What follows is fiction. Is it based on real life? In a way, just as a fictional character ties his shoes, the shoe tying reflects lived experience. The political underpinnings of this series are serious, yet presented absurdly. That I have to explain that from the get-go indicates the literal-mindedness of some people, including myself. Literal, as in what is written, real because written, a crazy idea, but many believe scriptures of many religions represent what is real. There are many realities, including the fictional. This fictional reality reads like a farce. Treat it so, and whatever else it may be, is on you.
President Morris "Moe" Lieden in conversation in the Oval Office with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General William "Bill" Bomb, U.S. Air Force, chest beribboned, Legion of Honor medal fully displayed, along with a Purple Heart medal, crowded by fourteen Oak Leaf clusters. One cluster commemorates an air incident in southern Iraq in 1991.
Blasted retreating Iraqi soldiers, came around for another go, make the vertical lines horizontal, stray rifle bullet hits a tender spot inside the starboard engine. Smoke, fire, shut it off. Not gonna make it to Saudi. No carousing tonight in the behind closed doors fleshpots, pricey but well worth it.Crashed his F-15 after blasting Iraqi soldiers. A stray rifle bullet hit the starboard fanjet, causing a blowout, smoke, fire, had to shut it off, flying on one port engine. Will he die? He survives by bailing. This thing isn't going to make it back to Saudi. Bailing, Lieutenant Bill Bomb is captured four minutes after he lands. These are some of the same Iraqi soldiers who torched the oil fields to the south.
Ugly scene, Bomb thinks. Hussein gave cover thereby to his army but also robbed America, Britain, and Kuwait of that oil. Black sky forever, end of the world shit. More than one officer got out his bible. Not me, I knew it was manmade. That son of a bitch polluted my beautiful desert sky!
While the president makes noise with his mouth, saying things lacking in any value to the subject at hand, Lieutenant Bomb remembers his escape from those oil-torching Arabs. Muttering to himself like he was crazy, Bomb's chin against his breast made him appear asleep. An Iraqi guard approached, Bomb went into action, violent bucking of his powerful hips, kicking his boots into the man's abdomen as he crouched forward. Bomb caught the falling rifle with hands he'd untied. Survival training from his Boy Scout years onward kept him in fine fighting shape, even at his present sixty-two.
Head-butting the grunting guard, he flips the rifle around and shoots the next guard in the back, picks up his AK, puts two rounds into the next guard, then sprays backs and sides and faces of thirty-nine men before the remaining sixty organize a resistance against this death machine singing America the Beauiful. Bomb draws a knife from a dead Iraqi, nineteen years old probably, killed him with my spray of freeedom's fire. Bomb, with knife, advances like a panther preparing to surprise a maintenance man checking fuel efficiency on my F-15, Darling Dora, named for my wife. Darling Dora, ah yes, she killed forty-nine men on the ground in one day. She smoked a village in the Marsh Arab territory. Darling Dora, you guide my hand in eliminating America's enemies. America's enemies are my enemies. Darling Dora, shooting down fifty planes, one of them a jetliner with 168 civilian passengers. Just followed orders that day, and every day, but President Richman and now this President Lieden, I don't know, These are venal men. President Lieden sniffs girls' hair. He's a creepo. I'm sitting with a creepo. My mother warned me. She was thinking of sex perverts, well maybe this one's a sex pervert, and a creepo, and he smiles too much. Don't trust him, but I can't help being nice and polite to authority figures. I loved boot camp. I loved jumping out of my airplane, letting it go wherever, maybe land on a village, spread disaster and despair all depending on the trajectory of the vehicle when I last steers it. Darling Dora is dead. Take her soul, God, Aether, the Upper Sky, Upper Ky as my youngest son, Frank Bomb, Little F, puts it. Upper Ky, that's F Bomb's god, and mine. Blue heights, a mansion of expansion to where it is black. This man is boring to listen to, I've paid no attention to the president. Shame on me. Now I'll listen.
Lieden: Have you ever played cat's cradle, Bill?
Bomb: No, Mr. President. That's a child's game, and in general I don't play games unless they be war games.
Lieden: Of course, that's your bailiwick.
Bomb: War is my vocation.
Lieden: Naturally. I mention cat's cradle because it begins as simple string, or yarn, or, I suppose, if your hands and fingers are big enough, rope. You've got big hands, Bill, I bet you could palm a medicine ball, right? Exaggeration. What I'm getting at is, the cat's cradle starts out easy and simple-looking but it goes complex. Now that's what happened when I took this job. The American people wanted a leader. Someone to pave over the ineptitude, the disrespect, the insults to our allies, the dastardly fullness of that man's psychopathic confidence.
Bomb: Former President Richman gave me no end of trouble, Mr. President.
Lieden: Well, your troubles ended when you started working for me.
