of the paper (in print letters- his signature is about the only thing he can still write in decent cursive)- Working in my office, I'll be done in a few hours- and goes to set up for another stream.

He hadn't planned on doing anything, but playing some Mario Maker and being heckled will provide some normal, somewhat brain-numbing noise while he processes the scientific upheaval of this morning in the back of his mind. He sends up an announcement on the Discord server saying he'll be live in half an hour, makes sure all his software is still ready to go, and then forces himself to chip away at at least one email for a minute or two.

Most of the emails he skims are junk, but he replies to a few things he's been needing to address for a little while. This little diversion with Gerald has made his inbox management even worse than before, if that’s even possible. 

A Discord message pops up in the corner of his screen, from Eric Pointcrow. you good?

yeah, why? Doug responds before tabbing back out to where he was in the middle of a sentence.

you seem kinda tense on stream lately, Eric writes back.

is it obvious? Doug asks right away.

eh, not really. i've only seen it 'cause I know you so well lol, Eric says, and Doug heaves a sigh of relief. If his friend has barely noticed it, then it's not going to be obvious enough for his viewership to notice.

so what are you procrastinating?

Doug sighs. Sure, sometimes he procrastinates doing the really boring business-side stuff of streaming (and science) by going live randomly (or working on experiments). It's not all that different from washing dishes to avoid doing homework, something he did all the time in undergrad. And he knows when he's doing it, which stresses him out, because now he still has to get the other stuff done. But that's not entirely what he's doing right now. 

nothing that important, he says.

Eric just sends back lmao sure, and that's the end of the conversation before Doug goes live. Some people seem to have noticed that he's streaming at a weird time for him- nearly four in the afternoon- but they're in the minority.

Instead, Chat mostly seems to be latching onto the basement jokes, for some reason. Probably because the first level Doug attempts is called "escap luigis manshon basement," typos and improper capitalization included, and Doug completely fails it because it's a stupid level full of random enemies and those stupid laughing mouths that cover up everything important. 

And each and every one of those jokes, no matter how stupid, sends an irrational jolt of cold fear down Doug's spine. Sure, Gerald isn't allowed in Doug's office, sure Doug has taken every possible precaution to keep his secret identity and scientific abilities a true secret, but it's still possible that someone could figure it out.

Really, it's inevitable. Every secret gets out. Hopefully, Doug will be the one revealing his secrets when he inevitably starts making demands. Once he starts on the real takeover of Los Angeles, nobody will care that he started on Gerald Ford. Most people don't care about Gerald Ford.

Heck, he didn't care about Gerald Ford (at least, beyond a random AI idea) until very recently.

He sure cares about Gerald Ford now, though. And now that he's actually talked to the man, gotten to know him, the man has become a lot less lame in his eyes. Sure, he never won a single election, but elections don't define people. If they did, nobody would ever shut the fuck up about the fact that Doug was the runner-up for seventh grade class president in junior high. 

Actually, if he tells his chat about that, they will never shut the fuck up about it. Just like they're not shutting up about the basement.

After about an hour and a half, Doug can hear the front door open, which is his cue to stop the stream for the day. There's more important things to do right now- he jots down a quick note on his notepad to do a proper debrief document later and heads out into the living room.

Gerald looks up from where he's sitting. "I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting," he says. "I mean, you said it yourself when we met. I should be dead, right?"

Doug sits down next to him on the couch. "Yeah, but you probably kinda get used to being alive again."

"Exactly. I don't want to die again," Gerald says. "I know I don't have a choice. But I just don't want to. Is that really so selfish?"

"I wouldn't say so," Doug says. "It's human nature to want to live, right? It's how we've survived as a species."

"I already got that chance, though," Gerald says.

"So you get a little extra, then," Doug says. "Sometimes it just works out that way. Doesn't mean you're selfish for wanting to hold onto it."

"I know," Gerald says, and they're both quiet for a little while.

"Is there an afterlife?" Doug asks, finally.

"I have a feeling that there is, that there's somewhere I should be returning to, but I can't remember it. Like the very concept was wiped from my mind."

"So you're saying you don't know?"

