(Illustration by Lance Laspina)

In Adam Reid’s world, Barack Obama and Joe Biden aren’t currently gritting their teeth and summoning superhuman reserves of self-restraint. They’re traveling through time and space and alternate realities to save us from ourselves—with the help of Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Reid is currently Kickstarting funds to make Barry & Joe a reality, or at least an animated series.

“It’s such a great way to take all this dark matter—because I couldn’t care more about what’s going in in the world—but I want to turn it into some light,” says Reid, a commercial and film maker based in New York. “There’s a conversation I think we’re not having with ourselves. We’re not getting any perspective because the news cycle is so relentless.”

To get there, the animated Biden and Obama take a leap into the past and alternate realities, respectively.

In the would-be pilot, the pair get secreted to a government lab right after inauguration, told to strip and huddle in the fetal position before getting sent back in time to change the world in which Donald Trump is elected president. Naturally, things go wrong.

“Obama, he vanishes,” Reid explains. “Joe is really destroyed from that. He just watched his best friend vaporized, and it’s been a rough day on top of it.”

While Biden gets sent back in the past, meeting up with young Obama throughout the decades, Obama goes on to a parallel world.

“I call him Obama the grey. He wakes up in a post-apocalyptic D.C. that’s really just like 28 Days Later and he’s naked, as often time travelers are, and there’s this weird orange snow drifting through what’s left of the Mall,” Reid says.

Like more than half of voters, Reid woke up with an “emotional hangover” on November 9. The idea for Barry & Joe popped into his head almost fully formed. He describes it as a warm blanket, shielding him from reality.

“We need a cartoon of a bromance trying to save us from ourselves … I put it away for six months because it’s clearly a stoner idea,” Reid says. “I felt like it was an overreaction to the news that Trump had won. But then we hadn’t lived through everything we’ve gone through in the past few months.”

A few weeks ago, he picked up where his post-election mind left off.

One of the Kickstarter FAQs reads: “Isn’t this just leftist fan fiction meant to give solace to those who need some hope and healing?” The answer is decisive: “Yes.”

“The Biden-Obama combination is obviously a thrill for me,” says Erick Sanchez, who organized a fan gathering for the former vice president before Biden left office and recently came on board with the project as an executive producer. “With all the hard work that folks are doing on the ground in D.C. and around the country, I think its important to have a program that brings levity to the troubling and uncertain time that we live in.”

In Reid’s dream world, Obama is voiced by Jordan Peele, Biden by Chris Pratt, and Neil deGrasse Tyson as himself—the scientist appears to the leads in augmented reality that only they can see.

Reid knows it’s all a bit ridiculous, but that’s also kind of the point.

“Even though Quantum Leap is the silliest kind of science fiction, it has this really great heart and part of that is built into the structure of the show,” he says, promising that Barry & Joe will be a “wonderful window into the history of these men and the history of this country that led up to where we actually are.”

But first they have to find the funds. The team is about two-thirds of the way to their $100,000 goal with two days to go. If they’re successful, they’ll either make a mini pilot to shop around or team up with a production company for a full-fledged episode. According to Reid, a number of companies have already expressed interest in working on the project.

In the meantime, should it be funded, Kickstarter backers will get rewards like posters, hoodies, or their very own replica of Obama and Biden’s birthday friendship bracelet.

“I feel like I’m creating something to escape, but into the truth,” Reid says. “I’m looking for comfort in a Saturday morning cartoon show that’s going to be more in tune with what’s actually going on than what we’re reading every day, and that’s more of a sign of where we’re at right now.”

More information is available on Kickstarter.