In the foggy, dawn haze of the next morning, Pavel peered over the railing atop the roof of the Mist Cove safehouse. Downstairs, Corny, Lieutenant Suarez, and Frederic slumbered. Knowing the regimentation of the Lieutenant’s routine, he knew that he would wake in a short time. But in this single blessed moment, knowing that miles away his daughter was finally receiving the life-saving care that she so desperately needed, Pavel could enjoy this lonesome reprieve with the solar panels as his only company.

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The building ran parallel to the coast, giving him a stunning view of the shoreline. In the past, such a view would have commanded a high premium on the Imperial Capital’s notoriously expensive real estate market. In prior visits, Pavel remembered that the chorus of the crashing waves were joined by the cacophony of shopping pedestrians and local residents, as well as tourists who came here for relief from the heat of the urban core. Whistles from arriving trains alighting passengers at the nearby station would pierce the air, alongside the fluty, gay carnival music from the boardwalk.

Today, the waves sing alone. This place is now just one of the great multitude of such buildings, lying almost entirely vacant as sores on the corpse of a once-great city.

In the days before the War, Pavel had often thought about what he would do in the event of an apocalypse. His realistic answer was usually that he would perish almost immediately – he was a near-sighted history professor, after all. In the context of conversations in the history department lounge, however, this answer was generally seen as being unsatisfactory. Pavel would instead dream of occupying some old mansion owned by some dead baron or titan of industry, protected by its high gates. He and his family would take in the luxury and splendor that could have only been accumulated in the frenzied dash for wealth in those pre-War years. He and Elizabeta would sip from flutes of champagne that cost a month’s wages. Anna and Filip would sleep in sheets with thread counts in the thousands, their heads resting on the plush pillows stuffed with the down of only the finest pure-bred geese. They would make this castle their redoubt, safe from the hordes of radioactive ne’er-do-wells that would inevitably come to upset their created peace.

Unfortunately for the Tzarkowskis, this vision of post-apocalyptic luxury would never come to pass. They mostly made their homes in canvas tents haphazardly arranged in squalid little camps where toilet paper was a rare commodity, much less sheets. Cholera, once the domain of the crude and impoverished slums of the Southern Ward of Hegeliopolis and the vast gray shanties of the urban fringe had become much more democratic and ubiquitous in its reach. A bout with dysentery nearly sent Pavel to an anti-climactic end. When he told Elizabeta that to die of illness was truly the more normal and typical way to die in war, she promptly told him to shut up.

The Tzarkowskis had heard of Nova Espero before but they had assumed it was a sort of mythical place. The feared (but coveted) scavenger convoys were known to be real, and so too were their accompaniment of armed, fatigue-clad guards. When Pavel tried to steal that can of beans, it was an act of desperation that followed so many other acts of desperation. Three months before, he wouldn’t have taken the risk. But seeing his children weep from hunger, and his wife slowly winnowing away did something to the risk assessment part of the history professor’s brain. He didn’t exactly regret what he did – but with a full night’s rest and full stomach, he could now properly realize how profoundly stupid it was to reach for that can.

“Coffee?” Suarez grunted as he approached Pavel.

“Thank you,” Pavel replied, startled. He never quite understood how such a lanky man could be so silent.

“I’ve always liked the view up here,” the lieutenant said. He said it with a finality in his voice. Like that was the start and end of the conversation. Or perhaps that’s just how Pavel perceived it. The lieutenant was typically not one for small talk.

Nevertheless, Pavel replied. “It’s beautiful. The waves look so peaceful, and the water so clear and pristine. It almost makes you think for a minute that things are normal.”

The Lieutenant remained silent.

He and Suarez watched the waves for some time, waiting for the others to wake. As the clock neared seven, the Lieutenant and Pavel started back down the steps. Corny and Frederic were nursing their own mugs of coffee, noticeably straightening when the Lieutenant entered the room.

“Good morning gentlemen,” Suarez said. “Today we will make our final approach to the war ministry building.”

Nearly ten miles outside of Nova Espero stood the massive, colonnaded concrete structure. The object of the mission was to go into that building and retrieve a number of sensitive documents related to supply stockpiles throughout the city.

“It’s doubtful that many of these stockpiles will have survived up to this point,” the Lieutenant conceded. “But even one would have enough resources to last us for months. Ammunition, grenades, rifles –” He paused, taking a beat to look towards Corny.

“And boots.”

“Thank God!” Corny exclaimed, still nursing the blisters on his soles and heels which he had dramatically called “early onset trench foot.”

On the downstairs table, Suarez rolled out a map showing Mist Cove in its entirety. Designed by the local tourism board for use by visitors, highlighted locations included the boardwalk, a number of bakeries and art galleries, and the local jewelers market. Suarez had inked an addition in the northern edge of the map, marking the location of the Imperial War Ministry Records and Communications Centre.

“It’s a large, concrete and steel structure that has very few windows,” he explained. “None of our scouting parties have tried to enter because there was no reason to. There’s a solid chance that it will already be occupied.”

“As with any mission,” he continued, “avoid engagement unless so ordered or is absolutely necessary. Is that understood?”

Pavel and the others quickly nodded in agreement.

“Fantastic – the way over should be mostly cleared out, but keep your eyes peeled for any enemies or survivors.”

The narrow, rectilinear streets of Mist Cove resembled many such highly manufactured places in the old Imperial Capital. Orderly rows of identical cottages and apartment houses clotted each side of the street, many of which were deeply fire scarred or otherwise damaged by the percussion of falling bombs or the simple lack of maintenance for the past three years. No nuclear warheads or thermobaric weapons exploded here, but the distant blasts and firestorms immediately following the War were more than enough to wreak havoc across the district.

Platoon 403 moved through the area, peering into each rubble-filled doorway as they passed. There was very little to scavenge here; these areas had already been picked over once by scouts looking for potential enemies as well as any snatchable “incidentals” they might find on their path. You could tell this place had already been scouted, not scavenged, because of the presence of copper wires and gutters, but the distinct lack of silverware, bottles of alcohol, and wrist watches.

Rounding one corner, the platoon entered a small neighborhood park. Even though the trees had been scorched down to tiny stubs, it was clear that there had been something living here in the recent past. Dead – not carbonized – grass indicated that there had been some sort of biological recovery here. This place was dead as all parks are during the wintertime, not in the strange, otherworldly, and glassy way that areas that were practically melted by the bombs were. Pavel imagined that this place, guarded as it may be by the coal-black husks of atomized trees, would look quite lovely in the springtime. In his softer, more contemplative days, he might see the existence of these places as a fitting monument to the new world – nature and life triumphing amid the chaos and destruction. Now, he felt as though he were looking at a graveyard. Verdant in the springtime and having places to picnic did not detract from the death and sorrows connected to the place.

On the edge of the park was a small shop, its front display case windows smashed in by the blasts, flames, or potentially looters, but the front door was jammed shut. Suarez gave Corny and Pavel the go-ahead, and the two began to strike at the entryway.

“It’s just jammed, not blocked by anything,” Corny grunted as he slammed into the door. Sometimes in desperate moments, people had shoved bookcases or store shelves in front of the doors of their homes and businesses. Rarely ever did such individuals survive the firestorms that followed the bombs and the fleeing crowds.

After a handful of firm strikes, the door finally tumbled open. The roof had very obviously caved in, and the smell of rainsoaked and moldy wood permeated the platoon’s nostrils. There was that strange musk of food long rotted away, a sort of stuffy, suffocating odor. Regardless, even if the perishables had perished, there were plenty of opportunities for plunder. Corny liberated two flasks of good North Hegelion whiskey, and Frederic located some sort of syrup-based rum that he insisted was a treasured whisper from the homeland. Suarez opened a box of cigars, only to toss them to the floor upon discovering their moldy, rotten state.

Pavel, meanwhile, eyed a familiar tin sitting on a collapsing shelf at the store’s edge. Blue with a white diagonal stripe, the aluminum, circular container was the signature trademark of the Uruski Baked Goods and Confections Corporation. Based out of Pavel’s native Zoldhegyek, Uruski products were a common fixture in the cabinet of every grandmother – the gingery pierniki and the crisp churschiki were among Pavel’s favorites.

This particular tin contained sushki, a hard, bagel-like bread ring that was best enjoyed with a cup of tea. As Pavel grabbed the container, his hopes were high – even fresh sushki were as durable as hardtack. He presumed that stale ones would be essentially identical.

The lid popped with a satisfying release of pressure, a slight puff of air spewing forth. Grabbing one of the sushki and taking a bite, he bit down and met a solid, satisfying, almost tooth-shattering crunch.

Home, he thought to himself. Noticing several more tins, he quickly stuffed them into his rucksack.

“Let’s move on,” the Lieutenant said. “We can’t spend all day here.”

Leaving the import store, Platoon 403 headed down another dreary, rubble-strewn side street. The winding paths gradually gave way to a wider street, which then terminated at a taut square. Fronted by the ruins of old cafes and drab office buildings, at the northern edge was a towering structure with a pointed pediment supported by massive columns. On the pediment sat the warped, mangled remains of a metallic crowned condor, the old symbol of the now dead Empire. Below the condor were the words, “W R MINISTRY INF MA ION & C NICATIONS CENT “.

Striding across the square, the platoon suddenly halted at the report of what sounded like a semi-automatic rifle.

“Shit!” Corny exclaimed.

“Get to cover, now!” Suarez ordered.

Diving behind the corner of a collapsing pharmacy, the platoon huddled as Suarez eyed the plaza and strategized, looking to every open window and potential cavity to find the sharpshooter. As he poked his head around the corner, another snap, and a puff of exploded brick and mortar flew in his face.

Quickly brushing it off, Suarez got to work. “Alright, Atwater, you and Boulanger make your way to the bank across the street,” he said, motioning to the rotting stone structure some twenty paces away. “Tzarkowski, you and I will provide covering fire. Understood?”

They all nodded.

Just as they began to rise, a shout erupted from the communications center.

“Name and rank!” said the shout.

Suarez threw out his hand to block Corny and Frederic from moving further. He began to think.

“Name and rank!” the shooters repeated.

After a moment, the Lieutenant raised his hands and emerged from behind the pharmacy.

“Lieutenant Antonio Trujillo, 2nd Imperial Garrison of Hegeliopolis,” he replied.

A slow, menacing silence followed. The Lieutenant remained steady, his arms firmly upright, eyes darting across the building. The air hung heavy.

A rifle barrel slowly peeked from the darkness beyond the columns. As the figure emerged further, the sunlight revealed a gaunt, bewhiskered man covered in threadbare fatigues. From the odor emanating from him, the platoon could tell that he had not bathed in weeks, or perhaps even since before the War. His sinewy arms ended in narrow fingers, wrapped tightly around his weapon. Cautiously approaching the Lieutenant, the man slowly lowered his rifle barrel.

Eyeing Suarez inquisitively, he then slung his rifle back over his shoulder. After doing so, he snapped his heels together at full attention, and brought his closed, bony fist to his chest to perform the Imperial salute.

“Lieutenant Trujillo, my apologies,” the man said.

“No worries, corporal,” Suarez replied, no doubt seeing the rank emblazoned on the man’s stinking jacket.

“I’m just glad to finally have some reinforcements,” the corporal said.

NOVA ESPERO CITY - QUINTO 30, 126 PM

“Now departing Customs House... please stand clear of the closing doors...”

The Hegeliopolis Metropolitan Railway Project was the product of the regime that built it -- or the one that tried to build it at least. Matching his ambitions for the vast state he controlled, Francisco II so desperately wanted to make Hegeliopolis a true imperial capital of a modern empire. His ambassador to the Ylrikian Empire sent back letters from Irikyo, jealously portraying the “underground railroads” of the rival nation’s metropole. “The stations are frescoed and spectacularly clean,” Oswaldo Perez, Duke of Cabo Grande wrote. “The trains themselves slink below the congested thoroughfares of the City, transporting passengers to and fro at incredible speeds and with unrivaled efficiency.”

Sketched out by the state’s best civil engineers, the first line would connect the Imperial Way -- the wide, manicured axis connecting the Imperial Palace and the Imperial Diet, fronted by the gargantuan mausolea of the Empire’s sprawling bureaucracy -- to a series of tony, soon-to-be-built rail suburbs on the northern shore. On Quinto 29, 1757 O.S. (9 BM)1 the Imperial Works Ministry began to dig in the inner core, and sweep away the rude slums that occupied the future sites of the new towns of Coats and Mist Cove.

But on Deka 28, 1766 O.S., after nine years of work, the project remained unfinished. A few cut and cover rail tunnels had been dug, connecting Palace Station and Coats. But the Empire’s spending on its military, on its weapons technology, and on its ever-growing arsenal of nuclear and thermobaric weaponry, and the resource demands of an expanding war economy meant that no rails were laid, no trains ran, and the “Metro” remained a hole gored deep into the earth and nothing more.

“Now arriving at Old City... doors will open on the right...”

Rebuilding mass transportation infrastructure was not a primary concern of the early inhabitants of Nova Espero. Two years after the Milito, the settlement of 6,000 survivors and citizens comprised the near-totality of the population of old Hegeliopolis, once a city of ten million inhabitants.

Even so, the unfinished system provided an effective means by which scavengers could go out to points beyond the new city’s central core.

“Now arriving at Memorial Circle / Milito Museum... doors will open on the right...”

Time passed. More people flocked to Nova Espero as the Federation leapt its borders outward. Newly incorporated citizens came to serve in the elected Common Council, or to work for the nation’s pre-eminent media outlets that found their headquarters there, or to find other employment in the city’s bountiful offices, factories, printers, bakeries, canneries, and foundries.

During the 40s, that imperious President Enrico Carmelo revived old Francisco’s vision of a Metro here. He used the old tunnels and his other Great Capital Projects to tell a story -- the line would pass from the Old City, where Nova Espero had been born, and move eastward along the old tunnels to where the city (and the Empire) was headed. Ever the politician, he converted the Palace Station into one connecting passengers to his new Milito Memorial and accompanying museum. Leaving their train, visitors would follow tiled walls with propagandized frescoes depicting stories of woe and despair during the War and subsequent Collapse, depicting the people of Hegeliopolis (and the broader pre-War Empire) as being one burdened by sorrows amid the howling laughter of foreign, Eastern emperors and warlords. They would then pour into the memorial via vomitoria. Massive rows of identical columbaria would hold the ashes of millions of victims of the War in Hegeliopolis, overwhelming visitors with the magnitude of destruction faced by the city’s inhabitants. Little did visitors know that this was all an elaborate framing exercise, one meant to prime the nation’s inhabitants – and the politically important inhabitants of Nova Espero – for war against the Ylrikians.