"I'm saying I don't remember," Gerald clarifies. "I suppose it makes sense. If a higher being, a god or gods, knew that we would come back, they wouldn't want to cause massive rifts over which religion or belief system is the 'correct' one, so better to let sleeping dogs lie when it comes to reincarnation and revival."

"Everyone's right and nobody is, then," Doug muses.

"Exactly. I think what happens after death is supposed to be a mystery nobody alive can solve."

"And the universe made a backup plan, in case anybody actually came back."

"I'll find out again soon," Gerald says. "I wonder if I'll remember this conversation, once I'm on the other side."

They go to bed late that night, both of them subdued. There's a lot to think about. Gerald told Doug about about Betty and his kids- they looked them all up on the internet. It looks like they've all done well for themselves, which is good.

It's closure most people don't get, and Gerald will always be thankful for that.

Later that night, Gerald jolts awake, heart pounding, skin prickling with cold sweat. He must have had some sort of nightmare- except he can't remember a thing about it now. He's never remembered his own dreams, just had lingering bad feelings that make it difficult to get back to sleep.

He glances over at the clock on the nightstand. The red numbers on it tell him that it's just about ten after two in the morning.

Far too early to get up and actually do anything, but then again, he can't exactly go back to sleep. Not for lack of trying, of course. He tosses and turns for a little while, but can't get himself to nod off again.

He looks back over at the clock. It's only been fifteen minutes, but it's felt like an hour. He picks up the empty glass on the nightstand and gets up. Maybe if he moves around a little, he can go back to sleep.

Opening the bedroom door, he can almost hear someone...talking? Once he's filled his glass, he realizes that yes, someone is saying something.

"...is full of eels," the voice says. It's Doug's voice. Is he talking to someone? Who would he be talking to at this time of night? "No, wait, no! Stop that!"

Is he in trouble? Gerald moves towards Doug's bedroom door. He's kept that door, as well as the door to his office, shut tight the entire time Gerald's been living with him, and he's a little curious about what Doug's room looks like. You can tell a lot about a person by the way they organize their space.

"Would you just- ravioli? The hell?" Doug says, and Gerald jumps. He should make sure Doug's okay. He opens the door slowly, hoping he doesn't make any noise, pausing with his hand on the doorknob.

Doug's bedroom is mostly dark, with the yellowed light from the streetlight outside creating stripes through the blinds. It's enough light to reveal that his room is actually rather neat, even if some of the decor clashes a little bit. Doug himself is still asleep, sprawled on his back in the middle of the bed. He's shirtless, covers pooled low around his hips, and that sight in particular causes Gerald to swallow hard for no particular reason.

"...gerbil Narnia," Doug mumbles, and rolls onto his side, away from the door. Clearly, he's not having any issues- just weird dreams.

Gerald closes the door softly. So Doug talks in his sleep. Good thing to know, although he doesn't know when he'll ever use it. Maybe in the morning he can poke fun of Doug for saying nonsense in the middle of the night.

A wave of exhaustion crashes over him, and he steps away from Doug's door. He should go back to bed- maybe now he can finally go to sleep.

Doug wakes up the next morning way too early and with a headache. Not a particularly bad one, like the one from earlier this week, but it still sucks. The stress is still there- perhaps even increased, now that he knows exactly how long Gerald's going to stay alive. 

This whole week has been a headache, honestly. He gets up and starts to get ready for the day, then realizes it's six o'clock in the morning and he doesn't actually want to be up this early. Maybe he'll just take some ibuprofen and go back to sleep. It won't help him from being less tired, but it might get the pain to lessen some.

He curls back up under the blankets and doesn't sleep a wink. He can't get his brain to shut up about what could go wrong with Gerald- what is going wrong with him. About what happens when he inevitably dies.

Around eight o'clock, he finally decides to just get up for the day. It's early, but who cares. He's not going to sleep, he might as well be productive about it.

While he and Gerald are eating breakfast, an idea smacks into Doug (like most do) like a bolt of lighting. He should be preserving some aspect of Gerald Ford's personality, voice, something, for future generations. Maybe he should record a speech of his, but in higher quality this time?

Wait, what if he used that speech and fed it into AI Gerald Ford? That would be cool, right? To have audio for Elevenlabs that isn't grainy as shit? And maybe he can convince Chat that he managed to program something that sharpened the quality with AI, even though it didn't? (His chat is a great testing ground for all of his lies. They just eat things up.)

