Special thanks and apologies to:
- Bevin Conners (ideas and moral support)
- Bob Doughboy (author of the Little Bob Chronicles)
- Cronan Thompson (creator of Norman and the Pocket Shuttlecraft)
- Paul Werdel and Geoff Couch (creators of Inspector P)
- Canadians everywhere (remember, it's satire!)
The World Oligarchy had been publicly in place for a month. William G. Enloe High School was being rebuilt as the William G. Enloe Oligarchy Government Complex, and governments all over the world were making transitions to global rule.
"Okay, here's the plan. The studio stays intact; they'll be making propaganda in there. The cafeteria stays, but the kitchen needs to be rebuilt. Mrs. Cooper's classroom is to be demolished, and the ruins are to be enclosed in brick walls so that no one may enter again. And get rid of the bridge in the ravine. Bevin wants some hammocks in there."
"What about the stage?"
"Leave it alone. That's for Wayla--"
The foreman was interrupted as the loud blast of an explosion rippled through the area. The construction crew rushed to the source of the blast to find what was left of the engineering lab in flames.
The police arrived a moment later, and began examining the wreckage. Soon, someone found a bomb fragment. "Looks like a Cuban bomb."
"How can you tell?" asked a construction worker.
"It says right here -- 'Made proudly in Cuba by Commie bastards.'"
"Well," the foreman said to a cop, "when you write your report, tell one of the Co-Rulers to call Castro and thank him for doing #14 on our agenda for us."
"Damn!" Fidel Castro yelled out when he heard the news. "Planting bombs isn't working. Do you have any more bright ideas?"
"Just one," replied Saddam Hussein, who had teamed up with Castro to attempt to subvert the Oligarchy. "We must obtain the help of someone even more evil than us."
"Good luck on that. I'm a Communist and make my citizens conveniently disappear for little reason. You're a nationalist dictator and use chemical weapons on dissenters. Who are we going to find who is more evil than us?"
Saddam smiled. "I have an idea."
"Non. There's no way I'm going to work with that tête-de-merde Castro. Not after he embarrassed me with that Holocaust speech back in '98."
"Get over it, Jean," replied Saddam. "We need your help. The two of us alone don't stand a chance as an effective force of evil. We can only accomplish the downfall of the Oligarchy with the pure, deceptive evil of a French-Canadian."
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien sighed. "D'accord. I'll do it. But Fidel owes me a buttload of cigars for this, eh?"
"Excellent. It's too bad we couldn't get Helmut Köhl, though. With Germany's help, we could bombard Raleigh with Volkswagen Beetles. And I mean the new, sucky ones!"
"Um, Saddam?"
"Benzes with mind-control devices in the stee-- what? Oh, sorry. Anyway, as you know, we've already tried bombs. That failed miserably. Worse yet, it turns out that anthrax is just a new kind of laundry detergent, so that won't be a very effective weapon... that is, unless the Co-Rulers have a fashion crisis. And Cuba hasn't got shit. What do you suggest?"
"Well, first, I will arrange for Red Green to be arrested for treason. He's been a public Oligarchy sympathizer since the beginning, eh?"
"Sounds good. Then what?"
"Next," Chretien continued, "we open a can of fresh whoop-ass."
"Whoa," Saddam replied, in true astonishment. "That is a good plan. Now I know how you Canadians get your reputation."
"It's a living," the Canuck answered evilly.
"...and the Overlord of the Internet shall be James 'Kibo' Parry," Tom Brokaw announced.
"In other news, the Enloe Oligarchy Complex was bombed by Cubans, but the job was fouled up and no one really cares. In a related story, Cronan's shirts faded in the wash yesterday."
Brokaw then noticed a new report coming in on the teleprompter. "This just in. Detroit, Michigan has been taken over by troops coming in from nearby Windsor, Ontario. Here is our live reporter, Inspector P, who is on location."
Inspector P, standing a block from Detroit City Hall, began, "Canadian Mounties massed outside Windsor at 4:30 today and crossed Fleetway Tunnel, swarming the streets on horseback, wreaking havoc on the city. Currently, City Hall is surrounded by 50 Mounties with assault rifles. Recent Canadian aggression: Inspector P's red seal of disapproval."