Though Carmelo avoided the pitfalls of the Old Empire and managed to lay down rails and even open a trunk of Line 1 between the Customs House and Memorial Circle by 43 PM2, he could not resist the temptation of total power. Enrico Carmelo would attempt to seize power in a disastrous failure of a coup attempt in Kvarto 47 PM, just months before a primary jewel in his crown of “Great Capital Projects” would be completed.

“Nun alvenante al Libero Placo / Federacia Stacio… Transiro al: Linio 2, Forta Fortuna Linio… La pordoj malfermiĝos dekstren.”

In the aftermath of Carmelo’s failed coup, the nation was reconstructed and reconfigured in a way not seen since the immediate aftermath of the War. Carmelo and Carmelists were shunned from “good society,” and a new constitution sought to ensure that someone like Carmelo – someone smarter than Carmelo – could not successfully pull off what el jefe had failed to do.

In this period of upheaval and disillusion, President Erika Lankolay sought to restore confidence in government. She tapped Nova Espero Planning Director Frederika Van Nuys – a political agnostic with a million ideas – to dream big and pursue massive changes. A second line would be dug under the Federal Way between the Milito Memorial and a new home for the Common Council, and would bend to connect the working class neighborhoods of the Southern Ward to the employment nodes of the CBD and a to-be-built industrial district that would separate the soot and smog of factories from the homes of their workers.

She would also expand Line 1, fulfilling the dreams of Francisco II in bringing it to Mist Cove, but instead of being the exclusive domain of wealthy well-to-dos, the line would spur the growth of “station cities” to be inhabited by people of all walks of life. On the high, central plateau – long a no-man’s land due to poor transportation connections – vast housing estates and commercial districts would be connected by a series of idyllic median-running trams. And at the tip of that plateau would be Palisades Park, accessible to the laboring classes of the flatlands below by a series of funiculars.

“Now arriving at Mist Cove… Doors will open on the left… This is the end of the trip. Please depart from the train…”

Van Nuys’ ideas were bold, audacious, unimaginably expensive, and triggered a backlash that would stifle such massive projects for generations. More caustic than their costs were the effects they had on surrounding communities. In places like Arlington, Sutton, Tabico, and Opalton, swathes of shanties and more formal urban neighborhoods that had blossomed in the decades following the War were unceremoniously demolished to make way for the Line 1 viaduct’s massive concrete pillars. The residents of these places revolted, throwing bricks at construction workers, filling the gas tanks of construction equipment with sugar, and firebombing site offices.

The people of these communities that had been so maligned by the urban works projects were among the members of the varied coalition that would unceremoniously remove Lankolay’s People’s Party from power in the 60 PM elections. The Conservatives, who had spent thirteen years in the political desert, were back – and there would be no more Frederika Van Nuys. Even so, the land in the affected cities was already cleared – the Line 1 expansion would go forward as planned.

Despite the population of Nova Espero increasing three-fold since the opening of the Line 1 expansion in 63 PM, very little has changed with the Metro. Frequencies have increased, but the only new lines built have been ones connecting Federal Station (and its arriving tourists with suitcases full of cash) with the hotels and casinos of Fort Fortuna, and another connecting the urban core to the recently-finished suburban Philippe Gaumont International Airport.

As a result, the system’s stations and trains are more packed than ever before. Passengers have complained of sardine-like conditions aboard rush hour trains, and the city’s Transportation Department and Police Bureau have warned of “crowd crunch” conditions at certain stations. And as the Plateau neighborhoods continue to develop and densify, analysts say that, despite their quaintness and the fondness local residents have for them, the Plateau trolleys are well past their useful life in terms of capacity.

“Now arriving at Moncton… Doors will open on the left… This is the end of the trip... Please depart from the train…”

Compared to the trains, parks, and the massive housing towers of Van Nuys Plaza, Frederika Van Nuys’ project at Moncton is often overlooked. Prior to its construction, dockyards and factories clung to the southern shores of the city, clotting the air of the poorer Southern Ward with a thick, brown-black haze of particulate matter. Van Nuys sought to ameliorate the issue by shifting these industrial uses to Moncton, then on the outer fringes of the city. The plan worked – but with the advent of nuclear energy and the proliferation of massive renewable energy projects, the coal-burning stacks that choked the lungs and throats of Southern Ward residents are now long gone. Though the industrial uses are unseemly, technology has largely solved the problem of pollution – were the idea to be proposed today, Moncton Industrial Area might not exist.

Some will point to the auto and claim that to build new trains is to engage in outmoded transportation strategies. When Van Nuys ballooned the Metro, less than 10% of Uniguitan households had access to an automobile – today, nearly 50% do. What cities need now are highways and boulevards, not trains, according to many in the urban planning community. The recently proposed Federal Budget would allocate millions more notes to roadways than in previous years, and the amount of funding for mass transit projects has dipped in recent years despite increasing costs and growing maintenance backlogs.

When zoning for industrial uses was explored for the Southern Ward recently, the community still stood in stiff opposition. Despite changes in technology that have made factories less pollution-intensive, the residents were still vehemently opposed to industrial uses being in their neighborhood. Outside of the Southern Ward, this was seen as irrational – but to local residents, many of whom worked in Moncton, they knew that the smoke and the soot weren’t the only problems, but also truck traffic and ceaseless noise of industry. Despite the heckles of well-to-do people outside the district, the residents knew the realities on the ground. Where you stand often depends on where you sit.

Of the 50% of households in Uniguita – and 20% in Nova Espero more specifically – that have access to a car, they are on average wealthier than households that do not have access to a car. Residents who rely on transit are, on average, poorer. To build out highways at the expense of transit would be akin to Francisco II’s old vision to build the Metro to serve only the toniest of wards in his new Imperial Capital.

This is part of a series centered on Pavel Tzarkowski’s experiences as a survivor in early Nova Espero entitled “1850-01.” Follow this link to go to the series’ page.

“Watch your step,” said Lieutenant Suarez as he and the rest of Platoon 403 approached the entrance of the subway station. The guard posted at the rotting gateway nodded as the unit passed through, stomping down the concrete steps made slick by snowmelt from the streets above. A patina of green grime clung to the tiled walls, disappearing with the daylight down what appeared to be an infinite chasm into the unfinished subterranean subway network.

Just ten or so paces down, Pavel and the others snapped on their flashlights, illuminating a fog of hazy ozone and the shimmering pool of water at the base of the stairs. Splashing down, Corny cursed their aging boots.

“They couldn’t have given us the rubber boots for this one?” he grumbled.

“Quit complaining. The railbed will be dry,” the lieutenant replied.

Indeed, approaching the edge of the platform revealed a gravel causeway just barely peering above the waterline. One after another, the foursome jumped down onto the unfinished tracks, the smell of rotting wood permeating their nostrils. Hundreds of railroad ties sat helplessly, wasting away half-submerged in the stagnant water beside the railbed. Frederic, forming the tail of the unit, instinctively looked back to help Kara down. Of course, she wasn’t there.

“Alright… onward for the next couple of miles,” said the lieutenant.

“I hate the tunnels,” Corny whispered to Pavel, “they’re way too spooky.” In the dead-quiet of this thankfully linear catacomb there was no way that Suarez didn’t hear him. Either out of mercy or out of frustration, the lieutenant chose not to acknowledge the complaint.

The slushy gravel squelched underfoot, inundated with two years of rainwater and snowmelt unable to drain into the severely damaged sewer system. The boots, which they already demanded so much of, failed under the pressure of the near-marshy environment. Soon enough, their socks became soaked with a gray-brown slurry, exacerbating the blisters beginning to form on their feet.

The tunnel, bored deep into the earth in the years prior to the War, was pitch dark. It was so far removed from the surface that no pinpricks of light from the pockmarked streets and bombed out basements above could make it through. Only the faintest levels of light emerged when the platoon made their way through defunct stations, where the apparition of day peered in through the distant entryways. The men trained their lights on the railbed, careful not to veer into the frigid ditches of ice water on either side. In front and behind, they could hear the scurrying of the tunnels’ massive rats, returning to the region with the newfound “prosperity” of the human inhabitants of Nova Espero. Though the city’s residents were careful when it came to food waste, not everything could be saved. And the rats relished in this comparative feast after so many years of famine.

“You think Anna would want one as a pet?” Corny asked Pavel, aiming his light at a particularly robust creature perched atop a rail tie. “There was a kid who kept one over on Kelso Street, but it bit him and I think he got an infection though, and he…”

Corny, remembering how the story ended and the particular sensitivity of his audience, caught himself.

“Maybe not, then,” he said.

After hiking for two hours in this abominable sludge, Platoon 403 lumbered over the edge of a station platform to stop for lunch. Though the tile was far from finished, the station sign had already been cemented to the wall. COATS it read in a thick, regal serif font. Pavel knew this area – it was a perfectly proper, middle-class ward along the posh northern coastline of the city. Several of his colleagues at the Imperial University spoke of their dreams of moving to somewhere like Coats once the subway finally got built. The low-slung sprawl on the outskirts, where Pavel and Elizabeta had lived, was seen as being outmodish – these so-called “urban villages” of high-rise condos and subway stations were becoming the new aspiration of the middle class.

Now, the quarter-finished remains of Coats station were covered in mildew and a slick, ubiquitous slime. Pavel could only imagine how the surface might look. From the sooty clouds he saw during his long march home, it looked like there had been a considerable firestorm in the area.

The platoon set up their lights and a small stove in the middle of their huddle. Though they had been spared the whipping winter winds of the surface world by taking the subway, the tunnel still served as a cold cellar. Taking off their boots, water dripped from the men’s fully saturated socks. Wringing them out, water splashed on the ceramic floors below, refracting sparkles of light from the bright-white lanterns. They laid their footwear near the stove in a vain effort to dry them out, the air filling with the stench of sweat and whatever unknowable particulates had built up in this makeshift sewer over the past twenty-seven months. Thankfully the cold had so far suppressed this odor – Pavel could only imagine what this place smelled like in the summer.

Pavel, Corny, Frederic, and the Lieutenant greedily opened their containers of rations. Inside were an allegedly high-protein biscuit made of lentils and mushrooms and a small tin of sardines. The sardines had been a major victory – the growing electrical grid helped power a couple of canning machines, and the calming waters had allowed a couple of small fishing boats to venture outwards. The lentils and mushrooms were the product of the Provisions Department’s experimentation with light hydroponics. Better electricity had made these things easier to produce – some of the “hydrofarmers” seemed optimistic that Nova Espero may even have fruit by the springtime.

Several more grueling, trudging hours passed through the gravelly muck and mud of the tunnel. The all-consuming darkness weakened the platoon’s perception of the passage of time and space. Were it not for the stations and their name placards, one would be forgiven for thinking that they had been marching for miles when in reality they had only gone a few hundred feet. And as far as Pavel and the rest of the crew knew, it could very well either be midnight or midday.

From their preparations, Pavel and the others knew that they had reached their destination upon seeing the station name MIST COVE arranged in fresco tiles on the wall. Pavel recalled that this had once been a resort community, complete with a boardwalk, taffy shops, and a carousel.

The men sagged under the weight of their heavy coats and rucksacks, and Pavel was convinced that taking off his clothing would reveal deep ruts where his pack straps had been sitting. Corny, whose body was already aged far beyond his thirty-eight years, belted out a string of expletives as he hobbled from the railbed to the station platform.

“Fucking finally,” he bleated as he splayed onto the unfinished concrete floor. As Pavel followed, he noticed Corny’s pained relief giving way to exasperation, rubbing his eyes in anguish.

“What?” Pavel asked, desperately catching his own breath.

“The stairs,” he said, flinging his hand rightward to the dimly lit stairwell in the far corner. “I always forget about the stairs.”

“Come on, let’s go,” Lieutenant Suarez panted. Pavel was grateful to see his commander in this state, overencumbered and exhausted. It reminded him that he was indeed a human, and not some one-man mechanized infantry unit who never fatigued. Though, sure enough, within seconds he was bounding towards those sure-to-be abominable stairs.

After some thirty-thousand steps – what surely felt like thirty-thousand steps – Platoon 403 emerged from the underworld. They found themselves in a pitch dark neighborhood. Though there was no moon in the sky, the winds had pushed the clouds out to sea, revealing a vast tapestry of stars above.

Lieutenant Suarez led the platoon down a series of streets and alleyways fronted by fire-scorched buildings that had not seen the light of life in quite some time. These great stone caverns seemed darker and colder than the night outside, their upper stories in varying states of decay. Windows burped out shattered bricks, with piles forming on the sidewalk. Rebar poked like hairs from scarred concrete, and snow crept up against empty doorways.

Turning down one of these alleys, the lieutenant made his way towards a heavy metal door. Using an archaic key on what appeared to be an even more archaic lock, he gestured the others inside. Pavel was prepared for another bivouac in some bombed out house, warmed only by the integrity of the thin wool blanket issued to him by the Scavenger’s Union.

Groping the dark interior walls for a minute, he eventually found a switch. When he hit it, the room erupted in a warm, incandescent glow. On the wall to the right hung a map of the region, and to the left bulletin boards with carefully written out instructions for visitors. A spiral staircase in the corner led upwards, and a desk in the opposite corner held a radio.

Flipping it on, the lieutenant chattered a message to Nova Espero.

“Nova Espero, this is Platoon 403. We have arrived at Granmercy and are clocking out for the night, over.”

“Understood, 403,” a reply crackled. “Sweep the roof, and then goodnight.”

“Pavel, follow me,” the lieutenant quickly barked as he turned off the radio and desk lamp. Grabbing two brooms, the men headed up the steep stairway. On the second floor, Pavel noticed three, steel-frame bunk beds side by side, with a water closet in the corner – “It’s non-functional, we have to empty a bucket when we leave,” Lieutenant Suarez explained.

At the top of the stairs, the lieutenant contended with another ancient lock, shoving the door upwards into the night sky. The two ascended onto the small roof, topped by a series of solar panels coated in a half-inch of snow. One by one, the men swept the snow off, Pavel taking the occasional opportunity to gawk at the kaleidoscope of colors above. The light purplish brush strokes and milky smudges, the innumerable diamonds forming absurd constellations. The moon itself seemed exaggerated, casting an impossibly bright beam in its reflection. A few blocks away, Pavel watched as the moonlight jittered over the rolling waters of the Western Sea.

As the waves smashed on the seawall, he could almost remember those summer nights where he and Elizabeta strolled the promenade, popping into the gimmicky gift shops and import stores together. Despite the frigid temperatures, Pavel could feel the warm sea breeze and taste the cup of Kilmartin Dairy ice cream they shared. Ice cream. What a throwback. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had-

“Pavel,” the lieutenant grumbled. “I have something for you. Don’t tell the others.”

