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From: Christine W Indigo <christineindigo@juno.com>
Subject: {ASSM} US Presidental Election 2000: That's The Ticket! Part 6 (MM, no-sex, hum, scfi, caution, slash)
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 19:10:08 -0400
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TITLE: PrezSlash 2000--That's the Ticket! Part 6 (of a projected 8 parts)
AUTHORS: This part by Valeria (loki@netnitco.net); the whole she-bang by
Valeria and Viedma (viedma9@yahoo.com)
SUMMARY: It makes no sense at all unless you read the rest of it at
http://www.certando.net/vali/ticket.htm. So there. Nude middle-aged men,
a giant brain, quick lunch and gas, and a very special appearance by
Chelsea "Mary Sue" Clinton.
WARNING: Short on smut, long on very, very, very bad jokes.
GENRE: Polislash.
PAIRINGS: Absolutely bonkers.
RATING: R? Something like that.
ARCHIVE: RS-X, yes; anyone else, ask. Christine Indigo, if you're still
'round these parts and interested in this thing, you may archive this
with the rest at a.s.s.m., et al., disclaimer attached.
DISCLAIMER: This is all so false, fake and untrue, anyone who believes a
word of it is a complete idiot. On a more serious note, all herein is a
work of satirical parody and is in no way representative of the actual
thoughts, beliefs, actions, proclivities or sexual orientations of the
public figures depicted herein. It is all fictional, none of it ever
happened and none of it ever will.

NOTES: It's the original RS-X Polislash mess, yee-hah, back from an
alarming six-month hiatus brought about by 1) my bar exam, 2) Mary's
library science class and 3) our mutual feelings of total and complete
despair following the results of last November's Florida farce. This is
Part Six and there shall be only two more parts to follow at some point
in the indeterminate future, so please let out a resounding cheer if you
hate this thing and were waiting breathlessly to see it die an ugly
death.

This is farcical, probably far less amusing than I found it when writing
it (if only because I'm kind of punchy right now) and necessarily
reflects the political biases of its author. You have been warned.
Feedback most welcome. And please, read parts 1-5 first or it will be
even more incoherent than it seems right off the bat. Arrivederci...

Vali

********

THAT'S THE TICKET!
Part 6

Somewhere in this favored land, the sun is shining bright, the band is
playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light. And somewhere men are
laughing, and somewhere children shout--but frankly, that meant jack to
former Secretary of State and left-wing double agent Henry Kissinger, who
was holed up in a top-secret Texas compound in the dead of night trying
to ward off certain political disaster.

With stockinged feet and one eye on the compound's double-locked steel
door, he crept amongst the rows upon rows of floor-to-ceiling shelves,
all stocked with miniature canisters of the insidious Uncle Ronnie's
Laughing GasT crammed together cheek by jowl. With assembly-line
efficiency, he tampered with each tiny canister one by one by one,
humming to himself as he worked.

"Her name iss Rio, und she dances on ze sands..."

Tamper, tamper, tamper. Time was slipping away, and four-fifths of the
canisters were still untouched, and the sweat was making his black suit
chafe like the proverbial bear, and every sound seemed to reverberate
horrifically loudly through the storage compound, and the guided Jill St.
John imagery wasn't working at all...

Keep going. For the sake of the people's revolution, keep going.

"Und I'm hungry like ze volf..."

He stopped for a moment, frowning. Was that footsteps he heard, or...no.
Just his own nerves talking back to him. He bent over another canister.

"Girls on film, girls on film...electrik Barbarella..."

The storage compound door swung open with a deafening crash.

Showing amazing élan for a man of his advancing years, the former
Secretary of State made a balletic leap behind a pile of boxes and
crouched motionless, holding his breath as the intruders barreled their
way inside.

At first, the thudding and stifled giggles made him groan inwardly--why
in Gott's name couldn't those tiresome Exodus people use some other dark
hiding place for their "lapses" from heterosexuality?--but then he peeked
out from between the boxes, and his dried-up Lothario's eyes widened
appreciatively. Two girls, twenty at the outside; one a round-faced,
pageboyed blonde, swaying unsteadily as she cradled a half-empty Jack
Daniels bottle, the other an angular brunette crisply dressed for field
hockey, sniffing disdainfully at her surroundings as she sipped a
Courvoisier.

"I say, old bean," drawled the brunette as she held her balloon snifter
betwixt two dainty fingers, "what are we doing in this dank little
hellhole? Not for our sort of person, tosh and bother--"

"Whersa booze?" slurred the blonde, gulping down the rest of the bottle
and gazing blearily around the compound. "Thiss doesn' look like Daddy's
wine cellar..."

"Well, obviously, said the brunette, plaid skirt swirling around her
knees. "Pish-posh, we've taken a wrong turn. Let's ask that manservant
over there--I say, boy!" she called out, slinging her hockey stick over
one shoulder and striding toward Kissinger. "We took a wrong turn down
the governor's mansion's secret tunnels--set us right, there's a good
lad."

Realizing, too late, that his salt-and-pepper pate was sticking up
prominently from behind the storage boxes, Kissinger rose to his feet and
tried practicing his own impromptu realpolitik. "Uff course, meine
fraulein," he attempted, in what he hoped was a suitably dutiful tone of
voice. "Der--how you say--tunnel to der wein cellar iss...er..."

He had no earthly clue where the wine cellar was, as it happened, but any
further thoughts of faking it died away when he saw the drunken blonde's
eyes narrow in cold suspicion.

"Yer no servant," she announced, narrowly avoiding knocking over an
entire shelf of gas canisters. "Servan's are...humble, an' def'rential
an' a lotta other big SAT words Daddy said that a girl doesn't have to
know--"

The brunette rolled her eyes. "Oh, pish," she repeated. "Of course he
exudes the miasmic funk of an overpoweringly palpable sense of studied
entitlement if not outright hubris--all old family retainers are like
that. Why do you think Daddy keeps that bullwhip lying around, anyway?"

