The blind man’s name is Ryan “Rigby” Dakota, and he was born February 3, 1923. The locals bring him in naked as his wedding night save a medical ID bracelet round his left wrist that labels him as blood type O- and a diabetic. Lt. Mitsuda fishes him a faded Mickey Mouse shirt and a set of ass-worn overalls out of the lost and found, then Danica sits this newest in a long chain of suspected Al-Qaeda sleeper agents down in what she thinks of as the confession room. But the asshole won’t shut up about his fucking dog!
Well, that and goddamn habeas corpus. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what it says in English common law, Mr. Dakota, this is America, and I’m telling you that for reasons of national security, you’re not talking to anyone until you explain why you had four thousand dollars in your suitcase.” Danica Abigail rubs at the puffy half-rings forming beneath her eyes, knowing she’s in for a migraine; it always hits her sinuses before the random spots of light in her vision and the icepick-to-temples pain kicks in.
“I already told you. Why can’t I talk to a lawyer?”
For a blind man, Danica thinks, he does a great job of staring her in the face when he talks. You’d think he’d wear some kind of glasses or something so people wouldn’t have to see those dead grey eyes. It’s rude to just let them loll at you all the time. “What was the money for, Mr. Dakota?”
“Like I said, I was on a tour to see the American West. There was a bus in the parking lot, and if you call the tour guides they’ll tell you I was—”
Okay, no more good cop shit. “It was for drugs, wasn’t it?”
The blind man—Danica just can’t not think of him that way—blinks at her a few times. She hadn’t realized they did that until she started her chat with Mr. Rigby. She thinks he might just be doing it to creep her out. Maybe Lt. Mitsuda can find some sunglasses in the lost and found. “I don’t do drugs!”
“There’s no need to carry around that kind of money unless it’s for drugs. Or were you buying something else? Maybe some black market guns for use in a terrorist attack.”
“I’m not a goddarned terrorist!”
“Law-abiding citizens don’t carry that kind of money around. They put it in banks, where it’s safe, and when they want access to it, they use ATMs to withdraw their money at reasonable fees, and they get receipts showing traceable electronic transactions took place.”
“Safe?” Ryan Dakota laughs for the first time since Danica met him, and she just now notices that he’s wearing dentures. Those could be a weapon. She’ll tell the locals to take those dentures away from him before he goes to lockup. “I don’t trust the banks to keep my money safe. The bozos are only still in business because of the bailout, and they only got that ‘cause they own D.C.”
Danica writes DEFINITELY A TERRORIST!!! on her notepad. What kind of nutbar doesn’t trust banks? It’s a good thing she nabbed this psycho before he could blow up a federal building. Lt. Mitsuda opens the door before she can get any further with the interrogation and says, “Phone call from Washington for you, Agent Abigail.”
Mr. Dakota stands as she moves to leave. “Hey, you gonna send anyone back to my hotel room to get my cane, or what?” Danica ignores him; if he’s going to further impede this investigation by persisting in his refusal to confess then there’s no way she’s doing him any favors. She wonders if a charge of obstruction of justice might be in order.
Danica takes the call at her temporary desk. It’s not a pleasant conversation. For the next forty minutes, Danica tries to explain to the deputy director who assigned her the Cathaway case why, after being tipped as to where the fugitive was and who she was with, she let said fugitive escape and is “wasting her goddamn time” grilling a blind man. That last criticism falls away when Danica explains Mr. Dakota was carrying four thousand dollars in cash in his suitcase—if you’re going to do that you’d better be wealthy; otherwise, it’s grounds for immediate arrest and asset seizure because, hey, what are you trying to hide?
Still, Danica has “utterly failed after receiving exemplary intelligence” to capture a high-priority suspect. For that, the deputy director tells her, she’s to return to D.C. immediately for debriefing and reassignment. Danica hangs up and fumes in her borrowed office chair, partly because she just got her ass chewed and party because the damn chair keeps slipping to the lowest setting under her weight.
Someone must have helped Cathaway from inside DHS, and she thinks she knows who that someone is. Danica vows to dig up the truth about the Al-Qaeda mole calling himself Todd Moody as soon as she gets back home, no matter how deep the hole goes.
***
Right after the deputy director in charge of Cathaway’s case hangs up with Danica, he dials an 800-number that (he’s unaware) redirects to an answering machine a few blocks away. “Cathaway, Laboros and Thomas were all identified by eye-witnesses at the hotel. Someone called off the police pursuit over a restricted channel, and their vehicle escaped with all three believed to have been in the car. Their last known direction of travel suggests they’re probably in British Columbia by now. I’m sending the full report to the usual place.”
The machine beeps, and soon the message passes to the man serving as the nation’s default patriarch (on account of the fact that he’s the only Founding Father still alive). He groans, wishing he could just ignore this newest disaster and deal with everything else that’s going wrong at the moment, but the sock is right: something must be done about Sindy Cathaway. It’s time to get the Council together.
***
In a posh office on the other side of town, the Witches Three kneel in a triangular configuration before a hand-sewn effigy. Around the effigy lie photos of faces famous and unknown, an ex-President and an ex-Vice President, the governor of New Mexico, and, pinned between the doll’s legs, a photo of the current President with a cigarette hanging off his bottom lip. The effigy’s face remains blank, the shape and color of the original visage that belongs there a rumor whose truth is known only to the Overmaster and the Beast himself.