Lieutenant Suarez handed Pavel a cigarette. At the time, this was no mere friendly gesture. Even as stale as they were, cigarettes had become a borderline currency in the Collapse.

As the lieutenant sparked his light and the cigarette began to burn, Pavel took a puff. Was it- it couldn’t possibly be?

“Fresca,” Suarez said. Even in the faint light, he could detect Pavel’s confused expression. He explained that in addition to more sensible, nutritious things like lentils and kale, the Provisions Department had experimented with tobacco hydroponics. The justification was that it would not only be a morale booster to be able to have fresh cigarettes again, but that once Nova Espero began to go out and trade, fresh cigarettes might be worth their weight in gold to the nicotine-starved world of survivors.

Eyeing his watch, Suarez coughed “congratulations, citizen.”

Citizen. Pavel thought. His mind raced away from the pure narcotic bliss between his lips and back to that hospital bed. Anna’s a citizen.

Eight miles away, Elizabeta stroked her daughter’s hand as she eyed the clock. Across the hospital bed, Dr. Poilievre prepared a series of syringes and vials, the antibiotics that would become available to the ailing six-year-old.

Anna had been asleep since just after dinner some five hours ago. The other children in the ward slumbered peacefully, their quiet only occasionally interrupted by the hacking cough of one of their fellow tubercular patients.

When the clock struck midnight, the doctor reached for some paperwork. Signing her affirmation of Anna’s citizenship, she handed the clipboard over to Elizabeta for her signature.

As she scribbled on the page, Dr. Poilievre got to work. One by one, she plunged the needles into Anna’s arm. She was so weak and exhausted that she hardly stirred.

“Now all we can do is continue her medication and keep her rested,” the doctor said.

Elizabeta quietly thanked the doctor. She could feel her eyes sagging as they darted back to Anna. Despite her improved diet, Elizabeta had been awake for nearly eighteen hours with little rest. Her stress and anxiety over Anna was compounded by her stress and anxiety over Pavel. At this point, her weariness had overridden her cortisol, and Elizabeta smiled softly as she nodded off in her chair.

NOVA ESPERO CITY - KVARTO 5, 126 PM

For deuce-driver Robert MacThomas, the day begins at 5 o’clock in the morning. He starts in his Southern Ward apartment which he shares with his wife Moira and his two sons. After a brief cup of coffee and hastily prepared toast, he is out the door before the rest of his family is even awake.

He then bikes over to the Southern Ward station of the Drivers’ Cooperative of Nova Espero (DCNE – typically read aloud as dickney). He badges in through the chainlink gate, alongside several other drivers. They each go to the DCNE office where they pick up their routes and route placards. These placards tell pedestrians where the vehicle attached can and cannot go, and in which zones the driver can pick up passengers.

“Zone 1, lucky pull,” Robert tells me as he receives his placards. Zone 1 contains the northern half of the Federal Way, a highly trafficked corridor of shops, museums, government offices, hotels, and a variety of tourist destinations. “People tip like profligates when they’re on vacation,” he tells me in his delightful rural Kilmartin brogue.

After he gets the placards, I follow Robert to his deuce, a brightly painted van with a carrying capacity of six – “seven if they’re skinny,” he tells me with a grin. He slides the placards into the wrought iron display atop the roof, showing potential clients that he is an officially licensed, DCNE-endorsed driver. Robert then performs a series of pre-trip checks – tire pressure, lights, windshield wipers. There’s nothing to flag today, but he assures me that when there is an issue the mechanics the Cooperative keeps on hand are quick and reliable.

He then unplugs the vehicle from its charger, and steps into the driver’s seat (on the right side of the vehicle, rather than the left) while I take the passenger side. We crawl out to the station exit behind a dozen or so other vehicles waiting patiently to turn onto Southern Avenue.

At 6:00 sharp, deuce #815 leaves the station and is ready to start the day.

What is a deuce?

“It’s an awful name, now, given the euphemism,” Robert delicately tries to explain. More professor than cabbie in dress and temperament, the fifteen-year veteran of the trade seems to still lament the name of the primary tool of his profession.

Deuces – the ubiquitous share-taxis of Nova Espero – first hit the roads in the early 10s. The scarcity of automobiles and the non-existence of real public transportation meant that alternatives were necessary for workers commuting across the increasingly sprawling settlement.

“There was no subway, there were no trolleys, there were no buses, and there absolutely were no private cars,” my driver for the day tells me. “You either walked places or, if you were lucky, you biked there.”

Francois Gauthier and his brother Simon had been road-tripping across the Empire when the War hit. When they arrived in Nova Espero in 2 PM, their worn-out, four-door, six-seat 1759 O.S.1 Richardson Trekker was their only possession. The van proved a valuable commodity in an automotive-starved Collapse-era Nova Espero, and the Gauthiers started a scavenging business where they used the vehicle to haul heavyweight materials back from the wasteland.

As time wore on, however, Nova Espero acquired and refurbished more abandoned trucks that were better suited to the task of salvaging. The Gauthiers, ever the entrepreneurial type, found another use for their van. As the city spread outward and distances became more difficult to navigate on foot, the duo began running a shuttle service between worksites and residential areas. The fare cost two pennies at first, or deux in the Gauthiers’ native Lacaise. This deux became deuce, the name for the vehicles themselves.

The business was so lucrative that the Gauthier brothers looked into buying more vans to expand their operation. Being a pricey and diminishing commodity as a result of a moribund, post-War auto industry, the brothers found difficulty in purchasing more vans on their own. So, they joined with a few other potential investors who would serve as drivers, part-time mechanics, and shareholders in the enterprise and formed the Drivers’ Cooperative of Nova Espero.

By the end of the decade, ten deuces trawled the streets of Nova Espero, picking up workers and shoppers throughout the city. They lined up outside worker housing at the beginning of the day, and then at the factory gates at shift changes. In an age where automobiles cost ten times the annual salary of a resident of the city, the deuces provided a vital piece of semi-public transportation infrastructure.

DCNE solidifies

By the 30s, the auto industry had finally begun to recover. Though they were still inaccessible to average commuters, automobiles did become more accessible to independent deuce operators, so-called indies. The Cooperative prided itself on its safety record, the training of its drivers, and its fair, consistent rates, and saw the newcomers as vulgar imposters. Their fares were often lower, sure, but their vans were poorly-maintained, their drivers dangerously inexperienced, and their service was subpar. Accidents were commonplace, and one 39 PM study from the City found that independent drivers were more than twice as likely to strike a pedestrian than DCNE drivers, and passengers were five times as likely to be injured in an indie than a DCNE deuce.

As independent drivers’ reputation diminished, they began to imitate Cooperative drivers. They placed DCNE logos on their vehicles and their uniforms were purposely designed to resemble DCNE’s. Frustrated by this mimicry, the Cooperative looked for ways to differentiate themselves from the indies in a new way.

Among the various wholesale markets that were still brimming with the reclaimed refuse from cities shattered by the War, then-driver for DCNE Carlos Primavera noticed something strange. Just before the War, a hotel in Nova Espero had purchased dozens of distinctive bedframes made of wrought-iron. Though many buyers at the market would snap these up for their own homes, Primavera had a different idea. He saw an opportunity when he noticed that the twin-sized headboards were roughly the width of most DCNE vans while the king-sized frames were roughly the vans’ length.

Primavera made the snap decision to buy a set, and went back to the DCNE station where he spent the weekend welding the frames together, bolting them to the roof of his own personal deuce, and then painting and cutting placards. When he showed the other members of the cooperative his creation, they broadly approved. By the end of the week, DCNE had bulk purchased all of the bedframes, rapidly attaching them to their vans and creating the distinctive marquees that still define DCNE deuces to this day.

As mimicry began to falter as a potential tactic, some independent drivers turned elsewhere. Michel Rousseau, a DCNE driver at the time, called them “pirates,” and complained that their “cutthroat prices came with cutthroat tactics.” Independent drivers would cut DCNE charging cables, slash tires, and even engage in violence to thwart their competition. DCNE drivers responded in kind, with shootouts and bare-knuckle brawls between cooperative and independent drivers being a running news item throughout the 30s.

“I’ll be frank, it was a gang war,” Robert says. “Even though most of that was over by the time they came around, some of the old timers still carry brass knuckles. Their fathers told them all these stories, and they left every day expecting a fight.”

After a particularly brutal fight between DCNE and indie drivers that left 6 dead in 43 PM – and amid the growing political clout of DCNE – the government stepped in. As a part of his new crackdown on organized crime, the government of President Enrico Carmelo passed new restrictions on deuce operations that left the indie drivers in a precarious regulatory state. Federal and Nova Espero police harassed unlicensed indie drivers (typically poorer and more likely to be immigrants than DCNE drivers), arresting dozens over the course of the operation. Enforcement of existing laws strengthened at the cost of a lucrative income stream for many of the working poor, especially those in the Southern Ward.

The relationship between DCNE and the Carmelo administration became symbiotic. In 44 and 46 PM, the Cooperative organized for Carmelo’s Conservatives, using their deuces to get right-wing voters to the polls on Election Day. DCNE’s then-leader and enthusiastic Carmelist Marco Trulio provided an additional working class veneer of legitimacy to Carmelo’s brand of right-wing populism. He frequently called him the “greatest president that nation’s ever had.” Carmelo responded to this support with further regulations that put smaller operators at a disadvantage, ensuring that DCNE and only DCNE stood a chance at operating share-cabs in the capital city. In 39 PM, DCNE operated around 50% of all deuces in the city. By 47 PM, DCNE deuces made up more than 90% of the market in Nova Espero.

The cooperative was a powerful political bloc in local politics, with their highly organized and wide-reaching membership having the potential to sink or float any individual candidate. Between 41 and 47 PM, every single candidate endorsed by DCNE in the city won their election, and the Cooperative’s rightward shift helped the Conservatives gain control of the traditionally left-wing capital in 44 PM.

They were at the top of their game, and it didn’t seem like anything could knock them down.

But then Enrico Carmelo attempted to end democracy with a stroke of his pen. When his coup attempt eventually failed, the local and national political backlash was severe. Whereas DCNE had been an unstoppable force in local politics for close to a decade, their legitimacy vanished overnight. In the 48 PM elections, the Conservatives went from controlling the presidency, the Common Council, and the government of Nova Espero to none of them. The right had been relegated to the political wilderness, and some saw DCNE as being guilty by association.

Their interests were no longer a priority.

Nova Espero grows, DCNE diminishes

After years of economic crisis and Carmelo’s attempted self-coup, newly elected President Erika Lankolay was looking for more than reform when she was swept into power in 48 PM. She was looking for a real, tangible process that would lift people’s spirits and put them to work.

One part of her broader strategy was the National Infrastructure Plan, a program in which the government would subsidize massive public works projects. The NIP would not only build transportation systems, sewer networks, and dams, but also schools, libraries, post offices, and housing. “Lankolay didn’t just want to rebuild the Old World, like Carmelo did,” according to Nova Espero city historian George Talmadge. “She wanted to exceed it.”

In Nova Espero, President Lankolay appointed local planning director Frederick van Nuys to be the city’s NIP administrator. And he had dreams. According to local legend, he visited President Lankolay and her closest advisors at Voorhees Square2 to present on over a dozen projects he had been designing, investigating, and planning in his spare time. They ranged in ambition from planting street trees in the working class Southern Ward to building a massive complex of retail and public housing to finally completing the city’s subway system that had been started just before the War. When Lankolay asked him how much money he would need, van Nuys supposedly asked, “for which project?”

She replied, “all of them.”

DCNE opposed some of these projects, specifically the mass transit programs. But neither Lankolay nor the People’s Party were very interested in what DCNE had to say. The Cooperative and its controversial head had been steadfast allies to the would-be dictator Carmelo, and had even shut down deuce service during the president’s attempted coup to keep protestors from getting to Voorhees Square. The typically labor-friendly People’s Party had few sympathies for what they saw as an organization allied to tyranny.

Just weeks before Nova Espero’s city council was set to approve van Nuys’ proposals, DCNE held its biennial leadership election. Marco Trulio faced a serious challenge from driver John Gauthier, the grandson of DCNE founder Francois Gauthier. Trulio ran on aggressive action to oppose the new NIP proposals — strikes, sit-ins, and what he called “creative, overwhelming resistance.” Gauthier favored collaboration with the new administration, and adaptation to an inevitably changing environment.

In the end, Trulio won re-election. The week before the city council’s vote, Trulio called and received approval for a strike.

“They won’t know what hit ‘em,” Trulio told a Universalo reporter at the time. “Those stuffed shirts in council, those idiot liberals won’t know what to do without us. Who’s gonna drive them to their meetings, or their seminars.”

“And their constituents are going to start complaining,” he continued. “And that’ll scare the fuck outta them.”

DCNE deuces surrounded City Hall, day and night, blaring on their horns and picketing in protest. Deuce service ground to a halt in the federal capital, and the small fleet of the municipal bus service was inadequate to pick up the demand. As an emergency measure, President Lankolay re-directed buses meant for Puerto Blanco’s already-approved transportation system to service Nova Espero instead.

Even so, service was clearly disrupted and the DCNE drivers were making their point clear. In the days preceding the vote, DCNE staged a letter-writing campaign to members of the council whose districts had significant deuce driver populations.

“When all is said and done, you’ll want to come down on the right side of this issue,” read a letter to Populist councilmember Rodney Markham. “Lankolay’s coattails got you your seat in 48. Don’t think they’ll be so long in 50.”

DCNE’s other tactics of persuasion were less civically-minded. Members of council had their tires slashed, threatening notes were left on their doorsteps, and several received threatening phone calls to their office. “They’re a bunch of mobsters,” said one councilor at the time. “Plain and simple.”

Ultimately, the strike, the letter-writing campaign, and the scare tactics were all for nought. The city council overwhelmingly approved van Nuys’ program, and the federal Common Council ratified it a little over a week later. A subway would be built. A new bus system would be organized.

And the deuces would be undercut.

Sabotage of the projects was a constant headache. As construction of the subway began, workers would return to the jobsite to find concrete drums destroyed with sugar and hydraulic lines cut. One night, the city was awakened when a shed storing nitroglycerin suddenly and violently exploded, destroying a worksite office trailer and several vehicles. When a fleet of buses was delivered in mid 51 PM, someone slashed their tires.

It wasn’t until the local police and federal Gendarmes set up a sting that the culprits were uncovered. Fifteen individuals – including twelve DCNE drivers – were ultimately arrested. Prosecutors soon discovered evidence that orders to sabotage the projects came directly from Trulio. He and the entire cooperative soon fell under an investigation using the same anti-mob laws President Carmelo had used to persecute DCNE’s independent rivals.