"Vell, ladies," Kissinger offered, attempting desperately to hide his gas
canister tampering equipment safely behind his back, "iff I may get back
to my humble und deferential servant verk--"

The blonde, unfortunately, wasn't buying any of it. Staggering even
closer to Kissinger--giving off a rather miasmic alcohol-soaked funk of
her own as she did so--she fixed him with a glare that would strip the
paint off a Trans Am.

"You followed us, din' you?" she hissed. "Yer a fuckin' Secret Service
narc."

"Nein!" Kissinger protested hastily. "Meine schone jungfrau--"

"Yer here to keep us from DRINKIN'!" she squealed, in an unholy
combination of undistilled right-wing paranoia and spoiled-schoolgirl
rage. "Lissen up, you fuckin' glorificated secur'ty guard--I ain't
leavin' till I do a lot more HEAVIN'!"

The brunette sighed wearily. "Old girl, are we making an ass of ourselves
in front of the hired help, again? Yes, I do believe we are--"

"Shaddup," her sister snarled, grabbing the balloon snifter and
swallowing its contents in one gulp. "Yew run an' fetch us some more
booze, you fuckin' kraut, and yew do it now."

Dedicated left-wing double agent though he was, Kissinger could feel the
colder, prouder parts of his diplomat's lizard brain stirring dangerously
to life. "I beg your pardon, ladies," he responded between clenched
teeth, "but ich bin nicht ein servant, und ich bin nicht ein fickener
bartender!"

"Then what on earth are you, you old rotter?" asked the brunette, with an
arch of one eyebrow. "You can't be one of Daddy's old friends, you're
entirely too swarthy to be permitted within a mile of Skull and Bones--"

Three sheets to the wind though she was, the blonde had exceedingly sharp
eyes. "Whazzat yer hidin' behind yer back?" she demanded of Kissinger.
"Thass more rotgut, in't it?"

"Meine fraulein, I really think ve should--no! Fraulein!"

Oblivious to his invieglings, the blonde marched straight up to Kissinger
and made a grab for the tampering equipment and an untouched gas
canister. "I know good fuckin' moonshine when I see it," she declared,
"an' thiss is it!"

"Put it down, you drunken little schweinhund!" Kissinger shouted,
struggling with her over the gas canister.

The brunette made a face, pointedly turning away from the scene before
her. "I've told you time and time again, old girl, never sink to the
level of the lower orders--"

"GIMME THAT FUCKIN' BOOZE!" screamed the blonde, now repeatedly trying to
kick the former Secretary of State.

"Ficken Sie!" yelled the Nobel Peace Prize-shortlisted ex-diplomat, not
above pulling the blonde girl's hair. "Vat is zis, ein Charles Bukowski
novel? You frauen haff no idea vat you are dealing wi--"

His words became an angry roar of pain as the blonde smashed full-force
into his instep. Grabbing the gas canister and tampering equipment with a
drunken hippo's bellow of triumph, she fumbled with the pressure dial at
the top, began turning it and turning it...

"ACH, MEIN GOTT!" Kissinger shouted in horror.

There was a tinny, flatulent hiss, and out of the opened canister came
rushing a full-force blast of Uncle Ronnie's Laughin' GasT--bright
poisonous green, opaque as rainclouds and smelling like an Iowa hog farm
at the height of July. Gagging on the horrific stench, Kissinger cupped
his hands protectively over his nose and mouth and, any and all cover
stories long since abandoned, swandove toward the emergency exit. As
alarm sirens began going full blast and the grounds around the storage
facility were floodlighted bright as day, the two sisters looked at each
other in utter puzzlement.

"Whassamatta with him?" the blonde demanded.

The brunette--who also did not seem to register the thick, blanketing
stench of the gas--shrugged her shoulders. "I've no idea." She examined
the ruined canister, and the toxic clouds now filling the room. "Rather
pleasant color and smell, eh what? Reminds me of that humidifier the
nanny always used to run in our nursery. Don't think we can get drunk on
it though, old bean."

The blonde stamped her foot in a fit of pique, staring at the shelves
which were going double before her very eyes. "So if it ain't likker,
what tha hell iss this stuff, anyway?"

"Must be party favors of some kind, old sport," declared the brunette,
who despite her poised appearance was every bit as smashed on her ass.
"Let's just open them all at once and find out, what say you?"

********

Hurling himself like a whirling dervish up the endless flights of stairs
leading aboveground, Kissinger just barely had time to don his Gods and
Monsters-licensed signature gas mask before the pea soup mind-control
clouds began drifting through the stairwell. Throwing open the top-level
door, he stumbled onto the floodlit grounds, just missed the arrival of
an emergency troop squadron, managed to sneak past the facility security
guards in a truly astounding burst of serendipity and didn't stop running
until he reached a truck stop in El Paso.

Flinging himself pell-mell into the nearest phone booth, the confidant of
presidents and princes immediately stripped naked, because that seemed
only the proper thing to do when attired in a Gods and Monsters-licensed
signature gas mask, and made a hasty collect call to Walla Walla,
Washington. Pick up...pick up...thank Gott.

"Zbigniew, meine liebeschatze," he gasped. "Get in your car und nicht
stop driving until you reach Vancoufer. I vill meet you there. Ze shit
has hit."

********

As the drunken gubernatorial twins sat whiling away the hours opening one
gas canister after another, the clouds drifting through the atmosphere
grew ever thicker, the highly favorable wind currents making them drift
ever farther.

"I understand now," said a science teacher in Tulsa, woken from a sound
sleep by a snootful of the green gas. "Jesus will punish us if we teach
children about evil-lution."

"I understand now," said a doctor in St. Louis. "Even gunshot victims
should prepay at the emergency room--with cash."

"I understand now," said a community organizer in Philadelphia. "Huge
corporations should move their operating facilities to Mexico while
dumping all their toxic wastes in poor minority neighborhoods--it's just
good business."