There's just one tiny problem with that. How is he supposed to explain AI to Gerald Ford? Scratch that, how is he supposed to explain AI Gerald Ford to Gerald Ford himself?

Very carefully.

"So you know how I said I was a freelance programmer, right?" Doug says out of the blue over breakfast that morning. 

"I seem to remember you bringing that up," Gerald says.

"Well, there's this project I did a while back- kind of for fun, kind of to try out some ideas- where I basically made a generative AI of you."

Of all the things that have happened in the last week, that one seems to puzzle Gerald the most. "I'm...sorry? A what now?"

"A generative AI- artificial intelligence," Doug says, and the look of both bewilderment and awe on Gerald's face is honestly hilarious. "Okay, so there's this thing you can do, where you put a bunch of samples of something into an algorithm and it will spit out something new but similar, right? If you feed it a bunch of cookbooks, then it kind of chews it up and spits out new recipes. Not always the right ones, sometimes they're really weird and wrong, like it'll give you a recipe for tomato soup and add like a thousand bay leaves, but it can make new stuff based on the stuff that came before."

Gerald nods. That's about as simple as Doug can make it (and it's definitely an over simplification), so it's good that he's getting it. Another win for explaining things with food.

"So I had this idea to see if I could give one of these AI programs a sort of voice- and I didn't want to use anybody alive, or at least alive at the time- but I needed a voice sample, and there's a recording of one of your speeches online, and I didn't really know much about you at the time besides the fact you were a president and also dead, so I made an AI you."

He pauses, waiting for Gerald to ask some sort of question, not wanting to push too much onto him at once.

"Is there a reason you're telling me about this?" Gerald finally asks. 

"It's been kind of a while since I did that project- it was just a test to see if things worked, so I could make an AI me, and I just remembered that I made AI you, too," Doug says with a shrug. Which is true, that's a big reason why he did it. So what if he's not telling the entire truth, that being that he also built it to keep Twitch Chat from talking incessantly about tax fraud? (And even that didn't work.) "I figured that I should probably tell you about it."

"And that's all?" Gerald asks. Damn it, he knows Doug too well by this point.

"Well, I was thinking about it, and I was wondering if you would mind recording some things to feed into the voice model?" Doug asks. "The speech I pulled from the internet is really grainy, and it just kind of...sounds bad. I want to try adding both high-quality audio and crunchy audio and seeing how the voice program deals with it. If it has a preference for speech quality, stuff like that."

"I can do that," Gerald says.

"Let me go organize my office a little bit, set up the recording program, and then you can come give me some voice material," Doug says. It's not like it's messy in there, but he'll put away the green screen and camera and light. Those would only bring up more questions that he doesn't want to answer. The mic is reasonable, at the very least. Probably.

And while he's at it, he should erase the board of villain monikers. None of them fit, anyways.

It only takes a couple of minutes for him to do that, before he's crossing the line he never thought he would and bringing his lab work into his other life.

"Welcome to my office," Doug says, and Gerald's jaw drops. Doug can only imagine what he must be thinking. Already, things like cell phones in their current forms and video games have astonished him. Three monitors and a whole recording setup? That must be a lot.

"Alright, once I press this button" snapping Gerald out of his shocked stupor, "you can start talking into the microphone here." He adjusts the stand so it's at Ford's height.

"What do you want me to say?" Gerald asks.

"Anything you want to," Doug says with a shrug.

"That's...too broad," Gerald says.

"Do you remember any of your old speeches?" Doug asks.

Gerald sighs. "Not in the slightest. I didn't write the majority of them-" Doug gasps dramatically, and Gerald just rolls his eyes "-so I don't remember more than just a sentence or two."

"You could also just say something weird and random- I don't really need a lot to feed into the AI," Doug says.

"Okay," Gerald says, then smirks. "You know, speaking of saying weird things, did you know you talk in your sleep?"

Doug sighs. "Yes, I know that. Did I say anything really stupid last night?"

Gerald shrugs. "You were talking about..." He pauses, racks his brain. "Gerbil Narnia, if I remember correctly. And ravioli. Does that count?"

