Storyline: Chaos rising

The delapidated old tanker trudged through the icy waters as if some titanic root hog foraging for buried morsels of scant tubors left after an orgiastic feasting on the plants that the roots once fed but were now reconstituted as razorback fertilizer.

An empty tanker that had once trolled these seas with belly full, she now skirted on the waves like a water spider.

The nose of the beast would seemingly dive into the frothy currents, only to emerge again splitting the waves like cannon fire through the ranks.

A cold mist formed large ice banks along the hull of the aged beheamoth as she forged ahead through the dark waters.

In the belly of this steel giant, a warm glow emanated from a tiny room deep within her cold, inhuman frame.

A pot-bellied stove sat in the corner of the steel room, and moisture formed on the walls and dripped from every over-hang.

The scotsman, roused by the rocking of the great ship, stoked the fire in the stove with more chunks of black and dusty coal.

He then fell against the wall and slid to the floor. "Elsa looks so lovely in the dim firelight", he thought, so lucid it seemed he heard his unspoken thought.

She reminded him of those cute little mice that would inhabit the corn-crib way back, in the back of beyond, behind the hidden place that one could only find by first venturing into the back woods in those hills of green that he called home - Greenback.

To Hans, he never would forget that it was the place of the blue-belly dollar, masquerading itself on an aqua-azure note.

The democrats had tried to fund the union forces during the Civil War by issuing (as all blasted liberals will do) $450 million dollars, greenback.

Printing more money has always been their standard when it comes to economics. If it doesn't really exist (or, if you don't like history), simply pretend. Who will know the difference. Who will care?

The repulicans on the other hand backed a stance that would once again base US currency on the gold standard - something real and tangible rather than fraudulent and fictitious.

The little town was torn in twain by that nasty war. At the time, they had embraced the liberal philosophy...but having been sold down the river, so many times since (by the TVA, for instance), they now have instituted a campaign to move away from that sullied past, and locally have embraced tobacco as their monetary standard (for the black market trade and barter of the backwood) - specifically a non-cancer causing, genetically-engineered strain that has all the flavor (not to mention addictive properties) of its cancerous counterpart, without the harmful effects (other than the brown teeth of most inhabitants).

To Hans, Greenback represented those beautiful green hills, and his secret place hidden within them.

But he'd thought enough of the tyrrany of the left, and the rage he felt for them manifest in that damned demon, Bigoyle.

He gently kissed Elsa's cheek and drifted back into glorious slumber dreaming beautiful dreams of warfare and the sweet, sweet taste of victory over those damned slug liberals.