"I understand now," said a waitress in Miami. "Electing a president is
just more needless government bureaucracy--we should save the trouble and
have one appointed. In fact, a nice Anglo-Saxon Christian heterosexual
obscenely wealthy middle-aged white man with a lot of powerful friends
would be absolutely perfect..."

********

"Gracious, old bean," said the brunette, frowning as the contents of yet
another canister made their hissing escape, "but what's this pink gas?
Not a bit like the other stuff, eh what--"

"Dunno," said the blonde, waving a hand in front of her face, "but it
sure smells disgusting."

********

As Ronald Reagan's cerebrospinal fluid threatened to suck the very
essence out of the nation literally overnight, Texas First Lady Laura
Bush sat before her makeup mirror, patting cold cream into her face with
a smile of robotic satisfaction.

It had been a very good day. She had read several Christian
Coalition-approved library books to an appropriately docile roomful of
six-year-olds, thrown three dozen copies of The Catcher in the Rye onto
the local bonfires and smiled supportively at her husband for over six
hours straight. Of course, her jaw did feel the slightest bit clenched
and her face stretched into a hideously mechanical rictus, but didn't a
good dutiful middle-aged wife owe as much to her husband? All part of the
wonderful, perfectly feminine full-time career--the only truly feminine
full-time career, as she liked to repeat to her circle of approving
friends--that was being Mrs. George W. Bush.

"I've been a very good girl today," she beamed into the mirror. "I
managed to mask my intellect and stifle my own opinions for over fourteen
full hours."

Was that...disgustingly unwomanly of her, to brag so openly like that?
She certainly hoped not. Firmly putting aside all thoughts of
self-expression and independent identity, she picked up her tortoiseshell
hairbrush, about to begin her requisite hundred strokes...

And frowned, sniffing the air as she turned her head toward the open
bedroom window. Perhaps she was imagining it, but did she smell...roses?

Some instinct told her she should close the window immediately, but--but
the smell, whatever it was, was so heavenly. Abandoning the brush
entirely, she walked over to the window to investigate--

A giant cloud of delicate carnation pink had blotted out the moon and was
drifting straight toward her, like an enormous airborne blancmange. In
their inadvertent reign of terror, the twin sisters had finally stumbled
upon--and opened--one of the canisters that Kissinger had managed to
alter; and it was from this particular canister that the Anti-Ronnie Gas
(patent pending) came forth to envelop their mother in a thick rosy mist.
Waving her hands in a futile attempt to dispel the gas, Laura Bush
coughed, and wheezed, and clutched the windowsill.

"Oh, heavens," she gasped, "I feel so faint!"

She thought about calling for help, but nice girls don't make that kind
of a fuss. The gas was making her dizzy, she was tipping gently over...

She awoke on the floor of her bedroom not a minute later, disoriented but
unharmed. Gingerly, she rose to her feet, steadying herself with her
hands on the windowsill. She felt confused, and bewildered...and yet,
oddly better, as though some vitally important part of her brain which
had been stifled and repressed for far too long was now finally being set
free. Like--well, one might say like a breath of fresh air.

What did this mean?

Now more at ease on her feet, she wandered over to her vanity table. She
stared into the mirror, and stared again.

"Jesus H. Christ," she said out loud, putting a hand to her hair. "Who
the hell ever told me the Stepford was a good look?"

********

The competing clouds of gas--one poisonous green, one daintiest
pink--drifted inexorably through the air, their bright circus colors as
repellent to one another as opposing magnetic poles. As strange an effect
as the former was having on the minds of its targets, the latter was
causing changes no less bizarre and unexpected.

"I get it now," said an HMO president in Tucson. "Medical care is not a
business commodity, but rather a basic human right that should be
affordable and available to all!"

"I get it now," said a prosecutor in Chicago. "Capital punishment not
only fails to deter criminal behavior, but encourages a lack of respect
for human life and gives a dangerous amount of power to the state!"

"I get it now," said a textile plant operator in Portland, Maine.
"Treating my employees with all the respect and common decency I'd want
them to show me is actually good for business!"

As the competing clouds drifted past one another in the sky, they seemed
to emit mutual noises which--had they been corporeal--might have
resembled nothing more than territorial growls.

But the green cloud was much bigger, and much thicker. And it was gaining
the high ground fast.

********

As the darkness of the sky above them vanished beneath the ominous
brightness of the gas clouds, three men lay serene and oblivious in one
another's arms--or to be precise, two of them lay in each other's arms
while the third, being somewhat new to this sort of endeavor, draped his
legs over them both with an awkward determination.

"Mmm," he offered. "I don't know why, exactly, but...I'm feeling a lot
less stressed out right now."

"Happy to hear it, Comrade Bradley," Ralph Nader offered sleepily. "More
organic carob-strawberry soy milk, my pet?"

"Maybe later," said George Stephanopoulos. "You want any, Bill? It's been
sitting out for at least six hours, it should be really warm and viscous
by now..."

Despite his post-coital rapture, Bill was moved to make a somewhat
revolted face. "Uh--no thanks. Had it for breakfast."

He stretched, and smiled to himself. Clearly, these loony-leftist dietary
laws were going to take some serious getting used to. The other perks of
being an authentic part of The Movement, on the other hand...

"It's a beautiful--er, progressive night out there," he offered.

Ralph and George gave approving nods; their newest, somewhat reluctant
pupil was turning out to be amazingly apt. "Just lovely," George agreed,
angling his head toward the window. "So progressive and organic and...and
green?"

"Green!" Ralph exclaimed delightedly.

"Uh, Ralph, wait a second."

Extricating himself from the tangle of hairy, pasty limbs, George
Stephanopoulos padded over to the window and pointed a finger at the
roiling verdant cloud hurtling toward them at top speed. "Okay, call me
crazy but I think that looks like it could be troub--"

The green cloud hit the closed window with an audible thud. And hit it
again, and again, as if trying to batter it open. The windowframe rattled
ominously. Ralph started, and stared, and slowly his skin went from
porridge-colored to paste.