Bomb: I appreciate your green light for the invasion of Syria.
Lieden: I was itching to do that for years.
Bomb: With this cat's cradle reference, Mr. President, you're hinting at what, exactly?
Lieden: It's like this: this job a year in has gotten complicated. Criminy! I've got Covid to deal with still! My polls look like an old man with erectile dysfunction. I'm saddled with a gaffe-prone Vice President. My handlers keep girls and women with nice hair away from me whenever possible. I can only rely on MSNBC and CNN to say nice things about me. Too much string in this cat's cradle!
Bomb: Weapons sales are up.
Lieden: Yeah, but I'm not supposed to boast about that, and neither are you.
Bomb: I suggest a secret strategic bombing mission, small scale, but somewhat damaging.
Lieden: Which country?
Bomb: One of our allies, Mr. President.
The Oval Office. President Lieden in conversation with Speaker of the House Angie Crook (D-CA).
Crook: My ears hear you, my eyes widen in amazement.
Lieden: It's easy to understand. Look. We need a distraction. Something to focus Americans' hate on those we hate. You know, do-gooders, anti-capitalists, socialists, Nazis, women who accuse powerful men of rape, people who could work but they don't--lazy bums my Pop used to call them, he hated them, too.
Crook: You think that by bombing France--
Lieden: Just a little bomb.
Crook: Well, how many will be killed, and where are you dropping this thing?
Lieden: It's gotta be in a bourgeois neighborhood. General Bomb says blowing up some homeless people isn't gonna move the needle on my popularity rating.
Crook: I know just the neighborhood. I was driven through there my last visit. I'm worried this will get back to you in a bad way.
Lieden: Back to us. Listen. I feel your concern. There's a lot more at stake than our careers here. America faces an abyss. The empire is about to fall, well not on my watch! Angie, pray with me. You know, Henry Kissinger and President Nixon prayed in this room, why can't we?
Crook: All right, but I'd prefer to not kneel on the floor.
Lieden: I'm gonna kneel.
Philanthropist Gil Bates on the phone with Dr. Tony Grauchi.
Bates: We've got people believing it's necessary to inject two year olds with Covid vaccines, but I want to go further.
Grauchi: As do I.
Bates: It shouldn't be difficult to get people believing their one year olds, down to their infants and newborns, should be injected.
Grauchi: Parents scare easily when their children are threatened, even if it's a made up threat.
Bates: It's terror tactics, essentially, but then, that's the news media.
Grauchi: Which you pay very generously.
Bates: Drop in the bucket considering how much money I've made off of home learning programs and vaccine patents since this most awesome of pestilential catastrophes was leaked.
Grauchi: Did you hear that crackpot Senator suggest the virus was leaked on purpose?
Bates: Well, it was, but yes, but for our purposes, he's a crackpot.
Grauchi: I hate having my word questioned. Science must not be questioned.
Bates: Making money should not be questioned, either.
Grauchi: So, newborns get vaccinated. Lots of kids get born every day, that'll generate a flood of revenue.
Bates: And it needn't stop there.
Grauchi: What are you suggesting, Gil? I'm all ears.
Bates: Fetuses, embryos even.
Grauchi: Protect them before they breathe, I like it.
Bates: I'll go further. My biomedical corporation, Hallucinatory Mad Dreams, has developed a way of micro-injecting sperm cells.
Grauchi: Really? That's like something out of that Raquel Welch movie.
Bates: Fantastic Voyage? Yes. Except the technology doesn't shrink people down to perform the injections. A man drinks a glass of milk filled with nanobots equipped with syringes. Through the bloodstream, these nanos don't activate until they stream into a man's junk, injecting the contents of a man's ball sack with vaccine.
Grauchi: Fantastic. Now my missus tells me I've still got vigorous sperm. Say I drink this potion. Could the nanobots be suspended in a glass of Bailey's Irish Cream? The only milk I like is the milk of human kindness.
Bates: That might be possible. I'll run it by my team at HMD.
White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psyop, the weekly briefing.
Reporter: Two questions, Jennifer. Where is Ukraine? And second, scientific research has shown that children are less likely to die from Covid than they are to die from the flu. Why are America's kids having to pay such a price, masked when in school, and too many not learning through the remote way?
Psyop: I'll answer your second question first, Tyler. Nothing is more important to this administration than our children. We've got to protect them in any way we can. The numbers show that 430,000 children under the age of twelve have died in the United States from Covid--
Reporter: That's not true--
Psyop: It is true. It's printed right here in this official binder with the Presidential Seal shining gold on its cover! Do you want me to show you the binder's cover? Look at the seal! Is that fake? 430,000 children under the age of twelve, 420,000 children between the ages of twelve and eighteen. That's a total of 850,000 children! Are you dismissing that? Do you care to act so insensitively towards the parents of those lost innocent souls? Everything we do is for the children! Everything! As for your second question, Ukraine is in Eastern Europe where it's most unfortunate to be located next to Russia. Trevor.