“O come forth in the name of Abaddon,” says Nancy Pelosi, reciting the invocation from decades-worn paths in her neural circuitry as she drips black wax on the effigy, “and destroy him whose name I give as a sign.” Joints pop as she hands the candle to Hillary Clinton, whose eyes flicker to watch the wax drip down Pelosi’s fingers. That better be all she’s watching. Nancy’s been casting satanic curses for so long she barely remembers nudity is part of the ritual once she’s started chanting, but there’s something about the way Hillary’s eyes linger on hers before Madam Secretary of State picks up the chant that reminds Nancy not all of those young women were lost to satisfy Bill’s simple, earthy desires.
“O great brothers of the night, you who make my place of comfort, who rides out upon the hot winds of hell, who dwells in the temple of the profane, move and appear!” Hillary flicks wax at the effigy’s blank face and hands the candle to the third and newest member of the Council’s coven.
“Oh golly, I hope I can remember all the words!” says Sarah Palin, who seems not to have understood that she was supposed to remove her glasses and wedding ring for the ceremony. “Here I go, okay?” She clears her throat. “Rend ill the gagglin’ tongue that speaks naught but eczema for the weak, O Moloch, let his liver shrivel and his nipples bleed and his testicles migrate deep up his ass, O Kali, O Airman, O Lilith Fair, hear the prayers of us your scorned daughters and visit justice unbridled upon the interloper!”
Hillary and Nancy look to each other, shrug and join Sarah in the reverse rosary and chant with her: “Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!”
“Yay us!” says Sarah, and she jumps to her feet with a certain jiggle that Hillary doesn’t bother hiding her ogle at. Pfshaw, Nancy thinks, if only Gingrich had known. Sarah claps her hands. “My first magic spell! That was nifty!” She seems to be looking for some kind of response, maybe a pat on the head, but it’s the message light blinking on Hillary’s desk that has the other two witches’ eyes now. What does the old man want?
***
Seeing as how he’s not a member of the Council, Ron Paul is unlikely to receive a summons from the Overmaster any time soon, which suits him just fine; his vision of the future doesn’t have much good in it for the Council. Even were he to receive a call like the ones now going to the sitting members of the Council, he wouldn’t get it at the moment, nor would he be in any position to heed it; he’s locked away in his study at his home in Lake Jackson, Texas, reading the secret prophecies of Ayn Sedai, just as he has so many times before when the way ahead was murky.
You’ve probably never heard of Ayn Sedai in our Universe. In our Universe, the Nathaniel Branden Institute fell apart when Ayn Rand discovered her apostle Nathaniel Branden was having an affair with a younger woman, which Rand apparently felt was an intrusion upon her own past extramarital affair with Branden. In the Universe we’re concerned with now, Rand never found out Branden was not-cheating on her, and the NBI eventually morphed into the First Holy Communion of the Randites, who believed Rand to be the physical manifestation of Ma’at, goddess of truth, balance, order and laissez-faire capitalism. In the final months of Rand’s life, secluded within the Randite compound, where she was surrounded by and endlessly waited on by her oath-sworn followers, the self-styled Ayn Sedai claimed she could “channel the currents of space-time in the Universe” and gave a secret code whereby one could find prophecies of the future in her writings and the writings of those she had inspired.
Ron Paul is a seventh-degree Randite Master; thus, he knows the code forward and backward, along with the story it tells in Rand’s own writings. Take this decoded bit from The Fountainhead, which to the untrained eye seems merely several paragraphs about a villainous newspaper editorialist:
It shall come to pass that what America made will be ruined
And the parasites shall once more lay across the electoral map.
Soldiers shall make war across the world for no good reason
And workers of the nation will lose consumer confidence.
Neither shall Wall Street abide…
The prophecies tell of foreign wars of aggression, economic collapse, public demonstrations against a federal government out of touch with and control of the voters, the hopeless apathy and moral degradation of the coming generation, the sorts of things you generally find in prophecies about times to come from any culture past or present. What sets this bunch apart are the bits about “Gugurped,” a computerized intelligence that will arise and force humanity to live in a technocratic collectivist empire until the end of history should America continue down its spiral of irrationalism and “capitulating to the looters.”
Ayn Sedai secretly assured her closest followers that a champion would come to save them, a real life John Galt destined to win the Presidency and lead America back to its nineteenth-century glory: the Dollar Reborn. The Dollar Reborn will tame the mechanical beast Gugurped; he’ll become its master and turn its power to regulating a well-armed militia, enforcing the gold standard and protecting the borders, and that will be it. Ayn Sedai’s writings don’t contain prophecies to identify the Dollar Reborn; the collectivists, she explained, would use her prophecies to identify and destroy the Dollar Reborn while he was young and weak if the signs of his coming were known before the time of his arrival on the world stage drew near.
Part of the prophecies contained in Ayn Sedai’s writings have already come true, so far as Ron can tell. Gugurped rears its head on the internet, though it’s still in its embryonic stage and not yet self-aware. Its awakening will surely come when Google and Wikipedia (and possibly this Facebook thing all the young people are using now) inevitably merge, becoming a self-aware search engine with all of mankind’s collected knowledge available to it. Ron started an initiative to get as many people as possible to enter his name into Google to counter Gugurped’s advances; that ought to make it more susceptible to his influence in the future. But he’s always known small measures like that won’t be enough, and he’s given up on illusions that he might be the Dollar Reborn—the White House seems forever out of his reach, his career already having reached its zenith with his seniority in the House.