"Fuckin' jiminy," he breathed. "George, you don't think--"

"Oh, yeah I do," George replied, unable to tear his eyes away from the
hideous sight. "It...oh, fuck. Oh, shit."

"What?" Bill said, confused. "What's going on?"

Ralph shook his head as he stared at the angry green cloud, his teeth
clenching. "Our goddamned incompetent asswipe of an agent in the field
fucked up, again," he replied. "That's what's going on."

"Oh," said Bill. "I see." Now, he was really at a loss, both as to this
mysterious "agent" and why a giant lime Jello appeared to be trying to
smash through the Watergate Hotel's windows. "So, uh...so what do we do?"

"RUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNN!!!" Ralph Nader cried, in a full-out gale-force
girly-scream of pure unbridled panic.

Leaping from the bed like a gazelle scenting a pride of lions, he made a
mad dash for the hotel room door and, still completely starkers, began
barreling down the hall. George went bare-assed pell-mell after him, and
Bill--after hastily wrapping a bedsheet around himself--had no choice but
to follow suit. The three men ran as if pursued by the devil incarnate,
rounding the hallway corner, heading for the elevators...

"This way!" shouted George, grabbing Bill's arm as the latter was
reaching for the down button. Bill found himself hurled toward what
looked like the stairwell door, but it opened upon...another elevator
entirely. He gaped for a moment, about to demand an explanation, then was
yanked inside.

"My sheet!" he cried, as it caught on the edge of an ashtray and went
sailing back into the hallway.

"Bill, this country is on the verge of the worst disaster it's ever
known, the Nixon administration included--we've got bigger things to
worry about," said Ralph sternly as the secret elevator's doors slid
closed. "Besides, modesty is so bourgeois."

******

Two giant, color-clashing clouds of gas loomed ominously over the White
House, circling one another like wolves from rival packs. Fistfights were
already breaking out between mobs of greens and the vastly outnumbered
pinks along the non-cordoned areas of Pennsylvania Avenue; the scene
inside the Presidential residence itself was no less chaotic, as
staffers, Cabinet members and the First Couple frantically tried to
coordinate their War-of-1812-style evacuation to the moderately fresher
air of upstate New York. Hillary Rodham Clinton being no Dolly
Madison--and Bill himself seeming more interested in t.p.-ing the White
House bathrooms and removing the W's from any passing typewriters--it
wasn't going all that smoothly.

"Aw, come on--just lemme write 'Bush Sucks Dick' in the Rose Room one
more time!" Bill cried, clutching his medium-point Sharpie, as the
kitchen staff scurried past to place his cherished Fry Daddy in the vast
pile of luggage.

"Oh, for God's sake!" Hillary cried irritably, tossing an armload of
leather trenchcoats, spiked collars, six-inch-heeled chartreuse
Ultrasuede thigh-high boots and Grateful Dead signature Beanie Babies
onto the enormous wheeled luggage carts. "Bill, I promised you we can
make the Air Force One toilet 'accidentally' fall on the Lincoln Bedroom
once we're out of here, so for the love of Al hurry up!"

A lone oblivious occupant of the White House--fast asleep when the gas
hit, and thus blissfully unaware of its maraudings--was finally woken by
all the commotion. Wandering into the Oval Office yawning and with her
hair a tangled, gingery cloud around her face, she stood taking in the
scene around her, and blinked.

"Uh--" she ventured.

"No time!" Dee Dee Myers squeaked frantically, half-entangled in the
bubble wrap she was using to shroud a pornographic Wedgwood figurine. "No
time to explain!"

The new arrival made a face, and motioned impatiently to her mother.

"What's going on?" Chelsea Clinton whispered, when they were both
barricaded in a far corner of the room. "Did Daddy turn into a Scotsman
again?"

"Oh, damned if I know," Hillary replied, rolling her eyes with an
all-too-familiar gesture in her husband's direction. "All Louis fucking
Freeh will tell us is that there's some kind of Force Ten ozone alert out
there, and I say it's a damned good excuse for a fucking long-ass
vacation. How's the Bahamas sound to you, kiddo? Or Vatican City?"

"Er...great," Chelsea said absently, turning her head to stare out the
White House windows. Her eyes widened. "Listen, Mom, I gotta, uh, go do
some stuff--"

" CONSUELO!" Hillary screeched at a passing staffer, already oblivious to
her daughter's tentative queries. "When I say Stryofoam peanuts, I don't
mean a fucking handful--I wanna see Mr. Fucking Planters Styrofoam Peanut
in his pansy-ass top hat DOING A GODDAMNED DANCE IN THE PACKING BOX!"

Unheeded by the hysterical hordes, Chelsea slipped back out of the room,
whistling casually all the while, and as soon as the coast was clear ran
pell-mell to her bedroom. Tossing the blankets and coverlet aside, she
rooted around under her mattress until she found both the Payday bar
she'd been hiding from her father--quick energy, in this situation, would
prove essential--and the other, infinitely more valuable piece of
contraband she'd been guarding for weeks with her very life. Then,
looking around her again to make sure the coast was clear, she walked
over to the feather-clad store window mannequin in the corner of her room
and turned its bald head sharply to the left.

There was a low rumbling sound, then the groan of metal gears in serious
need of oil, and the wall beside her bed opened up to reveal the secret
elevator hidden inside. Pushing one finger inside the mannequin's
glittery nostril, she swiftly Morse-coded her destination's coordinates,
righted the mannequin's head and hurried into the elevator just as the
wall was again sliding shut.

Slightly out of breath, still clad in Snoopy-appliqued pink feety
pajamas, clutching a battered, paper-stuffed Pink Lady and Jeff Trapper
Keeper and a slightly flattened Payday bar, Chelsea Clinton braced
herself against the elevator's far wall as it shot downward and then,
Willy Wonka-style, darted sideways, zigzagged, loop-de-looped and made a
dizzying underground course for the Watergate Hotel.

