News From Poughkeepsie – Sunday Editon #3

This week’s theme, “The New Adventures of…” was alot of fun for me, being a history nerd. Anytime you can make our only peglegged founding father talk like teenybopper is good time, as far as I’m concerned.

Jason (Anthraxus) provided the sole prompt in this week’s comments, so he gets the post by default. Luckily, it’s delightfully sideways look into John Slidell‘s work in annexing parts of Mexico:

Slidell smoothed the new map out on the expansive desk. Numerous small towns and missionaries were marked on it, as well as three large red X’s. The new Texas/Mexican border was clearly marked on the fresh bit of cartography.

He looked up at the other two men in the room and smiled tightly.

“As you can see, gentlemen”, he began, “Our spies in Mexico have been very active in gathering information for us. Besides information on the arrangement of the supply lines of the Mexican army, that I’m sure will interest General Taylor”, he nodded to the man in the military uniform,” They have also narrowed down the likely placement of the Martian relic to these three locations.”

President Polk leaned over the map and stroked his chin in thought. “Good work John. Taylor, why don’t you take some troops down to this spot for a look around.” he said, pointing to the one X closest to the new Texas border. “The rest of the territory there is far to vast to hope for a covert search of the area.” He stepped back from the table and began to pace the office.

Slidell smiled and said, “I’ve had an idea Mr. President.” Polk stopped in his restless pacing and looked to the diplomat. “War isn’t necessarily something that we want to launch into with Mexico, but perhaps we can avoid it by just offering to purchase the territory outright from them? We can suggest to Congress that we need access to the San Francisco Bay for trade to get them to approve the money.”

Polk smiled crookedly and nodded, “Not a bad idea John. not bad at all. Let’s go ahead and see what we can do there. And maybe on the trip out there you can arrange a stop by this Salt Lake location and look around.”

John Slidell straightened and said, “It would be an honor, sir.”

But that’s not all! Scott Roche was so inspired by this week’s theme that he did not one but 2 continuations of the prompts posted. His continuation of Monday’s New Adventures of Hitler is definitely worth reading, but his further examination of Mark Twain and Nikola Telsa’s friendship is too good not to post:

Sam Clemens took a pull on his cigar, the coal lighting the otherwise dim library. ”The devil you say. Is it that simple?”

Tesla nodded his head. ”Yes my friend, yes. That’s the beauty of it. And think, unlimited energy from such a simple, clean source.” The excitement brought his native accent to the fore, as it always did.

No one would believe them. They rarely did when genius brought them discovery like this. Not, that was, that this sort of genius or discovery was in any way common. He stirred the grainy contents of the mustard jar and marveled.

If anyone else wants to build on News From Poughkeepsie prompts–either from the current week, or any previous–leave a link or an excerpt in the comments, and I’ll put those up in the Sunday Edition as well. With a readership as talented as ISBW’s, there should be no shortage of gems!