Lone Star World

Yeeeeee-ha! Grab a steak, a gun and head downtown for a couple of shootouts. Got a legal problem? Forget the People's Court! Settle it the real way: kill them.

Parallel History

The Lone Star State. Bring thoughts of Texas to you? It should. But not here — it might be more appropriate to call it the Lone Star Country. Why? Because Texas is its own nation, and it’s taken a couple states with it.

During the Civil War, when the North was embroiled in bitter fighting with the Southern States, Texas, which was barely a state and was still hotly contested territory with the Mexicans, solidified its hold as a sovereign nation and began gobbling up land north and west of its borders. Without the troops to stop them, the United States and the Republic of Mexico let this formidable country expand in size and power to the state it is today.

In this San Francisco, legal battles have taken on a whole new level, as lawyers settle their difference with the Code of the West — basically, a gunfight. The fastest on the draw is the winner. If a man shoots another man, a preemptive move, they must go before a district judge while the Bar Association gets a hand in the matters. Lawyers are called ‘negotiators.’

The largest employer in the company, Drexal-Bullock, has 1,300 gunfighters on his staff with offices in Houston, Austin, Los Angeles and is headquartered in San Francisco. Industrialist Bullock put more people back to work during an unspoken depression than any other in his region — including Silicon Valley.

Bullock’s risk arbitrage division is dubbed the ‘Outriders’ because they always are on the lookout for the best companies to take over. The S.E.C. (Securities Exchange Commission) holds power and jurisdiction over the lawyers. Unfortunately for Mr. Bullock, he was arrested in 1996 for massive tax fraud and for the murder of Cliff Sutton. He is now serving a commuted life sentence in Alcatraz.

The Zimmerman Telegraph

Never existed, varmint.