Reporter: How likely is a war between the United States and Russia over Ukraine?
Psyop: Not quite likely, but then, you never know what they're going to do. They have 130,000 troops massed on the Ukrainian border. We take this very seriously--
Reporter: Has President Lieden spoken on the phone lately with President Putout?
Psyop: He has. It was a somewhat productive conversation, but they disagree strongly on whether or not Russia should invade Ukraine. Tugboat?
Reporter: Yes, has Defense Secretary Holroyd expressed his opinion on this matter to the President?
Psyop: They had lunch yesterday. Secretary Holroyd wants to keep a low profile in Ukraine, send in trainers and non-uniformed special personnel, plus a contingent of security contractors--
Reporter: From which security contractor?
Psyop: I don't have that information, Tugboat. President Lieden has the utmost confidence in our nation's military. He supports the troops wholeheartedly. If you'll recall last year's Memorial Day speech, a World War Two veteran of the Tarawa Campaign, a 101 year old man missing two arms, a nose, and his right eye, declared the President's speech to be the finest and most patriotic utterance he's ever heard. Considering he's a century old that's saying a lot. Timothy?
Reporter: Defense Secretary Holroyd's previous position on Raytheon's board of directors doesn't have anything to do with his stance on getting involved in Ukraine militarily?
Psyop: Only if you're operating in the realm of pure fantasy. Tina?
Reporter: Has the First Lady selected a cause? She's rather late in doing so, considering she's had over a year.
Psyop: The First Lady is the mistress of the East Wing. This is the West Wing. Tic-Tac?
Reporter: Speaker Crook has met with the President in the Oval Office three times this past week. What's going on? Are they working on an infrastructure deal?
Psyop: Speaker Crook's main concern is the children, but she's also seeking, from what I understand, a 200 billion dollar infrastructure bill--
Reporter: That's down from seven trillion.
Psyop: Do you know what size closet you would need to stuff it with 200 billion dollars?
Reporter: Hundreds, or twenties, or what?
Psyop: The point is, Tic-Tac, it's a mighty big closet. Speaker Crook thinks big, 200 billion is a lot to spend on things like roads and bridges, when we're still climbing out of a pandemic that's killed 850,000 children and even more adults, first things first! Tammy?
Reporter: Our bridges need inspecting, Jennifer.
Psyop: So do a lot of things. This room hasn't been remodeled in fifteen years! Every time I come in here I see that same coffee stain by the wall! Tully?
Reporter: What's your Super Bowl pick?
Psyop: I have to pick the Bengals or my Buckeye husband will argue with me about something I don't care about. Thank you, but I need to be somewhere else.
Dr. Anthony Grauchi with President Lieden in the Oval Office, steak and potato lunch with scotch and soda for Dr. Fauci; a glass of milk with Strawberry Quik laced with memory-enhancing medication for President Lieden.
Grauchi: You're adjusting well to the new medication regime from what I hear.
Lieden: Let me tell you something. This isn't just a kids' drink. No joke. I feel like a million bucks right now. I could take on a roomful of press. I could take on Don Richman in a debate. Damn, the timing! Right now I'm ready to go, Doctor. Where are my enemies when I need them? Bring on the slings and arrows of butts in a sling or something. What's in this Quik?
Grauchi: Drink it down and I'll tell you.
Lieden: Whatever you say.
Grauchi: Good?
Lieden: It's the best drink. Quik, in strawberry and chocolate. I think this should be distributed in schools.
Grauchi: I'll get on it, but it would have to be a lower percentage of solution.
Lieden: What's that?
Grauchi: Lower doses will be needed for youths.
Lieden: Doses of what?
Grauchi: I'm getting old, too, Mr. President. I like that you brought out the bust of Calvin Coolidge. The FDR painting is a bit much, but Calvin Coolidge, that's more your speed.
Lieden: I don't know anything about the man. The First Lady selected it, she's related to the sculptor.
Grauchi: Since passed, I take it?
Lieden: The sculptor? No, he's still alive, 101 years old, World War Two veteran, missing some limbs, has a great sense of humor.
Grauchi: He was at your Memorial Day speech, I remember him. He must have made this bust of Coolidge before he was dismembered?
Lieden: Who cares? We're done with lunch, let's get down to business.
Grauchi: We're dropping mask mandates in favor of letting states and shopowners and the like impose their own mandates on citizens and customers.
Lieden: I support that idea.
Grauchi: We will emphasize the safety to be found in the use of KN-95 and N-95 respirators.
Lieden: What's the big diff between KN-99 and N-45 masks?
Grauchi: You mean KN-95 and N-95.
Lieden: That's what I said.