"Thank you, Inspector," Brokaw said. "Now to
Raleigh, where the Co-Rulers of the World are holding a press
conference."
"We're pretty pissed," Cronan began. "We always
knew that Canadians were the heart of all evil, but this was completely
unexpected."
"We have decided to dispatch the Pocket Shuttlecraft to deal with this new threat to the security of the Oligarchy," Brendan added.
Wolf Blitzer, who had recently left CNN to work for NBC, came on for analysis. "The Co-Rulers' decision to use the Pocket Shuttlecraft shows that they are quite serious about this situation. The Shuttle is always crewed personally by Cronan, usually accompanied by Norman the Elf. If Canada wishes to become aggressive against the Oligarchy, this encounter will surely test their mettle."
"The Canadians, my most lethal enemy hath begun an invasion of the US and this time... there may be no stopping them," said Little Bob.
"Green bread, Rodman is your most lethal enemy," Pimp-Bot adds.
"The Canadians, my second most...."
"No, that's the music industry," corrects Pimp-Bot.
"The Canadians, my third..."
"No, that's Dick Clark."
"Fourth, Fifth, Sixth?" Little Bob has to remember to rank his enemies better.
"Strom Thurmond, Gary Coleman, and Bill Gates."
Little Bob starts over, "The Canadians, one of my lethal enemies, hath begun an invasion of the US and this time there may be no stopping them."
"Actually, they have almost been stopped already."
"Argh!"
"Muhahaha!" Chretien meanwhile yelled in Ottawa. "The Pocket Shuttlecraft cannot stand up against our ace in the hole. But we won't reveal that just yet. Castro -- you must open a Floridian front immediately."
"Of course."
"And Saddam... during that whole deal with the U.S. in 1997, where were you hiding those nukes?"
"Mostly in my shirts. I went around trying to pass myself off as a pregnant woman."
"Excellent. I want you to pop up unexpectedly in Buenos Aires and blow it to hell. I know the Co-Rulers hated that Starship Troopers movie, so we can piss them off some damn way with that, eh?"
At that point, the phone rang. "Âllo?" Chretien answered, then handed the receiver to Castro. "It's for you."
The Commie grabbed the phone. "Castro here... Yeah... No, I don't have the money. Look, a nation can only earn so much on cigars alone... All right, I'll try to get it. Yes, I'll send some more women to Times Square. Goodbye."
"Who the hell was that?" Saddam asked after Castro hung up.
"Just a guy I owe money to."
"You're a dictator, why the hell do you owe someone money?"
"I'm a dictator in a Communist nation. A Communist economy can only last so long on its own. So I borrowed some money."
Worriedly, Chretien asked, "How much?"
Hesitantly, Castro replied, "I got a couple hundred million from an android pimp."
"Not Pimp-Bot 5000, I hope?"
"Yes, you know him?"
"Mon dieu... Fidel, do you realize what you've done? You owe money to the Brokaw Team."
"The what?"
"The goddamn Brokaw Team! They're a group of Oligarchy superheroes. They are the ones keeping the Republicans in check!"
"So if it wasn't for this Brokaw Team and the Oligarchy, America would be under the control of evil Republicans? It would be a dictatorship like our countries."
"I've got to see Brokaw immediately," Pimp-Bot said to a security guard at the NBC lobby.
"Oh yeh? I gotta see the Co-Rulers immediately, but ya don't see anyone letting into Enloe, do ya?"
"Look, white bread, this is an Oligarchy emergency. I
have to see him now!"
The guard sighed, then held up his walkie-talkie. "Boss, I got this droid, says he's gotta see Brokaw for some sorta emergency."
"Let him through! It's Pimp-Bot 5000!" came the reply.
Not waiting for the guard to say anything, Pimp-Bot rushed past him and made his way to the main news studio.
"In economic news: stocks in Lucky Strike Cigarettes have risen steadily since Wayland became a Co-Ruler of the World, and now Winston has gone out of business as a result. Camel and Marlboro are considering a merger to avoid a similar fate. On an entirely unrelated note, Brendan has declared smoking illegal within 500 feet of him."
