"The resurgence of the Maniax gangcult, who had been believed to be out of business after the United States Cavalry/Turner-Harvest-Ramirez Joint Action before the new year, continues. Their latest atrocity was the take-over of Welcome Springs, New Hampshire, a peaceful community which has been left in ruins. The Maniax apparently selected the township because it was the home of the Dexter Blumguard Crusade for Christian Capitalism, the successful fund-raising fundamentalist televangelist station. Dirk Mazzini and Blade Barrie, Maniak War Chieftains wanted on counts of multiple murder, evidently inspired by the successful terrorist humiliation of Reverend Bob and Dolly Jackson by still-unidentified pranksters, walked into the Dexter Blumguard show and asked the program's estimated three million viewers to phone in pledges, and suggestions about the ways in which the Reverend Blumguard and his special guest-stars—Sister Ermintrude the Juggling Nun, the Cartwright Family Singers, Holy Roily and His Heaven-Bound Hang-Gliders—should be murdered. The Maniax are believed to have raised thirty-eight million dollars during the massacre, which lasted two and a half days and ended only when a concerned parent in Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, found her teenage son pledging his allowance for six months on the condition that Mazzini make Uncle Buck Cartwright eat his own banjolele, and alerted the authorities. The Grand Exalted Bullmoose, the shadowy head of the gangcult, issued a press statement announcing all-out war on the non-affiliated citizens of the United States.
"In Paris, fighting has broken out again on the Left Bank, as a bewildering array of insurrectionist splinter groups took on the UEC forces of European President LePen. General Bruno Rottweiler, well-known as the Butcher of Deauville, has been placed in charge of the troops and declared a condition of martial law. Sady Charbonneau, the CanalEpico television personality, has put in a bid of nine million European Currency Units with Rottweiler and the leaders of the various rebel factions for the exclusive television rights to dramatizations of the riots. Rottweiler is believed to be holding out for script approval, while Biron le Rouge, this week's spokesman for the Violent Tendency, has asked for his fee to be paid in ScumStopper ammunition and high explosive. Those Montmartre madames, hoteliers and cafe-owners able to remain open during the hostilities report a 58% upswing in trade, partially due to the presence of highly-paid UEC troops, but also thanks to the yearly influx of Japanese tourists.
"Having wrought a veritable miracle with the reclamation of Salt Lake City from the desert sands, Elder Nguyen Seth of the Church of Joseph has announced that there will be a South-East Coast sister community on the site of the former rocketry base, Cape Canaveral. Work has been started on draining the area dry and reestablishing the tidal walls. Currently, the site, which was purchased last year from the United States for a nominal fee, is being used as a training camp for Josephite missionaries. Mark Mannix, our Florida correspondent, was sent to give us an on-the-spot report from the Cape, but appears to have been eaten by alligators. As soon as we find a replacement, we'll bring you the full story on the latest miracle. Asked what they intended to do with any leftover space technology that might be lying around the Cape since the US space program transferred its site of operations to Edwards Air Force Base, Seth replied 'let it rust. We have no need of rocketships and space shuttles to get us to Heaven.' Incidentally, President North will have to find a new Ambassador to the Josephite state of Deseret. Admiral Harriman Bosley, the current holder of the post, has just announced his conversion to the Josephite faith and renounced his worldly position to become Brother Bosley, a tenor in the world-famous Josephite Tabernacle Choir.
"As if to underline Senator Redford's concern over the unruliness of Sanctioned Operatives, fighting broke out today along the Kansas-Missouri border between agents in the employ of the little-known Logan's Runners of Kansas City and the Good Ole Boys, the powerful South-Western Area Agency. Judgement Q. Harbottle of the GOB alleges that Logan's Runners have been involved in the operation of the so-cailed 'underground railroad' which has been assisting runaway indentees across the state line into Kansas, where the indenture system is not on the statutes. Max Logan, senior partner in the Runners, countercharges that Harbottle is 'nothing but a slave-whopping cotton-picking chickenplucker.' Indenture remains a controversial issue. Those corps who take advantage of indentured labour maintain that the system is not a form of slavery, but 68% of you, according to a recent national poll, don't believe them. We at GenTech would like to stress that those indentees employed in our Tennessee and Mississippi plants have offered their labour entirely voluntarily and have a standard of living far higher than the average for their socio-economic group.
"Talks again broke down between representatives of Russian Premier Boris Yeltsin and Japanese Prime Minister Noburo Sidehara yesterday, with Sidehara refusing to withdraw support from GenTech East's program of undersea mining in the Sea of Okhotsk. During routine naval manoeuvers last week, the Russian navy depth-charged the GenTech submersible rig Toshiro Mifune, and accusations have been flying all over the Far East. Yeltsin refuses to discipline Admiral Yevgeny Tchernobog for his actions, claiming that the Toshiro Mifune was well off its charted course and could easily be mistaken for a seabed rock formation, and is also ignoring the requests of GenTech East CEO Kobayashi that the Soviet Union pay reparations to the corp for the loss of expensive equipment and personnel during the incident. Three members of the Blood Banner Society, the Japanese ultra-nationalist group, took over the Russian Tea Rooms in Osaka, a popular Sovrock nightspot, and held over forty Petya Tcherkassoff fans hostage for five hours. The desperate siege ended only when the Blood Banner group finished their anti-Russian speeches and committed ritual suicide.
"On a lighter note, Dino the Skateboarding Duck was back on the streets again today after his annual medical check-up and road test. The children's favourite will be competing again in the Indianapolis 500 motor race. "And now, back to the studio…"
VII
"How the hell did you get into the building?" Elvis asked the small man with the big hat in his hand.
Robert E. Lee Chamberlain, Memphis Office Chief of the Good Ole Boys Agency, took a drag on his foot-long cigar.
"Just who d'you think your block committee buys their security from, Presley? The Hound Dog Agency?"
Chamberlain laughed, and coughed smoke into the air. He was leaning against Elvis' Cadillac, trying to look cool despite the sweat running into his white sideburns. Chamberlain was a desk Op if ever there was; all his battles were fought to thfc death in offices, with paperclips and computer terminals.
"That's Colonel Presley to you, Chamberlain. And get your dirty boot offa my clean car."
"Okay, okay. No need for us Southern boys to bite each other's heads clean off, is there?"
Chamberlain stepped away from the Cadillac and held up his hands in mock surrender.
"You should watch where you step, Chamberlain. You never know when a man has bought himself a pair of new shoes he don't want messed up. Like these. They're blue suede, you know."
Chamberlain bit off the wet end of his cigar and spat it out on the floor. Elvis had never liked the man. He had been the Enderby Registration officer for Tennessee before he transferred to the GOB, and had given Elvis a hard time granting the Hound Dog Agency its license. He'd always been in the pocket of Harbottle's Boys, and now it was official.
"We're from different Souths, Chamberlain."
"How do you mean?"
"Yours is all settin' on porches sippin' mint juleps and stringing up the coloured folks with ropes of magnolia blossom, and mine is all starvin' to death in sharecropper shacks goin' blind from bad moonshine and workin' eighteen hours a day just to stay even."