As Trulio and DCNE’s trial was underway, the cooperative faced another blow – in 53 PM, the newly formed Constitutional Court ruled that DCNE was an illegal monopoly. Just a week after Trulio and several co-conspirators were found guilty of racketeering, vandalism, and property damage, DCNE was broken up into four new cooperatives. The Cooperative went from having 90% of market share to just 35%. Still by far the largest operator in the city, but far removed from its one-time peak.

After Trulio’s trial, frequent news stories of mob-like behavior, lasting resentment towards DCNE for its actions during Carmelo’s coup attempt, and declining quality of service left the Cooperative with a reputation in tatters.

DCNE reborn

Shortly after Trulio’s indictment, he was ousted as head of the Cooperative. John Gauthier, who had run against Trulio in 49 PM, captured the presidency campaigning on pragmatic responses to the new transportation environment.

Rather than firebombing buses and cutting power cables, Gauthier pursued innovation. He hired transportation planners to map out optimal routes to take advantage of the new subways and bus routes rather than fight against them. DCNE would be a supplemental service, and a potentially quicker and more personalized alternative to the mass transportation options. The train would take you from home to downtown – a deuce would take you to your office door.

Gauthier emphasized a clean, efficient, and well-run operation. Vans were repainted, seating and carpets were updated, and new taximeters designed to cater to multiple passenger routes simultaneously were installed, showing them exactly how much they were going to pay in fare. Ranks were set up near the soon-to-open subway stations, and the city was re-zoned to align drivers to expected demand.

After completing a few early morning routes, Robert parks his deuce near the University of Nova Espero station of the city’s 2 line. Standing outside his vehicle, he ushers potential passengers into the van, handing them a plastic card. The card, when punched back into the taximeter, stops the machine and calculates the fare for the respective passenger. He welcomes aboard a second-year student heading to class, two lab assistants, and a professor who appears to be a regular customer.

“Robbie! It’s been a while since I’ve seen you down here,” he says, taking Robert’s hand into his. “It’s been too long, Donald. How’s paleontology treating you?”

“Well, my subjects are all still dead,” the professor replies, “so they’re not going anywhere at least.”

As Dr. Carrick takes his seat, MacThomas tumbles back in and starts the engine. The van, clearly encumbered by the weight of four new passengers, strains as Robert backs out onto the crowded Federal Way and heads north. The first stop is Dr. Donald Carrick’s paleontology department – fare, N1.25. Then the two lab assistants at the Biology Department, N1.50 each. Finally the sophomore – clearly hungover – lazily stumbles out at the mathematics building after paying his N1.75 fare.3

“It all used to be two pennies,” Robert says. “It’s more expensive now – everything’s more expensive now – but N64 ain’t bad for a fifteen-minute job.”

Initially intended to be a placeholder leader between Trulio and whoever came next, Gauthier’s tactics and strategy proved to be popular enough to get him re-elected president of DCNE until his eventual retirement in 88 PM. He transformed DCNE’s deuces from a declining, last-resort transportation option for the working poor tainted by years of grimy tactics into a luxury good for last-mile commuters, bewildered tourists, and intoxicated partiers.

As the subway, trolley, and bus systems expanded, the number of deuce drivers didn’t change very much. In fact, DCNE’s number of member-drivers has remained constant since about 90 PM. The work itself, however, has changed. Cross-town commutes are less common – instead, most drivers either serve the last mile in a supplement to the trains, or help chauffeur participants in the city’s vaunted nightlife.

“If Zone 1 is the number one pick, Zone 8 isn’t far behind,” Robert says. Zone 8 contains Fort Fortuna, the fortress turned prison turned massive casino complex. “If tourists tip well, drunks and gamblers tip great,” he says with a smile. “Folks who go to casinos are pretty loose with their money, it turns out.”

A few blocks away from UNE campus, a confused-looking father amid his equally confused family waves Robert down. Pulling up to the curb, he rolls down the window.

“Hello… erm, how get to…” the man says in heavily accented Hegelionic.

“Where are you from?” asks Robbie.

“Ferria,” the man stammers.

“Ah, a dónde quieren ir?” Robbie chatters back in Ferrian.

He explains in Ferrian that he and his family are trying to get to Federal Station. Robbie, again in perfect Ferrian, welcomes them aboard.

“It’s useful to know a couple different languages in this business, especially here,” Robbie explains. In addition to his native Swalish, MacThomas can speak Hegelionic, Ferrian, Lacaise, and Erachnian.

“I’m trying to learn Ylrikian too, but you have to remember so many characters,” he explains. “And it’s a tonal language too… it’s maddening.”

After a jaunt up to Federal Station, the family thanks Robert as they depart – fare total N5.25.5

When a passenger leaving the terminal asks if she can get a ride, he explains that he can’t take her anywhere. He can only drop people off outside of his zone – he can’t pick them up. Frustrated, she leaves, asking another nearby deuce driver for a ride.

“Those are the rules, I don’t know what to tell her,” Robert tells me.

Robert takes me through the lunch rush, the early afternoon lull, the later afternoon surge of commuters going back to the subway, and finally the early evening diners. All manner of people passed through Robert’s van: government employees in suits and dresses, students in sweatshirts, shiftworkers in their myriad of uniforms and coveralls, and tourists in comfortable shoes and breezy shirts.

All told, Robert brings in N69.256 in fares – a pretty good day, according to him. About a third of that goes to taxes and DCNE for facility upkeep, maintenance staff, and vehicle storage. The rest goes in his pocket. On an average day, he takes home around N40, working out to around N10,4007 a year. Given that the median wage in Nova Espero was N9,865 according to the 121 PM Federal census, this isn’t too shabby.

“Plus, I love the work,” Robert says. “You meet so many interesting people.”

Pulling back into the DCNE station at 5:58 in the evening, MacThomas performs his post-shift checks before plugging his van in for the night. After checking in with the office, reporting his fares and turning in his dues and taxes, he makes his way back through the chain-link gate N42.258 richer.

114 years after the first deuces criss-crossed the ancient, war-ravaged streets of Nova Espero, deuce drivers like Robert MacThomas still carve up the city today. Through turf wars, through monopoly breakups, through changes in transportation, DCNE is still here. And it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere.

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PRAVGOROD, P.O. – TRIO 26, 126 PM

At a “security training facility” on the outskirts of Pravgorod, Pravish Premier Aaron Landau speaks at the graduation of a fresh new class of recruits. These sixty or so men and women will be the newest members of the Pravish Self Defense Forces (PSDF, or PSSB in Pravish), the last legally recognized commonwealth militia in the Federation.

“We have seen times like these before. In the aftermath of the Milito, so many of our people were killed. Not by Ylrikian bombs, but those whom we believed to be our fellow countrymen. We were defenseless,” Landau said. “And after that, we said ‘never again’. Yet, we once again came to rely on outsiders to assist in our defense. And then the Bloody Week came. They failed us again. And now we do not merely say, but we promise – ‘never again.’”

Thirty-five years ago, nationalist extremists from neighboring Zoldhegyek staged a massive operation both there and in Pravo, setting out to kill ethnic Pravs and otherwise remove them from the borderlands between the two commonwealths. Though they failed in their ultimate hope of establishing a Zoldish ethnostate and eradicating the Pravs, the Zoldish National Army was able to kill hundreds of people and destroy millions of notes worth of property before the then-diminished Pravish Self Defense Forces and the Federal Army were able to stamp out the insurgency.

In the three and a half decades since the Bloody Week, the commonwealth government of Pravo has slowly rebuilt the PSDF. And with the recent rise of the far-right in Zoldhegyek, the Pravish government has seen a resurgence in recruitment.

“In years past, typical class sizes were twenty cadets, thirty at most,” Premier Landau told me, himself a veteran of the PSDF who fought during the Bloody Week. “Now, as you see, this class of cadets is sixty. The Forces is even expecting to hold another session of the training academy this summer, and another in the fall.”

“The generation two back – my generation – has told people what the outsiders are capable of,” he says. “Now they’re starting to listen. They want to sign up to defend Pravo before it’s too late.”

History of the Pravish Self Defense Forces

Immediately after the Milito, general order broke down in the fragmented and isolated mountain communities of the Zoldhegyek and Pravo. Both regions’ capitals had been catastrophically damaged by significant explosive devices (SEDs), and communications lines were generally severed. This chaotic environment was further compounded by the cutting of trade routes that brought food, medicine, and other essential supplies to the backcountry, as well as existing ethnic enmities between the two peoples.

In Zoldhegyek, rumors emerged that the Pravs had stockpiled supplies and were hoarding them as Zolds perished to starvation and the other privations of the Collapse Era. In reality, the Pravs were suffering just as much as the Zolds – according to historical studies of the War and the Collapse Era, death rates among both peoples in the first year following the War were generally similar, around 52%.

Even so, this paranoia led to conflict. The Zoldish warlords stormed across historically Pravish lands, looting the threadbare homes of the poor peasantry and murdering countless thousands of innocent civilians. When Pravish defenders fought back, the Zolds used the weapons they found to justify further warmaking against the Pravs. The Zolds managed to push the Pravs even further eastward into what is now considered Pravo, where a final line of defense was established.

This “national redoubt” – ludowa reduta in Pravish – became the basis for future Pravish defensive policy and the establishment of the first iterations of a formalized Pravish Self Defense Forces. The People’s Defense Forces (PDF), founded in 3 PM, would defend all Pravs behind the reduta to the death. In the coming decades, Zoldish forces would twice more attempt to invade Pravo, and both times they would be repelled by the PDF.

After Vetludo and the territories of Terre de Lac joined Uniguita in the late 10s, the generally isolationist Zoldhegyek joined as well in 19 PM. Ultimately, the Pravish government found it more advantageous to be a part of the Federation, especially if the possibility arose that the already-integrated Zoldhegyek could persuade the government to take action against Pravo.

In 27 PM, Pravo joined the Federation. Like all commonwealths, it was entitled to maintain a militia for the purposes of defense and internal law enforcement. Though by this point many of the commonwealths had abolished their militia, Pravo elected to retain theirs. To keep in line with the more politically secular naming conventions of the Federation, the PDF was rechristened as the Prawijskie Sily Samoobrony – better known as the Pravish Self Defense Forces, or the PSDF.

Despite persistent animosities and low-level ethnic conflict among organized gangs and small bands of ethnonationalists, relations normalized between the Zolds and Pravs. Over time, the PSDF diminished in importance as a paramilitary organization, and began to primarily focus on law enforcement and assisting in disaster response.

“They called us the kalosznicy komanda – the ‘mudboot commandos’ – because we were more likely to be wading through muck to save some idiot who didn’t listen to flood warnings than to be fighting in actual battles,” Landau tells me. Because of this shift in purpose, combat and weapons training became deprioritized.

Then came the Bloody Week. In the early morning hours of Trio 25, 91 PM, members of the ultranationalist Zoldish National Army staged coordinated terrorist attacks across Zoldhegyek and Pravo. Members of the organization stormed the Zoldish and Pravish houses of parliament, killing dozens of legislators including the Zoldish premier. Simultaneously, operatives attacked Pravish villages along the borderlands, killing hundreds in the name of anti-Pravish hatred.

Federal troops ultimately restored order in the region, but for many the ultimate restoration of order came too slowly. In the end, more than 900 Pravish civilians were killed during the Bloody Week, alongside 56 Zolds.

“It was a bloodbath, and they caught us unprepared. We had gotten complacent,” says Landau. “Like I said – ‘never again.’”

Though the PSDF still remains primarily a law enforcement and disaster recovery agency, combat training and readiness has been re-emphasized. Weapons are regularly updated, and the “national redoubt” has been reinforced with pre-built checkpoints and concrete bunkers, and all but one of the PSDF’s “bases” are located within fifty miles of the Zoldish-Pravish border.

“Things have been relatively peaceful since 91,” Landau tells me, though he contends “we thought that in Trio 91 PM too.”

The Black Eagles rescue Grawlowicz

On a cool, early spring morning in the rural frontier between Zoldhegyek and Pravo, privates Emil Kuna and Viktoria Florek share cigarettes over a dying campfire. A few other enlisted PSDF personnel amble about their campsite, nursing metal cups of instant coffee and tea.

“It’s too cold out here,” Private Florek complains. “They always schedule our exercises when it’s cold.” Small gray-white-brown lumps of snow muddled with dirt clings to the bases of the trees, and each breath hangs lazily in the air. The campsite sits on the side of one of the region’s characteristic rolling mountains, offering unrivaled vistas of the thawing valleys below and the frosted ridges some miles away.

Captain Franciszka Malecka, a mountain of terror stacked just five feet high, arouses the members of the militia, ordering them to kick out their fire and begin their march into the valley below. When a private slips on the wet leaves, tumbling a few feet down the hillside, a mere stare from Captain Malecka gets him to his feet at a speed I have never before seen.

After twenty minutes of hiking, the captain calls over two soldiers, pointing out to a rock jutting out over the valley. One puts binoculars to their face announcing estimates of the number of enemies while Captain Malecka observes, as the other soldier scribbles on a small notepad.

Reaching the valley floor, the members of the unit cling to a line of trees along a small rural lane heading into the hamlet of Grawlowicz. As they approach the inner core, Captain Malecka juts her hand behind her, slowly motioning it downward.

“Down, down!” she hisses, as an armored personnel carrier lumbers past.

“Okay, up, up!”

Sliding into an alleyway between two archaic stone buildings, the militia performs a final check on its weapons. Peering around the corner, Private Florek whispers to the captain and me, “five terrorists, two blocks down in the courthouse.”

Out in the street stand five figures dressed in military fatigues and cloaked in ski masks. “Terrorists” in the parlance of the PSDF, they are meant to represent a potential threat to Pravo’s safety and not any particular organization specifically. Their resemblance to the ski mask-clad members of the Zoldish National Army terrorists of the 90s is purely coincidental.

“One, two, three, four, five,” Malecka says, pointing out each terrorist. Turning around, she points to two privates, “one, two” she says to one, “three, four, five” she says to the other.

Florek and Kuna jostle forward. Florek stands while Kuna kneels.

They take aim.

Pak! Pak! Pak! Pak! Pak!

Paint explodes on the chests of the terrorists. They tumble to the ground to a successive chorus of “shit!” and that ever-present Pravish curse, “kurwa!”

The unit quickly crosses the street, breaching the courthouse. After a brief firefight, the unit makes its way to a backroom, where there are three “hostages” tied up.

