A while back I wrote about the Dept. Head Rawlings series of hi-tech super-spy thriller "op-eds" on The Onion.

I suspect the anonymous author of the series may have read that blog post, as when I wasn't looking, Rawlings returned to the Onion, with a new problem, and a new member on his team at the Department for Special Acquisitions and Liquidations...

Which is why Mr. Bisson is here. Some of you know Mr. Bisson, and I'm sorry you have to see him again. His specialty has become less common since the heady 1970s, but his services are still quite useful to us.

[...]

Bisson, you have your assignment. I have faith in your, shall I say, unorthodox skills and experience.

While some readers may see this as explaining my tendency to suddenly vanish on unexplained foreign trips, I'm afraid I'm going to be sticking to my cover story still just a technology journalist and not, as Rawlings says, "the world's most seductive catamite assassin".

At least the problem with the Thanatos device seems to have been solved.

The recent redesign of The Onion has opened up a lot of its archives (which used to be locked behind a paywall), including one of my favourite "columns", the briefings of Department Head Rawlings.

Gentlemen, Mei-Ling, we are in crisis as of seven minutes ago, when space station UCCCPZ-5476-43-B failed to crest the horizon over Gdazny. Even if our adversary's NKVD-trained orbital-warfare officers have been uncharacteristically slow on the uptake, we must assume that the Uzbekistanis have, by now, discovered the disappearance of their Rasputin orbital kinetic-energy-weapon platform.

The five short columns build up into a rather enjoyable hi-tech SF super-spy thriller involving malevolent half-brothers, strange chthonic devices, and a stolen orbital weapons platform. Fun stuff that leaves you wondering just what the rest of the story was - or could have been, as the last Rawlings column was posted nearly two years ago.

I wonder if the the Department for Special Acquisitions and Liquidations has gone on to bigger and better things, as certainly the anonymous author had to be familiar with SF technobabble, and the conventions of the conspiracy theory (and of course the wide screen spy novel). Perhaps someday we'll see a carefully renamed Rawlings walk onto the pages of a book...

After all, what did happen in Barcelona? And what is Mei Ling's role in this?