Year six of the occupation began inauspiciously with a suicide bombing on Wall Street which killed 56 people. The initial exuberance occasioned by the relative ease of the Alien's invasion of the United States had through five years of violence, chaos, and destruction turned high hopes into near universal despair (those Aliens responsible for the invasion still expressed optimistic assessments whenever engaging in on-site inspections of their handiwork).
Nothing seemed to be working out as planned, or, perhaps more accurately, hoped for. The Aliens expectation that control of American industry would enable them to continue to dominate the global market in manufactured goods foundered on their inability to resurrect industrial production after the destruction caused by wartime bombing and the ongoing acts of sabotage by the resistance. Not only industrial installations but the entire infrastructure of the country had collapsed. Power blackouts, formerly associated with occasional corporate malfeasance, like the Enron scandal, and restricted to certain locales, like California, were now recurring and nationwide. The Glen Canyon dam showed signs of imminent collapse for want of needed maintenance and the once fabled interstate highway system remained cratered from the war and nearly deserted for reasons both economic- and security-related.
In the early days the Aliens had hoped to set up a government of cooperative exiles - some of whom had lived outside the country so long their English was barely passable - who would restore order and get the economy going again. But this Plan A had foundered on the resistance of the Americans to both the Aliens and their puppet government. Moreover, Alien lawmakers proved unwilling to foot the bill for fixing the damage that their own bombing and a decade of sanctions had inflicted on the American economy. The occupation was, after all, supposed to "pay for itself", in the words of one of the architects of the attack on America, Deputy Secretary for Empire Paul Wolfowitz Jr.
With casualties amongst the occupying forces mounting, the Aliens opted for Plan B, a classic strategy of divide-and-conquer, which had never been far from the invader's mind in any case. Efforts would be made - in total opposition to the aspirations of the American people - to partition the country into a black-dominated Afriameristan in the south, a Catholic-dominated Hispaniolistan in the west, and a Protestant-dominated Angloameristan in the north and east. It was hoped to turn the Americans against each other so as to turn them away from attacking the occupiers. As such a division ran counter to the whole modern history of the United States, effecting such a partition proved no easy matter. But, through political maneuvering and Alien-aided fratricide, some progress in that direction had been made.
First, the Aliens arranged - through bribery, intimidation, and "neutralization" of the opposition - for Jerry Falwell Jr. to be appointed President, with Father Charles Coughlin III as his Vice-president, and for Louis Farrakhan Jr. to be named head of the FBI. The antagonism between these three, who shared only their mutual willingness to collaborate with the occupation, assured the sort of suspicion and distrust amongst Anglos, Blacks, and Hispanics that would facilitate the Aliens' plan. Congress, chosen through a sham election which nonetheless returned a number of non-collaborating nationalists to the House and Senate, was hopelessly rendered ineffective by sectarian and personal divisions, not to mention its inability even to raise a quorum because so many members had fled the country.
The legislators' flight reflected the deterioration in the security situation in the country since the bombing of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, one of the early ploys in the Aliens' stratagem to promote partition through fomenting sectarian violence. Despite the pleas of patriotic religious leaders to maintain national unity and refrain from acts of revenge, sectarian strife, or what passed for it, spread widely, fed by the semi-secret training and arming of fundamentalist Christian, White Supremacist, and Black Nationalist elements, both within and outside the FBI. Senseless bloodshed on every side turned Albuquerque exclusively Catholic and Minneapolis exclusively Protestant. Blacks streamed south while Whites moved north. Jews tried to maintain a neutral ground, but even they lost their Chief Rabbi in
a kidnap/murder carried out by unknown elements. Sectarianism even pervaded intercollegiate sports, Catholic schools no longer playing their Protestant or non-denominational rivals for fear of fan violence, which led to such lopsided contests as Notre Dame’s 78-0 trouncing of Georgetown in the All-Catholic Messiah Bowl.
In hopes of breaking the back of the resistance the Aliens had the puppet government conclude the long, drawn-out show trial of George Lincoln, the American leader who had so antagonized the Aliens by proving intractable to their demands. Contrary to the Aliens' hopes, Lincoln's conduct during the trial, and even more his defiant courage in the face of death when hung in the basement of the Supreme Court building (captured on a witness’s eye-cam), had only bolstered his image amongst his fellow countrymen. Even those who had opposed his iron-fisted suppression of the Alien-inspired insurrection of Black Nationalists in the south in the years preceding the invasion and his having the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution rescinded so that he could run for President a third time respected him for his defiant opposition to Alien domination. Secretly, patriots had already drawn up plans to replace the statue of Lincoln torn down by the invaders with an even larger one, once the occupiers were driven from the land.
The land between Pennsylvania Avenue and the Potomac River had been expropriated by the Aliens and turned into a walled citadel which housed the offices and residences of the occupation forces and collaborators amongst the Americans. The area, dubbed the "Green Zone" by the Americans after the color of the money which the Aliens used to bribe both the locals and their coalition allies, was a favorite target of insurgent gunners on Alien holidays or when VIPs were in town. It was especially noisy on the Alien’s Independence Day, celebrated back home with fake rockets’ red glare but here with real mortar rounds lobbed into the Zone by the Americans.
The situation in the west was complicated by attacks on Mexico by the Revolutionary People's Army, known by the Spanish-language acronym "ERP". The ERP’s armed struggle against the Mexican oligarchy, which predated the Alien invasion of America, had been emboldened by the new power granted their fellow Hispanics in ruling the American Southwest. Mexico responded by bombing ERP strongholds in New Mexico and occasionally crossed the border into the United States for more direct confrontation with the rebels. Mexico justified its cross-border invasions on grounds of self-defense, a hard argument for the Aliens to counter since they had justified their own invasion of America on the same grounds, with considerably less justification.
By year six of the occupation, over 10 million Americans had been killed in the violence and 30 million had fled into exile, most to Mexico and Canada. Hardly a university, a hospital, or a city hall remained intact or functioning. Daily bombing of towns and villages in the hinterland, resulting in many civilian casualties, were known to most though seldom reported in what passed for a news media. The Mississippi flowed brown and red with sewage and blood, polluting the drinking water of the lucky few who still had access to a public water supply. Cemeteries had long since been filled to capacity and public parks were now being converted to final resting places for the dead. Bombed-out neighborhoods surrounded by wretched tent cities - home to millions of displaced Americans - characterized America's major cities from Los Angeles to Boston. As year six progressed down its tortured path toward irresolution the only prospect most could see for the future was… year seven of the occupation.
