The book opens to reveal an America in the nearest of futures as it becomes a theocracy caused by the stealth investments of the radical conservative political right. The saga follows the adventures of Rip Pizzard a jazz musician and closet mystic. His humane doctrine (based on Buddhist principles for enlightenment) opposes the rigid dogma of the conservative hierarchy. The text merges traditional settings with exotic locales with tongue-in-cheek themes to satirize society’s views on religion, multiculturalism, politics, frivolous metaphysics, and liberal versus conservative conflicts. The story is framed with wry sentiments, expressive dialogue, and provocative concepts.

John E. (Johnny) Pepper hails from a small town, Dadeville, nestled in low kudzu sculptured clay hills of Alabama. His teenage years coincided in time and place with the birth of the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery and, this was also the time the music changed.

In 1976, Johnny and his wife, Carol, established the Still Waters Foundation to "Promote the ancient lost art of individual Thinking in the Higher Realms." Through 20 years of public activity (study and discussion groups, unique lecturers, library, animal sanctuary, astronomical observatory, metaphysical bookstore, international travel and networking) most of this pioneering effort is now mainstream.

Currently Johnny is researching new millennium spirituality merging both personal and transpersonal elements. The other side of the person plays music for charity and collects Les Paul guitars. He and Carol share their home in Pensacola, Florida, with four cats, two dogs, and four coati mundi.

Prolog -- The Vicki Vowell Show (Seattle)

1. The Acquisition of Consciousness (Loam County, Prison for Moderates)

2. The Sermon on the Tailgate (Prattville)

3. The Milwaukee Book of the Dead (Los Angeles)

4. The Chronicles of Stick’em (San Diego)

5. The Bigot Boy Boutique (Hotel del Coronado)

6. The American Inquisition (San Antonio)

7. The Nostradamus Out Takes (San Antonio and Elsewhere)

8. The Different Drumb (on board the Carnival Inquisitor)

9. The Escape from Mayaland (Limbo Prison for Liberals, Guatemala)

10. The Prozac of Tesla (New Port News)

11. The Lady of the Lake (Virginia Beach)

12. The Plot Heard Round the World (Walden Pond)

13. The ReAwakening (Washington, DC)

Epilog -- The Victoria Vowellini Show (Sorrento, Italy)

"As the rules of life don't apply to your bike club, neither do the rules of death. For you, it won't happen as the Christians proclaim heaven or hell. You'd all go to hell and take the sport out of their Judgment Day. You’d bring the system to its knees. For you it won't happen as the Hindus teach: reincarnation! In their system you are supposed to get better in each lifetime. You men and women would never quite make it up to chela and you would screw up their timetable of world periods . . . you know those Yugas . . . O.K., Yugos. For the first time ever, you are going to hear the truth as it applies specifically to bikers.

"Years ago the Harley Company worked out a system with God for dealing with you One Percenters. You can thank old William Harley and Arthur Davidson. They really cared about you even though publicly they distanced themselves from you. Bill and Arthur never meant those mean public relations remarks about how they would give you free Honda rice grinders to get you off their Harley bikes. In their private lives they were really ‘easy riders’ at heart. The religious authorities blessed the deal with God, as they didn't want you, as I previously stated, in their post-life programs. After American Machine and Foundry bought the Harley Company and nearly killed it, the deal with God was misplaced."

"What sells clothes on a global scale? Celebrities! Times are tacky; tacky tactics are the tactics of tacky times. Normally we would buy a ball-thrower or a movie star to market our clothing line. Our conservative leaders are too fat to throw footballs or even round balls anymore or attend the evil movies, but they have an affinity for walking on water. Let's exploit the unexploitable!" Rip lectured.

"Man, you ain't talkin' about exploiting God, are you Brother? I can't go along with that . . .!" Harvey interrupted.

Rip continued, "No sir Mr. H, we can't exploit God. The conservatives have a lock on exploiting Him, especially the male God. They think they have an exclusive management contract with God -- but your guess was close! I'm talking bigger than God. Our point man and model will be Rust Limbo, the conservative talk radio logos! Feed his ego the right way and he'll sell your rags for us. Our new clothing line will be the BIGOT-BOY series."

