from The Eighties: A Brief Primer
by Michael Reid Busk

The USSR spanned eleven time zones, which was a great source of pride for its citizens and premiers alike. Sometimes a member of the Politburo, watching the red sun fall past the onion domes of red square, would dial a Kamchatka number at random and ask whatever bleary-eyed oilman or bureaucrat answered whether the sun was indeed rising over the Bering sea. When, after a few moments, the sleepy easterner said, “Yes, yes,” the Politburo member back in Moscow would smile, spinning the antique globe by his desk, and say, “Good. Very good.” Russians only spoke Russian when Americans were present, to intimidate them—to each other they spoke English in growling monotone.

Naturally Americans were concerned, their states stretched thin over only six time zones. A sense of superiority was a longstanding national attribute, and a nearly two-to-one Soviet-American advantage was unacceptable. Everyone demanded the “time zone gap” be closed. To remedy the problem, Americans tried numerous tactics. Highly trained operatives parachuted into Siberia with outstanding vodka and thick gold coins in an effort to incite rebellion. Locals agreed on the condition that the Americans best them in chess, and although the Russians guzzled all the vodka before the first castling, the Americans, ignorant of the Sicilian Defence, captured nary a pawn (see Olympics Eighties). Another idea was to subdivide America’s time zones into twelve, but for the week it was implemented, chaos reigned as citizens set fire to clock towers and pounded their watches with the soles of their shoes, culminating in the Half Past Denver riots of 1985.

Michael Reid Busk is a PhD student in the university of southern California’s Literature and Creative Writing Program. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in both fiction and poetry, and his stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Fiction International, Florida Review, and other journals.