As the new millennium began and Ayn Sedai’s prophecies became more and more real every day, Ron couldn’t escape the feeling that he needed guidance if the war against Gugurped was to be won. Then, in early 2001, an intern working on the House floor brought Paul a copy of Faith of the Fallen by Terry Goodkind and told him he’d get a kick out of it. Paul never saw the intern in question again and wonders about that from time to time, but all concern over where the book came from falls away whenever he reads the code-masked prophecies hidden within its pages. Faith of the Fallen blew him away—not because of the Randian plot or the implied rape (a hallmark of Objectivist literature that not only survived under the Randites, but actually became more widespread, to the point that most modern Objectivist/Randite stories are at least eighty-four percent rape scenes) but because Ayn Sedai’s code could be used to identify several heretofore unknown prophecies about the hero who would save America in its darkest hour. The only rational explanation Paul can think of is that this Terry Goodkind must be channeling the same currents of space-time as Ayn Sedai, or maybe even the undead spirit of Ayn Sedai herself. As Paul does so often nowadays, he reads over the prophecies that identify the Dollar Reborn to comfort himself and think on his next step.
Once the eagle he shall be marked,
For fiscal responsibility that was abandoned.
Twice the eagle he shall be marked,
For gold standard he will restore.
Once the serpent he shall be marked,
For path that need be trod to win the nomination.
Twice the serpent he shall be marked,
For none shall tread on him.
While these familiar verses give Ron Paul a reassurance that warms what marrow is left in his bones, he can’t help but go back again to the lines he usually ignores, the ones he’s never fully understood and isn’t sure he wants to.
Patsy, fall-guy, mark and tool
Don’t let Lady Chaos make you her fool
Ron thinks this one might concern those looters in ERIS. Those anarchists are a threat to freedom, capitalism, god and country, and Ron Paul doesn’t need a prophecy to know that. As the only representative in Congress to have actually read the PATRIOT Act, he knows just how dangerous those radicals are. But that’s not even the worst of it. It’s the next one that scares him shitless.
Weep, gnash thine teeth and curse thine bank account,
For his blood on tragedy’s soil is thy salvation.
He doesn’t like the sound of that one at all. Again, he wonders if he should tell his son what he knows, but foreknowledge of the future might change Rand’s destiny and damn them all. The best Ron can do for now is make sure none of his son’s campaign stops take place at “tragedy’s soil;” there might not be another choice after Rand takes the Presidency in 2012, but Ron Paul refuses to allow prophecy to come to pass before its time. In all the chaos of the modern age, there’s only one thing of which he’s absolutely positive, one truth around which all his actions revolve: his son, Rand Paul, is the Dollar Reborn.
***
Back in Washington, D.C., the man called Dick Cheney in this era rests his wrinkled ass upon the silver throne of the Overmaster of the Council of Overseers, like the Roman Catholic pope, first among equals in name only. The throne rests on a dais at the western point of a small pentagonal room in an undisclosed location (hint: it’s about a mile below a certain similarly shaped building in Washington, D.C.). A golden pyramid with a single onyx eye rises from the back of the throne and glares over the room. Woven into the hemp carpet of the dais is a pentagram-and-inverted-cross pattern, developed in 1793 by the original Council coven to ensure the room’s maximum magical defensive potential against Rosicrucian curses, and the throne sits in the exact center of the symbol, a spot measured to the millimeter. It looks a bit like this on paper:
The other four corners of the room are decorated with ivory busts of the nation’s past Arbiters of the People’s Will, which you might know better as the Presidents. Washington is at the northwest corner, Adams at the northeast, Jefferson at the southeast, Madison southwest, then Monroe next to Washington in the northwest, and so on to the newest bust of Arbiter forty-three down the line from Jefferson. The only entrance or exit from the room (besides the dais, which doubles as an elevator and is reserved for the Overmaster’s use alone) is a set of gold-gilded double-doors on the eastern wall; one door is inlaid with the Eagle, the other with the Serpent. Beyond the doors is a staircase, and beyond the staircase is an elevator that requires a retinal scan to activate going up or down. Men and women belonging to a government agency without a name guard the elevator’s entrance at ground level.
The Council’s members are coming through those double doors, mostly in groups of twos and threes, some locals, some of them after trips in to D.C. from the surrounding states. Each has his or her assigned spot on the floor. There are no chairs or stools allowed, not even for the oldest and most infirm among them, though anyone over sixty is allowed to sit cross-legged on the floor rather than kneel. Not that most of the young fuckers appreciate the old ways anymore. Cheney chased some young investment banker representing Merrill Lynch out of the last meeting; the little shit brought in one of those folding chairs the proles take on camping trips, and he was sitting in it and sipping a latte like everything was right with the goddamn world. Well, okay, Cheney didn’t so much chase him out as scream at him until he left. Same difference. Point is, there’s no respect for authority anymore, and without respect for authority, what do they have? Murder, rape and—he shudders—theft in the streets. Chaos.
The Old One feels a gurgle in his stomach, like an angry baby is kicking him from within his remaining intestine. Cheney leans closer to the Beast, who’s standing at the Overmaster’s right hand as he has for decades. “How went the talk with Tony Hayward?”
