Phase FOUR: "Vauxhall and I"
Dwight: The problem with Jim's country?
Pause.
Dwight: Let me put it to you this way: every time you try to break away from the government that raised you, you always end up a tyrant. Look at Gandhi.
He gives the old knowing smile and nod.
Dwight: Jim might start out as a hero to his people, but... absolute power has a way of corrupting the weak...
Dwight treats us all to one of his smuggest and most frog-like smirks.
Dwight: ...And that sounds like Jim to me.
----
Pam was staring into the hallway like a kitten waiting for a mouse. She knew Dwight was going to pop into focus again, it was just a matter of waiting for the moment to come.
Jim approached her desk cautiously. "Is he still out there?"
"I think he went out to his stairway and right now he's hiding in the elevator, but..." Her voice was curiously tentchy and he knew she must have been putting a lot of effort into securing the border. Jim couldn't help but feel a little guilty for what he was about to tell her.
"Let him back in," he said simply.
Pam's eyes and mouth expanded in what could only be described as surprised betrayal, keeping Dwight out of the office had taken up most of her afternoon. "I thought that..."
The hurt little girl tone in her voice ripped the heart and lungs out of Jim's torso and thrust them sharply into a vise. He interrupted her rather than have to listen to another word of it. "It's just..." he paused, trying to find the write turn of the phrase, "...I feel like we should be making some goodwill trips to our neighbors..."
Pam could feel the smile being spread into existence across her visage. "International diplomacy."
Jim caught her smile in flight and served her back one of his own. "Precisely."
"We should start with a sightseeing tour of the State of Pennsylvania," she said playfully.
"I think that's an excellent idea, Pam," he replied in his loftiest available tone, "except Pennsylvania isn't a state, it's a Commonwealth."
She knew Jim was correct in this correction, but this brought back one of the key failures of the various Civics classes over the years. "What's the difference?"
This seemed like the sort of question Jim ought to furrow his brow for, so he did so. After a few moments of serious brow-furrowing, he was forced to admit "I don't know... but I know our grandfathers fought for it."
Pam shook her head. "I hate you."
Jim shrugged, having taken this as a given long ago.
----
Pam: "What is my position in Jim's government?"
Pause.
Pam: Well... I'm a judge and I'm kind of like the Vice President...
She thinks about it a little more.
Pam: I guess I'm sort of First Lady, too... not that I'm married to Jim, because...
There is a here a pause of a different type.
Pam: Um...
----
"Now, this is so everyone knows you're a visiting dignitary," Pam explained as affixed the thin strand of banner paper across Jim's torso.
Jim glanced down and read the words that she had quickly, yet artfully across the sash. "'El Presidente,'" he quoted. "Do I get one of those paper Burger King crowns, too?"
"No," Pam corrected sternly, "because you aren't the king, you're the president."
"Right," Jim nodded. He wasn't sure when he became anything; when he started this experiment he hadn't factored his own role into the equation at all. Still, if Pam said he was the President, he was the President.
She looked up from fastening the last paperclip and eyed him seriously. "You're not going mad with power are you, Halpert?"
"No."
"Because I would hate to have to launch a coup against you," she cautioned him.
"I would hate that, too," Jim conceded.
Jim tried to call his citizens to attention. "My fellow residents of Dundermifflokia," he began, trying his best to sound approachable, yet imperious. Most them didn't look up from the work, desktop games, or (in Kelly's case) instant message session. "I have an announcement to make as your Prime Minister."
"Presidente," Pam corrected.
"Right, sorry." Pam seemed to be correcting Jim with increasing frequency lately. He wondered if he could someway segue this newfound talent into a job revising the history of their proud nation. "Pam and I are going out for a quick diplomatic..." he dug through his mind for the appropriate word, but came up blank "...attaché?" Pam shook her head and looked him with frank bafflement. "Anyway, we're going out to get some cokes and bagels for everyone. In the meantime..." he searched the room briefly before deciding at random "...Oscar, you're President pro tempore."
"Oh, okay." Oscar was easy-going enough that he wasn't about to argue, especially when he noticed the ice-cold hate Angela was employing as she stared at him.
Safe in the knowledge that his kingdom was in good hands until his return, Jim picked up a thick stack of papers and wrapped his coat around his hand. "Are you ready to go?"
Pam smiled. "How could I possibly refuse an personal invitation from the President?"
"Well, obviously you couldn't," he replied. It was good to be the King, if only for a day.
No sooner were they in the hallway then they came across Dwight. As was to be expected, he was trying to remain unseen, sucking in his stomach more than could possibly be pleasant and straddling the door-jam to Vance Refrigeration.
"Hey, Dwight," Pam said casually.
"You can head on back if you want," Jim added in the same tone.
At first Dwight didn't acknowledge either one of them, but as he passed by Jim, Dwight was heard to snarl "who watches the Watchmen?"
Jim could only respond with standard jim-shrug and a quickening of pace. Any time Jim had qualms about what he was about to do to Dwight, Dwight himself was always there to encourage him to stay the course.
----
Dwight: Jim's an idiot. Not only did he let me back into his country, he left me alone in his country.
