“Bart?” asked Morehouse. “National transit plan almost done?”
“Almost, thanks to the Labor Service and those thousands of eager new immigrants looking for work the moment they set foot in the Republic,” said DeMarco. “We’ve managed to get all the Republic’s existing rail lines back into service after the Americans let almost all of them rust away. Major rail trunks have all been upgraded for high-speed traffic. The rail bridge over the Columbia at Portland is now up again, and it can handle six trains at a time, so you can now get from King Street station in Seattle to Republic Station in Portland in a little under an hour. Daily commuting between home and work from Seattle to Portland and vice versa is now a practical possibility, and that’s something the United States never accomplished.” This comment sparked more applause.
“Refresh my memory. Didn’t that used to be Union Station in Portland?” asked Art Flowers.
“Yeah, but we changed it, for obvious reasons,” said DeMarco. “You can now get to and from any inhabited area within the Republic of more than five thousand people, within one hundred yards of your destination, with no more than four transfers by combining bus and train, or Northwest Air. When the plan is fully functional, we’ll have that down to full coverage of anyplace over 300 inhabitants with only three transfers. Ridership of Northwest Transit is way up. Now that there are no buses and trains full of violent niggers, Mexican gang members, drug addicts, and advertisements depicting sexual perversion, white people are leaving their cars home more and more. Expensive gasoline has a lot to do with that as well, of course. No question in my mind we will turn a profit in our first full year of operation.”
“Outstanding!” said Ray Ridgeway.
DeMarco continued, “Northwest Air is now running a network of flights covering a total of forty destinations within the Republic, although a lot of those are small prop job flights out of the larger airports. No commercial airlines from outside the country are landing here yet except for Aeroflot, which we’re lucky to have or else we’d be completely cut off from the rest of the world. I think we may be able to lure Aer Lingus here soon. Private charters from the U.S. and Canada are running so regularly that they might develop into scheduled flights if the Americans allow it.”
“Aren’t the Americans cracking down on the charter flights?” asked Morehouse. “I know some of the ones based in California now effectively amount to commuter airlines.”
DeMarco jiggled his hand in the air. “Mmm, here and there, but they don’t seem to have figured out exactly what they want to do about this whole blockade thing, even as they’re establishing the McCurtain and shooting people who try to run the border. The fact of life they’re having to work around is that there are a lot of Americans who have ties here that involve legitimate family and business reasons to travel in and out of the Republic, as well as citizens of other countries, and if they interfere too much, it has political and PR repercussions. It pisses people off when they can’t send Aunt Sadie in Seattle a Christmas card, or go to their high school reunion in Spokane, and eventually that will generate blowback. It looks like ZOG is planning to back off on the whole total no-contact, blockade, illegal-to-come-here-at-all attitude. They’ve set up an exit visa and permit system, and they are now allowing limited legal entry into the Republic through a small number of border posts along the McCurtain, mostly on the interstate.
“There’s all kinds of restrictions, of course. You can’t take your whole family, you can only bring in two hundred dollars in cash or traveler’s checks, and you have to file an itinerary that includes everywhere you’re going and everyone you’re planning to meet and why, and if you don’t check back out again within 48 hours of your mandatory return date the FBI comes knocking on the doors of your next of kin. There are other restrictions and a long list of contraband items you can’t take into the Republic, and all kinds of bureaucracy, which we all know isn’t going to work worth a damn.”
“Joe, how are the phones?” asked Morehouse.
“I still think we need a separate Communications portfolio in the cabinet here, so my ministry can concentrate on vital R&D, but Northwest Telecom is now fully functional within the Republic with both land lines and cellular phone networks,” said Jennings.
“Northwest Telecom is a statutory body,” said Ray Ridgeway. “We need all of those outfits up and running successfully ASAP, because they constitute our main substitute for income and property tax. How soon before we see a profit?”
“Couple of years,” said Jennings. “I still say cell phones at least should be privatized and taxed. Frankly, we just don’t want to mess with it. The more each government department has to deal with, the more bureaucrats we have to hire, and we know where that road leads.”
“The Security Committee and the Political Bureau are twitchy about letting any private parties get too much control of the nation’s communications,” said Morehouse. “Yeah, we do know where that leads. That’s how the Jews were able to slip the noose around America’s neck in the last century. Speaking of electronic communications, Comrade Russell, I read over your NBA development plan. Both the State President and I are impressed. I’ll have copies of the plan for the rest of you to look over at next week’s Council meeting, but basically it calls for the Republic to be producing all our own television programming within three years, and churning out our own movies within two.”
“No more Gilligan’s Island re-runs, then?” asked John Morgan. “Shucks, now I’ll never know if they git rescued!” There was laughter.
“That pilot program for kids you have running now, Crossbow, looks really good,” DeMarco told Susan. “I saw the first three episodes. Where do you shoot that? It sure looks like Switzerland.”