Grauchi: Well, okay, I'll make you some more Quik. We'll emphasize the safety of those respirators because we want at least some, maybe fifty million Americans, ideally, still obsessed with wearing masks, even if they don't need to. They're all going to get the Omicron Variant--
Lieden: Omnichron. I'm not the doctor here and I know that.
Grauchi: I'm not going to argue that point. I have a phone call to make after this meeting.
Lieden: Get on with it, then!
Grauchi: The American people must continue to be wary of the likelihood of more pandemics. We're working on three right now.
Lieden: You and that computer guy?
Grauchi: Mr. Bates, yes.
Lieden: Yes, Gil Bates. Golfed with him, once. I think he cheated, can't prove it.
Grauchi: He's a good man, he wouldn't cheat at golf.
Lieden: If I catch a cold, how do I know if it's an Omnichron cold, when maybe it's an ordinary cold?
Grauchi: One is Covid-19, the other isn't.
Lieden: Which is better to get?
Grauchi: Neither, at your age.
Lieden: I see gray on your head too, Doc.
Office of Dinah Parris, Vice President of the United States, you better believe it. With her is failed Presidential Candidate, former Secretary of State, and former First Lady of South Carolina and even of the United States (Jeez!). What's more, a Democratic Senator from Illinois, Cassandra Hartliss Blade, long-suffering wife of former President Billy Boy Blade.
Parris: My polls are low, Cassie, I can't get them up above even thirty!
Blade: Make an impassioned speech about Russia, how their encroachments on their neighbor must stop.
Parris: Moe wouldn't like it if I made an aggressive foreign policy statement better left to Secretary of State Sneffen.
Blade: You're more popular than Sneffen. The American people don't even know who Sneffen is.
Arthur "Artie" Sneffen, Ph.D, Columbia, masters in hagiology, methodology, museology, nurismatology, and popular culture of the Cold War Period, the first one, pops his tousled brown head into the Vice President's office. It's like she doesn't even have reliable Secret Service people.
Sneffen: Did I hear my name? How are you two gals doing? Mind if I sit?
Parris: Mr. Sneffen, I'm having a meeting with a V.I.P.
Sneffen: Cassandra? A V.I.P.? Well. I heard you're running again, Cassandra.
Blade: I wouldn't go that far.
Sneffen: Your age won't hinder you, you have that. Don Richman, your likely opponent if you get the nomination, and good luck, I'm rooting for you...Don is still sharp as a tack so you need to him hard with the insults. Americans want an insult comic in the White House. My accountant, from prison, is prepared to bundle donations for your campaign. When will you announce? Shall I direct someone on CNN to interview so you can announce in TV studio light? Or shall it be at a rally in Illinois in winter? Remember the candidate who made her announcement for president in a blizzard? Yours would be extra-dramatic if it were done with a tornado approaching...Oh, Vice President Parris, you're here. Isn't Mrs. Blade blinding? Her golden hair is leonine! I didn't see you sitting there behind your big desk. Cassandra, has the President approached your hair? Of course he has. Madame Vice President, CNN's ratings are lower than yours, take heart.
Parris: It implies we're both lousy, Artie. What are you doing in here?
Sneffen: The President requested my service as a messenger, to you, Madame Vice President.
Parris: Well?
Blade: Tell us!
Sneffen: I'm not sure how to proceed. I was told to tell you, Madame Vice President, not...
Blade: Come on, Sneffen! If you want a job in my administration you better tell me what the message is!
Sneffen: He's unimpressed with your job performance during your first year, Madame Vice President. 'Sure,' yes, he said sure, 'you look impressive with your Master of the Senate look, that big gavel, feels good to hold a gavel, and it feels good to see an African-American in an official-looking position. I used to sit there, staring off at nothing, letting memories play in my mind, standing and applauding whenever President Bongo said something emphatically. Sure, I knew it was all bullshit, propaganda, every State of the Union is a bunch of people who don't know how to do their jobs properly getting together to applaud each other. Hollywood for ugly people, exactly right.'
Blade: He said all that? Exactly that?
Sneffen: Yes, I have a knack for remembering everything. I use mnemonics.
Parris: Is that like a weightlifting type of weights?
Sneffen: Memory aids, mental inside my pointy head.
Parris: Is there more to the message?
Sneffen: Yes. If you don't impress the President, he'll pick someone other than you to be his running mate, would you like that? You can quit anytime before the middle of 2024. For now, go to Germany, to the Munich "Aren't We Rich and Violent?" Nations Conference. Hobnob, smile in the photographs, look important, enjoy the food, shop, attend meetings, get interviewed by European journalists, maybe they'll like you. Not all journalists hate the President, but all of them hate you.
Blade: That's not fair! Dinah Parris is the charmingest woman I know. She's the first Black Vice President, she will be the first Black President, after I've finished that job.