"TOM!!" shouted Pimp-Bot. "We need to get to the Little Bob, now!"
"Uh... and now to sports with... someone else," Brokaw concluded, hurrying to remove his mic and speed to the exit.
Meanwhile, the Pocket Shuttlecraft was arriving in Detroit.
"Shall I activate the Dogbertron?" Norman asked.
"No," replied Cronan. "It would affect the Detroitians also."
"So?"
"So, they built my Ford Escort."
"Okay, then, so what should we do?"
"We'll have to use the Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Things. Ziggy, reroute weapons through the Fundamental Interconnectedness and fire. Target: Dudley Do-right."
"Zark off," came the computer's reply.
"Dammit, Ziggy, I don't have time for this today. Fire the weapons or I'll install a Windows 98 beta."
"Okay, okay. Targeting controls prepared at the main console."
Cronan typed at his console for a moment. "Fire now."
"Firing."
Norman checked the Sub-Micron Sens-O-Matic. "You missed! You got Ricardo Montalban."
"Damn... all right, let's try again. We're dealing with Canadians here; we can just raise the average temperature of Detroit."
"Enter parameters at the console," Ziggy said. Cronan did so, and within minutes the air temperature had risen to a whopping 65°F.
"It's working," Norman announced. "They can't handle such hot weather. They're retreating back to Ontario."
"Kick ass. Ziggy, open a channel with Raleigh."
"Channel open."
Wayland appeared on the screen. "Hello?"
"The Mounties have left. Detroit is under Oligarchy control again."
"And so Detroit has been saved. In related news, Ricardo Montalban has inexplicably gone completely bald. This is Tom Brokaw, reporting from the Little Bob, signing off." Brokaw deactivated the comm system on the Intel-Class spaceship and turned to Pimp-Bot. "Now, could you please tell us what's going on?"
"Okay. I called Fidel Castro earlier today, because he owes me money. Jean Chretien answered the phone."
"The guy who invaded Detroit?"
"Yeah. I got suspicious, so I sent Not-So-Little-Bob to infiltrate them. He found out that Saddam Hussein is planning to nuke Buenos Aires and that chasing cars makes you tired."
"Oh, Smint!" said the yppaHian Little Bob.
"Contact Raleigh," Brokaw said. "Tell them the situation and that we're on top of it."
"Okay," Little Bob replied, and sat at the helm console and sent the message.
"Merde!!!" the Canuck shouted when the Mountie commander reported to him. "That's it. Contact La Base Française Méchante Primaire. Tell them to launch. We're going for Raleigh this time. Muhahaha!"
Cronan walked out of the Pocket Shuttlecraft reading Weekly World News.
"So... how was Michigan?" Brendan asked.
"Ehh."
"We just got word from the Brokaw Team. They're going down to Buenos Aires. Saddam Hussein's trying to nuke the place."
"Check out this article. Apparently this lake or something just opened up on the French-Spanish border. They're saying Canada is responsible."
Brendan grimaced. "The largest city in South America is about to go up in a nuclear mushroom cloud unless a reporter, an alien, and a robotic pimp can stop it. Get serious for a minute."
"In this story?"
"Point taken. Come on, let's get some Holy Sandwiches."
As they walked into Enloe, a nearby phone rang. "Hello?" Brendan said as he picked it up.
"Brendan!" Bevin shouted. "I'm bored! Why haven't you put me in the story yet?!?"
"Uh, you can have a scene... Cronan and I are about to have some sandwiches in the cafeteria. Come on over. But first I have to cut to the Little Bob."
"We have an incoming transmission from Buenos Aires," Little Bob reported. "It looks like we've been invited to some kind of night club."
"Does it say who it's from?" Brokaw asked.
"It's just signed 'S.H.' I assume that would be Saddam Hussein."
"We should go," Pimp-Bot said. "It's probably a trap, but you never know, I mean I can't stay away from the chance to increase my hoe's."
"Okay, we'll go. What's our ETA?"
