Pages 113 - 139, The Good of the People, the Good of the Town

.
What happened? Big Jim Rennie fully consolidates his power, and gives bullyboy Randolph permission to hire up a bunch of other bullyboys and "provisional police."  This does not bode well. Meanwhile, editor Julia Shumway gets a call from the Oustide World -- from Colonel Jim Cox, the mysterious high-ranking official Dale Barbara was trying to get word to.  Captain Dale Barbara, as it happens.  She's supposed to hook them up, phone-wise.  And she agrees, smart cookie that she is.  We don't see Barbie in this section, but we do see migraine mass murderer Junior Rennie ... just long enough for him to have a sweet, unifying moment with his Dad when Pop makes him a friggin' cop.  Oh, happy day.

So here we are: somebody finally calls it "The Dome."  And we're off to the races.

You can see the Good Guy / Bad Guy factions shaping up, Stand-like already.  Barbie, Rose, Julia (more to come) on the Good Side, Big Jim, Chief Randolph and obviously Junior on the Bad Side.  But interestingly, outside of the Dome's appearance itself, not a single supernatural element to be seen.  This could easily be some kind of technology gone mad, not somebody casting Dome Spells in their underground Wiccan lair.

One other thing that's differentiating this book from most other Kings: it's placed very much in the real world c. 2009.  The "Event" is on CNN, at least at first.  The President -- implied to be Obama -- is making a national address about it.  The Army is lining up outside, pushing the media back.  None  of the other 'real world' books placed in Castle Rock or Derry ever 'broke out' of their small-town horror onto the wider stage.  It will be interesting to see how far King takes that, or whether his government-paranoia (i.e., the government lab in The Stand that built Captain Trips, or the ubiquitous, evil Shop that shows up in Firestarter and so many other places) just has the guvmint clamp down on the whole secret and makes the world go away.  The Feds alrealy clearly control outside access to cell phone and the internet.  Who knows what'll come next?