The Johnny Gentle, Chief Executive who pounds a rubber-gloved fist on the podium so hard it knocks the Seal askew and declares that Dammit there just must be some people besides each other of us to blame. To unite in opposition to. And he promises to eat light and sleep very little until he finds them — in the Ukraine, or the Teutons, or the wacko Latins. Or — pausing with that one arm up and head down in the climactic Vegas way — closer to right below our nose. He swears he’ll find us some cohesion-renewing Other. And then make some tough choices. Alludes to a whole new North America for a crazy post-millennial world. First U.S. President ever to use boss as an adjective.

Dialogue between the architects and hard-choice-makers of a new millennial era:

Pres. Mexico and P.M. Cananda [in unison and green-mask-muffled]: It is tremendously flattering to be invited to sit on the cabinet of the leadership of our beloved neighbor to the [choose one].

Gentle: Thanks, boys. You have gorgeous souls.

Gentle: Another piece of pre-tasted cobbler, J.J.J.C.?

P.M. Can: Couldn’t. Stuffed. Having trouble breathing. I would not say no to another beer, however.

Gentle: …

P.M. Can: …

Gentle: So we’re sympatico on the gradual and subtle but inexorable disarmament and dissolution of NATO as a system of mutual- defense agreements.

P.M. Can [Less muffled than last scene because his surgical mask gets to have a prandial hole]: We are side by side and behind you on this thing. Let the EEC pay for their oown defendings henceforth I say. Let them foot some defensive budgets and then try to subsidize their farmers into undercutting NAFTA. Let them eat butter and guns for their oown for once in a change. Hey?

Gentle: You said more than a mouthful right there, J.J. Now maybe we can all direct some cool-headed attention to our own infraternal affairs. Our own internal quality of life. Refocusing priorities back to this crazy continent we call home. Am I being dug?

P.M. Can: John, I am kilometers ahead of you. I happen to have my Term-In-Office-At-A-Glance book right with me here. Now that the big frappeurs are being put doown, we are wondering what is the date I can be pencilling in for the removals of NATO ICBM frappeurs from Manitoba.

GENTLE: Put that pencil away, you good-looking Canadian. I’ve got more long shiny trailer-rigs full of large men with very short haircuts and white suits than you can shake a maple leaf at heading for your silos right this very. Those complete totalities of Canada’s strategic capacity’ll be out of your hair toot sweet.

P.M. Can: John, let me be the first world leader to call you a statesman.

Gentle: We North Americans have to stick together, J.J.J.C., especially now, no? Am I off-base? We’re interdependent. We’re cheek to jowl.

P.M. Can: It is a smaller world, today.

Gentle: And an even smaller continent.

Mixing real and fake news-summary cartridges, magazine articles, and historical headers from the last few great daily papers, all for a sort of time-lapse exposition of certain developments leading up to Interdependence and Subsidized Time and cartographic Reconfiguration and the renewal of a tight and considerably tidier Experialist U.S. of A., under Gentle:

UKRAINE, TWO MORE BALTIC STATES APPLY FOR NATO INCLUSION— 16-point bold Header;

SO THEN WHY A NATO? — Editorial Header;

E.E.C. SIDES WITH PACIFIC RIM, UPS TARIFFS IN RESPONSE TO U.S. QUOTAS — Header;

GENTLE ON WASTE STORAGE FROM DISMANTLED NATO THERMS: ‘NOT IN MY NATION, BABE’ — 12-point Subheader;

‘Amid smiles and two-handed handshakes that belied the high tensions here, the leaders of twelve out of fifteen NATO nations today signed an accord effectively dismantling the Western Bloc’s fifty-five-year-old defensive alliance.’ — News-Summary Cartridge Voiceover;

U.S., CANADIAN SUPPORT CUTS DOOMED NATO SUMMIT FROM START, ICELANDIC POL DECLARES — Header;

SO THEN WHY NOT A CONTINENTAL ALLIANCE, NOW, MAYBE? — Editorial Header;

MEXICO SIGNS ON FOR ‘ORGANIZATION OF NORTH AMERICAN NATIONS’ CONTINENTAL ALLIANCE; BUT QUEBEC SEPARATISTS RALLY AGAINST ‘FINLANDIZATION’ OF ‘O.N.A.N.’ ALLIANCE; BUT GENTLE TO CANADA: UNLESS ‘O.N.A.N.’ TREATY SIGNED, NAFTA NULL, MANITOBAN THERMS STAY PUT, INTRACONTINENTAL POLLUTION AND WASTE DISPOSAL EACH NATION’S ‘INTERESTS TO PURSUE TO THE BEST THEY SEE FIT’ — Header from Veteran but Methamphetamine-Dependent Head-liner Finally Demoted after Repeated Warnings about Taking up Too Much Space;

