The Resistance needs a new leader as the conservatives realize General Zod is evil.
As talented neurosurgeon Dr. Carson reverts to an infantile state following soul transfer
the secret volcano base is left without medical personnel just as war looms on the horizon.
Will The Resistance find a new leader before the deadline for attacking Pearl Harbor comes?
Will it be a new hope or is there an already established hope?
The fate of The Resistance hangs in the balance.
EPISODE FOUR: AN ALREADY ESTABLISHED HOPE
General Zod was locked in a prison cell within the secret volcano base which was surrounded by a moat filled with killer sharks. We had quickly realized that many days of his brain rotting had definitely impacted General Zod's vision for America. That vision once consisted of re-forming the fifty states and returning free market capitalism to the nation but had now become one of wholesale slaughter and torture of innocents. We couldn't truck with that, so we locked him up and were left with a quandary. Who would assume command?
It would turn out to be an already established hope. Group Captain Reagan stepped up to the plate and delivered. He not only took command of the troops, he assumed complete control of the secret volcano base and the title of President of the United States of America. He was now known to us by his new title, President Reagan.
"My friends, we have a dangerous and difficult mission ahead of us, but it is morning now outside of this secret volcano base, and that means soon it will be morning across America. I have developed a reward system for all of you. It will encourage achievement, but also introduce a bit of fun to what is a very dire situation. Every time one of you does a good job, I will give you one jelly bean. If you do a really great job, I will give you two jelly beans. If you do something really, really great I will give you three jelly beans. How does that sound?"
"Sounds great," Encyclopedia Brown said before tripping over his untied shoelaces and getting a laugh out of everyone as he fell flat on his face and groaned, "Now I'm going to have pancake face!"
Those who had served in government before, like Former Congressman Joe Moore, knew there was a secret religious ceremony at The Vatican that all who became President of the United States had to undergo. Even Chancellor Humphrey had undergone the top secret ritual that was never revealed to the population at large because it was so secret. Chancellor Humphrey had to become President first, before he dissolved Congress and the Supreme Court through executive orders and let liberalism dictate the day. It was usually a Protestant ceremony, even though it was at The Vatican, which had a secret Protestant cult living in the catacombs below Vatican City. They usually conducted the ceremony, except in the case of John F. Kennedy whose ceremony was performed by The Pope. As well as President Jeb Bartlet, who was not a fictional character but who exists in a parallel universe, but still had to undergo the ceremony. I got to know these things because I was tight with Former Congressman Joe Moore.
I groaned at the idea of another long trip to do something weird, but President Reagan just smiled. "In a parallel universe I underwent the ceremony in 1980, so I'm already pre-ordained."
Well, that was good news.
We sat down to review the blueprints for Pearl Harbor while drinking a very good bottle of Scotch. We examined the specifications on the secret weapon the liberals had built to destroy conservativism forever. It was indeed a powerful weapon, capable of changing the way one thought with just one shot from its might laser weapon. It was madness to even consider going against this weapon. Our casualties would not die heroic deaths. They would join the opposition. It was too dangerous.
"It can't be done," said Former Congressman Joe Moore. His young learner Gerald Ford nodded in agreement after both had looked over the plans. "We're out of here."
We were losing two valuable assets, and with their decision to bug out, a lot of the other Resistance fighters were looking ready to throw in the towel as well. We would need an impressive speech from President Reagan to keep them all in line, but not even Reagan could convince former Congressman Joe Moore and young learner Gerald Ford, who took their luxury yacht and departed that day from the secret volcano base.
Years later, as we were under attack by the Seventh Fleet, I was hit in the head with a steel construction beam and woke up with total amnesia. I was living as a teenager, even though I wasn't a teenager but a very attractive man in his 20s with a full head of hair. I was living with my uncle, Frank Purdue and his wife Yoda. We lived in the desert and I fixed water evaporators with the help of talking robots and I was unsatisfied but didn't know why. And then the Liberal Reich came to town.
Their Liberal Walkers burned Uncle Frank and Aunt Yoda and I found their burning bodies outside our desert home after I went into town to find anyone who wanted to let me evaporate their water. I'd found no takers, again, and had returned home crestfallen. If we weren't evaporating water, how were we going to keep ourselves busy until the next government check arrived? When I saw the bodies, one of my robots came over to me and started acting kind of like a person, which was weird to me. I don't know how you would feel about a robot suddenly acting kind of like a person but it freaked me out. It told me to head up into the hills and to find someone named "Gerald Ford" who apparently lived up there in them hills. Without any water to evaporate, and with Uncle Frank and Aunt Yoda's corpses smoldering on the ground, I figured I had nothing to lose.
I found Gerald Ford easily enough, strangely close to the home of Uncle Frank, merely a five minute walk down the road. It was strange that I'd never before noticed his house or him, and could have sworn the place where his house was had once been a patch of cactus I had cut down so I could evaporate the water inside of it.
