In this alternate history, the corrupt United States president Ferris F. Fremont (FFF for 666, 'F' being the 6th letter in the alphabet) becomes Chief Executive in the late 1960s following Lyndon Johnson's administration.

The character is best described as an amalgam of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon, who abrogates civil liberties and human rights through positing a conspiracy theory centered on a (presumably) fictitious subversive organization known as "Aramchek".

The President's paranoia and opportunism lead to the establishment of a real resistance movement that is organized through narrow-beam radio transmissions from a mysterious alien near-Earth satellite by a superintelligent, extraterrestrial, but less than omnipotent being (or network) named VALIS.

Fremont eventually captures and imprisons Dick and Brady after the latter attempts to produce and distribute a record that contains subliminal messages of revolt against the current dictatorship.

Brady and Silvia are executed, and Dick narrates the concluding passage about his life in a concentration camp, while his supposedly latest work is actually penned by a ghost writer and regime-approved hack.

"[3] When he rewrote Radio Free Albemuth as VALIS, Dick incorporated the plotline of Radio Free Albemuth as a backdrop film (also titled VALIS) that recapitulated the central theological and existential concerns of his novel as a mise en abyme - that is, a miniature copy of his central preoccupations at this stage of his literary career, common to both works.