********

Meanwhile, in a fabulously luxurious and top-secret right-wing compound
hidden in the soft underbelly of Texas, an enormous pulsating brain on a
raised spotlight dais woke to find itself enveloped in gas clouds of its
own cerebrospinal fluid. The huge quivering gray-jelly mass twitched a
little, as was its wont.

A-choo, it thought.

Then the huge, bunched mass of nerves making up the brainstem began to
branch out, slowly but steadily.

It appeared to be growing feelers.

********

Twenty-seven floors below the Watergate Hotel, the self-appointed
conscience of the American left, his dashing politico-turned-news-pundit
boyfriend and a hangdog, tiresomely moderate third wheel sat shoulder to
shoulder on a long, wickedly cold stainless steel bench, listening to
America's most intrepid girl scientist offer her hypothesis on the
insanity happening above decks.

"So, how about my supercool top-secret laboratory?" she demanded. "Pretty
impressive, huh?"

Normally, Bill Bradley might have been somewhat taken aback at having had
a woman younger than some of his drabbest brown suits--and one clad in
pink Snoopy feety pajamas at that--introduced to him as "the finest
theoretical mind of our times," but then it had been a night of one
increasingly bizarre discovery after another and he was simply too
grateful for his sensible white terrycloth robe to care. (His two
companions would really have preferred to remain nude, but the theatrical
vomiting noises from the finest theoretical mind of their times made them
reluctantly decide to accept the proffered garb.)

"It's very, er...scientific," Bill offered, taking in the blindingly
sterile white floors, the array of bubbling beakers, the fluorescent
sparks zapping through dozens of test tubes and the Pink Lady and Jeff
posters covering every available wall surface.

"So what about the Laughin' Gas?" Ralph demanded impatiently. "We don't
have all night, young lady--"

Chelsea Clinton, Ph.D., M.D., D.Phil., rolled her eyes and, in unwitting
homage to her father, took a huge bite of her Payday bar. "S'like this,"
she said briskly, around a mouthful of peanuts and chewy caramel nougat.
"These tight-ass Republican guys invented some kind of twisted
mind-control gas, and--"

"We know that," George snapped. "Your point?"

Raising one eyebrow at this needless bit of temper, she tossed the candy
wrapper in his direction. "As I was going to say," she continued, "all
tests indicate it appears to be an amalgam of Ronald Reagan's
cerebrospinal fluid--"

"What?" Bill interrupted, unable to stop himself. The other two men gave
him reproving glances.

"--distilled water, sodium laureth sulfate, propylene glycol, natural and
artificial color and flavor, BHT (for freshness), cayenne pepper, aloe
extract and some weird extraterrestrial shit they got from one of the
Smithsonian moon rocks. Pretty simple, really." She demolished the rest
of the candy bar. "But that's not the whole story. Professors Gore, if
you'll help provide the necessary exposition?"

The three young blondes--lounging in a far corner of the laboratory,
resplendent in pink flowered lab coats, men's flannel striped pajamas and
bunny slippers--sprang to life with somewhat guilty expressions on their
faces. Chelsea snapped open the Trapper Keeper, sifting impatiently
through the chaotic pile of paperwork crammed inside.

"Where the hell did I put it?" she muttered impatiently, frowning as she
read aloud from a stapled sheaf of notebook paper. " 'Now on the verge of
a true digital getdown, Lance moaned and arched his back. "I'll show you
some dirty pop, you little ass-wiggling slut," Justin growled with the
smile of a horny heat-seeking missile as he tore open his--' Ewww,
KARENNA!"

"Uh, that's mine," said a beet-faced Karenna Gore, nearly falling over
her own feet as she grabbed the papers and shoved them into her lab coat
pocket, Chelsea still making disgusted faces. "The ones you want are
here--" Glaring at her giggling younger sisters, she grabbed a large set
of charts and graphs from the Trapper Keeper, hastily propping them
against a conveniently located easel.

"The Laughin' Gas has now penetrated approximately ninety-seven-point-six
percent of the continental United States," explained Chelsea, as the Gore
sisters did their best Vanna White finger-pointing and chart-flipping.
"As you can see, the worst concentrations appear to be in Texas, Florida,
California and the greater D.C. area. As you can also see, our own
Anti-Ronnie Gas has managed to penetrate only forty-four-point-one
percent of the nation, with its greatest concentration in the New England
states. How and why it was released now, we're still not sure--"

"--but it was probably due to somebody in the stuck-up big-shot Movement
screwing up," said Karenna, with a sidelong glance at the three men.
"Again."

"What if someone gets dosed with both gases?" Bill asked, more in an
attempt to ward off another spat than anything else. "What happens to
them?"

"That depends on the test subject," said Chelsea. "But it looks like if
you get hit with the green first, the pink isn't an antidote. Too little
too late."

"Is there an antidote?" George asked.

"None. We've tried everything--reason, logic, pleading, whining, street
demos with huge sea-turtle puppets, sit-ins, be-ins, poetry slams,
Prozac, a boot to the groin. Nothing works. I'm thinking it's that
extraterrestrial moon-rock shit that's screwing us up, but I can't figure
out exactly how." She shook her head in obvious frustration.

"This isn't our fault," Ralph insisted, rather more petulantly than was
his wont. The Gore girls rolled their eyes.

Chelsea shook her head again, a little sadly. "I told you this all
required more research," she reminded him. "But does Mr. Big Progressive
listen to me? Ohhhhh, no--"

"What good would more research have done?" George retorted angrily. "The
country's shot for shit now, for God's sake, and we need a plan of
attack!"

"Damn, he's right," said Sarah Gore, as though this idea had never even
occurred to her before. "So what do we do, Dr. Clinton?"

Six dedicated political mavens stared at Chelsea Clinton, M.D., Ph.D.,
D.Phil., waiting for her words of wisdom. She curled her hair around one
finger, looking slightly uncomfortable. "Well," she said awkwardly, "uh,
I really don't have a clue."

