October 2040: an exhausted nation readies itself for the third and final presidential debate of a grueling campaign season. Across America’s living rooms, bars, basement shelters, and prisons, augmented reality devices light up with images of the two contenders.

First-term California governor Malia Obama, vaulted to the Democratic nomination after her heroic response to the devastating Central Valley flood of ’39, introduces her Green Forward agenda. This ambitious plan, developed in partnership with Harvard University and the Bezos Foundation, aims to relocate 20 million workers from environmental and economic “brownfields” to productive metropolitan cores, where they can apply for federal grants, providing the displaced with access to education and skills training, along with civic engagement and entrepreneurship programs.

The proposal brings a throaty sneer from Republican president Allen Jones, the retired professional wrestling star formerly known as A.J. Styles. “The elite wants to make you move to Portland, Oregon, and eat plastic hamburgers in a cubicle until you die,” he says, referring to the city’s recent ordinance banning the consumption of animal products. In contrast, Jones pledges to protect Judeo-Christian values by building the largest military drone fleet in world history, implanting microchips in illegal immigrants (“just stamp ‘em!”), creating a million new American jobs in ocean-floor mineral mining, and cutting taxes.