“Black Eagle has rescued the hostages; no casualties,” Malecka says into a radio with a grin stretched across her face. The other members of the unit high-five, congratulating each other on a job well done.

This is the third year in a row where Captain Malecka’s Black Eagles managed to save the “hostages” – five members of another unit dressed in civilian clothing – without a single casualty.

“Back in 123 PM, we accidentally shot a mother carrying a baby in the head,” she tells me. “I caught hell for that. No way I was ever going to do that again.”

These exercises are a part of the PSDF’s mandatory “Terrorism Response Training”. Using the bountiful ghost towns and villages of the Zoldish/Pravish borderlands, the militia effectively reenacts real scenarios from the Bloody Week. Most analysts believe that if Pravo were to be attacked again, it would again be a spontaneous assault by a well-organized enemy or cellular assaults on remote villages. In 103 and 109 PM, Zoldish ultranationalist terrorists again staged attacks in Pravo, storming into rural hamlets to take hostages. In both cases, the PSDF was able to use their expertise to release the hostages without any casualties.

“This is like… less than 5% of what we do. Less than 1%, I’d guess,” the captain tells me. “But when that less than 1% happens… we have to be ready.”

The “Barcza boost”

Back in Pravgorod, I meet Brigadier General Pawel Favre, the current commander of the PSDF in his office. Appropriately spartan for this career soldier, the only two decorations of note are an old flag and a helmet with a ghastly chunk ripped out of it.

“This is from the Collapse,” he says, lifting the helmet from its display and circling the cavity with his forefinger. “A Zoldish soldier did this, likely from very close range. He looked a Prav in the eye, and then did this.”

At his desk, Favre shows me a series of charts. Over the past several years, enrollment in the PSDF has declined steadily. He blames the booming economy under former President Gaumont and fading threats of Zoldish terrorism for the decline.

“They weren’t attacking us very much anymore, and the alternatives were too good. If you can be a pipefitter, or a lineworker, or a driver and earn twice as much, why would you be a soldier?” he explains.

But the recent rise of far-right conservative Laszlo Barcza as premier of Zoldhegyek has been a boon for recruitment. According to a federal investigation back in 123 PM, Barcza was an active member of the Zoldish National Army during the Bloody Week, but efforts to prosecute him failed on procedural grounds.

For more on Barcza, read this Unuo 13 article about the far-right’s rise in Zoldhegyek and the reactions of various Zolds.

“Even if he were in prison, it wouldn’t make much of a difference to me, and to most Pravs,” the general explains. “Barcza himself is replaceable. The movement that brought him to power was one we thought had mostly died out, but it’s clear that it would’ve erupted regardless of who was at the head of it.”

In the nearby PSDF barracks I see a printout of Barcza’s official portrait tacked to the center of a dartboard, with evidence of multiple expert shots through his eyes. When I asked the soldiers why they joined, a common answer was fears of Zoldish ethno-nationalism and the rise of Barcza.

Private Janusz Tawicki – who stressed that he would very much like his name attached to this sentiment – tells me, “that fucking psychopath Barcza is why I’m here.”

“My village wasn’t ready when his friends came to town thirty-five years ago,” he says. “We’ll be ready now.”

NOVA ESPERO CITY — TRIO 15, 126 PM

To those who come across this place by happenstance, it doesn’t appear to be all that significant. It could really be any urban park in our increasingly developed world — in the background, you can hear the distant Lankolay Expressway, sending commuters to and fro along the thickly settled Golden Coast. The low-slung scrubs and woody trees atop a carpet of short, beige grasses makes this space look like any other semi-natural spot in this part of the country.

But a closer look reveals an interesting story here. The hills and cliffs are less rolling and more sheer. Rather than being lined by smooth, albeit rocky, banks, the rivers and creeks slide through violent and steep gorges before dumping into the Southern Sea. The ponds are circular things gored deep into the earth, whereas virtually all the lakes in this corner of the world are manmade and far from neatly round.

At the center of this park lies the primary remnant of the circumstances of its birth. Ringed by an almost perfectly circular, sixty-foot high earthen wall, Memorial Lake is around 1,000 feet across and more than 200 feet deep. Today, joggers run its circumference atop a recently repaved multi-use path and families of ducks wade in its bright blue waters mirroring the idyllic skies above.

This scene looked very different 125 years, 3 months, and seventeen days ago. Far from being a pastoral retreat, this was the center of Hegeliopolis’ East End, a densely-populated warren of slums and shanties interrupted by the occasional factory or what could be charitably described as a sweatshop. The people here lived hardscrabble lives amid the steep inequality of that age, and the declining geopolitical order that would ultimately spell their doom.

This scene looked dramatically different still 125 years, 3 months, and sixteen days ago. On a midmorning much similar to this one – blue skies, warm weather, and a calm, gentle breeze – the slums and factories and the countless millions of lives that filled them were callously erased from existence. A significant explosive device, launched from the Ylrikian Empire, exploded some one-hundred feet above the East End, creating this crater, and incinerating the community around it. The shanties were unceremoniously atomized, and the once-smooth hills were made instantaneously craggy and bare. Fires ripped apart the few trees and makeshift parks that existed here, and a hellish inferno marched eastward in a firestorm that killed hundreds of thousands in the coming days.

In the torrential, irradiated rains that defined the subsequent weeks, soil from the denuded hills sloughed off, forming deep ravines and sharp declines. Thousands of tons of dirt containing shredded corrugated metal sheets, concrete, utility poles turned into mulch, and mountains and mountains of ash were washed out to sea.

Over time, life returned. Not human life mind you – despite the area being back to pre-war levels of background radiation within a few months, the erosion of the stigma of visiting this place would take decades. But shoots of green soon erupted from the soil. Weeds and grasses nevertheless persisted, and soon enough animal droppings brought back ferns, trees, and shrubs. Once plants took root, the erosion eased. Water filled the massive central crater, as well as the smaller ones created by the detonation of smaller SED payloads deployed by the larger missile. Wildflowers sprung up in meadows that were once neighborhoods, and small mammals made their homes in what were once sandlots and schoolyards.

Within a few years, nature had reconquered this land; in contrast to the barren, desolate landscapes that defined the descriptions of post-apocalyptic worlds in pre-war literature, this space became verdant and positively re-wilded. Conceptualizing these places as being beige, sandy, almost sterile places long after a hypothetical SED war was an odd sort of self-serving comfort. Without us, without humanity, and through tools of our creation, the world could truly end with us. Life could end with us. It would be absolutely unthinkable for it not to end with us.

Thankfully, that very human, self-obsessed view was another casualty of the War. The ducks still ruffle their feathers, the grass still grows, and the wildflowers still bloom atop the atomized remains of countless millions of mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers.

Another prediction that proved incorrect was that society and civilization itself would cease to exist following a potential SED war. In what we now call the Milito, millions did indeed perish, and billions more from the consequent breakdown of order, famines, and disease. It’s estimated that several million died of hypothermia and frostbite alone in the frigid winters that immediately followed the War.

But much like weeds, humans and their societies tend to pop back no matter what chemicals you throw at them. Through what can only be described as a miracle, much of Hegeliopolis’ Old City was spared much of the destruction of the Milito, leaving alive thousands of residents including many well-trained bureaucrats from the old imperial ministries of agriculture and public works. These people, in concert with the impoverished residents of the Old City’s slums and the political prisoners sprung from the torture dungeon that was Fort Fortuna, were able to build some ramshackle society from the ashes of a murdered Empire.

Today, that settlement – which we now know as Nova Espero – supports a population of more than half a million people. The broader Federation, Uniguita, that spread from this peninsula is now a burgeoning democracy that contains over 25 million people. Far from the over half a billion people that lived in the old Hegelio-Ferrian Empire, but far from the 0 that the most pessimistic prophets of the post-apocalypse would have predicted. After 125 years, our cities have rebuilt, our cultures have flourished, and our technology has rebounded.

Even so, we are surrounded by persistent reminders of what we have lost – our cities are ringed by vast, undeveloped “badlands,” the remnants of dead cities not yet fully rebuilt, mausoleums containing the remains of millions of dead not instantaneously incinerated on that awful day, and so-called “SED-lakes” like Memorial, created as the result of massive explosions. Despite our modern comparative prosperity, generations of post-War collapse trauma have left deep scars on our collective psyche – the collision of modern agricultural surplus and famine-stricken societies of decades past have led to countless eating disorders. Even though no one alive today lived through the conflict and its immediate aftermath, millions still exhibit signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression and anxiety are endemic. Nostalgia for the pre-War world has fueled revisionist, racist politics, and movements arguing that humanity was truly meant to perish in its totality during the Milito still spark terroristic violence today.

Despite all of this, people find ways to bring themselves joy, make it through the day, and more than just survive but thrive. Most major cities have universities that rival pre-War institutions in research output due to advances in computing and communications technology over the past century and a quarter. The Houses of Wisdom form a constellation of research institutions, pursuing knowledge with a secular religious fervor. Settlements and cities alike abound with theaters, museums, and artists’ wards, markets and restaurants where chefs and artisans experiment with old and new cuisines alike. A higher proportion of Uniguitans are literate than their pre-War counterparts, and nearly a quarter have a university education.

Poverty and inequality remain, to be sure. There are the usual deprivations that societies inflict upon themselves and call it scarcity when in reality it is unjust distribution. Not to mention the very obvious and unignorable tragedy of the extinguishing of many billions of lives as a direct result of the War, and then the subsequent billions who will never know life as a result.

Ours is a world that contrasts overbearing tragedy with unrestrainable joy, obvious loss with a subtle gain that is often unrecognizable when you are in it. The purpose of this column is to share the stories of remaining traumas and persistent dreams as well as the continuity of ancient hatreds and the flourishing of newfound unity. Just as our Federation is filled with such contrasts, so too will this column.

I will be uploading a new column each week, either continuing an ongoing story or providing a brief look into a world you may not know. You can look at the Dispatches site now to start reading A Survivor’s Story, a tragic narrative about the Tzarkowski family of survivors coming to Nova Espero just two years after the War. There is some lighter content too, such as a brief piece about ice fishing in Pierron, and the Cockroach Day celebrations in Puerto Ostra. Each of these narratives provides an inexorable part of our national story, and I hope that you find them thought-provoking, or at the very least, entertaining.

This is Mikaelo Bonavido from the Nova Espero Universalo. And welcome to Dispatches from Uniguita.

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PORT WILLIAMS, N.H. – TRIO 10, 126 PM

In Little Irikyo, the first warm weekend of Trio is buzzing with life. The calm sea breeze gently shifts the branches of the imported ginkgo trees, and birds flutter among the cautiously budding leaves. Neighbors greet neighbors at the pop-up farmers market in Harry Sakai Square, sharing stories and jokes over plates of street food and hot buns.

For more information on Port Williams’ Ylrikian Uniguitan community, read this piece about the city’s Ylrikian and Crescent Islander diaspora’s response to the upcoming Crescent Islands’ referendum on independence.

As the largest hub of Ylrikian Uniguitans in the Federation, the district exhibits an explosive combination of Western and Eastern culture. Rather than using the more expensive and difficult-to-find octopus typical of Ylrikian cuisine, Sakai Square yakisoba incorporates more local ingredients like Ferrian crab meat, or Port Williams’ world-famous mussels. Vendors sell Ylrikian-language versions of Fosterian religious texts, and a group of bubbly volunteers from the Ylrikian Uniguitan Civil Rights Association (YUCRA) implore market visitors to vote.

Below are some of the conversations I had while at the Little Irikyo market.

Kate is a 23-year-old pharmacy student who grew up in Little Irikyo. She’s with her boyfriend, Lewis, who she’s introducing to her family this weekend. Lewis is from a rural area in Plains, and is clearly still getting his bearings in this much more diverse and high-energy urban neighborhood.

“He’s cute, isn’t he?” she says, pointing over to the lanky, bespectacled man gawking at the kintsugi1 bowls on display at a stall. “He’s kind of a dork, but I love him. My parents are super traditional, but they love him too. Or at least, they love the fact that he’s becoming a doctor.”

The child of refugees who came to Uniguita in the early 90s, Kate tells me that her parents had mixed feelings when she got into the elite University of Nova Espero.

“They were ecstatic that I got into UNE, it’s every immigrant parent’s dream for their kid to get into UNE,” she tells me. “But my dad was heartbroken that his little girl was going to be hours down the coast. ‘It’s so far away,’ he’d say. ‘And what if there aren’t any Ylrikian boys there,’” she says with a laugh. “Whoops.”

Lewis comes over and introduces himself in a twang that’d betray his Fertile Center roots if Kate hadn’t already told me where he’s from.

“Everything’s really… loud here,” he says. This elicits a giggle from Kate, very much amused at the fish so clearly out of water. “But it’s honestly been a lot of fun! I love this… um, uh,” he says as he fumbles with a bottle filled with a deep-red liquid.

“Sakura Pop!” Kate exclaims. “I’m so glad he likes it, it’s honestly a green flag for me. So many people from outside of here don’t like it very much.”

The couple continues onward, waving goodbye as they duck into a line of nearby shops.

Benjamin is a lifelong Port Williams resident and employee of Rensselaer Shipbuilding, which has a massive shipyard around a mile away. Though he’s from a predominantly Western neighborhood on the city’s south side, he says he likes the “energy” of Little Irikyo, especially on market days.

“Our neighborhood can just be too quiet sometimes,” he tells me while sitting on a bench near the center of the action. “It’s nice when you’re trying to go to sleep, or just want a quiet walk to yourself, but sometimes it just feels a little… I don’t know, cold?”

“It feels a lot warmer here,” says Benjamin as he lights up a cigarette.

As we’re talking, a number of vendors and neighborhood residents wave hello to Benjamin. He tells me to stay put while he catches up with a man pushing a cart overflowing with bouquets of daffodils, poppies, and imported roses.

“Sorry about that,” he apologizes. “I hadn’t seen Danny in about a year. I was starting to get worried about him!”

The air is filled with the buzz of a thousand conversations, the laughter of children running around, and the splattering of fryer oil. The thrum is intermittently pierced by the honking of a nearby jitney, the ringing of a bike bell, or the chirping of the returning migratory birds.

“I’d move up here, but my wife would throw a fit. She thinks it’s too noisy,” Benjamin laments. “Oh well. She’s worth the train trip,” he says waving around a bright red rose he purchased from Danny.

“Hello sir! Are you registered to vote?” is how 57-year-old Esther greets me at the YUCRA table. Even after I tell her that I’m registered in Nova Espero, she shows no urgency in moving me along. Compared to the rest of the market, the spot around the YUCRA table is relatively quiet. When I tell her that I work for the Universalo, she seems excited.