"Eh, that's, like, average weirdness for me," Doug shrugs. "I don't really remember my dreams all that often."

"I don't either," Gerald says.

"Alright, then. You ready?" Doug asks.

"Sure," Gerald says. Doug hits the button on the screen that says Start Recording, and starts to speak. Tongue-twisters are always a good fallback. "She sells seashells by the seashore, red leather yellow leather red leather yellow leather, Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers...you need any more than that?"

"No, I think that's good," Doug says, and does some computer wizardry that's too fast for Gerald to follow. You'd think he was born knowing how to use the thing.

 "How does it sound?" Gerald asks. "Or is that something that takes a long time for the computer to do?"

"It shouldn't take long," Doug says. "Give me a minute."

Gerald watches, and a few moments later, Doug sits back with a grin. "Here, give it a listen," he says, handing Gerald his headphones.

"Good morning, imposter president," Artificial Gerald says, voice is only slightly scratchy.

"Oh my god," Gerald says. "How did you-"

"Like I said," Doug says, "I already had the code ready, I just needed some more inputs. Thanks, by the way."

"You're welcome," Gerald says, handing the headphones back. It's a little creepy, to be honest, that Doug can make an artificial him that says anything he wants to. But it's also surprisingly interesting.

"Hey, so I've still got some stuff I need to get done today- this was just an experiment- so would you mind..." Doug trails off.

"Going into the other room for a while? Yeah, I can do that," Gerald says. "You don't get to spend all day working, though. You've already spent enough time in the lab working on me."

"True, but that isn't the job that makes me money," Doug says, "so I still have to work on this."

"I'll come make sure you take a break in a couple hours," Gerald says, and leaves the office.

After Gerald leaves, Doug spends some time on a call with a potential sponsor, then at about noon (he's a couple minutes early today, actually) starts the day's stream.

"So I was thinking the other day, and I decided to see if I could bring Gerald Ford back and make him any better," he says once a decent chunk of people have started watching. "We're playing more Mario Maker, but you can also have Gerald-GPT yell at me."

Chat seems to like that idea, even if it does take a five minute (half-hour) coding adventure. After that, Mario Maker, of course, doesn't go well. The universe is out to get him, by inundating him with troll levels and other stupid things, so his chat is constantly dunking on him for being bad at 2D platormers.

And with Gerald's voice in his headphones constantly, it's really unsettling that the voice program has a better quality. Every time someone redeems the channel point reward to talk to AI Ford, Doug's heart rate spikes, briefly panicking that Gerald Ford is actually in the room with him.

He never is, of course, he respects Doug's space...but that doesn't calm him down one bit.

After about an hour and a half of his chat playing with Gerald-GPT, he decides that he can't take the stress anymore, and ends the stream a little earlier than he had planned to. At some point, he has to preserve what little sanity he has left, so he wraps things up and starts on the stream write-up right away, even though his mind has already started to wander.

This reanimation, necromancy business is a lot more trouble than it's worth, so far. He hasn't figured out a way to replicate his results yet, Gerald has been the cause of so much stress...what is he even going to do with this? Sure, necromancy is cool in theory, but what is it good for in practice? Is it just some cool side discovery that isn't going to have any impact on his life?

And then it hits him.

Instead of having to rely on getting the regular, alive citizens of Los Angeles to do his bidding with an implanted chip, he could just raise an army of the undead, to have them do everything for him. And that would add to the evil shock factor- what could be worse than the guy with the literal zombie army? 

He'd be feared. He'd be respected. And most of all, he'd be in control. Any undead army would have to do his bidding- they'd be so grateful just to be alive that they'd do anything in the first place, and it (probably, he'll need to consult Parkzer for some legal advice) isn't illegal to kill someone that's already dead, so that threat would be effective.

Plus, he could use that chip he's been developing and just...use it. If the army of the undead dies again within a week or two, maybe a couple months, then he doesn't have to worry about long-term viability. There's billions of dead homo sapiens on this planet, and it doesn't seem like decomposition is an issue when it comes to revival. He's got everything he could ever need beneath his fingertips.

