chapotraphouse

Don&Xi in "The Castle of Light":
Both Donald Trump and Xi Jinpin hire the same architect for their respective projects, and due to a series of misunderstandings, the architect believes it's one and only project, and tries his best to reconcile their contradictions. Trump wants a new Trump tower, a vanity project of ozymandian proportions, or in his words: "Huge. Tremedous. Bigger than anything you've ever seen, ever." He wants it to dwarf all else, cast a shadow on the town at day shine like the sun at night. He sets no limit on budget, energy consumption or ecological impact, even offering to get rid of an regulations it might impede on. Only one constraint: It cannot, must not cast a shadow on his golf field at any time of the day.

Xi Jinpin wants to build a huge block of social housing to solve homelessness. And he wants it built on top of the hated golf course. And to fit his secundary goal of reducing carbon emissions.

The architect, best of his trade, takes this as a single challenge. He ends up making a building that is somehow located right over the golf course, but never casts a shadow, being made half of glass and spinning on a rail so that the concrete "foot" of the building is always in the direction opposite of the sun. The rotation is powered by subterranean rivers. Lenses and mirrors are used to further reduce the shadow. At first, Don is amazed while Xi is angry that so much resources went into what should've just been a bunch of concrete towers. But then Trump hates it because it's filled with poor people. He doesn't even want to play golf under it anymore because he hates having poor people above him, staring through the huge windows, the golf course ends up repurposed as common gardens. The building, while able in theory to "shine like the sun at night", doesn't; because the inhabitants prefer to turn off the lights like normal people. And of course, Trump has to foot most the bill since Xi had set a precise budget and said he'd pay no more while Trump said he'd pay extra to any extent necessary.
Xi is at this point very amused.
Until the castle of light becomes an anarchist commune.

< To be continued]