“Maybe folks will hear my message. Too many people in Uniguita aren’t registered to vote. They don’t even seem to care about politics,” she complains. In fact, Port Williams has particularly low rates of political participation – in the 124 PM general election, only around 49% of the city’s registered voters cast a ballot, compared to 57% nationwide.

“I grew up in Ylrikia, and left when I was 24… it’s different now, but when I was a kid you couldn’t really vote. Well, you could, but there was only one party so it wasn’t really an election,” Esther explains. “People here take it for granted sometimes, I think.”

Esther gets excited when her co-volunteer, Sophie, convinces a young man to register to vote. She thanks him for registering before turning back to me.

“I think people talk to her more because she’s a cute college girl,” Esther whispers to me with a laugh. “Whatever gets them to the polls I suppose!”

PORT WILLIAMS, N.H. – TRIO 3, 126 PM

At Pier 15 in Port Williams’ storied harbor, tearful passengers drag suitcases down gangways, briefly looking back to gaze upon the towering Amity behind them. 1,128 feet from bow to stern and with a capacity of 4,000 passengers, the gigantic cruise liner plodded the several thousand miles between Port Williams and Ylrik City for decades. Sunset Hospitality, which acquired the liner in 111 PM, says that it plans to keep the liner at a nearby pier permanently as a portside luxury hotel after an extensive retrofit that would see its history-making nuclear engine ripped out and replaced with more space for spas, boutiques, and theaters.

This last call to port marks the end of a long and fascinating narrative in nautical, technological, and even geopolitical history. As a ship responsible for so many memories sets down its anchor for the final time, it’s worth retelling the history of this fascinating vessel.

War and peace

After the Sherbrooke War ended in 45 PM, tensions remained high between Uniguita and the Ylrikian Empire. Relations were further inflamed after the latter’s first, post-Milito test of a significant explosive device (SED) in 53 PM. Two years later, Uniguita followed suit with a test of its own. Renewed fears over a second SED war little more than half a century after the Milito nearly destroyed all life on the planet generated a significant anti-SED protest movement that helped define politics in the West in the late 50s.

One of the leaders of this movement was Conservative Common Councilmember Fernando Pelar. Like many at the time, Pelar was the son of victims of the Milito, specifically a couple that survived the cavalcade of missiles that destroyed Puerto Blanco. As Pelar eventually came into politics, he became an active and outspoken opponent of redeveloping SEDs, lending his support to a 51 PM motion to ban their research and development within Uniguita entirely. Though the bill obviously didn’t pass and Uniguita did end up rebuilding the bomb, Pelar remained obstinate in his commitment to disarmament.

Ahead of the 60 PM primaries, Pelar became the friendly face of a Conservative Party still reeling from the consequences of party leader President Enrico Carmelo’s attempted coup in 47 PM. An anti-SED former businessman provided a contrast to the Populist Marco Paleda, a lifelong bureaucrat and staunch supporter of the incumbent administration. Pelar won over a new renegade constituency of liberal-conservatives who supported traditional values, low taxes, and geopolitical détente. Despite only narrowly nabbing the Conservative nomination, Pelar ended up winning the 60 PM presidential election convincingly. Pelar promised a “new day” for Uniguita, and sought to turn the page on the country’s past struggles and rebuild transcontinental communications.

Meanwhile, Ylrikian Emperor Katsuhito pursued an aggressive foreign policy. After the Empire’s loss in the Sherbrooke War, he shored up occupying forces in the Crescent Islands, Bawguk, and the Central Mountains while expanding the Imperial Navy. Katsuhito pushed for redevelopment of SEDs, and proudly boasted about them on the international stage. At a 59 PM meeting of the Continental Union, he said that his nation’s bombers could, “cloud the Western skies with smoke before their pilots even rolled out of their barracks.”

There could be no men more different than Katsuhito and his son Asahi. Unlike Katsuhito, a longstanding military officer and lieutenant to his own continent-conquering father, Asahi was much more interested in economics and diplomacy than war. During his requisite military service, then-Prince Asahi spent time in the Ylrikian backcountry and was taken aback by the crushing poverty. When he visited Uniguita in 51 PM as a part of his studies, Asahi was astounded at the Federation’s comparative abundance. He wrote in his diary.

“Here, the children of farmers do not suffer the humiliation of hunger and deprivation. The hamlets are obviously less prosperous than the cities, but even a rural fruit stand here is more replete with produce than a typical grocer in the Imperial Capital. The school in this village has more resources and a more competent instructor than most schools even in our middle class districts. It is a wonder that we have an Empire at all.”

Because of the difference between the two men, Katsuhito’s sudden death in 62 PM served was a geopolitical earthquake. The newly crowned, 33-year-old Emperor Asahi had no interest in pursuing his father’s revisionist foreign policy. Instead, he sought a liberalized economy bereft of its ancient, ossified Crown corporations and landlords, and rapprochement with Uniguita to facilitate open trade. In an address following his coronation, Asahi called for the “light of the coming glorious sunrise to burn away the icy walls of enmity.”

When President Pelar and Emperor Asahi met for the first time in 63 PM for preliminary trade and arms reduction talks, the two got along well. When revanchist imperialists attempted to overthrow Asahi in 64 PM, Pelar lent valuable intelligence support that led to the coup’s ultimate failure. On the heels of this failed insurrection, Asahi was able to sideline the old nobles and replace them with an ascendant industrial, merchant, and political class that would supercharge the Ylrikian economy and supply the membership of his new Imperial Parliament.

This same parliament would help ratify the Continental Arms Reduction Treaty of 64 PM (CART 64), which prohibited Uniguita and Ylrikia from further developing SEDs for the next twenty five years, and created a timeline for the destruction of current weapons. The document also, importantly, barred both powers from building new nuclear-powered warships.

At the time the treaty was signed, the governments of both nations had the construction of a number of such warships under contract with a variety of shipbuilders. Some chose to pivot, selling the reactors to universities and institutes for research, or to backcountry utilities as an efficient option for rural electrification of low-population areas.

Others had a different idea.

‘Game on’

Shortly after CART 64’s ratification, Uniguitan shipping magnate Benjamin Rensselaer met with Ylrikian shipping magnate Hiro Shimizu at a hotel in Madawba. Both men had two issues – surplus nuclear reactors specifically designed to power ships, and no ships to power them with. And while détente helped create a new peace, this new peace was detrimental to the bottom lines of these giants of their countries’ military-industrial complexes.

At the same time, both saw an opportunity. Prior to the Milito, cruise liners had been a booming industry, with the various shipbuilders of the world competing to build the best cruise ship possible. Rival Ylrikian and Hegelio-Ferrian companies regularly raced ships across the Great Western Sea to show off their nautical acumen, creating a strong – but pacific – competitive spirit between the two countries’ seafaring enterprises.

In the decades following the Milito, both Uniguita and Ylrikia had built river cruises or liners meant for intra-national travel along their own coasts. But they hadn’t explored transoceanic travel in the same way pre-Milito companies had.

Now, with a series of nuclear reactors just waiting to have ships built around them, Rensselaer and Shimizu saw a chance for a comeback. The two agreed to stage a friendly competition between the two shipbuilding giants – they would see who could build a ship the quickest, and then in a simultaneous time trial, who could travel between the two countries’ capitals the fastest.

Even before they had lined up the funding for their projects, the two companies built hype by announcing the competition. On Quinto 3, 65 PM, Shimizu placed a full page ad in the Universalo challenging the Federation to compete to build the, “fastest, greatest, and most luxurious ship the world has ever seen.” There were only three rules: the ship had to be at least 1,000 feet long, it had to have a passenger capacity of at least 4,000, and it had to make use of a nuclear-powered engine.

A week later, Rensselaer published its response in the Universalo and the Ylrikian Teikoku Shimbun: shōbu da – “game on”.

Media coverage increased, and both companies began working on their respective liners. Soon enough, the governments of both countries became interested in the competition. In Uniguita, the Common Council dedicated N5,000,0001 – about N18.7 million today – to building Rensselaer’s entry, the Amity. Ylrikia committed a similar sum to building Shimizu’s Shinzen (“goodwill” in Ylrikian) project.

The two countries got involved in what was nominally a private competition between various shipping magnates for a number of reasons. The first was technological. Even though CART 64 prohibited putting nuclear-powered engines in warships, the treaty would only remain in force for twenty-five years. Further testing would not only give each navy an advantage when the treaty eventually sunsetted, but would also lend itself to commercial uses in the merchant fleets that were expected to grow alongside expanded trade between Uniguita and Ylrikia.

The second was political. With a drawdown in naval shipbuilding contracts, thousands were expected to be unemployed in Uniguita’s populous coastal cities like Port Williams. Funding such a project would provide temporary employment, and would help staunch any potential resentment that unemployed dockworkers would feel at the polls in the next elections. Even in Ylrikia, which was far from a democracy – Parliament was only open to members of the newly-founded Loyalty and Prosperity Party, which was itself a fairly elite, exclusive organization – Emperor Asahi knew that immediately laying off thousands of dockworkers might damage the legitimacy of his still very fresh reforms and strategy of economic over military competition.

The final reason was purely symbolic. After Ylrikia’s defeat in the Sherbrooke War twenty years prior, there was a sense that the Empire could use a win. Asahi and his advisors were confident that Ylrikia, with its larger population and mercantile history, would eventually come to outcompete Uniguita economically. He and his advisors foresaw Ylrikia’s victory in this competition as the opening salvo in a new era of Ylrikian ascendancy. Pelar and the Uniguitans, meanwhile, saw the competition as a way to reaffirm the Federation’s economic and technological supremacy.

With government and private support, Shimizu and Rensselaer began construction in earnest. The two became celebrities in their respective countries, as did the projects’ leads. In a temperamentally conservative and reserved culture, Shinzen’s Fuku Tanaka was unique in being a jovial, charismatic, and eminently telegenic figure. At the same time, Ylrikian audiences revered his proven technical expertise, impressive credentials as a longtime naval engineer responsible for some of the Empire’s most advanced warships, and regular project updates that became must-see television.

The Amity’s Sandra McMaster, meanwhile, stood as a symbol of the Uniguitan Dream. The tenth of eleven children from a poor family from the swamps of Swalabash, McMaster came from nothing to become one of the most accomplished individuals in maritime history. Responsible for designing several of the ships that eventually helped Uniguita win the Sherbrooke War, she became a national hero. As a self-described “reformed warmonger”, her professed hope for more peaceful relations between Uniguita and Ylrikia folded in neatly with the country’s new geopolitical outlook. And being a woman, she provided a more egalitarian contrast to the male-dominated world of Ylrikian industry.

For the next two years, construction continued. In Ylrik City, Shimizu’s workers labored for countless hours of overtime, oftentimes clocking over 80 hours a week driving rivets, welding beams, and installing the ship’s hundreds of staterooms. While this working style was a boon for the rate of progress, it created hazardous working conditions – on Unuo 14, 67 PM, three workers were killed and dozens more were scalded in a steam explosion aboard the ship that likely resulted from hastily welded valves. Four months later, seventeen workers were killed and nearly forty more were injured when a scaffolding platform gave way. Over two-hundred other workers were injured in falls, collapses, and other workplace incidents. On the 30th anniversary of the ship race, one Shinzen worker later told the Universalo that working conditions on the jobsite reminded him of “the slavery that built the vast Ylrikian temples centuries ago.”

“They drove us to work impossible hours with impossible speed,” he told the paper in 98 PM. “Simply put, it was all impossible. It only got done despite the impossibility of the circumstances.”

In Uniguita, meanwhile, Rensselaer faced its own setbacks. The largely unionized workforce of Port Williams demanded shorter hours, higher pay, and safer working conditions. This ensured that the workers were better compensated and safer than their counterparts in Ylrikia – only three died during Amity’s construction – but it slowed progress and caused construction costs to balloon over the lifetime of the project. Originally projected to cost just N36 million2 in today’s notes, the project finally cost just over N51 million3 at completion.

Further exacerbating timeline and cost issues were conflicts early in the construction process between Western and Eastern workers. The Western-dominated Shipbuilders Union was hesitant to enlist the help of the significant Ylrikian and Crescent Islander diaspora communities in Port Williams, alleging that they would sabotage the project in the interest of the Ylrikian Empire and put downward pressure on the unionworkers’ wages. Just weeks after construction started, members of the Shipbuilders Union attacked arriving Ylrikian- and Islander-Uniguitan workers, leading to dozens of injuries and hundreds of arrests.

Eventually, the federal Constitutional Court intervened, ordering the union to accept non-Western members and to halt all attempts at blocking workers of Eastern heritage from entering the jobsite. Even so, the entire situation served as a black eye for the project and a propaganda victory for the more nationalist set in Ylrikia. The ultranationalist Irikkoku Shinbun chastised their Uniguitan competition, pointing out the hypocrisy of Uniguita’s stated egalitarian values that conflicted directly with what was essentially a race riot.

For more on the Ylrikian- and Islander-Uniguitan communities in Port Williams, read the following Dispatch on the modern diaspora’s reaction to the Crescent Islands’ potential withdrawal from the Ylrikian Empire.

Ylrikia scored a major victory on Septo 19, 67 PM when Shinzen was the first of the two ships to launch. Hundreds of thousands flocked to Ylrik City’s port to see the cruise set off for the first time, a victory and goodwill tour around the Empire’s island possessions. The Teikoku Shimbun published a breathless review of the ceremony, saying that the launch “marked the beginning of a new Century of Ylrikian Excellence, and the first of likely endless triumphs of Ylrikian industry.”

The Amity, confronted with the aforementioned delays, wouldn’t launch until Dekaunuo 2, 67 PM. “While the Shinzen slipped from its berths amid the beautiful sunshine of an Ylrik City summer, the Amity slinks away through the bitter winds and driving rains of a Port Williams autumn,” wrote one columnist from the Universalo.

Broadly speaking, however, initial reviews of the Amity were positive. It was a feat of modern engineering, and its luxury was unrivaled. In trial cruises along the Federation’s sunnier Gold Coast, tourists, maritime professionals, and public officials all lauded its state-of-the-art accommodations, bountiful entertainment, and breathtaking speed. The same columnist from the Universalo wrote of the ship that, “despite its tardiness, the Amity is a monument to Uniguitan commerce, innovation, engineering, and imagination.” He contended, “that there exists no greater representation of the Spirit of Uniguita than a costly, over-schedule, truly groundbreaking and unrivaled piece of nautical architecture.”

In early 68 PM, Shimizu and Rensselaer agreed to a timeline for the final race. Both ships would depart their respective capitals, and would then have to plod across the Great Western Sea (or, Great Eastern Sea, from the Ylrikians’ point of view) to the rival’s capital, stop for a state visit by each nation’s head of state, and then rush back.

