A fourteen year old bed wetter runs home from school every day to retrieve the wet sheet his mother has hung from his bedroom window to punish him. He races to get there before any of his friends pass the house. This enforced training prepares him to become a competitive runner.

When a planeload of Pakistani orphans are shipped to his state for permanent relocation, the governor of Idaho defies the president and closes the state's border. News Net Television, a cable news program that makes hay by reporting on political scandals, quickly spins the racist act into an overnight media sensation, creating a divide in national opinion over the issue.

When starving mobs begin rioting in the streets of Moscow, Soviet leaders believe they have no recourse but to seize the Alaskan pipeline to force the United States to end the grain embargo that has brought turmoil to the U.S.S.R.