Dwight smiles insanely.
Dwight: And it is never a good idea to be in the same country as Dwight Schrute.
----
"So," Pam asked as she buckled herself into the passenger seat of Jim's legendary Toyota, "what's this trip really about?"
"This trip is about our national bird," Jim replied, perhaps a little more wistful than she would have expected.
Pam had been raised to accept what she couldn't change, and since it didn't seem like a better explanation was forthcoming, she left it at that. After all, there were worse ways to spend an afternoon. "And you let Dwight back in the office because..."
Jim shrugged, and focused his attention on getting his car to start. It may have been among the top-rated American-made Japanese automobiles, but the car had been with him for a while and it had developed a few chronic ailments in that time.
"You know he's just going to try to ruin everything." Which was not to say that Pam had any faith in Dwight's ability to successfully destroy what she and Jim had built over the past few hours, but she liked to play the game.
Again, Jim shrugged. "As long as he doesn't go home." He wondered if a car could actually have colitis.
Then the engine finally gave a sputtering cough and roared back to life and Jim felt a little less distracted and a little more focused on the next phase. "Here," he said, handing Pam a pile of papers.
Pam eyed her new acquisition with wary disgust. "What's this?"
"This," Jim simultaneously smiling wickedly and pulling out of his parking space, "is what Dwight has been working on the past few days."
Pam read the work slowly, as though it might explode at any second. At first she was afraid reading in the car might make her carsick, but she soon realized that there was another, much more pressing nausea to worry about. "'Starbuck kissed Starbuck roughly and passionately, kneading her breats roughly while he messaged his massive...'" What little color she had instantly drained out of her cheeks. "Jim, what is this?"
"Well, I'm not an expert," he spoke with a markedly philosophical tone, "but I think it's a crossover fan fiction between Battlestar Galatica and Battlestar Galactica."
"It's pornographic," Pam gasped, less offended by the sexual content than its source.
"That it is, Pam," Jim agreed brightly. "That it is."
----
Pam: He misspelled the word "breasts."
She nods.
Pam: More than once.
----
On some level Dwight had to admit he was grateful for what Jim had done. It had been among his lifelong dreams topple a totalitarian fascist state and he hadn't expected to have the opportunity for another few years.
At least until the next presidential election, he thought.
"Creed," Dwight was speaking only through one side of his face in the hopes that it would throw off any secret listeners, "can I speak to you?"
Creed was a nature choice for the convert to his secret army. As a member of the older generation, Creed was probably the most suspicious of anything resembling radicalism or free thought. Dwight was also fairly certain that Creed had served in the armed forces, mostly likely during World War II (or possibly World War I, he wasn't sure) and his force needed someone other than himself who had been trained to kill. The only other possibility in the regard was Stanley, and Dwight wasn't quite sure he could be trusted.
"I'm organizing a team to help bring the old ways back," Dwight said very softly, his face to the wall in case anyone could read lips. "Can I count on your support."
"No can do," Creed replied, "they've given me everything I've ever wanted."
"What could they possibly have given you to make turn against Michael?"
"They made shoes optional," Creed explained, illustrating his point by pulling his feet out from under chair and dangling them in front of Dwight.
Dwight nodded, trying to avert his gaze, but not quite able to find the strength.
----
Creed, pleasantly: Oh, it happened when I was in high school. I was trying to impress a girl...
He scratches his chin as he tries to recall the specifics.
Creed: I don't remember her name, but... that hardly seems important now.
----
They had been in line for five minutes and Pam was still no closer to discovering exactly where all this was going. Then again, given that the last revelation of the day had involved Dwight's fantasy life, maybe she was better of not knowing.
She knew Jim hated these massive chain stores, but he didn't seem to think there was much choice in the matter. No one else would have what they needed in the quantity they needed, he explained.
The fact that that very logic would soon leave them both unemployed was not lost on either one of them.
"Wow," Jim said, examining a random product from the shelf next to him. "Pam, did you know that Old Spice has created a product that can simultaneously act as soap and shampoo?"
"Uh-huh," Pam replied, trying to keep her tone clipped and detached, "and how does that make you feel?"
Jim pretended to think about it for a few minutes before answering. "Frightened," he replied seriously, "yet strangely excited."
She wasn't about to chase that one. "You're up," Pam pointed out, gesturing to the now available cashier.
"Hi," Jim said crisply to the bored clerk, "I just have a few questions before we check out."
The young man behind the register tried to vivisect Jim with his eyes. He hated customers with questions. When were people going to learn to shut up, pay for their merchandise, and leave him alone?
"First off," Jim felt the key here was to speak quickly, but with total conviction, "do you except checks from the National Treasury of the Democratic Republic of Miffland?"
The clerk also hated customers who thought they were funny. "No."
Jim decided to take this defeat in stride, giving his standard shrug and moving on to the next problem. "Okay, next question," Jim hefted up a pink plastic lawn flamingo and handed it to the clerk "how many of these do you have?"
----
Pam, holding up a lawn flamingo: Ladies and gentlemen, the national bird of Halpertia.
Pause.
Pam, awkwardly: I... I don't know what Jim wants to do with them.