Episode 3

The next call was from the Secretary of Agriculture, who reported plummeting estimates for the corn and wheat crops because of Nebraska's disappearance. 'Gosh, Sir, maybe you should get the National Guard and station it around the borders of Kansas, Iowa, North Dakota, and Colorado so nobody steals those states too,' he drawled.

'I don't think North Dakota is in danger of being stolen,' President Woodhed said.

'If this were yesterday, I wouldn't have thought Nebraska would disappear, but it did anyway.'

The FBI and CIA also weighed in with advice, much of it conflicting. The FBI wanted to blame Nebraska's disappearance on renegade Indians who had been lobbying for expanded territory. Apparently some of them had seen Killers of the Flower Moon and thought public opinion would finally be on their side. The CIA, on the other hand, was sure that extraterrestrial mischief was involved.

President Woodhed had no choice but to combine the two theories. He wrote a brief speech expaining the situation, and then went on live television to tell the good people of America that extraterrestrial Indians had abducted Nebraska for unknown reasons. This announcement was greeted with sidesplitting laughter in every corner of the globe. Opinion was divided among those who doubted that Nebraska had ever existed in the first place, those who thought it did exist but wasn't answering its phone, and those who felt it really had disappeared but none of Woodhed's theories had ever panned out so why trust him now? A certain former president speculated that this proved the last election really was stolen. Little did anyone realize jsut how prescient Woodhed's analysis would turn out to be.

Sure enough, at 6:00 p.m., just in time for the evening news, spokesmen for an extraterrestrial tribe of Indians appeared on TV via communications satellite to take credit for Nebraska's disappearance. 'Greetings to The United States of America,' the tribe's spokesman said in flawless Engish, 'My name is Hard Drive, and I'm here with the leaders of my tribe, the HTTP Indians. We have Nebraska. If you want Nebraska back, you must meet our demands. We've been told that that a man named Woodhed is in charge of your country. Our operators are standing by to receive his call.'

President Woodhed dialed the number that Hard Drive had given. 'Mr. Hard Drive, Sir,' he began, grateful that no one could see how hard he was sweating. 'I've only just found out about this, so bear with me. Where is your tribe's homeland located?'

'Mr. President, we've told you that we are extraterrestrials,' Hard Drive said dismissively. 'We used to live on your planet, near the place you call Omaha, but we left because we had so little in common with the other tribes in the area. Our technology was way ahead of theirs. Then this Columbus guy and his successors came along with inferior technology. We could have coped with that, but they began raising larger and larger armies. One day we got tired of having the threat of invasion hanging over our heads, so we just left for another planet. Our technology is still way ahead of yours, but we don't have to worry about invasion. We have gotten a tad homesick for what you call Nebraska, so...'

'So you decided to take Nebraska to your planet.' Woodhed could tell where this was leading.

The people around Hard Drive saw a look of annoyance cross his face. 'That's for us to know, and for you to guess,' he said with a sneer, 'and let me just say that some of our tribal elders have reservations about returning Nebraska at all.'

'Perhaps we could all get together soon and smoke the peace pipe,' President Woodhed offered.

The Indians were overcome with laughter at this proposal. Finally Hard Drive stopped laughing long enough to say, 'Don't do us any favors, Mr. President. Our tribe stopped smoking 500 years ago. That's more than your tribe can say.'

Paulh

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