All he has to do is replicate the exact conditions that caused Gerald to revive. Considering he was asleep when Ford actually appeared, that's going to be a difficult task, but it's not impossible. Doug doesn't even finish his sentence as he gets up to head down to the lab. When inspiration strikes, he's got to follow it. Gerald watches as he goes, but doesn't interfere.

You can't think of things as impossible when you do science. Especially not evil science.

Really, this whole fiasco is just Clarke's Law. There's no difference between magic and sufficiently advanced science- and necromancy is magic, therefore, necromancy is also sufficiently advanced science. It's not that much of a leap in logic, now that he's broken one law of nature.

Hmm. What can he start with...

...well, he might as well start with Frankenstein, and go from there. A jolt of electricity might create, right? Reality emulates fiction, or is it the other way around?

Doug sets up a small experiment underneath the fume hood, just in case. A coil that will provide a spark, the same chemicals and processes that he was working on when Gerald appeared replicated in miniature. Everything's exactly the same as Doug holds his breath, turning on the power supply to the coil.

It sparks a bit, but nothing of note happens. Doug feels his heart sink into the pit of his stomach.

But just as he's reaching to disconnect the power, a larger spark from the coil jumps into the air- but instead of clearing in a fraction of a second, it continues branching up, crackling and making the hair on Doug's arms stand on end. A swirl of dark smoke and an odd smell fill the small area, before clearing to reveal...a cockroach? That definitely wasn't there before.

Doug slams the fume hood shut, watching as the roach scuttles around for a moment under the glass. It seems to be a normal roach...but it just appeared, out of nowhere. After about five minutes of wandering around, it suddenly stops, keels over, and twitches. Just as Doug is about to open the hood and put it out of its misery, it starts flickering, becoming almost dimmer before it starts to spark and smoke again.

And then it disappears.

Doug just stares at the spot where it appeared-then-disappeared. What the fuck. That...doesn't seem right. From what Doug knows about all of biology, conservation of mass, electricity... really, it shouldn't work like that. But somehow, it does.

He stares at the components out on the lab bench. There’s nothing that’s all that out there lying here, but it all works together to create Iife. What’s the variable that caused it? What’s the change in the setup?

And it hits him, like a bolt out of the blue. The electricity brought that cockroach back to life. The only question is, how did he get enough to bring Gerald back?

Lightning. It has to be.

The lightning storms from the last several days must have caused all of this, must have brought Gerald back. That would be the only thing to cause that much electricity to hit the lab in a single instant. If he harnessed a surge of power that great, even unintentionally, it could react with everything else he has set up and theoretically bring a human back from the dead.

And the amount of current must be determining his lifespan, too. Gerald's EKG from this morning was weaker than the first- the power keeps draining out of him, like a battery on its last legs. The cockroach got a much smaller dosage of electricity, and it died within ten minutes. Oh, this is incredible.

This is what he needs to be working on right now- screw the PCR he had scheduled to prep this week. He runs upstairs and grabs Gerald. He's got tests to run. Questions to answer, and new ones to come up with.

Unfortunately, all this testing means Gerald is in the lab more, which means he's getting underfoot. Doug's willing to explain what he's doing, what all the machines and glassware and chemicals do, but he does need to focus from time to time without worrying about the former president touching things he's not supposed to.

So he's given his Switch to Gerald for now, Smash Bros. already loaded, and Gerald seems to be hooked. He grins as he mashes the buttons, discovering new combos with an almost childlike sense of wonder visible on his face.

That look has been causing no end of trouble for Doug. It's just...distracting, in some weird way. He's given in several times to joining Gerald for a match, just to see the slightly self-deprecating grin on his face when he loses. A smile that gives Doug an odd fluttery, floating feeling in his chest.

It's become a bit of a problem. Gerald's been re-alive for six days now, his time is running out. Doug should be searching for a way to keep him alive, should be searching for a way to replicate his current results with other people, should be finding a way to make Gerald's inevitable death less painful at the very least. But instead he's playing video games just to see someone smile, which isn't exactly very evil of him. 

