Explore "The Trouble With Truth" by Julian F. Grow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It "was" a phony of course. Despite Vern's failure to signal for a double-check, the WPA had delayed publication and run the circuits. Similar but not identical stories had gone into Scoops in 14 major cities, all at the same time today; each involved a near death or disaster, with a reference to a recognizable gift that couldn't be edited out. In each case the Source was a retailer visiting that city -- and yet the stores and 14 retailers matched up perfectly.
In our particular "accident," the woman turned out to be a clandestine actress -- they had all virtually disappeared after the Edict, needless to say -- hired for her ability to fall and fake injury convincingly. She hadn't cut herself on the glass, only burst a hidden capsule of her own blood drawn off weeks before. The actual gash in her throat was made with a shard of glass by the "unidentified passerby" -- really the Flack himself -- when he saw the store doctor coming. The artificially-stimulated birth of twins that had delayed the doctor, had also been part of the Plant.