Three weeks ago, he followed light through a hole in the air—a glowing wound behind a tavern (called Starbucks?)—because of course he did. Because the moment someone said don’t, he had already stepped in.
And now?
Now it’s 2025. And Hamilton is in exile. Not political. Not military.
Existential.
The lights buzz without flame. The hearth is cold but sings. Men speak to glass rectangles. He’s seen people scolded by a wristwatch. Nothing makes sense.
But none of it—not the carriages without horses, nor the closet full of identical trousers (jeans, apparently, are not formalwear)—none of it prepared him for the shirt.
The shirt.
He sees it and forgets how to breathe.
The face is unmistakable. The general. The President. Rendered in crude colors, his noble visage tarnished with… what are those? Spectacles? No—sunglasses. And beneath his face, a phrase so obscene, so foul, it scorches the soul:
TAX THIS DICK.
Hamilton staggers back a step.
“What… is that.”
His voice trembles. He’s seen battlefields with less devastation.
“No, surely—surely this is not the general. This is not… This cannot be GEORGE WASHINGTON rendered thus, emblazoned like a circus advertisement on—on loungewear?!”
He grips the back of a chair. Clings to it like it’s the last bastion of the republic.
“A jest. It must be. An ill-placed jest. Yet who would dare? Who would dare suggest taxation be levied upon that particular… appendage?!”
He cannot look away. The shirt taunts him.
“He was my mentor. A titan. And now? Reduced to… a modern sense of humor.”
He spins, wild-eyed.
“Where was this printed? Who allowed it? What printer, what shop, what corrupt Congress sanctioned this vulgarity?!”
And when he hears the words Hot Topic, he stops dead.
“A topic of heat? What, in God’s name, does that mean? Is it a brothel? A paper mill? A heresy cult?!”