"Texas roadside justice gave you only community service! I don’t want to know what you did but you were lucky." The two men had started walking back to Frank’s apartment when he picked up on the dig, "You forget I am from the ‘hood, I do have some severance pay, but it wasn’t exactly given to me. Once upon a time I was given a scholarship to work at the Vatican to help preserve the older books. Arial first went to Rome as a tourist to be near me and later got a job at the copy shop, which helped with our preservation work. Between she and I, we left Rome with copies of some real ‘first editions’ that are quite a sight for secular eyes!"

Startled, Rip commented, "Man, I am about to develop some real respect for you! Liberating occult books from the Vatican Library is no small feat, I am impressed . . . no, it must be the booze. Did you get any of the good stuff? Something we can sell -- a best seller to finance your prison break?"

"I won’t upset you by mentioning Mayan Codexes," Frank said, "but First Books Publishers has just paid me big bucks for some unknown works of a Michael de Nostredame. Mikey De was under great stress at the time of the plague; these were some predictions with which he didn’t want to be caught dead having made. Hence we have . . . Nostradamus --The Out Takes!"

From Chapter 8:

A refurbished teletype in a taupe colored pot metal case came to life in Puerto Barrios and clattered priority instructions from Guatemala's quasi-military capitol at Guatemala City. It read: "Congratulations! You have been chosen for the American Reformed Sister Cities Act. Find something to sell them and give their cultural exchange people free travel (they will spend money everywhere they go). We know the leasing of the Quirigua site for the Yankee prison is good. This should get your peasants' minds off the revenue lost by the necessity of closing that Mayan tourist site."

Thirteen hundred miles to the north, Billy Bumpp rushed into the Mayor's office with exciting news, "I have been chosen by President Aryan Denny to pick up a couple of big truck loads of mahogany from one of those jungle countries that you can drive to! He also wants our Precision Tractor-Pull Drill Team to go along and put on a show for those natives. Ain't this new government great, or what?"

"Or what is my real opinion but that is just between you and I Billy," The Mayor was pleased, but more pleased that he did not have to pay for, plan or preside over this goodwill venture. A tractor-pull was on the approved list of recommended activities by the Revised National Endowment of the Arts. He never suspected that the liberation of the liberals at the Limbo Prison had been organized with his approval.

As the day wore on, they got down to discussing the Prozac device. Devila explained, "The space program died an internal death years ago. When all we can do is fly around the earth just a bit higher than a commercial airliner in our remaining antique shuttles, who cares? With the start we had during America’s Golden Age of Space, we should have teenagers living on Mars – who were born there! NASA keeps a few of us old-timers around to grind out statistics over at Langley for budget purposes. It’s so boring; that is why Angela and I trade out jobs occasionally. Anyhow, boredom led me to run some numbers on several of Tesla’s theories on transmission of alternating current. If Tesla had had access to NASA’s big Cray computer like I have, he would have been more famous than Edison . . . "

Angela interrupted, "She put together an oscillator circuit that creates the same effect as beaming on a high-powered tranquilizer. We call it the Prozac machine cause it relaxes and lowers the inhibitions of the most anal-retentive conservative in its range."

The Piz was amazed, "So Sis, you, via Tesla, have found a frequency that causes the kundalini or consciousness to rise at least to the level of the heart chakra in a 21st century stone minded male human?"

". . . And in 21st century stone-minded female humans!" the twins responded simultaneously.

Finally just south of Alexandria, they came to the first Leaded Kettle House of Coffee since Portsmouth. The Piz’s world became an user-friendlier place.

Indira tried to talk to Rip as his awareness began to thaw out. "I really liked your twin sisters."

"They had a serious gripe about you--."

"Oh, did they think I wasn’t good enough for you?"

"Yeah, something like that in reverse." Rip acknowledged, "They say they want me to date a least one bimbo before I get too old."

"Both of them say they are the youngest! It is neat the way they lightly compete with each other and they, as a unit, compete against you."

"Yeah, they have that twin’s telepathy thing going for them. I have always been able to tell them apart and they can’t figure that out. Petty, but the three of us have, as a unit, competed with Lemuel except when he ran for president of the Ken Starr fan club. Remember I told you about our archetypal ideal sibling . . . who was adopted?" Rip mumbled without lowering his cup.

"You can tell your twin sisters apart?"

"Yes."

"Will you tell me how you do that?"

"No."

"Pretty please?"

"Ok, first tell me what your doctorate from Madras University is in."

"No."

After successful testing around the Concord/Lexington area, the Prozac tranquilizer-generating device was ready to be tried on a larger scale over the nation’s capital. The Operation Underlord team quietly left Walden Pond and set up a new command post in the District of Columbia.