The instructions were explained in a text message. Our phones or tablet would start vibrating to alert us that a new message was being posted. Nine quick dots, a long dash, a dot: Morse code for Resin. A text message would direct us to the specific platform: Twitter or email, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tinder, or another easily accessible site. The message would provide a onetime-use password. Ninety seconds after it was opened, this invitation would disappear. Invited members could then go to the designated site and open it with that password. After it had been read and closed, it would be deleted, leaving no history of having ever existed. It could not be saved, printed, copied, or forwarded.

And right on cue, my tablet started vibrating. A new message had been posted. A text message directed me to YouTube and provided a password. The password opened a cartoon: Bugs Bunny’s mouth was moving but it was entirely out of sync with the report. A woman’s voice delivered the latest updates: The sweep had continued through the night. Among those people supposedly detained were Alec Baldwin, Lorne Michaels, and several Saturday Night Live performers and writers, Barbra Streisand, Colin Kaepernick, basketball coaches Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich, Bono, Liam Neeson, Jimmy Kimmel, and Stephen Colbert. Justice Sonia Sotomayor had been marched out of her home in handcuffs. It was rumored but had not been confirmed that the entire Kardashian family had been swept up, although a convoy of black government vehicles was seen leaving their family compound.

(Apparently the fact that Bono and Neeson weren’t American citizens made no difference. As people were being “detained” under emergency regulations, rather than arrested, immigration law did not apply.)

The report continued. Many people had managed to escape. A large group had been flown out of the country by John Travolta; among those people believed to have been on his private jet were George and Amit Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jennifer Lawrence, Jay-Z and Beyoncé and their children, Stephen King, Morgan Freeman, and George Lucas with their families. Travolta had not filed a flight plan, but it was believed his destination was Montreal. The Obama family had made it across the border into Canada secreted behind stacks of packages in a FedEx truck. Soon after his safe arrival, the former president had announced the formation of the American Resistance Movement, Barack’s Battalions. He vowed to use every means possible, other than force, to pressure President Wrightman into restoring complete democracy to the United States.

All of that actually was a good thing, I decided. When those Americans who had avoided learning about that coup thing turned on their favorite shows or went to the movies and discovered that their favorite actors had been replaced, they were going to be furious. And then, when they found out what had happened in this country, they were going to demand those characters return. It wasn’t going to be pretty.

Bugs Bunny continued her report without coloring it with emotion: This is reality. She might just as easily have been delivering the weather: Rain with a chance of revolution. She spoke with a slight European accent that added an unusual solemnity to the antics of the cartoon characters. Bugs was getting ready to clobber Yosemite Sam with a sledgehammer when she reported that Wrightman had ordered the army to fortify both America’s southern and northern borders, “although rather than keeping immigrants out, his objective appears to be preventing Americans from fleeing.” She added that according to the BBC, Russian president for life Vladimir Putin had announced his support for the “long overdue crackdown.”