“Leavenworth, Washington,” Susan Russell told him. “They have a kind of German section of town there that they used to run as a tourist attraction. We throw in stock footage of Swiss scenery and merge it into our own scenes using a special computer program.”
“You’ve got some good actors,” admitted Flowers. “Of course Erica Collingwood is going to upstage anybody anytime she’s on camera, since she’s a heroine of the revolution in her own right, [see The Brigade] but that bruiser you’ve got playing William Tell is also pretty impressive. And who’s that lovely girl who plays Inga?”
“That’s James C. Marshall and Kelly Shipman, both of whom have worked in Hollywood,” replied Susan. “We’re getting a lot of actors coming to the Republic now, from Hollywood and New York, because the word is getting out that there’s plenty of work here, and it’s possible to be a real actor without all the lefty politics, the drugs and perversion, and the bad racial atmosphere. I’ve spoken to Minister Stepanov about a Shakespeare and Restoration drama company that can perform the classics both on video and in live theater, but I believe we need to prioritize children’s and young people’s programming at first, because we have to start forging a new healthy generation of white children.
“Crossbow is the first series put out by an NBA subsidiary, Asgard Productions,” she went on. “We have other After School Theater projects in the works, and by early next year our animation department will be producing our own cartoons. I’m afraid the ancient sitcoms will still be around for a while. I know we need adult programming as well, of course. Our acquisitions department is scouring the world’s broadcast archives from America and Europe, television and movies both, and digging up anything that’s clean enough and racially healthy enough to use here. Where necessary, we steal digital copies off servers outside the country. Then there are some programs and films that can be rendered usable by a little creative editing, like Blue Peter, and we have a revision department working on those. One of the current projects is cleaning up Sesame Street, getting rid of all the non-whites and lefty propaganda, giving Bert and Ernie girlfriends, so forth and so on, while leaving behind the good educational parts for toddlers. Adult programming is more difficult, such as most crime and police dramas, since we don’t want anything t
hat idealizes or makes heroes out of American police or FBI. Of course, everything Hollywood and the American industry turned out for half a century was riddled with Jews, Marxists, and sexual deviates on all levels, but sometimes all that’s necessary is to cut a few lines here and a scene there, and remove all the Jewish names from the credits.”
“Wait until we get Lighten Up on line,” said Joseph Jennings.
“What’s that?” asked Morehouse.
“Lighten Up is a computer program with which we can ethnically cleanse Hollywood movies and TV programs,” said Jennings. “We can replace nigger and mud characters with white synthetic characters. Some of them will be used multiple times and given names like they were real actors. Or we can use digitized versions of real white actors. You have a smart-ass nigger like Will Smith or Wesley Snipes in the lead, he can be replaced with Rutger Hauer or Viggo Mortensen, complete with synchronized voice matching dialog. Or conversely, if you’ve got some really sleazy white villain in a movie, you can turn him into Ving Rhames or Jackie Mason.”
“While helping ourselves to the rest of a fifty-million-dollar Hollywood production, technology and production quality and technique we can’t possibly match yet. The mind truly boggles,” said Morehouse with a chuckle. “Fi, are we healthy yet?”
“All the old hospitals are up and running, although short-staffed,” reported Fiona Bonnar. “All Northwest communities are now served by clinics with at least one doctor, although they’re mostly staffed with nurse practitioners and paramedics. The new medical schools at the national universities in Seattle, Pullman, Eugene, Spokane and Missoula will start their first classes within a few months, although we’re going to have to stagger the academic year for a bit. The National Ambulance Service is now in place, so the days when a ride to the emergency room cost seven hundred dollars are over. On the downside, medicines and medical equipment of all kinds are in short supply, and there is a bad shortage of parts for X-ray, EKG and CAT scan machines, things like syringes and sterile gloves, supplies of every kind. Our blockade runners are doing wonders, but it’s still problematic. Minister Bresler and I are working on a plan to establish manufacturing plants in the Republic for most of the small items, but the really hi-tech parts and supplies still have to be imported.”
“Once the trade credit bank is established I think we will be able to start serious importation of medical supplies and gear direct from the source, Fi,” said Ridgeway. “It will be breaking sanctions and exposing vendors to risk, it will have to be surreptitious for a long time, and we’ll be paying through the nose, but when someone is willing to pay over market price for something, there will always be someone willing to sell. The capitalists are spot on about the profit motive in human nature.”
“Joe, getting back to your department, I’ve been meaning to ask, how’s your mad scientist project coming?” asked Morehouse.
“It’s starting to get into gear,” said Jennings. “We’ve established lab and plant facilities at the universities in Seattle, Missoula, and Eugene, and the word is getting out among the egghead community around the world that we are willing to look at and bankroll virtually any crackpot idea that any scientist or inventor comes up with, at least until it proves through research and experimentation to be a bust. Right now we have embryonic projects in anti-gravity, wireless energy transmission, genetic cloning of extinct species straight out of Jurassic Park, human longevity and half a dozen possible cancer cures the Big Pharm companies under the old order wouldn’t bother with because it cost too much money, or else because they wouldn’t have been able to make enough profit on ’em.”