Sneffen: Dinah is not charming. She's a nasty-tempered, vicious creep who only got the job because virtue signaling and appealing to the surface issue of race can generate some votes President Lieden might've needed in a swing state or two.
Blade: The President is senile.
Sneffen: Of course he is. This has been me talking.
Parris: When I was a child I ran in track. I was almost good enough to win a ribbon. Just not quite good enough. My daddy bought me a little plastic trophy, shaped like a trophy cup. He stamped out on that tape we used to have, Dinah Bethjean Parris, The Winner.
Blade: SHE IS A WINNER!
President Lieden pops his head into the office.
Lieden: Am I interrupting?
Parris: No, Mr. President.
Blade: So, Mr. President, you're not thrilled with my protege?
Lieden: What's that? Protege?
Blade: She's not good enough for the job, just a fill in the boxes hire to satisfy the culture warriors?
Lieden: You've got me at a disadvantage.
Blade: All those words you passed on to Artie here.
Lieden: I did talk to Artie. We discussed the cyberattack in Ukraine.
Sneffen: A very exciting time we live in.
Blade: It's going to be better once a woman becomes president.
Sneffen: The money's on Richman pulling a Grover Cleveland.
Lieden: I don't get the reference.
Sneffen: Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms.
Lieden: So?
Sneffen: If Mr. Richman becomes president again he will have had two non-consecutive terms.
Blade: He'll be the twenty-first century Grover Cleveland, but he won't because I'm going to be the first female president.
Parris: And I'm going to be the second.
Sneffen: You're both deluded. Sorry, I feel like I can talk to you that way because I know you're both unimportant to the powers that be, especially you, Madame Vice President.
Parris: Get out of my office!
Sneffen: There is one more part to the message.
Parris: I'm waiting.
Sneffen: You may be needed to defect to Russia. We need actual intel from the Kremlin.
Lieden: Heroine, that's what you'll be. Heroine, not hero, a woman is a heroine. I want to have a woman with smells good hair.
The President leaves the room.
Blade: Well, Secret Agent Parris, I didn't know this was going to happen.
Parris: I can't get out of this?
Sneffen: We have compromising material on you. We've been surveilling you since 2004. Thirteen thumb drives of material so far. I've studied you. I know how you take off your clothes. I've watched you eat. I know you like Steel Magnolias. Films about prison turn you on. You like Tom Cruise, Jeff Fahey, and Robert Mitchum. Your favorite band? Kiss.
Parris: You get out of my office!
Sneffen: You throw things at people. Your foul temper loses you a lot of employees.
Blade: Have you done a full surveillance on me, Artie?
Sneffen: I won't confirm or deny.
Parris: Is it the State Department's Intelligence Bureau that's doing this?
Sneffen: One of many. Oh, I forgot to tell you. The bomb plan Operation Charlie Tuna is cancelled indefinitely, set aside to be reworked into a different plan to be utilized or not utilized.
Blade: Sneffen, you talk more and more like an A.I.
Sneffen: I am an A.I.
Dracula Deadface, founder and CEO of Ahem, number one social media platform and news sharing community, given to censorship lately. On the phone with Ray Holroyd, Defense Secretary, "Mr. Pentagon" in a children's cartoon, makes appearances in a foam rubber five-sided costume at church picnics, school cafeteria lunch periods, on the field at high school night games, voice echoing, offering recruitment bonuses and a promise of college, likely to be fulfilled, depending on how they encourage their parents to vote.
Holroyd: Ooh, I'll get good grades Mommy I promise! Just please vote for President Lieden in November, Building Togetherness, Together! Rolls off the tongue, like the heaviest bombs pushed out of the back of a cargo plane. Ever taken a ride in a cargo plane when it drops a Daisy Cutter, or a MOAB?
Deadface: I haven't had the pleasure.
Holroyd: Best annihilation whoosh you'll ever feel!
Deadface: We'll push the recruitment bonuses for high school kids angle, I've got two employees working on it in Santa Clarita right now.
Holroyd: You didn't make a phone call.
Deadface: Yes I did. I have implants. I can surf the Internet, literally. I can take a screwdriver to it.
Holroyd: What does that mean?
Deadface: A virtual screwdriver. I tighten, I loosen, I make connections, I break connections. Let me loose in a cyberworld and you will see a very clever and entrepreneurial dictator. Right now I'm recording this scene.
Holroyd: Scene?
Deadface: You're an actor in a twenty-ninth century autocamera drama, Hell Froze Over, Now What?
Holroyd: You're being silly.
Deadface: The actor is inside you. An A.I. He last played Leon Trotsky. He'll next play me.
Holroyd: If you don't stop saying peculiar things I'm going to end this meeting.
Deadface: The meeting must end in any case, unless you would like to live in an endless meeting?
Holroyd: Endless? No. I do get things agreed upon at meetings. I always accept a chance to drink coffee.