Six dedicated political mavens exchanged glances of complete disbelief.
"What the hell do you mean, you don't have a clue?" Ralph demanded.
"You're the scientist here!"

Chelsea shrugged. "Hey, I'm the finest theoretical mind of my times, you
know? I'm not that great with the practical details."

Six dedicated political mavens let this latest revelation sink in.

"But...there must be someone out there," Bill Bradley insisted out loud,
rather plaintively. "Someone who can help us. Isn't there?"

Seven dedicated political mavens sat where they were, unsure what to do
or where to go next.

********

Far above the Watergate Hotel and its super-secret underground
girl-scientist laboratory, far above Washington, far above the United
States itself, the Fortress of Meat gleamed like a jewel against the
snowy, icy wilds of the vast Arctic Circle. An astonishing edifice of
perpetually frozen chops, roasts, prime cuts and butt steaks, it rose
seventy-seven stories above the surface of the snow, the whole sides of
beef serving as its roof not even trembling in the mighty gusts of
northern winds. Inside, the trio who shared its magnificence were not
only troubled, they were downright petulant.

"I am not only troubled, Linc-El," said the first, "but I admit I am on
the verge of being downright petulant."

Olympia Snowe, liberal Republican senator from the great state of Maine,
stood on the Fortress's mighty Balcony of Prime Rib, hawkish profile
silhouetted against the glaringly white skyline and black hair whipping
this way and that in the storm. Her deep blue Spandex suit, boots and
cape were covered in frost and icicles, but she did not seem the least
bit cold.

Lincoln Chaffee, liberal Republican senator from the great state of Rhode
Island, frowned at her words. His own white Spandex and cape were equally
frost-bitten. "What troubles you, oh sister?" he asked.

Hands on her hips, she continued gazing into the distance. "Many things,
Linc-El, son of John-El," she replied, "not the least of which being my
uncanny psychic intuition that something is deeply rotten in the United
States of America."

"Hey, tell me about it," interjected Jim Jeffords, liberal ex-Republican
senator from the great state of Vermont, brushing the pelting snow off
his scarlet Spandex with an absent hand. "I really thought my defecting
from the party would get it in the bag for us--"

"You did well, Jef-El," Olympia said warmly, as Lincoln Chaffee nodded.
"But alas, even we can only do so much."

"Do not lose hope so easily, Oly-Oly-Oxen-Free," Lincoln admonished her.
"We are the last link to another time, a time when even a wild-eyed
right-wing megalomaniac like Richard Nixon could endorse a Clean Air Act,
the creation of OSHA and the concept of a mandatory living wage for every
adult American. We are the last remnants of a party kidnapped by the
Christian right and held hostage by an unholy alliance of religious
hatemongers, blood-spattered militarists and slaveringly greedy
businessmen. We are the ones unashamed to ally with the liberals,
undaunted by the prospect of wheel-and-dealing the conservatives. We are
the voice of reason, the voice of true centrism, the voice of pulling
your shorts up and getting things done for a change. We are...The Kind of
Vaguely Liberal Moderates!"

He made the secret salute, Olympia and Jim joining in enthusiastically.
Then they all lowered their fists and sat there looking kind of
depressed.

"And yet, I fear that even our time has passed, my brothers," Olympia
said. "Everything has been polarized. Agreeing to disagree is now seen as
being 'soft,' 'wimpy' or even a 'traitor.' Every argument over ideology
threatens shameless conspiracy-mongering and Kafkaesque 'independent
counsel ivestigations' that drag on for months, even years. And yes, I
admit it--I simply miss the moon-drenched shores of our beautiful home
planet."

"We must not abandon them now," Jim declared. "They need us more than
ever. Even if they are getting pissier with every passing second--"

"Then you too have had the dreams, Jef-El!" she declared triumphantly.

He nodded, leaning casually against a columnar archway of smoky links and
beef jerky sticks. "Really weird ones. Everything in them looks
very...green. Ugly green."

Lincoln nodded in agreement. "And smoggy," he added.

"And extremist," said Olympia.

"The people of America cry out for our help," said Lincoln, gloved hand
forming a fist as his cape fluttered like wings. "We cannot let their
pleas go unheeded!"

Jim frowned. "That's not John Williams music I hear, is it?"

Olympia waved a dismissive hand. "Ignore it. I always do."

"It's getting really LOUD, though!" Jim shouted, over the nearly
deafening crash of stirring orchestral chords.

"All the more reason to fly out of here and save America from itself!"
Lincoln shouted back, almost unable to hear himself at this point.
"Besides, the chances of our being brought face to face with the sort of
extraterrestrial moon-rock substances that have the same deleterious
effect on us as Kryptonite had on that overrated lug Superman are, I am
guessing, close to nil!"

"What?!" Jim shouted.

"I said--"

"Never mind!" Olympia nearly screamed. "Let's get our superhero groove on
before we all go bloody deaf!"

As the veal cutlets making up the Fortress's atrium walls began vibrating
under the musical assault, the trio rose side by side into the frozen
Arctic sky. Flying shoulder to shoulder, faster and faster, the Fantastic
Three became a single red, white and blue streak outlined against the
horizon as they flew on icicle-encrusted capes toward North America.

********

Meanwhile, in the great and considerably hotter state of Florida, the
biggest of the big-shot greens were tanned, rested and itching for a
showdown, specifically one in the form of a recently scheduled nationwide
"emergency presidential election." Standing up on giant wooden platforms
festooned with flags and bunting, George W. Bush and Al Gore worked the
crowds, grinning like spastic crocodiles for the cameras and shooting
each other glares of murderous hatred. The few pinks in attendance
huddled protectively by Gore's platform, lest they be stomped into a pulp
by the spastic green-gas-shot right-wing zombies surrounding them
everywhere they looked.