The man America’s most recently learned to call Barack Obama smiles. Though he wears neither the name nor the face he was born with, his expressions look natural. The Beast always was an impeccable impressionist, even before he got into politics. “We came to an understanding. Hayward was still under the impression that the oil spill was a genuine accident. Once I explained what a tragedy it would be if accidents like that kept happening, and what we might be forced to do if they did, he agreed it was in our mutual best interests that BP take our concerns to Parliament.” Cheney nods, satisfied his protégé has resolved the issue, though he’s annoyed the incident had to take place at all. What’s wrong with the world when the fucking English think they can question America’s right to use the UK’s airspace and ports? Do they really think America’s that vulnerable now?
“The whole world is waiting for a chance to kick us when we’re down,” the Overmaster tells his latest disciple, knowing that if anyone’s ready to go after him when he’s down, it’s the Beast.
This whole Beast thing probably deserves an explanation, and since we’re still waiting on everyone to get to the meeting, now’s probably the best time to give it. There’s a lot of talk going around about who Barack Obama “really” is and what his agenda might be, none of it very accurate, including the bits about him working with the underprivileged in Chicago or being a secret Muslim, but inaccuracy hasn’t stopped the rumors. Take this randomly selected post from Craigslist’s Rants & Raves:
The truth is that the Beast doesn’t ascribe to any particular religious viewpoint, though his original persona is fond of meditation. Cheney assures the rest of the Council that the Beast was born in the United States, which is quite truthful, though when and where and under what name are some of the Overmaster’s most closely guarded secrets. The Barack Obama persona identifies as a Christian, albeit a different brand of Christianity than that of George W. Bush, the persona the Beast wore most often during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Right now, one of the Beast’s personas is caught up in a pay-to-play investigation in New Mexico, another believes a camera company is out to get him, and yet another is drawing comparisons to eighties-era Madonna. Cheney isn’t sure if the Beast really is the world’s greatest method actor or if he just has a high-functioning form of dissociative identity disorder, for the Beast wholeheartedly believes certain things as some personas that are anathema to things he believes as others without any apparent internal contradiction.
Through the double doors and across the room comes Joe Biden, who strides up the dais steps and slaps Barack Obama on the shoulder. “I was just getting ready to tie one on. What’s up?” Cheney grunts. Biden wasn’t his first choice for Vice President, but that was the deal with Olmert, so Biden takes a place on the Council of Overseers not as the Vice President of the United States but as the Council’s official liaison with the Israeli government. It worries the Old One that those goddamn kikes are able to dictate who gets within a bullet of the Presidency, but the Council needs the nation of Israel to serve as a staging ground for their military endeavors in the Middle East, and that means playing nice when they make demands. For now.
“The Overmaster is concerned,” the Beast says, which is all he knows about it despite his bevy of titles (Grand Illuminated Trueseer, Protector of Old Glory and He Whose Finger Is On The Button, among others). Biden nods his acceptance of that explanation, knowing it’s the best he’s likely to get before the meeting starts.
Some other men and women come into the conference room and kneel (or, as has been happening more and more lately, sit) at their assigned and long-familiar places on the floor, but they’re mostly the boring ones you don’t hear about, representatives from oil companies and financial firms, a couple of older women who have something to do with pharmaceuticals, those sorts of people. Their job is to listen, make their quarterly reports and pass on orders (or “scenarios”) to their bosses. The real Council members they represent are busy running corporate America, not to mention the military-industrial and prison-industrial complexes. A survey of the representatives present at an average meeting would find at least fifty percent of them are personal assistants with human resources degrees, and half of those are unpaid interns. We’re not concerned with them.
John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, the representatives for the conservative faction, come into the room together and take knees on the right side of the room (from Cheney’s perspective, not theirs); the liberal faction’s representatives, Robert Byrd and Harry Reid, come in a minute later and head to the left. Nancy Pelosi, head of the Council’s supernatural defenses, is with them. The conservatives and liberals glare at each other before they all turn their gazes to their betters up on the dais.
While we’re on the topic, let’s have a quick chat about these two major factions. Each represents a sizable chunk of the Senior Council, and each is vying for influence with the Overmaster (and therefore power over the American people):
| The Conservatives* | The Liberals* | |
| Public Goal | Maintain American prosperity and protect American values. Protect jobs from immigrants. | Promote tolerance, equality and prosperity for all Americans. |
| Actual Goal | Seize power to pursue own interests and vendettas. | Seize power to pursue own interests and vendettas. |
| Major Supporters | Oil, agriculture, manufacturing, banking, Wall Street, pharmaceuticals. | Oil, agriculture, manufacturing, banking, Wall Street, pharmaceuticals. |
| Party Line | We can make things as good as they were in an imaginary time that never existed if you give our side enough power. | We can create a utopia like something in a science-fiction novel if you give our side enough power. |
| Official Reaction To 9/11 | Assign blame and cover own ass by distracting public with wars. Take advantage of panic to pass unconstitutional laws that were sitting in desk drawer at home for years. Create illegal mercenary company run by the CIA to do dirty work. | Complain loudly about government run amuck and promise to fix things if put in power. Once in power, retain status quo of previous faction in power while blaming other faction for everything and asking for more power. |
| Would Have Done In Other’s Shoes | Same thing liberals did, except with more empty talk about reducing size and power of federal government. Complain about how much war costs. | Same thing conservatives did, except with less Iraq and more Darfur, but still an equal part Halliburton and Blackwater (sorry, “Xe”). |
| What People Need | To be controlled because they’re too dumb to know what’s good for them. | To be controlled because they’re too dumb to know what’s good for them. |
| Who Knows What’s Best | Only themselves. | Only themselves. |
*Both terms used erroneously. On purpose.