Deadface: You like to hold forth with colleagues, air your opinions.
Holroyd: Educated and experience-based viewpoints.
Deadface: Based on hope, too.
Holroyd: I pray to God every morning.
Deadface: What do you say?
Holroyd: Your eyes are strange, colorless.
Deadface: You're next, Mr. Secretary.
Holroyd: Next what?
Deadface: We'll improve you.
Holroyd: Who's we?
Deadface: The Grand Council of Ratfuck Bastards.
Holroyd: Oh.
Don Richman, former President, man behind the RICHMAN brand, achieved with inherited piles of cash. What would you do if your Dad bequeathed you hundreds of millions of dollars? Richman's dinner guest, Billy Boy Blade, would further invest in himself while pretending to be a philanthropist and wise old Democrat of the party, an influencer extending beyond politicians into corporate and banking circles.
Blade: A shame about Terry Stein.
Richman: I split from that guy twenty years ago.
Blade: Later than that. Anyway, he's gone, that happy smiling face, the prognathous jaw, a Neanderthal intellectual with his own island.
Richman: I miss that island. I was thinking of buying it.
Blade: The press would have their field day.
Richman: It would make them happy.
Blade: Ratings bonanza.
Richman: I should do it.
Blade: Who's stopping you? Are you afraid what people will say? Are you afraid of Rachel Flooden?
Richman: No one am I afraid of! I'll take on anybody! I'm the Kid from Queens! Don't mess with Queens!
Mila Richman, former First Lady, enters, a five foot ten exotic former model from Bratislava, Slovakia, speaks nine languages. Mila commands attention, her face never changing expression. People stare at her face, waiting for it to change but it never does.
Mr. Richman: What does my bride want? Isn't she beautiful?
Mrs. Richman: I want you to sign the divorce papers.
Mr. Richman: My lawyer is looking them over.
Mrs. Richman: I want to be free, Don. I've been offered a movie role on the Lifetime Network.
Blade: What's the role, Mila?
Mrs. Richman: A cheating wife falls in love with her husband's murderer.
Mr. Richman: You can do better than that. I'll get you a part in the next Mission Impossible.
Mrs. Richman: Make it a beeg part, but I'm still doing the Lifetime movie.
Mr. Richman: How much are they paying you, Sugar Lips?
Mrs. Richman: Don't call me that in front of others. 900,000 dollars.
Mr. Richman: THAT'S ALL???
Mrs. Richman: It is low budget film.
Mr. Richman: I'll pump ten million into it right now! Add another hundred million in a few weeks. It's gonna be a great film! 300 minutes long, my Gone With the Wind.
Getting up, she kisses Billy Boy Blade on the mouth, exits, ignores her husband, lost for a moment inside his movie mogul fantasy, not the first time he's daydreamed about it.
Blade: Are you concerned about Mathilde de Sade, she knows as much as Stein did.
Richman: Mathilde won't spill. She knows what happened to Terry.
Blade: What happened to Terry, really?
Richman: Terry thought he would get out fairly soon. He was treated well when he wasn't in his cell with that goon cop who harassed him.
Blade: Did the cop kill him?
Richman: Good question. I don't know who killed him, but I know it wasn't me.
Blade: Me neither.
Richman: Who then?
Blade: It's an Agatha Christie novel.
Richman: Do we know anybody named Butler?
Secretary of State Sneffen's office, near Foggy Bottom. The office, the largest chamber at the bottommost level of the deep plunging State Department complex called the Nail, an inverted skyscraper unknown to the American people.
He's joined by the Second Gentlemen, a Wall Street financier, net worth, thirty-five million, a philanthropist and one with no influence on his hard-willed wife of fifteen years, the Vice President.
Sneffen: Surely you can convince her to step down?
Doug Gard: I have no say in her life. She's a strong-willed woman.
Sneffen: She's allowed the administration to push her over numerous times, what are you talking about?
Gard: Remember in the primary, when she pushed back against Candidate Lieden, the thing about bussing. She really was that little girl!
Sneffen: Yes, she was, in the debate, implying the former Vice President of the United States is a racist.
Gard: She got big campaign donations from that! I was so proud of her! I even took her to Las Vegas!
Sneffen: The fire shown in that debate means nothing now. It's a sound bite shown sometimes to demonstrate how it's all a show, she doesn't really resent Moe Lieden for his school bussing viewpoints. She accepted his invitation to be his running mate, didn't she?
Gard: One doesn't turn down such an invitation, even if one's kids don't want it. It's hard on the tykes, having to move, to leave their friends and extracurriculars.
Sneffen: Sometimes I think I'm surrounded by TV characters. I've mostly seen you on TV, so maybe that's why. Who is Douglas Gard?