FED WORKERS PROTEST RANDOM FINGERNAIL-HYGIENE SCREENS — 12-point Header;

GENTLE PROPOSES NATIONALIZATION OF INTERLACE TELENT —Header;

SAYS GOVT IN LINE FOR ‘PIECE OF THE ACTION’ ON VIDEO, CARTRIDGE, DISK RENTALS — 8-point subheader;

O.N.A.N. PACT PENNED — 24-point Superheader;

CANADA ‘NUCK’LES UNDER — Tabloidish NY Daily’s 24-point Superheader;

PRESIDENT’S OFFICE IS ‘A ANALLY RETENTIVE HORROR SHOW SAYS THIS JUST RETIRED WHITE HOUSE CUSTODIAN —Tabloid Header with Photo of Old Guy with Basically One Eyebrow Running All

green-masked Gentle accepting tight-lipped handshakes from Mexican and Canadian officials in an agreement to make the U.S. President the first Chair of the Organization of North American Nations, with Mexican Presidente and new heavily guarded Canadian P.M. to be co-Vice Chairs. Gentle’s first State of the O.N.A.N. Address, delivered before a triple-size Congress on the very last day of ‘B.S.’ solar time, holds out the promise of a whole bright spanking new millennium of sacrifices and rewards and Interdependence’s ‘not impossibly radically altered new look,’ continent-wide.

SEC. treas.: You’re looking vigorous and hale today, sir.

Gentle: Hhhaaahh Hhhuuuhh Hhhaaahh Hhhuuuhh.

pres. MEX./SEC. MEX./V-C O.N.A.N.: May I ask, Señor, why my distinguished co-Vice Chair of O.N.A.N. is not with us in attendance today.

Gentle: Hhhaaahh Hhhuuuhh.

Mr. Rodney Tine, chief, U.S. office of unspecified services: The president’s taking a little pure oxygen today, boys, and has authorized me as his oral proxy on this may I say historically opportune day. The Canadian P.M.’s in a bit of a snit.

Tine: President Gentle’s decided we’re going to reinvent not just government but history. Torch the past. Manifest a new destiny. Boys, we’re going to institute some serious intra-O.N.A.N. interdependence.

Gentle: Hhhaaahh hhhuuuhh.

Tine: Gentlemen, we’re going to make an unprecedented intercontinental gift of certain newly expendable northeast American territories, in return for the faute-de-mieux continuation of U.S. waste-displacement access to those territories. Allow me to illustrate what Lur— just what the president means.

Sec. State: A kind of ecological gerrymandering?

Tine: The president invites you Gentlemen to conceive these two visuals as a sort of before-and-after representation of ‘projected intra-O.N.A.N. territorial re-allocations,’ or some public term like that. Redemise-ment’s probably too technical.

Sec. State: Still respectfully not quite sure we at State see how inhabited territories can be sold to the public as quote expendable when a decent slice of that public by all reports inhabits that territory, Rod.

Gentle: Hhhaaahh.

Tine: The president’s pro-actively chosen not to hedge that high-cost tough-choice possibly unpopular lonely-at-the-top fact one bit, guys. We’ve been moving forward full-bore on anticipating various highly involved relocation scenarios. Scenaria? Is it scenarios or scenaria? Marty’s on-task on the scenario front. Care to bring us to speed, Marty?

Sec. Transp: We foresee a whole lot of people moving south really really fast. We foresee cars, light trucks, heavier trucks, buses, Winnebagos — Winnebaga? — commandeered vans and buses, and possibly commandeered Winnebagos or Winnebaga. We foresee 4-wheel-drive vehicles, motorcycles, Jeeps, boats, mopeds, bicycles, canoes and the odd makeshift raft. Snowmobiles and cross-country skiers and roller-skaters on those strange-looking roller-skates with only one line of wheels down each skate. We foresee backpack-type folks speed-walking in walking-shorts and boots and Tyrolean hats and a stick. We foresee a strictly temporary breakdown in the thin veneer of civilization over the souls of essentially frightened stampeding animals. We foresee looting, shooting, price-gouging, ethnic tensions, promiscuous sex, births in transit.

sec. H.E.W.: Rollerblades I think you mean, Marty.

Sec. Transp: All feedback and input welcome, Trent. Someone junior in the office foresaw hang-gliders. I don’t foresee demographically significant hang-gliding, personally, at this juncture. Nor I need to stress do we foresee anything you could call true refugees.