"We should arrive in Buenos Aires in an hour and a half unless we crash," replied Little Bob.
"Good. Everyone get ready. We're going in."
(See, Bevin? That didn't take long.)
(Just write the damn scene, Brendan.)
(Okay.)
Bevin arrived in the cafeteria a moment after Brendan and Cronan, ordered a Holy Sandwich (sans pickles), approached the table, and immediately stuck her hand into the hood of Brendan's green sweatshirt. "Oh, Brendan..."
Brendan slapped his forehead. "Hello."
After running through a quick rendition of "Ditez-Moi Pourquoi," Bevin sat and began consuming her sandwich and a bottle of Coke.
"So this is what I missed out on when I left Enloe as a sophomore," Cronan commented.
Bevin gave Cronan a look, then offered him a bottlecapfull of cola.
"Um, no thanks."
"DRINK THE DAMN COKE!!"
"Cronan," Brendan interrupted, "we're dealing with the Chief Goddess of Pain and Wanton Destruction. I don't think you've seen her Evil Deadly Hairclip in action yet, and believe me, you don't want to. I advise you to just drink it."
"Whatever," Cronan shrugged, as he downed the tiny beverage. He then held up the bottlecap in the precise location to block the oncoming hairclip.
"We better end this scene before she breaks out the pseudo-sock puppets," said Brendan.
The Brokaw Team entered the night club. "Oh cool, they're playing Superfly," said Little Bob. "I'll, uh, start looking for Saddam on the dance floor."
"Okay, have fun," said Brokaw. He and Pimp-Bot started searching the rest of the club until they were approached by a pregnant woman.
"Hey, you're Tom Brokaw from the news!" she observed. "Can I have your autograph?"
"Sure," the anchorman replied, accepting the woman's autograph book and pen.
"Doesn't it seem a little strange that she just happened to be carrying an autograph book and pen around in a night club? And she should really wax her lip," Pimp-Bot whispered.
"Quiet, Pimp-Bot," Brokaw answered, and began to hold a conversation with the woman, who said her name was Mrs. Smith.
Meanwhile, as the song ended, Little Bob noticed someone across the dance floor. Making his way across the floor, he asked, "Aren't you Austin Powers?"
"Hey, shagadelic! It's an alien," Powers said.
"Well bring out the midgets and call me Sam. Hey, um, Mr. Powers, I'm here with Tom Brokaw, and we're trying to find Saddam Hussein so we can save Buenos Aires from nuclear oblivion. You want to help?"
"Yeah, baby, yeah!"
"Great!" Little Bob said. "The rest of the team is over there. Come on, I'll introduce you to them." They walked over to Brokaw and Pimp-Bot. "Hey everyone, this is Austin Powers. He's going to help us. Mr. Powers, this is Tom Brokaw and Pimp-Bot 5000."
"Good to meet you," said Brokaw. "Mrs. Smith, this is Little Bob. Little Bob and Mr. Powers, this is--"
"That's not a woman," Powers shouted, as he punched out Mrs. Smith. "She's a man, baby!"
"What?!" shouted Brokaw.
Powers yanked Mrs. Smith's wig off. "It's Saddam!" Little Bob exclaimed.
"I guess that would explain the mustache," Pimp-Bot replied.
"Well," said Brokaw, "thank you for your help, Mr. Powers. We couldn't have done it without you."
"Of course."
"But that still doesn't explain why he looks pregnant." Brokaw lifted Saddam's shirt, and a nuclear bomb rolled out.
"Holy Poop!" shouted Little Bob.
"Easy as a pimp-slap," said Pimp-Bot. He opened a small panel on his arm, revealing some of his circuitry, touched it to the detonator, and shorted out the bomb. "I got a top of the line modem and a state of the art...."
"Personal log, Prime Minister Chretien. Stardate... hold on, this isn't Star Trek. Anyway, I am the only one left in the evil trio. Saddam Hussein was captured by the Brokaw Team in Argentina, and Castro's idea of an invasion of Florida is sending a few dinghies of troops into the middle of a Miami seaport. Both idiots are in Oligarchy custody. However, I am not worried. My main weapon will arrive in North Carolina in a matter of hours. End log."