"Come in, James T. Kirk. I was not expecting company because no one can see my house unless they have a robot who tells them to find it. That doesn't happen very often."
"Who are you?"
"Oh, just an old man who enjoys college football and likes to help restore normalcy after a major national tragedy," he told me. "I know your name because I've sometimes skulked around your house late at night being invisible and peeking in your windows."
"Well, you do live awfully close to us and Aunt Yoda did look good in a teddy before her body got burned up. Hottie. And I can say that because they adopted me. My father was a great warrior."
"I knew your father once," Gerald Ford told me, "but he was changed... I mean, he died a hero's death."
"Wait, you started saying he changed and then totally switched it around. What's up with that?"
"I am an old man, easily confused by names and dates. I was confused as to what story I was telling you. Your father was definitely not General Peters."
"What? The turncoat from The Resistance? The one who turned to evil with liberal undertones? The one who escaped from the secret volcano base after it was destroyed by the Seventh Fleet? How do I know all this if I am just a water evaporator from the desert who is only seventeen years old?"
"Because you are not just a water evaporator and you're not seventeen. You are a fully grown and very attractive man with a full head of hair who is in his twenties. And you also escaped from the secret volcano base when it was destroyed. The trauma of those events and being hit on the head with a steel construction beam at the same time caused you to have amnesia and think you were this teenage boy living in the desert. Your Uncle Frank and Aunt Yoda were terrified having you in their house. They had no fucking clue who you were or why you started living there, and why you were insisting on evaporating water even though water is scarce in the desert and that is a completely stupid thing to spend your time doing, but they figured pointless busy work was best for you and it kept you away from them most of the day. You were freaking them out big time."
"That sounded like a liberal phrase, that bit at the end."
"I've spent a lot of time undercover as I work to normalize various nations and governments at all levels to keep trouble from breaking out. It is what I do. It is my superpower."
"So what do we do now, since I am starting to recover my memories, and by the way, since when has General Peters been my father? I have a father, and a mother, back home in New York City. Were they illusions created by me being hit in the head with a steel construction beam? And where is my pal Encyclopedia Brown? The guy with the blue head?"
"Your real name is not James T. Kirk, it is Harry Porter, and you are a fighter in the resistance. General Peters, now General Zod, used to tell everyone you were his son, and so to honor him we are making you his son. This works out in creating some new plot elements as you now have a special reason to track down General Zod."
"Not really. I mean, he isn't really my father, and just because you say he's my father and talk about some weird sexual issue he had that made him want to call me his son, it really doesn't matter to me."
"What if I told you that he was taken to Woodstock, New York, the capital of Inoffensive Country, where he is training with Chancellor Humphrey himself to become a liberal dictator? Apparently the liberals think he has a lot of promise."
"That offends me because I know there is still some of General Peters inside of General Zod. Maybe I can do something to bring out the conservative in him, and maybe it has to be me because he has a weird sexual thing where he thinks I'm his son. I am going after General Zod!"
"This is why we call you our already established hope." When he said that I felt empty, as President Reagan had already been declared our already established hope, but apparently Gerald Ford was wishy-washy about this kind of thing.
I got back into one of my hippie liberal disguises and went to Hawaii. For some reason I decided that taking a bus from the desert to California, or Continental Japan, and then finding another sort of crooked freighter captain to take me to Hawaii, and then take a flight from Honolulu to Woodstock, New York, was the best course of action. I later regretted as I thought about how ridiculous my itinerary had been and could not figure out why I had decided to get to Woodstock in this fashion.
I learned at that moment, the moment where I thought about my stupid itinerary, that I had special conservative powers. They flowed through me like a river through a canyon. The flight I should have taken from the desert to Woodstock was blown up by terrorists. My foolish itinerary had saved my life. These were powers of a remarkable nature.
In disguise I walked out of the Woodstock airport and into the dirt field where the shack was that served as the capital of the Inoffensive Country. The field around the shack was well guarded by a group of Mark XX Liberal Walkers with the latest upgrades. I closed my eyes and summoned conservativism to flow through my veins and they exploded with patriotism. I now had the courage to walk straight across that field to the shack and find General Zod and Chancellor Humphrey.
The shack was pretty small, and General Zod and Chancellor Humphrey were sitting on an old couch just inside. It looked like the kind of couch one sees sitting on the side of the road for some reason we cannot explain. I was appalled with the conditions inside this Capital Building."
"You want a Pabst?" Chancellor Humphrey asked me. "I got some on ice."
"I've come to take my father away from you and to save his soul and later allow that plastic helmet you're making him wear to melt and then be discovered by later generations that will undermine my intent with saving my father's soul. What use will it be to bring him back to conservativism just to have him die and have his legacy as General Zod inspire a future liberal uprising, even if we conservatives are successful in our venture to bring order back to America."