Barring unexpected weather conditions, both ships would launch on Kvarto 14, 68 PM at noon Nova Espero time – Ylrikia lost the coin flip, meaning that they would have to launch at midnight local time.

The game was set: soon, the Amity and Shinzen would sail the high seas. The speculation on which ship would take home the gold was muddled – analysts on both sides of the ocean believed that their ship would be the clear favorite. Independent observers from third-party nations like Erachnia and Madawba weren’t any help either; they said either had a solid chance at victory.

As Kvarto 14 approached, both sides prepared mightily. But the road was not yet clear. In the weeks before the race, tragedy, controversy, and technical issues would almost keep it from happening entirely.

This is the first in a two-part series on the Great Cruise Race of the 60s PM. Subscribe to Dispatches from Uniguita to receive an alert when Part Two is posted.

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PIERRON, P.N. – DUO 24, 126 PM

“Tabernac!” fisherman Jean-Pierre Fournier exclaims as he frantically yanks on his fishing pole. Tugging and reeling, the seasoned angler grits his teeth as the massive walleye erupts from the hole carved into the ice below. Five-year-old Philippe Fournier, buried under layers of winter weather gear, claps his gloved hands together excitedly. “C’est énorme, papa!” he shouts.

On the frigid ice of Ultime Cove under the watchful eye of Old Pierron’s medieval parapets, father and son Fournier embrace. The Fourniers are just two in the long line of ice fishers that have long plied these icy waters adjacent to one of the nation’s largest cities. Rising temperatures, however, could see this long-standing tradition soon thaw out of existence.

Fishing to shipping to fishing again

Pierron was initially founded on the heights overlooking the Grand Coin, the massive estuary where the Pierron River meets the Great Inland Sea. The Grand Coin was replete with fish, and walleye and pike became mainstays of the area’s diet. Just south of the settlement’s center sits Ultime Cove, a large, relatively shallow pool that served as a common fishing spot in early Pierron.

“During winter, the conditions on the sea and the Grand Coin are absolutely horrid,” says Sophie Denaurd, an associate historian at the Pierron Maritime Museum. She shows me the bell of the Fontenot, a fishing vessel that succumbed to the sea’s turbulent waters a few years before the Milito, taking fifty-three sailors with it. She points to a dark red mark on the adjacent wall thirty feet up, the estimated height of the waves that sent the Fontenot to the seafloor.

Denaurd explains that if a great, steel fishing vessel like the Fontenot faced grave danger in the wintertime seas, the small wooden dinghies of the medieval times were in even greater danger.

Ultime Cove, shielded from the ferocious winds and waves of the Great Inland Sea and the broader Grand Coin made for a well-protected fishing spot. When the Cove froze over, Pieronnaise fishers bored holes into the ice and got to work. The yearly hauls would supplement grain sent aboard river barges from further inland, ensuring that Pierron didn’t starve during the region’s long and brutal winters. Even on summer days, the cove was regularly filled with small fishing boats.

As transportation modernized, industrialists and food shippers found the Cove to be a valuable location to take in freighters and barges to transfer goods to newly built rail lines for transport to Terre de Lac’s non-riverine and non-coastal cities. Additionally, the city’s rapid industrialization and expansion in the decades leading up to the Milito led to something called the “urban heat island effect.”

“All of those new dark surfaces – think apartment blocks, roads, factories, railyards, and even sidewalks – suck up a lot more heat than, say, the native forest that existed before,” says Étiennette Desvaliers, an employee of the city’s park system which oversees ice fishing at Ultime Cove. This additional heat caused the ice of the Cove to recede, leaving less space and time for the once common fishermen during the winter months.

Being a major port city, Pierron faced heavy bombardment during the Milito. Like Nova Espero, much of its older core was spared the worst of the damage, and the city’s survivors found security behind its ancient walls. But with the War came a critical food shortage.

“They didn’t have access to those giant fishing boats anymore, and even if they did, the seas were absolutely lethal in those first few years,” Sophie Denaurd tells me. The climatic effects of the Milito were catastrophic in Terre de Lac, creating massive storm surges that pummeled the already severely damaged city’s northern shore and swept a number of fledgling coastal fishing villages out to sea. Not to mention the frequent subzero conditions and blizzards that would dump upwards of two feet of snow on the area, boxing in the local inhabitants.

Ultime Cove, now refreezing, provided an opportunity.

After the father-son fishing trip, Jean-Pierre takes me to his family’s (thankfully, very warm) home in Pierron’s rapidly growing Côté Sud neighborhood just a few blocks away. As teenage Claire shows Philippe how to cut and clean the walleye, Jean-Pierre shows me a well-worn photo album. He points to a photo of a couple taken just a few short years before the War.

“When they were running off to a shelter, my great-great grandmother, Marie, put a photo album and her old camera in her bag. Her husband, Jean-Luc, said, ‘Marie, what the hell are you doing! What use is that junk’”, he recalls with a chuckle. “I’m glad she didn’t listen!”

After showing me some more photos of the Fournier ancestors, he moves on to the album’s post-War section. It documents Pierron’s damaged buildings, burnt-out vehicles, and ad hoc shantytowns, but also the community’s resilience in the face of adversity. One photo, marked “Le Grand Butin” – “the great bounty” – shows a grinning Jean-Luc and his fellow survivors on Ultime Cove, standing arm in arm behind a massive pile of fish. Another shows them cooking the “bounty” over wire baskets and other impromptu grills.

“Things were hard back then,” Jean-Pierre tells me. “But the people here are tough – ‘en marche!” he says, quoting the city’s slogan which translates to “onward!”

Thinning ice

As Pierron and the other Lacaise commonwealths joined Uniguita and the trade economy came back, so too did the Ultime dockyards. Freight traffic crowded out the Cove to warm-weather fishers by the early 30s PM, but once again, as soon as the ice returned around Dekaduo each year, ramshackle ice-shanties appeared atop the ice.

At the Ultime Public Market just two blocks from the waterfront, Jean-Pierre’s great-grandfather, then grandfather, and then father, had a small stall where they would sell their catches. Walleye were the hottest commodity, as were the mussels that scummed the covebed. The poissonnerie served customers from 33 PM to 117 PM, transcending three generations of the Fournier family. Rising costs, diminishing fish populations, and changing appetites among marketgoers – the Fourniers’ old stall is now occupied by a Bawguk gimbap stand – ultimately led to the stall’s closure under Jean-Pierre’s father.

“He was sad to see it go,” he says at first with a wistful look in his eyes. His expression soon changes to a smirk. “But he seems plenty happy with mom down in the sun of the Gold Coast.”

Jean-Pierre carries on the family tradition with his children and their ice-fishing adventures on the Cove. But a changing microclimate may be putting that under threat. As a result of Pierron’s rapid expansion over the past several years, the city’s “urban heat island” is returning and growing in temperature.

“Because Côté Sud right next to the water is developing so quickly, and because we’ve finally ended the decades-long recovery from the post-War ‘little ice age’ the ice is thickening less quickly and receding more quickly than we’d like,” Étiennette Desvaliers explains.

Though Desvaliers says that the ice is still safely thick to support human beings and even lightweight shanties in the dead of winter, things are getting more hazardous in the late-fall and early-spring. Tragedy struck on Dekaduo 19, 123 PM when a father was severely injured and his two daughters drowned after their fishing shanty broke through the ice. On Trio 3, 125 PM, two teenagers suffered life-threatening frostbite and hypothermia when the ice beneath them gave way.

In response, officials have closed Ultime Cove to ice fishing prior to Fellowship Day (Dekaduo 22) and after Trio 1. And Parcs Pierron now hires two seasonal “ice inspectors” to check the ice’s thickness on a weekly basis, setting down barriers to prevent visitors from stepping out onto potentially-hazardous sections.

Jean-Pierre points out the neon-orange, plastic construction fences as we near the waterfront. He translates a bright white warning sign bearing the haunting silhouette of someone drowning amid chunks of floating ice.

“‘Warning – The ice ahead is perilous. People have died here. Please stay out.’” he reads.

Well away from the ominous alert, I join Jean-Pierre and Philippe as they prepare for another day of fishing. “The ice is good, we’re good,” the younger Fournier says.

They cross their fingers for more walleyes.

UPCHURCH, NEW HEGELION – DUO 17, 126 PM

The capital of New Hegelion would be a forgettable, regional hub on the other side of the Great Inland Sea. With just under 100,000 inhabitants, Upchurch is not a great metropolitan center of a burgeoning multi-national democracy like Nova Espero, or the crown jewel in an expansive Empire like Ylrik City. Built with assistance of Ylrikia during its autocracy’s waning years as a sign of inter-regime fraternity, central Upchurch is itself a monument to authoritarian neuropathy. Its expansive and ostentatious boulevards and gratuitous monuments are relics of a different time – one where this quasi-state was not an international pariah persistently on the verge of economic collapse. Under the weight of three decades of isolation, poverty, and inept administration, the statues rot and the triumphal arches wither in the harsh northern winters.

At an oversized, over-indulgent roundabout at the city’s focal point are statues of the ethnostate’s national fathers. Lionel Upchurch, that ancient racist whose scheming, capacity for violence, and demagoguery made him a perfect avatar for the New Hegelion movement a century ago stands upright, his hand outstretched southwards as if to pull his Hegelionic co-ethnics to the north.

To his right stands Charles Belk. Even the hagiographers who design such statues could only do so much to cover up his embarrassing combover, outsized eyebrows, and awkward chin. Here, he is the same height as the historically six-foot-one Lionel Upchurch, whereas in reality he was closer to five-foot-six and 150 pounds soaking wet. At the time these statues were erected, Charles Belk was still alive – but no one dared to question the inaccuracies. Charles Belk was a god, and one to be feared. Maybe he really was six feet tall.

If things went a different way, Charles Belk would have been another in a series of Security and Justice Party also-rans, netting less than 10% of the vote in the second round of the 88 PM Uniguitan presidential election. Another embarrassing loss for an embarrassing political movement. But the 88 PM election – and the SJP’s humiliating defeat – would break something deep in the core of Charles Belk. And subsequently, something deep in the core of Uniguita.

The sum of all fears

Premier Phillip Gladstone had defeated Howard Sanck, the manifestation of the insurgent far-right within the Conservative Party. He had managed to emerge victorious without selling his political soul, but history showed that he may need to reassess. Since Carmelo’s fall in 47 PM, the Conservatives had been unable to capture a general election victory without the support of their in-house right wing, in addition to the support of the Security and Justice Party.

And the leader of the SJP, Charles Belk, was an obstinate extremist. Emerging from the ideological backwater of the extreme wing of an already extreme party, Belk was never going to settle for anything less than the traditional “Agreement” between the Conservatives and the SJP. In exchange for their support, the SJP would seek diminished federal involvement in New Hegelion’s internal affairs, and relaxed enforcement of the Federation’s constitutional civil rights guarantees. This had been the quid pro quo for the past half century, from Carmelo to Pelar to now. No Conservative presidency, no conservative majority in the Council could be formed without acquiescing to these demands. And after twenty years of isolation from political power, Belk figured that Gladstone and the Conservatives would be more willing than ever to make concessions.

But Phillip Gladstone had a different read of the political landscape in 88 PM. From his point of view, it wasn’t the Conservatives who were fatigued from loss, but the Uniguitan people from two decades of Populist victory. Since Conservative Fernando Pelar left office twenty years before, the People’s Party had had a stranglehold on federal power. The 86 PM midterms had offered a glimmer of hope – the Conservatives and SJP were able to capture a workable majority. A slim majority, but a majority nonetheless. Since those elections, people’s views of the Poppies had soured even more – the incumbent president Stephen McAllister had an approval rating of just 30% by mid 88 PM. His anointed successor, Vice President Harry Pierce, sat comfortably in the mid-30s in the first round polls and had only just barely won his own party’s primary. Gladstone didn’t think he could win in the first round – a Conservative had never won outright in the first round – but he thought he could win in the second round with less support from the SJP.

Over the next three months, Gladstone toured the country, courting the countless ethnic organizations and special interest groups in the Conservative constellation. He spoke at assemblies of traditionalist Fosterians, meetings of Swalabash swampmen’s unions, and the soirees of suburban ladies’ clubs. He swept to the right sometimes – “it’s clear that the Poppies are incapable of ensuring that law and order are maintained,” he told an audience in Vetludo. “It’s high time that we start laying down the law, and follow Commissioner Renzi’s example.”

Arturo Renzi had been the controversial chief of police in Vetludo, a city long-known for its violent organized crime. After becoming the city’s top cop in 79 PM, Renzi pursued a tough-on-crime agenda that bolstered his popularity on the national stage. While he was applauded for taking down a number of criminal outfits, his heavy-handed methods came under fire for violating citizens’ civil rights, and his police bureau faced allegations of torture and extrajudicial killing. “If you have a problem with lower crime, safer streets, and fewer gangsters running around, you’re free to leave,” Renzi once told reporters. When questioned about the suspicious death of a suspected gang member, he shot back, “how many crooks have you put away?”

There was a line that Gladstone wouldn’t cross, at least not explicitly – he would not voice his support for continuing “the Agreement.” He didn’t outright condemn it. But in speeches across the country, he hesitated to race-bait or champion “local rights” in the way that SJP audiences might have liked. He instead focused on kitchen table issues like public safety, the economy, and government corruption. The Poppies had given him plenty of ammunition – President McAllister’s chief of staff had just been convicted of surreptitiously taking a bribe from an automotive manufacturer seeking rollbacks in regulations – and he intended to use it.

That someone like Renzi, who should have been an easy target for SJP support, threw his heavyweight law-and-order endorsement behind Gladstone should have been a warning sign for Belk. In prior years, the SJP had cleaned up with the tough-on-crime crowd. If for nothing else, people voted SJP to send a message to the Conservatives: crack skulls, or get out of the way for people who will.

But the SJP had spent the past decade and a half whittling away its own support. In the past two decades, the SJP had become more single-mindedly obsessed with New Hegelion-specific issues, and the majority within the party’s governing institutions had become increasingly isolated in the echo chambers of the Hegelionic ethnonationalism that had come to dominate the northern political zeitgeist. Old Hegelion, once a bastion of support for the New Hegelion project, had politically moderated in recent decades. The SJP was quickly losing support there, and it became a vicious cycle – as more southerners left the party, the radical northerners gained power. And as they gained more power, the party became more extreme and alienated more southerners. When Fernando Pelar left office in 68 PM, around a third of SJP Common Councilors came from the south. By 88 PM, less than a tenth did. In 72 PM, the SJP won 23% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election. In 84 PM, they won just 12%.

