Friday, July 12, 2019

"The High Rollers"

by Benjamin Adams and James Robert Smith
originally published Singers of Strange Songs, Chaosium, 1997

Donald Trump - I'm sorry, Anthony King, has purchased some coastal land in Innsmouth and is building a big casino there.  Too bad he's having all kinds of problems, what with workers up and quitting cause they don't want to deal with Innsmouth or its people, and his one friend in the world, Robert Steinberg, who runs a rare book dealership in the refurbished retail regions, is giving him ominous warnings based on things he's read in some of those old, rare books of his.

To top it all off, some of those icky Innsmouthers are pestering him to buy back the land, being as they say they have prior claim to it.

Well, the reps from "The Newquay and Raleigh Company" finally get to him and get him to bargain away the land in exchange for power and knowledge beyond anything he's dreamed.  Thus, King vanishes into vistas of cosmic otherwhatsiness.  Seven years later his body turns up.

Pretty well written, and a decent enough "Twilight Zone"-ish story.  It's hard to read something with such an obvious portrayal of a pre-presidential Donald Trump (it couldn't be more obvious) as the protagonist without snickering - this was written c. 1997. though, so I can't blame the authors for that.  It's nothing special though.


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