"Detroit, city of angels," Not-So-Little Bob reminisced about his infiltration mission.
"Um... dad, Detroit is motor city," says Little Bob.
"I thought Chicago was the motor city?" asks Not-So-Little Bob confused about geography.
"No, Chicago is the windy city," Little Bob corrects his easily confused father.
"I thought that was Detroit."
"Sir, I'm detecting something on radar," said Air Force radarman Sgt. Stephen Montrell. "I don't know what it is, but it's big, and it's coming towards the coast at almost 900 miles per hour."
"How big?" asked his CO.
"Ten, twenty miles across. I can't get an exact reading from here."
"Check its course."
"I haven't been tracking it long enough to get an accurate reading on that either, but it appears to be on its way to North Carolina. Possibly Raleigh."
"Crap. Contact Oligarchy Command. Tell them we've got an enormous bogey that could be incoming towards Raleigh."
Wayland was sitting on the sidewalk of Clarendon Crescent, smoking a cigarette, when it suddenly became very dark. He checked his watch; it was 3:30 in the afternoon. "There's something not quite right about this, but I can't put my finger on it," he said to himself. Looking up, he noticed a rather large object floating over the city. He did a double-take, screamed, and ran back into Enloe.
"What's today?" he shouted at the first person he saw.
"Uh, the 17th, sir," replied a lackey.
"Whew. For a second, I thought it was Independence Day." Wayland ran to Brendan's office. "Have you looked out the window?" he asked.
"Erm... not recently, why?"
"That report we got earlier from the Air Force base... they weren't exaggerating about the size."
Brendan jumped up and looked outside. "God damn! I thought it was just cloudy." He picked up the phone, but before he could dial a number, Cronan ran into the office. Brendan put down the phone. "Cronan, get the Shuttle ready. I don't know what that is over Raleigh, but we have to assume it's hostile until we have evidence otherwise."
"All right... find out what it is, though."
"We were about to go try to do that now."
As Cronan headed for the Pocket Shuttlecraft, Brendan and Wayland sped to what was once Enloe's foreign language hall, and was now full of sensor equipment and stuff.
"It appears to be some sort of landmass," said a science officer on duty, anticipating the Co-Rulers' question. "About 15 miles across. How it's floating there, I have no idea. All I know is that it's running on pure evil."
Brendan and Wayland looked at each other. "Canadians," they said in unison.
"Actually, no," the officer said. "We've run a match against all areas in Canada. The shape of this landmass doesn't seem to match with any island or section of the continent. However, we may have found a match elsewhere."
"Where?" Brendan asked.
The officer picked up a newspaper. "Have you seen this morning's Weekly World News?"
"Look, I like reading that occasionally, too -- it's always good for a laugh. But I think we have more pressing concerns."
Undaunted, the science officer continued. "There's a report of a lake appearing overnight on the border of France and Spain -- 15 miles across." He waited a moment for that to sink in.
"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" asked Wayland.
"Yes. That thing over our heads... is Andorra."
"In the name of the Three Gods of Sandwichmaking," Brendan breathed.
"We suspect it was launched by the French. The missing area was filled with water so no one, except maybe the tabloids, would notice. We also did some research. Before 1956, Andorra didn't actually exist. It was just a lake -- as it is now. To cover up its appearance, historical records were changed. Any reference to Andorra prior to 1956 was fabricated by the French. We suspect that, rather than being granted independence by Charlemagne in the 800s A.D., it was in fact built in the fifties at a seaport in Marseilles... as a warship."
"And now the Canadians are using it."
"Exactly. The French are even more evil than the Canadians, and would undoubtedly like to see the downfall of the Oligarchy, but they're too afraid to get directly involved. So they gave their primary weapon to Canada."
"What are Andorra's capabilities?"
