There was a long, drawn-out silence in the dimly-lit boardroom. Eight men and a woman sat around a long, massive oak table.

Finally the woman broke the tension. "I get still uneasy when I think about what we're proposing. I can't help wondering if it's somehow subverting the Constitution, undermining the republic, as it were. That feels uncomfortably close to something like, well, treason."

A disembodied voice answered. "That happens to be the least of our worries. Our primary loyalty remains to the owners and stockholders -- to profit, in other words. This is an eternal truth."

The man at the head of the table stood. "We're in agreement, then. The proposal is tentatively adopted. This meeting is adjourned."

Valentino clasped his hands together and cracked his knuckles. Kerwin wished he wouldn't do that. It was so damned uncouth. But Valentino was the power broker, the fixer, the script doctor. He was the guy who got things done.

Johnny Valentino was the head of OOMPA, the Organization of Motion Picture Associates. He had been Lyndon Baynes's chief of staff for a while in the 1960's, prior to that unfortunate Chief Executive's downfall over the Vietnam war. A protegee of the legendary arch-sleazemeister and behind-the-scenes manipulator Cliff Clarkson, Valentino was unsurpassed in situations requiring "special handling."

Johnny Valentino should have been an old and decrepit wreck by now. Instead, his face was unlined and his hair didn't have a single strand of gray. It was rumored that he stayed young by drinking the blood of virgins. That seemed rather unlikely. There weren't that many virgins in all of Hollywood. (Ah, Hollywood. Everyone in this fucking town is totally corrupt. And I love it.)

Harry Kerwin, head of RIPOFF, the Recording Industry Production Office depised some of the people he had to work with. But there was really no alternative. Technology threatened the entire entertainment cartel. Teenagers downloading pirated songs from the Internet, people copying movie DVDs, and worst of all, independent bands writing their own songs and creating their own distribution channels. Where would it all end?

"So, Harry, whaddya think?"

"About the Plan?"

"Don't even say it out loud. Even in this place, the walls, you know, have ears. Yes, we got one of the muscle guys on it. It'll get taken care of, don't you worry."

Marvin Hootihound looked himself up and down in the full-length mirror. He flexed his biceps and leered at his beautiful reflection. "I da biggest an' baddest."

And he was. Thus far he had done thirty takedowns in the line of duty. And if he enjoyed his work, what of it?

Now this new job, that was something else again. It wasn't quite a hit, just some friendly persuasion, but even that left him a lot of slack. There were these music pirates, y'know, and they had to be made to see reason. "Just have a little talk with them, Hoot, yeah, yeah, talk."

Hootihound liked persuading people. Sometimes he had to lean on them a little, but hey, that was all part of the game. Take, for instance, that rock band that didn't want to sign up for a contract renewal with their label. Well, Johnnie V had arranged a little talk with them, and later on the band signed, oh, yes, they sure did. So what if the guitarman came out of it with smashed kneecaps and the lead singer had cigarette burns on his face? At least those guys could still walk and suck air, huh?

Hootie had been leaning on people for as long as he could remember. Growing up, he had been a schoolyard bully and he used to get extra special jollies by setting stray cats on fire. His parents died of "mysterious causes" when he was 15, and he left town with the contents of their bank account and safe deposit box, and that happened right around the time several neighboring houses burned down. Hootie'd had a grudge against those particular neighbors.

These music pirates, now, he was supposed to make an example of them. There was this one teenage teenage girl who had been downloading music bigtime. RIPOFF had filed a lawsuit against her, but her family had money and connections, and they'd hired a bigshot lawyer who was making things difficult. Well, nobody could be allowed to get away with that shit. Might encourage other pirates to pirate music and do other nasty things. So Hootie was gonna pay her a midnight visit through her bedroom window and have a little fun with her. Maybe even do some plastic surgery on her face afterwards, who knows.

Running a movie studio isn't nearly as much fun as it's made out to be. Michael "Mickey" Mauser, head of Dizzy Walters Productions was in a pissy mood. The bill making it illegal to own a computer or any other electronic device without Digital Rights Control built in had failed to pass Congress. That meant anybody could play DVD movies on their own computers, and worse yet, copy them. And it was all the fault of that one fucking idiot. Hitch Hitchens, Senator from Nebraska, the guy who couldn't even wipe his own ass without supervision. He'd shot off his mouth to the press prematurely, and before there was a chance to put the proper spin on it and do damage control, the horse was out of the barn. Higgins was even dumber than that numb nuts Harley Schnickelfritz of Alabama, and that was saying something. No wonder they called him "Booby" Hitch.

Well, at least Suzy Kramnitz had pushed through the Bobo Act a few years back. Named in memory of the late Bobo Bozeman, singer turned politician, the Act had extended the copyrights on books, songs, and, most important, cartoon characters, for an additional thousand years. That protected the studio's income stream from Ricky the Rat, that lovable and oh, so lucrative critter, for another 40 generations or so. Yeah, these politicos should only keep remembering who put money into their pockets, who kept getting them reelected, who owned them.

Yeah, for example, Senator Susan Kramnitz. "Suzy Creamcheese" they called her, because she'd spread her legs for anyone who contributed a big enough wad to her reelection fund. But, she was as honest a politician as you could find in the entire Congress. Once she was bought, she stayed bought.

"Gonna lay some track at that meeting today," Mauser was thinking. Saul Wingold and Alec Brassner headed up competing studios, but they weren't really competitors. It was all a tight little club, even if most of the outfits were foreign owned. He chuckled, thinking of how execs sitting in their offices in Paris, Frankfurt, and Tokyo made decisions that ended up making criminals out of American teenagers.

But, yeah, those fucking pirates. Copying DVD's and even filming new releases in the theaters on digital minicams. Hanging was too good for those scumbags! Now, to get the other guys on board for "special measures."