Chapter 1: "Chuchen!"

>After the concert, we all pile into our vehicles, and follow the tour 
>busses to venue after venue, clogging highways and byways with our 
>sheer numbers, causing roads to be closed just for our passage into 
>each city we visit.

eadlines appear coast to coast --

Time: "Monkeeporn -- The Untold Story of the New Hippies"

Pulse Magazine: "Peace, Love, and Underacheiving: Are The Monkees The New Weezer?""

Forbes: "The Top 50 Mutual Funds of the Monkheads"

Weekly World News: "Boy Trapped In Refrigerator Eats Own Foot" (oops, wrong movie)

Dr. Dobbs' Journal: "Our New Win95 Utility: Higgs137.EXE"

At a memorable September gathering outside of the St. Louis Arch, amid the sickly-sweet haze of kombucha smoke, a rumor arises. Quietly at first and then spreading wider, like the ripples in a pond as an autumn leaf touches the water:

"New Mexico..."
"We must go to New Mexico..."
"New Mexico ...Lordsburg ...Gallup..."

"Chuchen!"

Without each knowing quite why, but with the mass intent of travellers on a spiritual Chautauqua, the new nation points down Interstate 44...