As you might imagine, allowing combinations of agents from these two factions to run the country has led to a bloated and corrupt kleptocracy posing as a republic, a glorified fiefdom ruled by nefarious sociopaths with total disregard for individual liberty or happiness; it has created an insulated ruling class who feel morally justified both in spending the nation into bankruptcy while indiscriminately killing non-citizens overseas (either in “self-defense” through wars of aggression or for “humanitarian purposes” to ensure cheap access to natural resources in foreign nations) and in imposing blatantly illegal restrictions on their serfs’ activities in the homeland in the name of “national security.” Lucky for the members of the Council, they also control the courts, who ostensibly watch the watchmen, but are mostly packed with watchmen as well, meaning even with the right to vote, run for office and file suit against the government, the serfs are effectively (though unofficially, and therefore legally) disenfranchised.
Hillary Clinton is next to enter the room. As Secretary of State, she’s the only Cabinet member on the Council, though her presence on the Council precedes her ascension to her current public office; in fact, it goes back to 1992, when her pawn first sat in the Oval Office. Cheney had once planned to put the Beast into the executive office in the mid-nineties, but his spotty performance as Vice President under Bush Sr. (not to mention his failure to take the office seriously when he was temporarily President after Nixon fucked up) convinced Cheney to hold off on those plans. At the time, Bill Clinton had seemed an ideal placeholder to fill the office until the Beast was ready to rule. If Cheney could do it all again, he might have let the Beast have the job after all, or at least picked someone besides Hillary’s stooge; that woman has been a boil on his ass every week of the past eighteen years, and she’s been on the Council too long and knows too much to be gotten rid of now.
Right on Hillary’s heels comes Sarah Palin, a new addition to the Council and one Cheney wasn’t happy to make. The Old One’s still not sure whether she’s nefariously bright and using that bumpkin accent to disarm her critics or she’s really dumber than a tongueless mime with laryngitis. Cheney thinks it’s the latter, but W’Moud says she belongs in the room, and just thinking about disagreeing with W’Moud makes Cheney’s left arm start to ache. Cheney does agrees that it’s a good idea to direct the serfs’ unpatriotic dissatisfaction into this Tea Party business so the bastards can be monitored and pushed in convenient directions as need be, but did they have to let this hick in a skirt sit with the grown-ups? At least she seems comfortable getting down on her knees; that’s a quality the Old One has always appreciated in a woman.
Cheney waits for the latecomers to settle on the floor, then he raises a gnarled hand. The room goes quiet. He savors the moment, reminding himself that despite all the hell the Council’s gone through in the past nine years, he’s still Overmaster of the most powerful cabal in the world. It would be better if the others gathered here would remember that too and behave appropriately.
“What I have to say is sealed to the Senior Council alone.” Most of the people in the room plug their fingers into their ears as the precepts require. A woman near the back, probably a new intern, whispers “Really?” to the man next to her, and he gives her a solemn nod; the woman jabs her lacquered nails into her ear canals with a dazed look on her face. Cheney waits until he’s sure no one’s listening who shouldn’t be, then says, “My friends, we are beset by terrorists and worshippers of anarchy.”
Every society needs a group to fear, be it the Vikings, the Jews, devil-worshippers putting subliminal satanic messages on rock records or, since September 2001 in the United States of America, faceless, hidden, ever-unconfrontable terrorists. Cheney subscribes to the old mentality that served the USA so well during the Cold War: the easiest, and therefore best, way to control people is through fear of an enemy no one can ever face directly, which is to say the rulers of the United States manipulate their serfs the same way the average horror film director plays with his audience.
“We have reason to believe a terrorist organization called ERIS is in possession of Council secrets.” Cheney’s left hand flaps open and closed as he speaks, like he’s trying to scoop something out of the air, though he seems not to notice. No one dares mention it to him. “Last week, we intercepted word that a drunken CIA agent disclosed the discovery of the WMD in Iraq to an erotic dancer in Seattle named Sindy Cathaway. I had a DHS agent dispatched to apprehend Cathaway, but ERIS got to her before we did and spirited her away.”
Henry Reid clears his throat. “Who did we intercept that intelligence from?” As a representative for the liberal caucus, Reid is a member of the Senior Council and allowed to pose questions to the Overmaster. It hasn’t slipped the Old One’s notice that members of the Senior Council used to ask for permission to field those questions instead of just tossing them out. What does he think this is, the press corps? There’s no respect for authority anymore.
“A mole planted within the Roman heretics. They had the club bugged. But I’m afraid we got the news several days after the fact.” The Overmaster sits in silence for a minute, mentally daring someone else to interrupt him. “Another tip from a mole within ERIS led our agent to the hotel where Cathaway and her ERIS compatriots were staying this morning, but they have escaped again. I am told the terrorists tapped into a local law enforcement radio band and impersonated a field agent to call off the pursuit.”
John Boehner chokes back a sob. “That’s cheating!”
Clinton gives Boehner a look fit to send a man’s toenails fleeing up to his kneecaps, and he wipes his nose with the cuff of his jacket. She turns to the Overmaster and says, “Do we know where they headed after that?”
“The Canadian border, it seems.” Cheney grimaces, though that isn’t too far from his usual expression, so it’s a little hard to tell. His left hand spasms open and closed, like the mouth of a man throwing an expletive-heavy fit.
“What about the CIA agent in question?” the Beast says.