Gentle: Hhhaaahh hhhuuuhhhhhhh.

Tine: Absolutely not, Mart. No way a downer-association-rife term like refugee is going to be applicable here. I cannot overstress this too assertively. Eminent nondomain: yes. Renewal-grade brand of sacrifice: you bet. Heroes, new era’s breed of new pioneers, striking in bravely for already-settled good old settled but unfoul American territory: bien sûr.

Sec. State: Bien sûr?

press sec. [w/ queer combination of bangs and bouffant and pair of bifocals on slim bead chain around neck and resting in cleavage]: Neil over in Spin has been poring through resource materials. Apparently the term refugee can be plausibly denied if both — I’m quoting direct from Neil’s memo here — if both, a, no homemade wagons piled high with worldly goods are pulled by slow bovine animals with curvy horns, and b, if the percentage of children under six who are either, a, naked, or b, squalling at the top of their lungs, or c, both, is under 20% of the total number of children under six in transit. It’s true that Neil’s key resource here is Pol and Di-ang’s Totalitarian’s Guide to Iron-Fisted Spin, but they’re thinking this fact can be spun away from without much to-do, over in Spin.

Gentle: Hhhuuuhh.

Tine: Marty and Jay’s staffs have been day-and-nighting on strategies to forestall anything like ostensible refugeeism.

press sec. [Holding brillantined head at that angle people in bifocals have to, to read]: Anything bovine with curvy horns gets shot on sight. Rod’s top U.S.O. operatives in shiny trucks at strategic intervals handing out free toddler-wear courtesy of Sears’ Winnie-the-Pooh line, to nip nakedness in the bud.

GENTLE TO CANADIAN PM: HAVE SOME TERRITORY — Header;

CANADIAN P.M. TO GENTLE: NO, REALLY, THANKS ANYWAY — Header;

GENTLE TO CANADIAN P.M.: BUT I INSIST — Header;

BLOC QUEBECOIS TO CANADIAN P.M.: ACCEPT TOXICLY CONVEX ADDITION TO OUR PROVINCE AND WE ARE OUT OF HERE SO FAST YOUR HEAD WILL SPIN ALL THE WAY AROUND -Header from That Guy Again;

CANADIAN P.M. TO GENTLE: LOOK, WE’RE SWIMMING IN TERRITORY ALREADY, HAVE A LOOK AT AN ATLAS

THIRD-WORLD VEGETABLES HURLED IN U.N. IMBROGLIO — 10-point Subheader;

GENTLE TO P.M.: LOOK, BABE, TAKE THE TERRITORY OR YOU’RE GOING TO BE REALLY REALLY SORRY — Header;

MY GARDEN NOW’S GOT TOMATOES I COULDN’T LIFT EVEN IF I COULD HACK THROUGH THEIR VINES WITH A MACHETE TO EVEN REACH THEM — Tabloid Header, Dateline Montpelier VT, with Photo That Simply Has Got to Have Been Doctored;

PRESIDENTIAL HISTORY OF ‘EMOTIONAL INSTABILITY’ ALLEGED BY LAS VEGAS M.D. — Respectable Header;

TOP AIDES HUDDLE AS WORRIES OVER GENTLE’S ‘PATHOLOGICAL INABILITY TO DEAL PROACTIVELY WITH ANY SORT OF REAL OR IMAGINED REJECTION’ MOUNT IN FACE OF CANADIAN SHOWDOWN — Meth-Dependent Headliner, Now at Third Daily in 17 Months;

‘Both financial and diplomatic communities have reacted with increasing concern to reports that President Gentle has isolated himself in a small private suite at Bethesda Naval Hospital with several thousand dollars’ worth of sound and sterilization equipment and is spending all day every day singing morose show-tunes in inappropriate keys to the U.S.M.C. Colonel who stands near the Dermalatix Hypospectral sterilization appliance handcuffed to the Black Box of United States nuclear codes. Unspecified Services Office spokespersons have declined to comment on reports of such erratic Executive directives as: ordering the Defense Department to commandeer department store giant Searsco’s entire inventory of Winnie-the-Pooh toddler wear under National Security Emergency Proviso 414; requiring Armed Forces personnel to take target practice at cardboard silhouettes of what appear to be oxen, water buffalo, or Texas longhorn cattle;instructing silo personnel at all S.A.C. installations north of 44° to remove their missiles from the silos and then reinsert them upside-down;

‘UNPRECEDENTED’ WHOPPER REVENUES IN THIRD QUARTER CREDITED BY PILLSBURY/BK TO GENTLE’S ‘CREATIVELY PROACTIVE’ RESUSCITATION OF POST-NETWORK ADVERTISING -Ad Week 14-point Full-Color Header;

