"Goddamn younguns and their moving pictures," Lloyd snarled.

"What can I say?" Douglas shrugged, "they're fun to watch." Lloyd found those things obnoxious, the black and white cat chasing some dirty varmint. He hated those things enough when he found them in the fields, now he had to see them whenever he watched the damn news. "You need to loosen up," Douglas took his seat and adjusted his red tie.

"Friggin kids..." Lloyd took a seat next to him. As much as he hated rats as the next man, at least he got to suffer with Doug. An old cowpoke who had seen the whole east, doing cattle drives in the badlands of Buffalo to getting into barfights with rustlers down in the proving grounds of Costa Verde, he had seen it all and had the scars to prove it. Yet he was always friends with Doug, the pharmacist who stayed home with his folks while he grabbed his hat and went out.

Doug wrinkled his nose and tried to swat out the smell, "goddamn- he's here too?"

Lloyd narrowed his eyes as Red John, the local drunken thief, stumbled in. "The friggen savage don't got any stock with this." The dominions had long played second fiddle to the trouble enveloping the west but civilized men still felt a connection to the fatherland, especially when many had their boys ushered off from their homes to fight. He grit his teeth as John emptied an entire bottle of whiskey right in front of them. "I oughta just-"

Doug shushed him as the newsreel came on. 'The Empire continues strong!' The black and white letters came on, showing the colonial auxiliaries. Stetson wearing marines- white men but wild eyed and fierce, landing at some godforsaken land. Then it showed black men marching in a countryside, going one by one into a trench. 'Here come the coolies,' Lloyd mentally chuckled, 'look at those ridiculous things.' He had more respect for them than he did the savages, but he still got a chuckle at those things. 'They look like toilet paper.'

Then he saw on the screen: 'THE KING IS DEAD.'