“His name is Robert Johnson. We’re unsure of his present location. It looks like he left Seattle the day after he ran his mouth, and he hasn’t reported to us since.”
Pelosi frowns. “Johnson? Isn’t he part of Project Judo?” Cheney grunts an affirmation. “Did they put him up to this? And how did he find out about W’Moud?”
“What’s Project Jew-Doh?” Palin says, but no one pays her any mind except Biden, who scowls in her direction, then tries to look down her blouse.
Clinton clears her throat. “So, if this started last week, why are we just hearing about it now? Especially in light of your failure to contain the problem.”
Not a breath can be heard in the room outside the Old One’s usual wheezing, and the Beast shifts his weight like he’s ready to pounce at the Secretary of State. That would be something, the Old One thinks; it would be just like old times. “Nancy,” Cheney says as he turns to look at Pelosi, ignoring Clinton’s breach of etiquette for the moment, “I want new barrier spells cast in all five spots around the capitol. We have to assume those Roman bastards are throwing hexes at us again.”
“I’ll make a stop by the Humane Society tomorrow.”
“That won’t be enough. We have to be sure on this one.”
Pelosi clicks her tongue. “I can arrange a few celebrity adoptions from Africa. It won’t take longer than a week.” Cheney nods. This age of bureaucracy is usually convenient when you’re on top, but it’s made gathering orphans for use in sacrifices harder to pull off without leaving a paper trail. That’s a problem, even in a country where the Council controls the mainstream media. There are too many goddamn bloggers with too much internet-surfing time on their hands looking for exclusives. Maybe some kind of law requiring bloggers to register as journalists and pay for licenses is in order? It’s a thought for another time. The Old One misses the days when the Council could kidnap even famous aviators’ babies for use in their rituals and get away with it.
“Fine, fine,” Cheney says. “Get their fingers out of their ears.” The Senior Council members wave back at their hear-no-evil compatriots, and it’s not long before everyone’s listening again. “Mueller.” The director of the FBI bobs his head in acknowledgement. He’s not often invited to Council meetings, but he’s been called in today to give a report. “What is the status on the McHailey investigation?”
“She was in Topeka, but she’s skipped town,” Robert Mueller says. “Looks like she was shacking up with a group of Truthers. A rental car exploded at one of their rallies, and it looks like she left Topeka immediately afterward.”
Cheney’s eyebrows climb into his forehead wrinkles. “Those unpatriotic bastards are blowing up cars now?”
“We’re not sure, sir. DHS sent an agent to look into the matter, but he hasn’t submitted a report yet. Do you want the Bureau to investigate, sir?”
“No. Any idea where McHailey went?”
“Based on our interviews with the locals she had contact with, we believe she’s coming to D.C., sir. I’ve already forwarded her description to the MPDC.”
“Fine. Gates,” Cheney says. Robert Gates stands. He’s not usually part of the these meetings either, but this is another report due and now’s as good a time as any to get it out of the way. “How goes progress on HAARP?”
Gates clears his throat. “We’ve finished using data from the Haiti quake to recalibrate the IRI. Pre-test readings indicate we may have upped our accuracy by as much as 5.8 percent, but we can’t be sure until we fire it again.”
“Excellent. How soon can you run another live test?”
“All we need is a target and permission to fire, sir.”
Finally, someone with some good news. Cheney waves for Robert Gates to take his seat. Perhaps he should see to making the head of the Department of Defense a permanent member of the Council. There aren’t any hard and fast rules about who does and doesn’t get to attend Council meetings; everyone serves at the Overmaster’s pleasure, the same way it’s been since the eighteenth century. There’s an empty spot on the left side of the room where Ted Kennedy used to sit, same piece of the floor once occupied by Ted’s father and two older brothers before him, but the Old One hasn’t seen fit to fill it with another Kennedy since Ted’s death last year. Gates is making noise about retiring, but a spot on the Senior Council might change his mind.
“You will all receive new orders shortly,” Cheney says to the rest of the Council. “Go forth and do what thou wilt. Dismissed.”
***
Senator Robert Byrd returns to his office after the meeting and types the latest in a long history of secret reports on Council business. He emails this report, as he’s mailed so many reports on Council business in times past, to an organization called DRAGON (Democrats and Republicans Against the Gay Onslaught), whose incoming emails are forwarded via proxies in 23 various international locales to a server currently off the west coast of Alaska.
As far as Byrd is aware, DRAGON is an ally in both his secret war against the Council and his public war against the encroachment of the homosexual agenda on American politics. Unbeknownst to Byrd, his history as an unwitting mole for ERIS has been uncovered by a Council counter-mole on the Party, and his time on this earth is thereby limited.
***
Elsewhere, John McCain blinks his way out of a nap, awakened by a rap at his door. “Who is it?”
“Howdy!” says Sarah Palin as she lets herself into his study. “Howyadoin’, chief-in-command?” She sits in the guest easy-chair across from McCain’s own and leans back so that the footrest comes out. “I tell ya, Mac Daddy, I don’t know about this witch stuff. I’m pretty sure that Hillary wants to jump my bones, and that just ain’t biblical, ya know? Besides, I looked up witchcraft in the Bible, and it said you’re not s’posed to suffer a witch to live, and when I asked Todd about life as a witch being suffering he said it sounded Buddhist, and that ain’t biblical neither.”
McCain grunts. “What brings you here?”
“We had a meeting,” says Palin, “and you said I was always s’posed to tell ya after we had a meeting. Ya wanna know what it was about, doancha?”
