Ken.
I am writing to you from a secure and secret place, safe from the hacking of the Russians. Yes, it is true, I have found a way to avoid them. The Russians, I mean, and their hacking, I mean. I have found a way to foil entirely their machinations, a quite clever and, I might even say, diabolical way.
Mr. Venti Cappuccino, Chairman of the House Diabolical Mustachio Committee, has pulled it off. He has rendered the Office of Official Optimism toothless and ineffectual, having placed it under the auspices of the House Committee for Keeping It Secret.
As we saw in an earlier instalment, the episode with Ozymandias has left our hero in a state of unrest. The orange menace paces his realm of marble-and-gold as his mind searches for an outlet through which the pent-up emotions might soar. Soon, so soon, he will have the resources of the world’s most powerful nation at his disposal. Yes, in only days his hands will be upon the levers. For now, however, he must settle on less grand arrangements.
The sun rises over the city of Geld. “Thank-you, Damien Crusher,” says the President-elect. “Thank-you for once again causing the sun to rise over your tremendous city.”
Today, it rains. Today I must go out. When I say I must go out, I mean to say that the choice to go out is not mine, or not mine alone, for there are external forces which compel me to rise from my bed and to venture into the world, against my will. My will! How absurd it sounds when I put it that way, as if I had a definite will and not rather a velleity. And against this will, this velleity, the many forces, some external but others perhaps not. Forces, that is precisely the word. And external, also the precise word. For everyone understands what is meant by a force, and also by an external. Were it not for these, I would stay in today, as I would stay in every day, if left to my own devices.
It’s not a merry Christmas for the orange menace. He finds neither rest nor peace in the holiday. In the night, Mr. Crusher is visited by three spirits. The first is the Ghost of Presidents Past, Mr. John F. Kennedy.
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