Maybe he should make rules for his next revival subject. Don't become friends with them- they'll disrupt your work and you'll never get anything done. They'll exist to be lab rats and minions, nothing else. Don't let them play games in your lab. Don't encourage them to keep practicing at those distracting games. (Doug hasn't been letting Ford win- he's not that kind of person- but Gerald has been getting exponentially better over the past couple of days, surprisingly enough. For a guy who was in his nineties when the Xbox 360 was brand new, he's taken to it remarkably well.) And whatever you do, don't let them leave the lab- they'll insert themself into your life, and make it so you're dreading the day they disappear.

Gerald's just special. He was an important guy (well, as compared to the average person) when he was alive, he's the first person Doug's ever reanimated, the rules are different for him.

It's relatively early when they mutually decide to go to bed for the night, which is probably why Doug can't get to sleep. He's fucked up his sleep schedule a lot over the years, and the past week hasn't made it any better, but he was really hoping to make a little bit of a dent in his sleep debt. Get a good eight hours in at least, maybe nine if he's really lucky. It won't help much, this week has been way too stressful, but it can't hurt.

Instead, he's stuck tossing and turning in bed, still thinking about Gerald Ford.

Something keeps drawing him towards this ex-president, and it's more than just the connection they have from hanging out as friends this last week. There's an element to his smile, a spark to his touch, some catalyst that keeps Doug attached to him.

...If Gerald Ford wasn't a man, Doug would say he's in the mid-stage of a crush.

Wait. Where the fuck did that come from?

Well...huh. Gerald isn't exactly the most...conventionally attractive man. He's balding like Doug isn't, his smile could be easily described as unsettling, he's somewhat brash...he's basically the opposite of everything anybody sane would want in a romantic partner. 

But when Gerald smiles at him, touches his hand, says something in that dry tone of his, Doug feels something he's only ever recognized as romantic feelings before. Romantic feelings he's only ever had for women before. Right? Right. 

Okay, maybe not entirely for women. He might be a little bit bisexual. He's never actually had a reason to think about it before. Women are great! They're about half the population and a lot of them are smart and funny and attractive and some of them have even thought the same thing about him, so he's never felt the need to think about the other fifty-ish percent of the population.

Thinking about it, there's some moments from the last few years that have some very interesting connotations if you look at them with a bisexual lens. He never did, at the time, but those things still happened.

Like, guys are hot, right? He can appreciate a good-looking guy aesthetically. But is he attracted to men? And is he attracted to Gerald Ford? That's a different story altogether.

And the more he thinks about it, particularly the days before Gerald's sharp decline in health where they explored the city together and Doug couldn't help but feel a warm something every time Gerald looked at him, the more he realizes that it's a story that ends with a yes. After the past few days, he has to finally admit it to himself. He likes Gerald Ford like that.

Maybe he wouldn't date Gerald Ford, mostly because Ford has maybe twenty-four hours at most left in his life and this is a hell of a revelation to spring on a guy, but he would probably kiss him. He won't, because again, hell of a revelation, but if he was given the chance, well, he wouldn't squander it.

Gerald wakes up on his last day alive and stares at the ceiling.

Surprisingly, he hasn't actually really looked at it before this morning. It's a dusty popcorn ceiling, the pale sunlight coming in from behind the blinds to show its landlord-white flat paint. Between the dust and the crags, he can see pictures like the kind that show up in the clouds on a pleasant day. The kind that are too subjective to be more than imagination.

It's all the little details he's noticing, really. Things he never truly appreciated before he died for the first time, he now feels like he has to drink in and memorize. This is what it feels like to wake up- it's the only time he'll ever do it again.

His chest still hurts, even worse than before. If he gets up too quickly, he knows his head will pound and spin, so he continues laying down, watching the slowly-brightening sunlight softly illuminate the room.

It's odd, to be explicitly faced with his own morality like this again. Twenty-four hours or less left on his life, for certain. He feels tired, a deep ache in his bones that tells him he doesn't have much time left- last night’s twenty-four hour estimate was undoubtedly generous on Doug's part. Probably to keep him from panicking- although there was probably some uncertainty with the science.

He’s no doctor, hell, he's not even a biochemist like Doug. He doesn't know the science. All he can feel is the deep intuition that he's not going to be around much longer.

And if he's truly honest with himself, he's mostly okay with that. There'll never be enough time for him to see as much as he wants to now, but one week of borrowed time is close enough to have given him a good taste of the future he never reached.