"Your pitiful band of conservative scum has already been destroyed by the Seventh Fleet," Chancellor Humphrey reminded me, causing me great upset. "You have no allies and you have no friends. And I am all too well aware of what your friend Gerald Ford is doing in Rhode Island, trying to take down the shield generator for Pearl Harbor. All these things have been anticipated and prepared for. You have already lost."
"Why is there a shield generator for Pearl Harbor in Rhode Island?"
"Enough with this! First you ignore my offer of an ice cold Pabst and now you doubt the marvels of liberal engineering. I have had enough. General Zod, show him the pain cage!"
"Nothing you can do to me can change my fundamental conservative principles," I told him defiantly. "I am prepared for your worst."
General Zod motioned for me to follow him, deeper into the shack that had now becoming a lot larger than I remembered it being when I first walked in. There was a glass cage, probably not actually made of glass but of some clear, unbreakable plastic, and inside was a baby and a tiger. The tiger was stalking around the baby, staring at it, and it was a truly awful situation.
"All you have to do is open the door to the cage and get the baby out," General Zod told me.
"No, I won't do it. That baby's parents should never have let it get into that situation. This is a problem with personal responsibility. I will not fall for your liberal tricks."
"There is little time. The tiger will soon kill the baby. Let yourself feel the desire to help. Let the liberalism flow through your veins."
"No. Parents. Should. Have. Watched. Their. Baby. More. Closely. This will be a lesson for them that will help them better raise their other children with an increased sense of responsibility."
"You are struggling, my son. Stop fighting it. Feel the liberalism within you."
"No, I won't. I've come to save your soul, man who has a weird sexual thing where he thinks I'm his son. I will not let the Chancellor have you."
"It is too late, son. I have already given my soul to liberalism."
"Look, if the parents aren't being responsible for this child, the slack should be taken up by churches and other charitable organizations. The government should not be getting involved in these sorts of things. The business of government is national defense, keeping itself as small as possible, and letting the states decide for themselves what to do about different kinds of things other than abortion. That is right out. I am not going to open that door and save that baby. You've lost, weirdo who thinks I'm his son."
I knew that Gerald Ford had not gone to Rhode Island alone. He had taken a small, but hardy group of Care Bears with him on the mission. You would think that Care Bears, with all their annoying caring, would have embraced the liberal cause, but this was not the case. Since the formation of the Liberal Reich, the Care Bears had lost so much on marketing and syndication income that they were no friends of the Liberal Reich. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, indeed. If I could somehow give them enough time, they could get the shield generator turned off, which would leave Pearl Harbor almost defenseless against an air attack. The only problem with my plan is that The Resistance did not have any planes or any forces anywhere near Pearl Harbor, but I figured I would face that issue when it actually came up. If we were not successful in taking down the shield generator, not having any military at the moment wouldn't matter.
"You WILL rescue that child," said Chancellor Humphrey as he floated into the room like magic.
"I will not. The parents need to be responsible here. The state should NOT jump in."
"Very well, you have bested me," the Chancellor sighed. He then waved his hand in front of the glass cage and his illusion was shattered. What was a baby turned out to be just a glazed ham and what had appeared to be a tiger was actually a homeless man who had illegally immigrated from New Norway. He grabbed the ham and began consuming it while the Chancellor laughed. "You see, young Mr. Porter, you have lost! If you had rescued the child you would have kept a homeless illegal immigrant from eating a ham. Instead, he gets his belly full, doesn't he? Hmm? You thought you were resisting liberalism, but you have GIVEN IN TO IT!"
"Oh crap!" I exclaimed. "This is awful. He's eating that entire ham. That could have been served at a banquet attended by wealthy entrepreneurs! How dastardly!"
"I am not a rank amateur, Harry Porter. Your Resistance has failed. There is no one left. Your forces have been wiped out. What did you really think you were going to accomplish? And I am well aware of your little band of Care Bears who are trying to take down the Pearl Harbor shield generators. I am fully aware! And they will fail! And they will be wiped out! Your kind will be gone from these lands FOREVER!"
An alarm went off, ringing loudly throughout the shack. General Zod looked upset, but Chancellor Humphrey was even more upset.
"The shield generator has been taken down! General Zod, have Walter Mondale take Harry Porter to the detention cells, which are very comfortable and catered, by the way, and come with me to the strategic planning room. We must act quickly! The shield generator is down! And someone give that illegal immigrant a visa and some walking around money."
They thought I was beaten. They thought I was bested. But they were wrong. Showing me this illegal immigrant had given me the answer I sought. I knew how to take down the Liberal Reich.
Part Five: Throw Mondale from the Train