Balls!

Stated First printing-Unclipped and unmarked-" It's 1985. As the worst winter storm in American history moves in on Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York State, gas monopoly TransState cuts off 350,000 customers. Twenty thousand people die in Buffalo, a supernatural place of rapidly freezing water and car consuming snowdrifts. Everyone else is spared, save newly installed American president Hugh Baker who makes the mistake of visiting the city. Those who aren't?t dead agree that the government?s lax industry regulations are to blame. President John Hansen, Baker's successor, inherits a country at its weakest point since the Revolution.? He comes up with a very clever plan that involves stealing Canadian technology to transport natural gas by tanker. The gas is Canadian, too, which leads to an ultimatum just like the one in Ultimatum: Give us your natural gas? or else!"-Reading Rohmer.