McCain nods for her to continue, but she doesn’t say anything. She seems to have problems understanding unspoken instructions. Also written instructions. Also the English language in general. “What did they say, Sarah?”
“Oh golly, there was somethin’ about the Jews and a harp and that place with all the chocolate people that had the tsunami, but mostly they talked a lot about this stripper who found out about that one thing we’re not supposed to talk about and how some heiress who’s a terrorist got away with her to Canada.”
“There’s a lot of things Council members aren’t supposed to talk about,” McCain says, but his pulse quickens at the thought that she’s babbling about what he thinks she’s babbling about. “What does the stripper know about that she’s not supposed to know?”
“She knows about the dubya-emm-dee from aye-arr-aye…” Palin trails off, unsure of what comes next. “You know whadayemean?”
“W’Moud. Someone knows about it?”
“Yeah, Paris Hilton, I think. They said it was some heiress, and she’s the only heiress in the country, right? Never would have thought she was a terrorist.”
“Paris Hilton knows about W’Moud?”
“Yeah. I feel real bad for that little dog she carries around in her purse ‘cause now that she’s a Muslim, ya just know she’s gonna eat it sooner or later, right?”
“Ahumph.” McCain chokes back the urge to smack the infidel bitch.
Now you might think, based on experiences in our Universe, that John McCain has spent years in the House of Representatives to better America, and that he ran for President in 2008 because (rightly or wrongly, from your perspective) he thought he was the right man for the job. I’m afraid there are some things you need to know about the John McCain in this Universe, and some of them may come as a shock.
The official story is that John McCain accidentally crashed his plane on his sixth flight during the Vietnam War and subsequently spent five and a half years in a POW camp. The truth is that John McCain scuttled his fighter jet on purpose at a pre-arranged location, and he did so for two reasons:
1) To provide the Viet Cong with an A-4 so the Russians and Chinese could reverse-engineer American military aircraft, and
2) To give McCain cover to train as a sleeper agent at a secret Soviet installation so he could help destroy the United States from within.
What would drive a man to turn against his own society so completely? While it’s probably impossible to give a straight answer on that one, let’s examine the path of John’s life leading to that fateful choice in pursuit of a clearer understanding.
John McCain grew up in a strict military household, groomed from childhood for military and political leadership (which is called “service” for some odd reason, possibly an attempt at low-level irony). He was a C student who fucked off through school and passed at the bare bottom of his class on the murmur of his father’s name. McCain hated living in his father’s shadow, but he was too stubborn and lazy in his youth to cast his own. Spider-Freud says that when McCain grew up he substituted the hatred of his symbolic patriarch, the United States of America, for the rage at his father that he felt he could never express. Whatever the reason, McCain swore an oath as a Russian spy during his final year at the academy and entered the Navy as a double-agent. Spider-Freud speculates further that McCain crashing his jet and embracing his clandestine training with the Russians, where he suddenly excelled and rose to the top of the ranks, may have been his rebellious rite of passage.
The half-decade of Soviet training put steel in a spine that had once been rubber. McCain led false-flag attacks on Vietnamese peasants to fuck with the press and discredit the American government, but it turned out the Council so completely fucked up in Vietnam that those false-flag massacres were assumed to be part of the larger catastrophe and didn’t get much airtime. To this day, US military intelligence (another possible attempt at low-level irony) believes the nation’s armed forces were guilty of McCain’s atrocities. Over time, the steel in McCain’s spine has morphed to iron and rusted, but he could kick some Yankee capitalist ass back in the day.
All that said, it wasn’t McCain’s Soviet indoctrination that set his life on its current path. That honor goes to his introduction to Ahmatohtal Wahkjhab, a Sunni cleric who spoke to the young radical of a sacred truth, a holy mission and a deep and abiding hatred for the Great Satan America, a country where women wore pants and everyone smelled of cheese. John McCain’s conversion was sudden and absolute, and he returned to the United States to pursue not his original political agenda, but his newfound religious destiny—he would stab the Great Satan’s heart from the Oval Office, and none of the pig-fucking infidels would ever suspect John McCain was a secret Muslim until the United States was burning to the ground.
Victory seemed so close in 2008. The Beast, posing as George W. Bush, couldn’t have mismanaged the country worse, and the Overmaster had to have known it. But the Overmaster had refused to boot his protégé out of office even after his string of failures, though not without losing face—he’d had to buy off Hillary with the office of Secretary of State. But what was John McCain left with for participating in the electoral game of musical chairs that put the Beast back in the White House with a new name and face? Nothing, not even a seat on the Senior Council. It might sting less if he thought the infidels knew of his true intentions, knew of his true faith, but no—they just think him burned out and harmless enough to cast aside.
But the Great Satan has made an error in its hubris: they took Sarah into their ranks. McCain isn’t sure whose bright idea that was, but it gives him an ear at all their meetings. Not the most comprehending ear, certainly. John gave Sarah a book of Sudoku puzzles in the hopes they’d give her brain a work-out, and she came back complaining that she couldn’t find the across and down clues. Still, tonight proves what a blunder putting her on the Council was for Cheney. He wonders if it’s true that the Old One is finally losing it for good.
“Here’s what you’re going to do, Sarah. I want you to—”
“Oh hang on, okey dokey? I gotta write this down, ya know?” Sarah digs in her purse for a Hello Kitty notepad and a stub pencil. “Shoot, chief!”