Up on the platform itself, Al Gore twitched with nervousness as he waited
for the results of this travesty--er, election--to be revealed. He
honestly had no idea how it was all going to come out. Tipper's satin
bikini and fan dance had played enormously well with the crowd (both
sides were pulling out all the stops), but Jesus, there were a hell of a
lot of green Children of the Damned in attendance today. The pinks had to
be hiding in their homes after having voted him into office by an
astoundingly huge margin, they had to be...

Up on his own platform, George W. Bush gazed out at the masses with his
usual slack-jawed confusion, while Jeb Bush blew kisses and threw peanut
brittle. "God, this is exciting!" the latter gushed. "Ain't it,
Georgie-Porgie? Ain't it?"

"When am I president?" George whined petulantly.

"Oh, God, my fuckin' head hurts," moaned Jenna Bush, more hung over than
she had ever been in all her youthful hard-drinking life, and that was
really saying something. Her sister Barbara lay next to her in a fetal
position on the platform, her only contribution to the conversation an
occasional nauseated whimper.

"Mr. Governor, sir," a blue-faced Dick Cheney gasped with a hand to his
chest, "this just arrived for you--"

He keeled over next to the twins with a resounding crash. Jeb ripped the
crumpled paper impatiently from Dick's hand, read it, frowned deeply,
then handed it to his brother. His lips visibly moving, George read the
brief note slowly (of course) and in disbelief:

Dear George, on cross-country voyage of feminist self-discovery in
Volkswagen minivan. Might come back, then again might not. Ham in fridge.
Love, Laura.

As Jeb gave beauty-queen waves to the crowd and Dick Cheney staggered to
his feet and gulped whole handfuls of nitroglycerin pills, George re-read
the note several more times, feeling a strange pang in his own chest.
Maybe, he suddenly thought, maybe he was spending all his time and energy
on entirely the wrong pursuits. Did he really even want to be president?
He knew he wasn't qualified, he was just another rich spoiled
box-of-rocks-dumb preppie boy with a psychotically ambitious family and,
well...maybe it was time to just pack it all in. Maybe he should leave
right now. Maybe he should try and track down Laura, wherever she had
gone, and tell her that he loved her. Maybe--

His vaguely subversive thoughts were cut short as a horrifically foul
odor suddenly assaulted both his nostrils and a highly presumptuous hand
suddenly tweaked both his balls. Leaping half a foot in the air, he
staggered backward--almost tripping over one of his still-ailing
daughters in the process--grabbed at some bunting for support and turned
to Dick Cheney, who had just broken open an ampoule of the green gas
beneath his running mate's WASPy nose.

"Thanks," George muttered to Dick. "I needed that."

Jeb, reluctantly removing his goosing hand from his brother's trousers,
smirked flirtatiously.

"Believe me, Georgie," he murmured, "so did I."

********

"Lemme win, lemme win, c'mon, c'mon, lemme win, never gave up on anything
in my goddamned life, lemme win--"

James Carville, standing on the Democratic platform next to the
frantically muttering and hand-wringing Al Gore, broke into a mocking
grin. "Hey batta, hey batta, hey batta--"

"Shut up!" Al cried, feeling more than slightly surrounded on all sides.
"This is my election, cracker barrel, and I'm not walking out of here
without a fucking vict--"

"Ahhh, fuck yer victory," James Carville sneered, in a Southern drawl so
thick it made Grandma's cake batter seem like watered-down giblet gravy.
"Long as we got moonshine, etouffée, tobacco chaws and tight-assed lil'
blond boys plantin' trumped-up short-side-of-libel rumors 'bout the other
side in all the big Yankee papers, I don't care if this campaign goes on
for the next thousand years--MARY! MARY, CALL THE FUCKIN' ELECTION
RESULTS, YA BONY-ASSED COW!"

Mary Matalin, conservative pundit jaw-jabber and James Carville's
astoundingly ill-matched spouse, matched his obscene gestures from her
own candidate's platform finger for finger. "EAT ME, YOU REDNECK FUCK!"
she screeched.

"IN YOUR DREAMS, BEAVER SKANK--"

"Where the hell is my vice-presidential candidate, anyway?" Al demanded.

James snorted, looking supremely unconcerned. "Damned if I know."

Al gazed off pensively into the distance. He knew, of course. He knew
that Joe Lieberman--the wonderful, enchanting, adorable man who had
stolen his heart for good over a package of lousy Corn Nuts--couldn't
stand to be seen with him, couldn't stand to be next to him. And it was
all Al's crummy fault; well, that and the damned Tom Fontana E-Z Prison
Tattoo KitT (who knew the sweet-faced little gnome would turn out to be
such a fucking prude?). He had to find him again, had to explain things,
had to beg forgiveness, get on his knees, rip his constricting sensible
suit clean off his back and--

"ATTENTION!" shouted Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, via a
megaphone larger than her entire head. "THE RESULTS OF THIS SPECIALLY
CALLED TAKE BACK THE COUNTRY FROM THE GODLESS ATHEIST HOMOSEXUAL COLORED
COMMUNIST UN-AMERICANS EMERGENCY PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WILL NOW BE
ANNOUNCED, AND ANYONE WHO ISN'T HAPPY ABOUT THAT IS A FUCKING GODLESS
HOMOSEXUAL COMMUNIST WHO KILLS AND EATS SMALL CHILDREN!"

The greens broke into deafening applause, while the pinks gritted their
teeth and surged closer to Al Gore's platform. Tension, to say the least,
was thick on the ground.

"THE RESULTS OF THIS GLORIOUS ELECTION ARE AS FOLLOWS!"

Al Gore held his breath. George W. Bush made funny armpit noises,
stopping only when Dick Cheney shot him a reproving glance.

"RESULTS FOR THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE, ALBERT GORE, JUNIOR--"

A chorus of green boos and hisses drowned out Katherine Harris's voice. A
volley of rubber dum-dum bullets fired into the crowd, however, quickly
and efficiently restored order.