He'll take what he got- the time he spent with Doug, doing things he'd never done before, seeing that the future has always been about moving forwards and making things better. 

Speaking of Doug, Gerald can hear him out in the hallway, so he finally braces himself for the pain and pushes himself first to a seated position, then to standing.

Honestly, once he's up, it's not so bad. If he takes some ibuprofen and doesn't do anything too suddenly, the pain should be down to a dull roar.

They spend their morning like they have been- Gerald cooking and Doug "cooking", talking about nothing at the table, going for a slow walk around the neighborhood until the pain gets to be a little too much for Gerald. After they return, Doug shepherds Gerald down into the laboratory for more testing.

At this point, Gerald feels like it's futile to take blood and measure his heart's electricity, but Doug insists. Once that's done, the last test of the blood still going in the background, they sit at one of the lab benches, the hum of the machines in the background providing white noise for their conversation. Mostly, they talk about nothing, with periods of not-entirely-uncomfortable silence stretching between asinine topics. It feels like they're dancing around the topic clearly at the forefront of both of their minds, refusing to face the reality for fear that it'll come faster.

"Any last regrets?" Doug finally asks, spinning his glass ball around in his hands absently. He calls it contact juggling, and it's very impressive. He spent an hour on Wednesday trying to teach Gerald how to do a simple trick with it- Gerald just dropped the ball on the floor a dozen times. At least it was upstairs, where there’s carpet to absorb the impact. "Bucket list items you think we can get done down here?"

"You know," Gerald says, "If you'd asked me that a week ago, I'd have said I didn't have any. I've been living on borrowed time, or at least that's what it feels like."

"But..." Doug says, catching onto the implied second part to his little speech. There's always a but.

"But I... I feel different now." He goes quiet. "I've done a lot of introspection."

"And?"

Gerald sighs. "I don't know how to say this, but..." He stops. Looks at Doug- really looks, at his open face, his casual posture, the way his hands still the glass ball under Gerald's gaze.

He decides, in that half-second of hesitation, to not say what he planned to say after all.

At least, not with words.

Instead he stands, steps forward, and tips his head down to capture Doug's lips in a soft, lingering kiss.

The glass ball falls out of Doug's hands and smashes to smithereens on the floor. Doug doesn't even notice. Instead, he kisses back, eyes fluttering shut, one hand gently coming to rest on Gerald's jaw.

"Oh," Doug says when they finally step away from each other, hand hovering in mid-air where Gerald just was. "I- um- oh ."

"I'm sorry," Gerald says, pointedly looking anywhere but Doug's face.

"What for?" Doug asks, somewhat distractedly, like he's still a little dazed.

"For- for assuming. That you'd be okay with that. And surprising you like that."

"I mean, it was a good surprise," Doug says. Gerald looks up at him. He's got a shy smile on his face, but the part that really stands out is the affection in his eyes.

"Really?"

"Yeah. For a final bucket list item, that's pretty good." Doug stands up, moves closer, and kisses Gerald again.

It's Gerald's turn to be surprised, but he doesn't show it outwardly.

Now that they've gotten over the initial shock, Gerald can appreciate that Doug is a very good kisser. His facial hair adds a rough, definitively masculine texture to everything, making Gerald a little weak in the knees. Doug takes advantage of that weakness to turn the both of them so Gerald's back is up against the lab bench. Gerald's never kissed another man before, but Doug is setting the bar very high. Almost unconsciously, he reaches up and runs his hand through Doug's hair- it's far softer than it has any right to be, Doug shivering almost imperceptibly under his touch.

Gerald gasps in sudden pain, a burst of hot fire radiating through his chest. Doug steps back, concern painted over his face. "Are you okay?" he asks. "Did I-"

"No, no," Gerald waves him off. "I- I just don't think I have much time left."

"Here," Doug says, "maybe move to where you came into the lab? That might help."

They move to the corner, Gerald leaning heavily on Doug but still forcing himself to stand. Moving to that corner only makes the pain worse. It comes in waves, each crest a little worse than the last.

"Hey," Gerald says softly, between winces. "Thanks. I really enjoyed getting to know you."

"Me too," Doug says. "Hey, maybe I'll see you again."

"You'd try to do that?" Gerald asks.