Dr. Paul Hassling spoke up. “The most important and top secret are our energy-related projects, especially nuclear cold fusion, but we’re also going to be able to come up with working prototypes of two compact, inexpensive, and efficient new engines, one alcohol and one methane. That will be within the year.”
“Both of which fuels we can manufacture, rather than import,” Bresler pointed out. “We can turn corn and potatoes into alcohol, and pig and chicken guano into methane. Small quantities at first, and to be sure, not enough completely to eliminate the Republic’s need for fossil fuel yet. But we can make enough fuel and convert enough of our energy production to take the edge off at least, and eventually we will have no need for petroleum imports at all.”
“Anything else so urgent that it can’t wait until next week?” asked Morehouse. “Right, then we all need to get on the road, except for Comrade Minister Brown here, who gets to plunk his butt down in the presidential chair for a few hours.” Morehouse stood up. “Comrades, we have kept the Republic free and moving forward to a glorious white future for one full year. Quite a feat, one those bastards who spent the past century trying to wipe us off the earth never thought we’d accomplish. That’s one down and nine hundred and ninety-nine to go. I’ll see all of you back here on Friday, and we’ll start to work on year number two. Freedom!”
PART TWO
THE EMPIRE STRIKES OUT
Cascade, Idaho
The oak and poplar trees grew tall around our mountain farm,
With corn in the fields and alfalfa in the barn.
Word came over CNN and Fox News to our door,
The NVA in Coeur d’Alene had started up a war.
Our days of living good were short, and little did we know,
We’d be driven out by murderers from Cascade, Idaho.
Rebels shot some federal man, Johnson was his name,
Someone called the Hatecrime line and they held us to blame,
They kicked our door one morning as the sun was rising red,
They caught my husband half asleep and shot him in his bed.
Someone had called us racists, and that’s all they had to know,
Those murderers came to our home in Cascade, Idaho.
They dragged me out and beat me bloody so I would confess,
They pointed guns at both my kids and threatened them with death.
We got no trial or jury, just a single rubber stamp,
That shipped us to Nevada, to the Hawthorne FEMA camp.
We lived in tents in summer heat and freezing winter snow,
We won’t forget those murderers in Cascade, Idaho.
The war was done, and finally we got our homestead back,
But we know well they’re waiting on the border to attack,
It won’t be like the last time when you brutalized my sons,
’Cause now my boys are old and strong enough to hold a gun.
So come right on, you bastards, and before you die, you’ll know:
We won’t be driven out again from Cascade, Idaho.
—The Next Generation, popular NAR folk group. Hit song from the year of Operation Strikeout.
VII
THINGS MOVING IN THE SHADE
(12 years, four months and 20 days after Longview)
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
—John Adams
“Come on in, Jeff,” said General John Corbett Morgan. “Close the door.” The big Kentucky mountain man’s black beard and hair were now flecked with gray, but he was still impressive and bulky in his green and khaki NDF uniform, and the measurement of his barrel chest was still greater than his waist even in middle age. A tendency to trade off the top jobs between old NVA vets in the Northwest Republic’s government had appeared over the past dozen years, and so John Morgan was now into his third year as NDF Chief of Staff here at Fort Lewis, Washington, while his old comrade in arms from Volunteer days, Carter Wingfield, now held down his old Council of State portfolio as Minister of Defense in Olympia.
Colonel Jeff Garrison, who now entered the office, was tall and mustachioed, a 35-year-old senior analyst from CMI (Combined Military Intelligence). He stood to attention, and saluted. “I got your latest update, Colonel,” said Morgan. “I need to go over it with you, and I asked Air Marshal Basquine and Admiral Leach to sit
in.” Air Marshal Billy Basquine, in light powder blue, was the Luftwaffe’s Head of Service or commanding general. “Bloody Dave” Leach in dark blue serge with an anchor behind the eagle and swastika on his uniform was now the Kriegsmarine HOS. Leach had been a former U.S. Navy sailor before the War of Independence, he came from a traditional seagoing family, and after his stint as a Flying Column commander and then ramrodding Force 101 (what Force 101?) he returned to his original love, the sea. “Have a seat and tell us all what-all’s got you so hot and bothered,” said Morgan, with a gesture toward a chair.
Garrison sat down and plugged a thumb drive into the computer terminal on Morgan’s desk before him. The computer was on a small intranet that connected only to the second workstation in the room, the plasma display screen on one wall, and a special underground fiber-optic connection the State President’s own personal computer in his office in Olympia. The intranet had a new encryption code every month, and no connection wired or wireless to the internet or any other station, making it impossible to hack from the outside. Garrison authenticated himself to the terminal with a voice code, a thumbprint, and a retinal scan before the machine would accept and upload the data from his portable drive.
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