"FOR THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE, ALBERT GORE, JUNIOR: SIXTY MILLION, NINE
HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SEVEN THOUSAND, FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY-TWO VOTES!"

Silence and then excited murmuring, even the most heavily gassed of the
greens seeming a little taken aback by that one. Al stomach clenched and
his heart leapt in a suddenly renewed burst of hope. I might have it, he
allowed himself to think. I might have it, I MIGHT have it, I'm gonna
make it after all--

"FOR THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE, GEORGE WALKER BUSH: ONE VOTE!"

A pin dropping would have sounded like a crash.

"THE WINNER OF THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IS... GEORGE WALKER BUSH!"

The greens exploded in a roaring, angry, deeply disconcerting and
downright piggish frenzy of right-wing triumph, while several of the less
bravehearted pinks whimpered and dove for safety beneath the Democratic
platform. Al Gore stood there for a second, frozen in disbelief, then
began waving his arms like a traffic cop on methedrine.

"RECOUNT!" he screamed. "I DEMAND A RECOUNT!!"

"I WON!" George screeched at the top of his lungs. "Jim-dandy hot-diggety
goody goody gumdrop, I WON!! I DID IT!! THEY LIKE ME, THEY REALLY LIKE
ME! I'M THE GOD, I'M THE GOD!!"

"RECOUNT!!" Al howled again, oblivious to the wild-dog faces of the
greens surrounding him. "I demand that you conduct a recount of this
UNFAIR and CLEARLY RIGGED election resu--HEY!"

 From out of the crowd had come four huge, beefy greens in dark suits,
each one grabbing a Democratic limb and hauling Al Gore off his own
platform without so much as a by-your-leave. "HEY!" Al shouted yet again,
in both shock and fury. "What the HELL are you--you can't do this to me!
I'm an American citizen! I have certain rights endowed upon me by my
FUCKIN' Creator, and you can't just--"

"Sorry, Alsey-walsey," said one of the thugs, "but your kind's just been
outlawed. Permanently."

While the struggling, infuriated presidential candidate was frogmarched
through the crowd, George W. Bush stood with tears streaming down his
face as he graciously--as graciously as he was capable, anyway--accepted
the official presidential sash, tiara and bouquet of roses. "I'd like to
thank the Academy," he gushed into a throng of reporters' microphones,
"and Daddy's staff, and Daddy's campaign manager, and Daddy's old Cabinet
buddies, and his old CIA buddies, and his old Congressional buddies and
his right-wing yellow-journalist buddies and--"

"HEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLP!" Al Gore wailed, as he was shoved into a
gleaming black limousine with dark-tinted windows and driven away from
the scene.

No one in the snarling, slavering, pink-hunting riot mob, however, seemed
to hear him.

Nor did they see--just barely visible on the horizon, but growing closer
by the second--the faint streak of red, white and blue traveling across
the sky toward them.

********

After what seemed an eternity, the black limo jolted to a halt in front
of a huge, imposing red brick edifice somewhere in the Virginia
countryside. Now stripped down to his undershirt, boxers and sock
garters, an obscenities-hurling Gore was hauled out of the back, dragged
inside and led down an endless spiral of stone stairs to what was
unmistakably an underground dungeon. Jerking to a halt before a dank,
dark cell, his jailers shoved him into the cell and, ignoring his
struggles, manacled him to wall, then turned and left without another
word.

"HEY!" Al roared, as the door clanged shut behind him. "You are in
trouble, you asswipes, you are in SO much fucking trouble--"

As they vanished up the stone stairs, he rattled his chains not so much
in an attempt to free himself as in a full-force, kicking and screaming
temper tantrum. Finally--bowing to the inevitable--he stamped one socked
foot petulantly against the cold stone floor of his cell and blinked
hard, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom. A narrow bunk bed, a corner
toilet, a tiny built-in desk and accompanying chair...

And, so close that their feet could touch, another prisoner.

Al stared at the other man, taking him in. Also in undershirt and shorts,
also chained to the wall, he had an elfish face, a gnomish build and a
distinctly pissed-off expression in his eyes.

"Shalom," said Joe Lieberman sardonically.

********

In a fabulously luxurious right-wing compound hidden in the farthest
reaches of the Lone Star State, an enormous pulsating brain on a raised
spotlight dais rolled and roiled where it sat.

The green gas--the atomized essence of its own cerebrospinal fluid--had
surrounded it, had nourished it, had enabled it to grow and grow and grow
until its huge quivering gray-jelly mass had spilled over onto the floors
and pressed up against the compound's mighty walls. It was, in fact, now
over fifty times as large as it had been before the gas drifted into the
room. The huge, bunched mass of nerves making up the brainstem had
branched out, growing what had first looked like feelers and then became,
umistakably...feet.

Slowly, very slowly, it began to raise itself upward.

At it tried like some hideous mutant toddler to steady itself on its
newfound feet, it slammed against the compound walls. The walls cracked
and crashed and collapsed, as though Reagan's brain were Samson laying
waste to a Jerusalem temple, and the ceiling soon followed suit. Shaking
itself free of bits of stone and plaster dust, the giant brain--now so
huge that its cerebral pulsations were now unmistakably, sickeningly
audible--stood swaying for a moment, soupy thought waves mingling with
the green gas poisoning the air.

Hungry, it thought.

HUNGRY. Feed me, Seymour. BLOOD. BLOOD. BLOOD!

Slowly, very slowly, it lifted one foot, and then another, and then
another. Each earthquake of a step split the stone flooring in two, then
opened rifts in the surrounding earth.

Emerging into the nascent green-tinged sunlight, the brain started
walking. It ignored the fleeing farmers and migrant workers who scattered
in its wake; they would have been a quick source of protein, to be sure,
but the brain had bigger, more important prey in mind. Much bigger.

Slowly, very slowly, the brain started its trek eastward. Toward
Washington. As it moved, its steps grew faster, and faster.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

********

TO BE CONTINUED, SOMETIME OR OTHER, DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH


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