"Yeah," Doug whispers. "Yeah, I'd bring you back." He's not even sure if he's lying.

With that, Gerald Ford starts...blinking, almost. It's almost as if he gets dimmer intermittently, the color washing out of his body and clothes before coming back. Then he starts sparking like a downed power line, and a swirl of black smoke that smells like rotting flesh creeps around Gerald's feet. Doug covers his nose with the sleeve of his lab coat as the smell gets stronger. He's dying before Doug's very eyes, and Doug is completely powerless to stop it.

It has to happen, but Doug has to almost physically force himself from reaching out and taking hold of him, like he can save Gerald from falling off the cliff, never to return.

The smoke climbs higher. Something prickles in the corners of Doug's eyes- it's got to be the smoke, got to be the smell, nothing else.

(If you love them, let them go.)

The smoke clears around Gerald's face for the briefest of moments. Gerald smiles sadly and makes eye contact with him- Doug can't bring himself to look away. The man is dying again, someone has to witness it. He has to witness it.

(It's not love, it was never love, but it was affection, and that's close enough, right?)

Lightning strikes inside the lab- unconsciously, Doug closes his eyes and turns away against the light, but there are still spots swimming behind his eyes when he looks back.

Gerald Ford has merely disappeared into nothing in the split second Doug wasn't watching. Doug's knees give out and he sinks to the floor, lab coat flared out on the floor around him, head swimming.

He's gone.

Gerald has simply disappeared into thin air.

Doug doesn't know exactly how long he spends staring at the spot on the floor where Ford disappeared. An hour, maybe two. Maybe longer, the clock on the wall is still running fast. There's so much to process from the last week, so much so that his brain doesn't want to expend any energy on mundane tasks like getting up.

He didn't get much done, qualitatively speaking, and his other job was just another week of honestly forgettable streams, mostly to keep himself sane by doing normal things, but everything else? Everything else turned upside down. All his theories, all his ideas, all his ambitions. His identity, his sense of self.

He continues to stare at the floor, mind spinning ideas at a thousand miles an hour, yet going nowhere. Rehashing the last week, re-contextualizing everything he's been working on.

At least there's one bright spot in this whole mess- he doesn't have to get rid of a body. That'd get him on way too many radars, and then his lab would be shut down, and he'd be fucked, just when everything is getting interesting. But Gerald just up and disappeared into thin air, leaving nothing except for some foul-smelling smoke and a confusing mass of feelings. The smoke is already beginning to disperse, the ventilation fans sucking away the smell, but the feelings are here to stay.

He tips backwards, sprawling out on the ground, staring at the ceiling. His limbs feel heavy, like he's melting into the ground, all his energy sapping out of his body and going towards his mental processes. 

Forget any old villainous backstory he had before. This is what fuels him.

He's got to enhance his control over his necromancy-his undead army can't be dropping dead in a flash of light after only a week.

He's got to strengthen his control over himself- he can't fall for every person he revives.

He's got to work seriously on controlling the world- he's broken a fundamental law of nature, and it's just begging to be exploited. If he doesn't, someone else will, and he can't have that.

(Gerald Ford is going to have to remain a secret. He might not be well versed in his newly discovered bisexuality, but it doesn't look good for him to admit that he's into the now-dead-again Gerald Ford. Or should he say he was into the formerly-alive Gerald Ford? There's no reasonable way to explain any of this without raising a lot of questions.)

On the lab bench, Doug's phone goes off with a ping. Doug finally stands up, physically shaking himself out of the fugue state he's been in for the past while. After the past week, he's finally found a new determination. This is the spark he's been waiting for- this is the breakthrough he's been needing. Can he bring back specific people, how long can he make them stay- can he force them to die or shut down without resorting to traditional methods of murder?

He's got so many questions to investigate, so much research to do- but for the first time in the last six months of science slogging, he's more excited than anxious about it. Finally, everything is falling into place. He'll be unstoppable.

On the lab bench beside him, Doug's phone pings again with another alert. Severe lightning storms in your area. Shelter in place advised. 

Doug looks over at the spot where Gerald Ford disappeared, realizing the setup from the original revival hasn't been touched at all.  

And he laughs, and he laughs, and he laughs.