“I want you to go back to Alaska,” McCain says. “If these terrorists are headed where I think they’re headed, you’ll be in the right place to capture them.” A heiress who’s a terrorist? No, he knows about the terrorist organization ERIS all too well. How could he not? Their prankful intervention in his campaign is what stuck him with Sarah as his Vice Presidential candidate in the first place. And he also knows their base of operations is somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean; where, he’s not sure. But if that’s where they’re headed, Alaska’s as good a place as any for them to disembark from. He’ll tell the Al-Qaeda agents in British Columbia to be on a lookout as well. “Use any means necessary to capture them. Can you do that?”
Sarah Palin grins as she puts her notepad back in her purse. “Sure thing, ya know? Easier than catchin’ a moose in a noose!”
***
The Old One stands at his office window and looks out over the national capitol he helped build. His aged eyes can’t quite make out the statue in his honor standing by the Old Post Office from here, not even with these modern glasses. The man called Dick Cheney in the present day marks the last item off his daily checklist:
Contemplate what we have wrought
This list-making is an old habit long ingrained in his ancient psyche, and he credits it above everything else for his longevity. He keeps a stringent schedule every day, each moment of exercise planned, each bout of contemplation pre-arranged, all the facets of his life orderly, scientific. He keeps meticulous journals on both his diet and (like Todd Moody) his bowel movements, and the occasions when he indulges in pleasures of the flesh are all inked on the calendar in his personal ledger weeks in advance. There is a time to eat, a time to nap, a time to take his pills and a time to think on those he’s lost over the long course of his life. There is time on Sunday devoted to thinking on those whose names start with A-D, on Monday for those of E-J, and so on.
Perhaps he’s right, and he’s lived these past 304 years thanks to his insistence on order. Maybe it’s the secret concoction of herbs he developed as part of his scientific career; he continues to take that tincture once a week, just as he has since his forties. Putting the same mix in batter for frying chicken and feeding the results to the masses seems to have done nothing positive for the average person’s life expectancy, however. That was a disappointing, though profitable, experiment.
Hell, maybe that bolt of lightning changed something in him, though he’s not often given to that kind of comic book logic. If he had to guess, he’d wager that divine providence has blessed him with a biblical lifespan so that he might continue to perfect this most sacred of Unions.
Truth is, it no longer matters to the Old One why he’s lived so long. Whatever the cause, it’s no longer working. A score of years and two centuries have passed since the day the history books claim his body was laid to rest beneath Philadelphia’s soil, with over a dozen lesser personas supposedly settled into the dirt since. But there will be no trickery when the persona Dick Cheney dies, for the man born Benjamin Franklin will have finally come to his natural end.
He wonders what George and Tom would say if they had lived as long as he has. The Old One misses their bull sessions, sitting around a tavern, drinking hard apple cider, smoking their hemp pipes* and talking legal philosophy and rebellion. Now those were the days of statesmen—patriotic men who understood what it took to build a nation, men who took radical positions and stuck to them despite knowing that failure to win the revolution would mean a trip to the gallows. They’d created a perfect Union—well, okay, there were some bumps along the way, but the Old One doesn’t like to think about that—but what had come of that Union? It was inherited by squabbling children who sniped at each other while terrorists foreign and domestic did their best to wreck the peace and prosperity he’d fought for. Well, other people had fought for. He had mostly hung out in France at the time, making speeches at elaborate dinner parties and fucking other men’s wives, but each patriot had to fight in his own way.
(*Note: This habit of our Founding Fathers should come as no surprise to anyone. Washington and Jefferson were both known to grow their own. Besides, one need only read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to know the people writing both were stoned; ideas like “everyone is born equal” and “the government shouldn’t push people around” and “some people are, like, only three-fifths of a person” are all stoner ideas.)
“It’s all falling apart. None of them…” He’s sure he was going somewhere with that thought, but it’s gone before he can finish his sentence, like one of his all-too-rare hard-ons spent before he can unbuckle his belt. Maybe this is the joke of a mortal life, that what one builds must inevitably be handed off to the young, whom it seems to the Old One will only wreck everything if left to their own devices. Can there be any doubt that the young—and everyone alive is “the young” from the former Mr. Franklin’s point of view—need to be dominated by their elders for their own good? “No respect for authority,” he says to no one in particular, his personal koan.
“Oh, Benny.” The Old One can feel his left hand flapping open and shut within the sock, but it doesn’t move of his accord, nor does W’Moud’s voice issue from the Old One’s throat. “Don’t let it get you down,” says the only consciousness in the United States more ancient than the Overmaster. “C’mon now, let’s see a smile.”
The Old One does his best, which is something like a scowl that would frighten only toddlers as opposed to children in general.
“That’s it!” says the sock puppet. “You know what we’re gonna do, buddy? We’re gonna catch that slut, then we’re gonna burn her alive and piss on her ashes. They’re all gonna burn, Benny, every fucking one of ‘em! All the terrorists, all the towelheads, all the illegals, all the whistleblowers, all the faggots, all the moochers, all the goddamn unpatriotic bastards who don’t give you credit for all you’ve done for them, they’re all gonna burn. So smile, yeah?”
“We must make this nation safe at any cost,” the Old One says, and he sighs. “So much blood has been spilled already. We owe it to those who have laid down their lives to spill all the more blood necessary to bring it to an end. We really do have no other choice in the matter.”
“No choice at all,” says W’Moud, and it begins to laugh.