"The Andorrans are a relatively poor people. They run mainly on agriculture, tourism and smuggling. They can't afford any significant weapons. This may have been the point -- they were made to be extremely minor so that they would be largely ignored. However, they have one major strength. The landmass weighs hundreds of thousands of megatons. I suspect that if they were to crash down on us, they would completely destroy everything under them -- a total of 180 square miles. The resulting shockwaves would crack the crust of the planet in this area and destroy nearly all of the Carolinas and Virginia with high-magnitude earthquakes. We have detected a thick layer of foam about a mile under Andorra's surface, which would absorb most of the force of the impact. Such a maneuver would cause them minimal damage."
"If you're right about all this," Brendan began, "what are our chances?"
"As far as I can tell... we're fucked."
The Pocket Shuttlecraft sailed majestically across the Raleigh skyline. To see a Classic Star Trek-style shuttlecraft flying over the Beltline, City Market, N.C. State University campus, and so on was quite a spectacle. However, the sight was somewhat diminished this time by the shadow of Andorra hanging in the air in precisely the way that bricks don't.
"Incoming transmission from Enloe," Ziggy announced.
"On screen," Cronan replied. The image of Brendan beeped onto the viewer.
"Cronan, we've identified it. It's Andorra. It has a crew/population of about 59,000. Do not, under any circumstances, allow it to drop. That's what we think it's planning to do."
"What am I supposed to do -- push it back into the Atlantic?"
"Then we would be washed away by tidal waves. I think Norman may have to help out with this one, directly."
"All right, I'll call you back when the threat has been dealt with. Pocket Shuttlecraft out." Cronan turned his head toward his shoulder and looked Norman in the eyes. "Norman, if you are in fact a Junior God, which I have long suspected you to be, now is the time to show it off. Small miracles and mass teleportation -- we'll need both of them today."
Norman thought about it for a moment. "All right. I'll do it," he decided.
At about this point, the Pocket Shuttlecraft reached the edge of Andorra and emerged from its massive shadow. As the Shuttle flipped over the top of the nation-weapon, Norman began to glow a bright blue. Within seconds, a blue shockwave began to reverberate from the Shuttle, slowly at first, but soon gaining tremendous speed. As the wave moved across the Andorra countryside, every human it passed vanished completely, leaving only their clothes where they were before. Before the population -- largely farmers, smugglers, and travel agents -- could respond in any significant manner, they had all disappeared.
That done, a hole opened up in midair, halfway between Andorra and Raleigh. In the blink of an eye the hole had expanded to twenty miles in diameter. With the entire population of Andorra no longer aboard, there was no one to hold its altitude, and it began to drop from the sky. Before Enloe could sound any alerts on the surface, Andorra fell through the hole in space and vanished as completely as its population. The hole closed up as quickly as it opened. Norman gradually stopped glowing, then fell over, unconscious.
"Coming through!" shouted Dr. Thomas Ranier in the emergency room of Wake Med, pushing a stretcher which seemed a bit large for the three-inch-tall frame of Norman the Elf. A group of nurses and surgeons crowded around the stretcher as it arrived in a room down the hall.
"Is he going to make it?" Cronan asked worriedly.
"I'll be honest," said Dr. Ranier. "I don't even know his anatomy. Even if I did, it would be extremely difficult to do precise surgery on someone three inches tall. Right now I have no idea of the odds."
"Well, if he's a Junior God, he should be immortal. There should be nothing to worry about," Cronan said, mainly to himself. It didn't seem to do much to calm him, though.
The doctors got to work. "Check his vital signs."
"Respiration low but regular."
"Heartbeat... um, I don't think he's got a heart."
"I guess that would explain a few things."
"Brain activity erratic."
"Left pinky toe shrinking."
"Respiration rising."
"Pinky toe expanding to normal size."
"He's coming out of it."
"What the hell is going on?!?" Norman screamed.
"You fell unconscious after saving Raleigh from Andorra," Dr. Ranier explained. "No one knew whether you would be all right."
"I was asleep, you fucking idiots! I haven't done anything like that since I came to this dimension. It was very exhausting. So I fell asleep. Do you really thing I would sacrifice myself like that?"
"So what the hell did you do with the Andorrans anyway?" Brendan asked after they returned to Enloe.
"They're on Baffin Island, naked. If they're going to help the Canadians, they can freeze off their naughty bits there."