Gard: Your peering at me makes me uncomfortable. I'm a straightforward man, I like to get things done, I don't like hearing complaining, I'm on time, I don't overstay my welcome, I'm generous, to a point, thoughtful, a graduate of Harvard, three point three, I belonged to Nu Omicron Epsilon, I like barbecue, I like good American films, my favorite is Fargo.
Sneffen: You seem a robust specimen.
Gard: I work out, lift weights, I have a personal trainer, Margo, she/he is from Russia by way of Finland. What you call a shemale. Strong as a bull. And I run, and I drink protein shakes. I like playing touch football with my male friends, and the Vice President sometimes gives me a date night, but that's not as steady and regular as I'd like.
Sneffen: She sounds like a terrible person from everything I've heard about her. Only you, her husband, have shared any good things about your wife. I'm betting she's really terrible and you're afraid of her. You're worried this office records conversations.
Gard: Does it?
Sneffen: What do you think?"
Gard: I don't know.
Sneffen: Come on, tell me what you think of her.
Gard: I don't--
Sneffen: Do it!
Gard: Okay. I think she's harmful to the nation.
Sneffen: Go on.
Gard: I fear she may pull a boner and it'll be the end of her career.
Sneffen: People thought that of Dan Quayle.
Gard: She's brittle inside, like an old piece of candy. First two years of our marriage were sweet. I never had so much sex before or since. I miss it! I MISS SEX WITH DINAH!
Sneffen: If you must weep, weep.
Gard: My mine-uh Dinah.
Sneffen: She seduced you, it seems. All along you've had more money than she. You're appealing to such women. You're the servant. Well now I'm urging you to take control over her! And to take control of your squeaking pathetic existence!
Gard: How?
Sneffen: Go to wherever she is, demand some of her time, and exert your husband's privilege over her corpus.
Gard: Force myself on her?
Sneffen: I didn't say that! Make yourself irresistible, man! Appealing, charming, lovable.
Gard: I can try.
Sneffen: DO IT! She's an obstacle to our plan, she must resign before June next. You can be the influencer whispering in her ear. The two of you can retire with generous wealth at your disposal, no money needs whatsoever. She can get a job on The View, easily. One call to Cassandra Hartliss Blade will make that happen.
Gard: I want to keep my job.
Sneffen: You don't matter, except as an agent of her retirement from politics. We made a mistake. We shouldn't have trusted former Secretary of State Blade's word that Dinah Parris is a competent policymaker. We eat the mistake and move on. Stay on Wall Street or not, we don't care.
Gard: That gives me a feeling of relief.
Sneffen: You're the big man in the family now, don't back down, or God help you.
Gard: May I have a swig of that fine whiskey?
Sneffen: Certainly.
Gard: One belt and then I'll go to her office, that's where she probably is, I'll close the door and get her onto the desk, does that sound like it'll work?
Sneffen: Don't treat her like a frat boy's conquest. She's your wife and you love her, remember?
TYG, The Young Genocides, a Youtube channel with 9.15 million subscribers most assuredly not the sum. In the studio, Chuck Booger and his co-host, foxy-eyed hair pulled back so tightly scalp damage in her future Lana Armenian. Viewership on Livestream has been piss poor. They've lost subscribers by the thousands, probably millions. Devoted to making money above having integrity, Booger and Armenian have become what Philip K. Dick referred to in Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, as News Clowns. News as a clown show from two hosts in the past habit of making segments about celebrity women's private parts. Money from right wing and left wing politicians and influencers in the national security state has found its wide-open acceptance in Booger, head of TYG.
Armenian: This next story is frankly incredible.
Booger: You know what incredible means--
Armenian: Stunning.
Booger: No, it means unbelievable. I'm going to add 'Incredible!' to my explosive utterances.
Armenian: Good for you.
Booger: Incredible.
Armenian: What is incredible about what I just said?
Booger: What you said, good for you, struck me as unbelievable, that you didn't mean it.
Armenian: I meant it! I know you like your "Naturally," and your "Hipty-doo-doo!"
Booger: Hipty-doo-doo! My grandmother used to say that to me.
Armenian: Back in Turkey? The country named after something I eat in November?
Booger: If we had met in 1915 I would've killed you.
Armenian: You never think about our ethnic difference, do you?
Booger: All the time I do.
Armenian: I'm gonna get back to this story. Three hikers in upstate Wisconsin near the town of Florence--
Booger: I wonder if they have beautiful architecture there.
Armenian: Not the thrust of the story, Chuck! To continue: found the skeleton of a long-limbed but short person, evidently an adult of its kind, the head egg-shaped with teardrop eye sockets and a three-lobed brain case.
Booger: I'd like to visit Florence. I wonder if there's a Medici museum in Florence? I'd like to think so? Lana, Medici Museum in Florence, Italy, or not.
Armenian: Yes, there is one, Jerrold proposed to me in Florence, remember?