GENTLE HAS COMPLETELY LOST MIND, CLAIMS CONFIDANT, O.U.S. CHIEF TINE AT PRESS CONFERENCE: THREATENS TO DETONATE UPSIDE-DOWN MISSILES IN U.S. SILOS.

an alleged doomed and unconsummated affair between President J. Gentle and the equally hygiene-and-germ-obsessed wife of Canada’s ‘Minister of Environment and Resource-Development Enterprises,’ the affair presented as doomed and unconsummated because the Minister hires a malevolent young Canadian Candida albicans specialist to induce in his wife a severe and more or less permanent yeast infection, driving both wife and Gentle to ardent-desire-v.-hygienic-neurosis breakdowns during which the wife throws herself across the tracks in front of a Québecois bullet-train and Gentle decides to exact his revenge on a macrocartographic scale.

Rodney Tine, chief, united states office of unspecified services: President Gentle’s asked us all here this morning to put our collective expertise together on an issue about which we in Unspecified Services believe he’s been hit with a truly seminal set of creative insights.

Gentle: Gentlemen, we’re both pleased and concerned to report that our seminal experiment in the Territorial Reconfiguration of O.N.A.N.has been a thoroughgoing logistical coup. More or less. Delaware’s looking a bit crowded, and one or two curvy-horned animals apparently got by the tactical squads, and there’s rather less overall good sportsmanship in downstate New New York than we’d like to see, but overall I think ‘thoroughgoing coup’ would not be out of line as a term to describe this sort of success.

Tine: Now it’s time to think about how to pay for it.

Gentle: Rod informs me Marty’s got the preliminary figures on gross costs, while Chef’s boys have provided us with some projections on gross revenue-losses from the Reconfiguration of taxable territories and households and businesses and that there.

sec. transp. & sec. treas.: [Pass around thick bound folders, each emblazoned with the yawning red skull that emblazons all bad-news memos in the Gentle administration. Folders opened and scanned by all secs. Sounds of jaws hitting the tabletop. One sec. heard to ask whether there’s even a name for a figure with this many zeroes.]

Gentle: Boys. Men. Before anybody needs oxygen here [holding a placa-tive hand up against the bubble’s glass], let Rod here explain that despite a quantitative downer-type quality to these figures, all we merely have here is just what Rod might call an exaggerated example of a quadrennial problem any administration with vision is going to have to face eventually anyway.

Tine: Gentlemen, what the president is articulating is that what we face here is a microsmic exemplar of the infamous Democratic Triple Bind faced by visionarians from FDR and JFK on down. The American electorate, as is its every right, on one hand demands the sort of millennial statesmanship and vision — decisive action, tough choices, lots of programs and services — see for instance the Territorial Reconfiguration for example — that will lead a renewed community into a whole new era of interdependent choice and freedom.

Gentle: The rhetorical chapeau’s off to you, babe.

sec. treas.: And we already have an all-too-good idea of what will happen if we attempt any sort of conventional revenue enhancements.

Sec. State: Tax revolt.

sec. H.E.W.: A whingeathon, Chief.

sec. def.: Tea-party.

Gentle: Bullseye. Whingeville. Political whingeocide. A serious drag-caliber lapse in mandate. We’ve already promised no new enhancements. I told them on Inauguration Day. I said look into my eyes: no new enhancements. I pointed at my eyes up there and said that was one tough choice that was not going to rain on anybody’s program. Rod and Tom and I had that three-planked platform-exhibit. One: waste. Two: no new enhancements. Three: find somebody outside the borders of our community selves to blame.

Tine: So then a double bind, so far, with potential whingeing on both flanks.

sec. treas.: And yet the financial communities demand a balanced federal budget. The Reserve Board all but insists on a balanced budget. Our balance of trade with the handful of nations we’re still trading with requires a stable buck and so a balanced budget.

Tine: The third flank, Chet, of the Triple Bind. Outflows required, inflows restricted, balance demanded.

Gentle: The classic executive-branch Cerberus-horned dilemma. The thorn in the Achilles’ tendon of democratic process.

The southbound bus, empty and (which he detested) fluorescently lit, climbs a thin hill off Winter Park, north Cambridge, heading for the Squares Inman and Central. With here and there the vaguely blue flicker of expensive digital entertainment equipment flickering through darkened windows. He imagines M. Tine holding the hand holding the pen of President J. Gentle as the O.N.A.N.ite President signs declaring War. He imagines teacups clinking thinly beneath trembling hands in the interior sanctums of Ottawa’s sanctum of power.