"And the country itself?"
"Look out the window, at the sky."
The Co-Rulers and others present looked up and saw only the moon, already visible in the late-afternoon sky. A second later, they noticed that the "man in the moon" had grown a third eye.
"Good work," Wayland said. "You and the Brokaw Team will certainly be commended after all this."
"There's one more thing," Norman announced. "Before I fell asleep, I made one last teleportation. He should be locked in the old auto shop."
The group made their way across the East Building. From down the hall, they could hear a pounding noise. As they approached the auto shop, the noise became clearer -- someone was beating on the door, trying to get out. Brendan opened the door, which revealed none other than Jean Chretien.
"Take him to Mr. Prosser's room," Brendan ordered. A few guards seized the Canuck and did so. "Bevin... I think I'll let you handle this one. Have fun."
After Bevin, the guards, and Chretien had left the room, Cronan wondered out loud, "What's she going to do to him?"
"Pixy Stix Torture, I expect."
"What is that?"
"Believe me -- you don't want to know," Brendan replied. "I've been there."
What had once been Mr. Prosser's math classroom had been redesigned into a grim interrogation chamber. The windows had been removed and bricked in. The only light in the room was a low-hanging bulb, which was focused on a crude chair with arm and leg restraints in the center of the room. Facing this chair was another chair, this one without restraints. Parallel to the chairs was a table, currently covered with Pixy Stix of all flavors.
The door opened, and Chretien was slumped into the center chair and strapped in. Bevin sat in the other chair, as the guards left the room, except for one who stood silently next to the locked door.
In a cute but strangely frightening voice, Bevin began, "So... what's your favorite flavor? Orange? Cherry? Lime... or maybe blue raspberry?"
"You'll never break me," the Canadian declared defiantly.
"Cherry it is, then." Bevin picked up a red straw, tore off the end, and forced Chretien to open his mouth. "Everyone loves Pixy Stix," she said, as she poured the contents onto Chretien's tongue. He allowed some of it to dissolve and then swallowed the rest. "Not bad, wouldn't you say? You seemed to enjoy that well enough -- and if you like one, surely you can handle two." She dumped a lime and an orange straw simultaneously, making sure some of it went under Chretien's tongue. He seemed to have some difficulty digging out the last bit from under his tongue, but he still seemed to be doing fine.
"Well then," Bevin said, "we'll just have to find out how much you can really handle." She emptied three random Pixy Stix into Chretien's mouth. He made a face and coughed. Purplish-green drool trickled down his chin.
Bevin smiled. "It seems we have found your limit. Let's continue."
The torture went on for hours, on and on until there were no Pixy Stix left. By that time, she was dumping upwards of ten straws, even up to fifteen at once, through a big-ass funnel.
The Co-Rulers were in the cafeteria, discussing what they should do about the nations that had been aggressive in the war that had now ended.
"For now," said Wayland, "we should put them under direct control of their respective continental governors."
"I agree in regards to Canada and Iraq," Brendan replied. "Cuba, however, is a different situation. Almost as soon as Castro was captured, the citizens overthrew the rest of the Communist government. It's a revolution."
"What kind of revolution?" Cronan asked.
Brendan looked Cronan in the eye and paused. "A taco revolution."
"Oh, god."
"The people have declared a talking chihuahua as the new head of the Cuban government. I've sent some advisors over there to observe him for a while. As long as they approve of him, I think we should leave him there. He'll answer directly to Governor Rothney, of course."
"If you say so," Cronan said. "Just try to keep him from going lizard-hunting."
"In political news," Tom Brokaw reported later that night, "former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has escaped from Oligarchy custody, apparently due to a false background check. Unbeknownst to the Oligarchy, an Enloe guard, whose name has not been released, is a native of Newfoundland. This guard assisted Chretien in escaping and is himself missing, presumably with Chretien. Neither are anywhere to be found. It is unlikely that Mr. Chretien will become a significant threat again, but at this time, that is impossible to predict for certain.
"And now for tonight's Fleecing of the Oligarchy..."
Return to the Hail to the Oligarchy Trilogy.