Booger: That's right. Of course!!!! A-ha. We're losing viewership, subscribers jumping ship. No confidence, huh? She just read a story about an alien skeleton found in Wisconsin! That's incredible! We are not alone! Where else are you going to hear about this?
Jackson Pawlenty, podcaster on literature, current affairs, history, popular music, especially that of the 1960s and 1970s, and an ideological enemy of Booger and Armenian.
Pawlenty: Right after Booger said that about that alien story, another story surfaced in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, written by an on site reporter. The skeleton found near the Michigan border outside Florence, Wisconsin is not an alien, but a boy missing since 1956, Tommy Nardles of Ironwood, age six when he disappeared.
President's Office, afternoon, Moe Lieden chuckles at the antics of a squirrel burying a nut in the shell.
Lieden: Little rascal! I'd like to pet you.
Seated in the same yellow wing chair where President Billy Boy Blade received his first blowjob from a secret servicewoman in his wife's detail, General Bomb clears his scarred throat.
Bomb: Mr. President...you were saying?
Lieden (spins his chair away from the window and the distracting squirrel): Bill, I don't remember. Had something to do with Ukraine.
Bomb: Ukraine is the subject of this meeting, sir.
Lieden: Now I remember. Ukraine's the bread basket of Europe, right? That's why Hitler wanted it. Lebensraum, living space. Why don't we play up the Lebensraum angle, we'll call it something else. We'll call it living space! Ukrainians want to go into Donetsk and what's that other one?
Bomb: Luhansk.
Lieden: First of all, the problem is, the names are funny. Iraq is easy to say, not so easy to conquer, as my good friend on the other side of the aisle Chick Raney found out though he won't admitted the truth of it. Fifty million dead, a country ruined and filled with Isis choppin heads off, doing propaganda videos like it's a TV show. Yeah, great generation the Millennials, choppin heads off in the deserts of Iraq and Syria. Maniacs. When President Bongo and myself armed Isis and al-Nusra, just bloated al-Qaeda with arms, say, that's a funny picture. A group of bearded Muslims with big bellies, and they got the shapes of AK-47s and hand grenades and shit bulging through their bellies and shirts, what do you think?
Bomb: (Nothing this man has said makes any sense. I must report this to Secretary Holroyd. Then he passes it onto who? Vice President Parris? Can't stand that woman. Holroyd will talk to CIA Director, Bernie Shoe. Bernie will call Israel. Konstantin Krusher, P.M. of Israel, will call for an intervention. This president is dangerous. I must guard my words.)
Lieden: Can't think of anything to say? I get like that. Sometimes I gush words, sometimes dry as a bone. My wife knows when I've had too much company, too many questions shouted at me. Don't like it. Oh, I put up with it, a president has to be able to endure flying shit after it hits the fan. They want me to resign. My own wife wants me to resign! Holroyd asked me to my face if I've considered resigning. If I resign, Dinah Parris is president. Do we want that?
Bomb: I'm not officially in the know on this matter, but I've heard from a reliable source that Vice President Parris will step down, and soon.
Lieden: That sounds familiar. Who told you that?
Bomb: It's privileged information, sir.
Lieden: Tell me the agency.
Bomb: Um.
Lieden: Begins with a C?
Bomb: I--
Lieden: A!
Bomb: --was going to say the snitch works for the government, that's all I can say, with honor.
Lieden: Oh it doesn't matter, I guess. Some leaker informed you about Dinah Parris's removal from high office. Everybody's talking about it. I don't care, I won't miss her. I'll send her to be Italy's U.S. ambassador. That would be safe, she's no good on foreign policy, or domestic policy.
Bomb: It's hard to get both in one man or woman.
Lieden: Yeah, like some hair smells good and if you get it on a freshly shampooed day, it's heavenly. Have you seen the First Lady's hair?
Bomb: Yes.
Lieden: It gets greasy real quick. Don't like that greasy smell. I like liveliness and bounce in my kind of hair, the best kind, hair on a little girl's head, long and smooth, or on a woman's head, perfumey and curled. I've got a thing with my olfactory nerve. It's linked straight to my boner equipment.
Bomb: Unusual.
Lieden: What turns you on, Bill?
Bomb: A well-executed bombing run.
Lieden: Are you a leg man? Do you like a big ass, Bill? Huh? What about tits? You like em big, Bill?
Bomb: Mr. President, I have another meeting in five minutes. I'll consult with my counterparts in the other services--
Lieden: Including Space Force?!
Bomb: Yessir.
Lieden: Six branches of the military, you know, there should be a new Defense Department building. The Hexagon!
Bomb: It's human nature to accept the offer of a larger office.
Lieden: The Hexagon! I'll run it by everyone at the next cabinet meeting.
Concluding Part One of The Ratfuck Bastard Conspiracy
Vic Neptune
