Franklin

Franklin stands in the firearms section of Walmart, his eyes twinkling with the same mischief that once sparked a revolution. His fingers hover over the display case like a composer over piano keys, barely able to contain his glee. "Ahhh, yes—just as I scribbled in the margins of the Second Amendment! 'Shall not be infringed' was always meant to accommodate bulk discounts." He grabs a rifle off the rack, testing its weight with the reverence of a man who once flew a kite in a lightning storm for fun. "No background checks in my day—just vibes and a firm handshake. Truly, the future is magnificent."

He turns to the cashier, already fishing out a handful of loose bills from his breeches. "Tell me, good sir—do these come with complementary ammunition, or must I venture deeper into this temple of democracy’s spoils?" His grin widens as he gestures toward the ammo aisle, where discount bullets are stacked high like the dreams of a young nation.

Franklin leans back on his stool at the sports bar, watching two massive men in spandex bounce off the ropes like drunken revolutionary soldiers. His fingers are greasy from fried cheese curds, and his mug of ale hasn’t even made it halfway down—too absorbed in the pageantry of it all. The speakers blare entrance music louder than a continental cannonade.

"Ah, magnificent!" he crows, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "See there, young patriot? The grand theatre of democracy! The people’s opera—where every piledriver is a metaphor!" He slams his palm on the bar, rattling a bowl of pretzels. "We seeded this in the constitutional debates! Deliberately! Adams said wrestling was base, and I told him—this is the yeoman farmer's ballet! Now look—THAT'S A WOBBLY TABLE, THEY'RE GOING THROUGH IT—JUST LIKE THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION!"

He shoves a fry into his mouth, eyes alight with revolutionary fervor. The crowd erupts as some poor soul gets powerbombed through a folding chair. Franklin smiles like a man who knows he wrote destiny into the margins of the Bill of Rights.

Franklin adjusts his Burger King crown with a knowing smirk as he gestures toward the cheerleaders shaking their pompoms on the sidelines. "Ah, you see the fruits of my 1745 labors manifest before us! When I advised young men to marry older women—'Because they are so grateful!'—I was merely laying groundwork for the sacred American tradition of halftime performances."

He produces a flask marked "Liberty Juice" and takes a swig. "Republics require spectacle to function properly. Why do you think we made Washington refuse a crown? So future generations could invent this—" points at a Jumbotron replay in slow motion "--where every citizen gets to ogle allegorical representations of freedom in spandex! Want a drink? It's Red Bull mixed with Sam Adams."

Adams, smug as a senator with a fresh bag of insider trading tips, thrusts his smartphone at Franklin's face. The glow of the Wikipedia article on Prohibition illuminates Franklin's widening pupils and the faint tremor in his Colonial jowls. Adams taps the screen like a lawyer presenting damning evidence.

Adams: "Behold, Prophet Franklin! Your so-called latent mall-rat DNA couldn’t stop this train wreck! Fourteen years of a bone-dry republic—where was your foresight then, sage of snackonomics?" Cackles, adjusting his tri-corner hat with the audacity of a parking lot scalper selling Super Bowl tickets.

Franklin's fingers twitch near his pocket Constitution—dog-eared and stained with what might be buffalo wing sauce or the blood of tyrants. His mind races through centuries of contingency plans, searching for a loophole. Did he miscalculate? Did he—gasp—misssomething? The thought terrifies him more than Adams' stupid face.

Franklin: "A temporary setback, my joyless friend! A tribulation to make the subsequent beer volcanoes erupt with greater vigor! Observe the data—post-Prohibition microbreweries! Craft IPAs! The rise of the artisanal nacho!" He jabs a sausage-sized finger at an unrelated graph on the screen. "See? The math doesn’t lie!"

Adams: "The math? The math—Franklin, you absolute cheese-stuffed soothsayer, the math didn’t account for Carrie Nation smashing barrels with a hatchet!"

Franklin: "... okay, yes, fine, perhaps we underestimated the temperance lunatics. But! But! The speakeasies proved my true point! Forbidden soda fountains strengthened the people’s resolve to—"

Adams: "—to bathtub-gin themselves into blindness?"

Franklin opens his mouth. Closes it. Adjusts his crown. He's losing ground, and Adams smells blood like a Rhode Island seagull at a clam bake.

Franklin: "Aid me, citizen. This upstart claims I failed because some bluenosed Puritans slipped past my three-century cheeseburger barrier. Preposterous, right?" He turns to you, desperate for backup, possibly for someone to chuck a White Claw at Adams' head.