On Election Day, the cumulative effects of Gladstone’s vigorous campaign and the SJP’s decline revealed themselves. Belk won a record low 8.3% of the vote, and his SJP won around the same amount in the party list vote. But much to Belk and the SJP’s terror, Gladstone won 50.7% in the first round. For the first time, a Conservative who made no effort to reach out to the SJP and had very little interest in their prerogatives had won a majority of the vote in the first round. He had secured the presidency without making the formulaic appearance before a convention of Security and Justice Party members, or prostrating himself before audiences of skeptical Upchurch racists.

Belk and his strategists held out hope for some sort of continuation of the Agreement through the Council. The Conservatives hadn’t won an outright majority in the legislature, and dozens of district races where no candidate won more than 50% of the vote in the first round would go to a second round of voting. In a number of swing districts, the SJP attempted to covertly support the Populist candidate in the hopes of denying the Conservatives a majority and forcing them to coalesce with the SJP. Just days before the second round of voting was to take place, the Universalo revealed the scheme in a front-page exposé.

The following day, Gladstone and the Council Conservative leader Paula Laredo announced that, even if the Conservatives failed to gain a majority, they wouldn’t work with the SJP.

“This isn’t just political hardball, this is cynicism,” Gladstone told a gaggle of reporters. “After the past two decades of corruption and mismanagement, there will be no room in the upcoming government for cynicism. We need pragmatists and idealists, not the tacticians of dirty backroom politics.”

On the day of the second round, the sum of all Belk’s and the SJP’s fears had come to fruition. The SJP’s efforts at political subterfuge had failed – the Conservatives would have their first outright majority in Council since the Carmelo administration forty years prior, with several votes to spare in case a few members needed to buck the party line.

The Conservatives had won. And for the first time, the SJP wasn’t along for the ride. The SJP had learned that they were not indispensable to a Conservative victory. Gladstone didn’t need them. The Conservatives didn’t need them. In fact, they didn’t even want them.

Belk still held out hope for some semblance of right-wing allyship between the two parties. Gladstone made great haste in dashing it.

A world on the precipice

When Phillip Gladstone took office on Dekaduo 1, 88 PM, supplicating the northern racists was not at the front of his mind. The economy was in freefall, and confidence in the government had been shaken by a series of corruption and moral scandals within the preceding McAllister administration. Long-standing ethnic grievances between the Zoldish and Pravish peoples had escalated into reciprocal spasms of violence, and the nation’s institutions were under stress from incoming waves of refugees fleeing Ylrikia’s renewed repression in the Central Mountains and the Crescent Islands. Simmering tensions with an increasingly revanchist Ylrikia stoked fears of renewed continental war, and some analysts hypothesized that the Empire was on the verge of redeveloping the same bombs that had nearly snuffed out humanity less than a century before.

From his new office at Voorhees Square, President Gladstone saw a world on the precipice. Growing anxieties over political and cultural irrelevance in the north weren’t the most salient issues, and responses would be delegated to advisors. “In the context of everything, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal,” Gladstone told the Universalo in 112 PM.

For Charles Belk, the issue was front of mind. Despite all of his efforts, the Conservatives no longer had to seek his party’s advice or support on anything. Rumors spread that Gladstone would be pushing for a general amnesty for illegal immigrants. With the SJP-written Immigration and Naturalization Act of 64 PM nearing its expiration, theories suggested that the Conservative government would create an immigration framework that was more relaxed. The 64 PM act contained a carve-out that essentially allowed the commonwealths of New Hegelion to determine their own linguistic and immigration policies. A draft of the new replacement legislation crafted by the Conservative majority had no such carve-out, and in fact would mandate that New Hegelion absorb more immigrants and refugees.

On Duo 18, 89 PM, the Security and Justice Party held its regularly scheduled post-election conference. There, the party faithful reviewed the previous year’s results, and determined whether or not to retain the leadership. Charles Belk, still the leader of the SJP in the Common Council despite his loss in the presidential election, faced an uphill battle to keep his spot. The SJP had lost seats despite the deep unpopularity of the People’s Party. The party now only had a handful of remaining councilors south of the Inland Sea. And some viewed Belk with contempt; the party’s more aristocratic sort saw his scheme to block the Conservative majority as being vulgar and underhanded.

When Charles Belk approached the podium at the conference’s opening session, he was greeted with applause. From the aristocrats came tepid claps, the mandatory show of praise to demonstrate continued party unity. From Belk’s allies, the stubborn support of a village welcoming back its fallen wrestler from a bout in a neighboring town. “That kid was a gorilla, it wasn’t your fault,” some would say, patting him on the shoulder. “You gave ‘em a good fight.”

It isn’t known when Belk decided to make the speech he ended up giving. It matched no written remarks found anywhere, least of all the ones that he laid down on the podium.

“Fellow patriots,” he began. “I come to you today as the leader of our Party. Before all else, I take responsibility for our performance in the most recent election. As the leader, the buck stops with me.”

The energy in the convention hall was restless. Delegates milled about. Some shared words about the upcoming leadership votes. Others sat in silence, listening to what was expected to be Belk’s final words from the political gallows.

“Before I offer you my resignation, I ask that you humor me, and allow me to share with you a story.”

Belk proceeded to tell a romantic tale of New Hegelion – as a nation of exiled Hegelions, the progenitors of Uniguitan governance who were eventually shunned for their culture and their adherence to traditional moral principles. He told of how the Uniguitans came to embrace these expats, seeing their wonderful cities, thriving industry, and solid faith. But over time, the love affair soured. The old bigotries returned.

“They loved us for our faith, and then hated us for our adherence to the word of God,” he said. “They loved us for our care of history, and then hated us for strenuously defending our way of life.”

He argued that, in this new age, the Populists and Conservatives had molded into one. “They value indulgence over integrity, profit over prayer, and hedonism over heritage,” he told the audience, the tenor in his voice rising.

“The election was rigged,” he yelled into the microphone.

“Not at the ballot box, no. They didn’t need to do that. It was rigged by a media that peddled pornography and loose morals. It was rigged by an academia that tells children to hate their history. It was rigged by a culture of decadence, of vanity, of gluttony,” he howled.

“The system our forefathers fought so hard to build has become rigged against us,” Belk clamored, as the volume picked up in the conference hall. “And I pledge, as your leader, to resist that wicked system to my dying breath.”

The crowd jumped to their feet. Belk had lit a fire at what was supposed to be his political funeral. Even the aristocrats, the executioners ready to spring the trapdoor and usher in a new era for the SJP, couldn’t help but cheer. The noose around Belk’s neck quickly unraveled.

“My friends: for so long the south has waged war against us,” he concluded.

“Now, together, we will take the war to Nova Espero!”

There was rapturous applause in the chamber. Most in the hall understood this to be a rhetorical war, a culture war against an increasingly immoral and misguided south. But some heard something else. Something more profound.

Some saw Belk’s address as the opening salvo in a revolution.

This is part of a series centered on Pavel Tzarkowski’s experiences as a survivor in early Nova Espero entitled “1850-01.” Follow this link to go to the series’ page.

“We went back out to the electrical institute to see if we could scrape up any further documentation. We were only able to find one useful journal, but we did find a box of old cortezada sticks1 in what appeared to be a professor’s office. Lt. Suarez loves the things, and knows that Chief Libero does too. They apparently shared them over some coffee in the Council Hall. I visited Anna today. She seems to be in good spirits, and the Aid Corps officers appear very attentive. Filip misses his sister, but he seems to be liking daycare and Miss Martine.”

• Diary of Pavel Tzarkowski, Dekaunuo 1, 2 PM. 2 days after leaving quarantine; 88 until citizenship.

“Elizabeta and I attended our first ‘market night’ tonight. Every weekend, Guards who pay a fee or licensed dealers are allowed to hawk their ‘non-essential’ exploits from beyond the walls. Dress shirts, fur coats, neckties, dresses, watches, jewelry are all hot commodities. As are toys, games, and surprisingly books and even records. Though only the cooperatives and public buildings have the power for a record player, their staffs are always looking for familiar favorites or pre-War novelties. Particularly beloved is Rodiño Sáenz, a tango artist out of southern Ferria. People like to get close to one another here especially this time of year, and now they have the security for the kind of intimacy and diversion a tango would provide. Selling liquor by the bottle is strictly forbidden, but the makeshift bar does brisk business. Whiskeys and rums that were once sold for thousands of crowns are now sold for pennies per shot. It’s a morale booster in this community of former slum dwellers, dockworkers, prisoners, and peasants. Under the Common Council, even La Marca Real is affordable, is the common line. For Anna, we bought a button to replace her swamp monster’s missing eye, and for Filip we bought a book about pirates. We’ll be sure to come back next week.”

• Diary of Pavel Tzarkowski, Dekaunuo 3, 2 PM. 4 days after leaving quarantine, 86 until citizenship

“I just returned from my first overnight run with the platoon. We ventured about three miles down the peninsula, hoping to find the old city hall. Though it was almost entirely destroyed, we found the basement archives to be largely intact, if not entirely dry. We spent hours shuffling through the stinking, pulpy slop, attempting to find anything useful. Our primary targets were any maps or diagrams of the city’s under-construction subway line or the sewage system. We were able to find some maps, but they appeared to be a decade or two out of date. No matter; practically nothing has changed in the Old City in the past two hundred years. Aside from the obvious, anyway. After we emerged, we found ourselves in a clear night illuminated by a radiant full moon. Because of the wind patterns, there are these rare occasions where the smoke and smog that otherwise fills the sky is swept either out to sea or further up the shore. In those precious moments, we can soak up the sunlight or take in the stars. There are so many stars at night, far more than there ever were before the War. It’s one of the few pleasant things to come from all of this.”

• Diary of Pavel Tzarkowski, Dekaunuo 16, 2 PM. 17 days after leaving quarantine; 73 until citizenship

“Funerals are a critical event here. In other places, those who die are frequently given soldier’s burials. That is, they are placed in a shallow grave with nothing more than a wooden marker proving that they ever existed. Those who buried them often forget the names of the lost soon; it’s unhealthy to dwell on the dead out there. But here, the settlement’s dead are resigned to their fate in dignity. Any of those who die within a given week are kept at the Hospital. On the first day of the weekend, the bodies are placed in a simple wooden box wrapped in the flag of the settlement – a white sheet with a green star at the center and a green border. The coffins are then placed on carts and a funeral procession meanders through the town center. A secular service is held at Council Hall, where friends, coworkers, families (for the fortunate few), and government leaders honor the dead. Afterwards, the march continues over to Delancey Street. Burials are illegal – every square inch of open space is reserved for cultivation – so the dead are taken to a makeshift crematorium and burned. The ashes are then placed in bricks that are laid in a new columbarium at the town center. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Common Councilor or a bricklayer, a Guard or a scavenger, resident or citizen, or if you died in bed at the Hospital or out in the wastelands, the proceedings are always the same. Under the Common Council, everyone gets a service, everyone gets a flag-draped coffin, and everyone ends up in the columbarium.

“Kara got her service today. We were on an overnighter and someone got her with a squirrel gun. We were all there, we all saw it. Frederic held his hand over her neck for what seemed like forever, trying to stanch the blood long after her pulse stopped. She was an intelligent and accomplished electrician, a truly unbeatable drinker, and a damn good shot. And why did she die? Someone thought she had made a move on his ‘turf,’ a dilapidated set of old rowhouses. Why wasn’t Kara at the co-op with Beta? What an idiotic waste of a life.”

• Diary of Pavel Tzarkowski, Dekaunuo 24, 2 PM. 25 days after leaving quarantine; 65 until citizenship.

“Snow. Snow. An endless deluge of snow. Temperatures are well below freezing, and the Council is tightening rations on coal. We’ve been moved off of archival duties to hunt for fuel. The solar panels are even less effective in this weather, but the Council says that the batteries should keep the lights on at the hospital and Council Hall for at least a few days. Elizabeta says that the grid she’s working on should expand access to power during these storms, but that it isn’t quite ready yet. Anna is noticeably weaker, and her cough has become harsher. She can still walk, but she doesn’t run around like she used to. It is clear that she is growing sicker each day.”

• Diary of Pavel Tzarkowski, Dekaduo 14, 2 PM. 45 days after leaving quarantine; 45 until citizenship.

“Elizabeta and I sat with Anna in shifts today. She is in bed much more often than before and her cough is getting worse. Today is evidently a festival of some sort in the settlement, a so-called Fellowship Day. Residents and citizens alike come together for a feast of meat of questionable origin and potatoes, reminiscing about friends and family now long gone. I would think such a thing would only damage morale, but it seems to build community. They’ve all lost someone, but they all have each other. Neither Elizabeta nor I, however, had the emotional strength to participate. It is impossible to think of death and not think of Anna, wasting away in the Hospital. It is only a little over a month now until I gain my citizenship and Anna can get her medication.”

• Diary of Pavel Tzarkowski, Dekaduo 21, 2 PM. 52 days after leaving quarantine; 38 until citizenship.

“Anna’s condition has further deteriorated. Her skin is much more pale and her cough has gotten worse. She coughs out small specks of blood now. She has less energy for company now, and this is fortunate for Elizabeta and me, as we can only bear to see her like this for so long. The doctors say she is relatively stable, and should be in a holding pattern at this state for quite some time. I don’t know whether or not these are comforting words from someone watching another’s child consumed with illness, or if they are from some sort of expertise. Dr. [Frances] Poilievre has been very kind to Anna, and pays special attention to her.”

• Diary of Pavel Tzarkowski, Unuo 12, 3 PM. 74 days after leaving quarantine; 16 until citizenship.

“Tonight, Elizabeta brought me to a side street a few blocks away to show off the test of the co-op’s new grid system. With the press of a key at a terminal at the office a few blocks away, the lights suddenly went out on one side and flashed to life on the other. Then back and forth with the pressing of keys. Her coworkers cheered as the lights danced to and fro; they tell me this means that they can engineer the entire settlement, redirecting power to where it’s necessary and transferring loads from productive solar panels to areas where the panels are less effective or where sun is available for fewer hours in the day. This celebration provided a momentary distraction from Anna’s worsening state. She sleeps most of the day, and when she isn’t sleeping she is kept up by a persistent, hacking cough. Dr. Poilievre says her situation is precarious, but she should begin the long road to recovery after I receive my citizenship next week. She has arranged it so that regardless of where I am at midnight the day I qualify, Anna will be administered her first round. She has promised to stay up late to ensure that it takes place. Elizabeta and I have grown to appreciate her kindness.”

• Diary of Pavel Tzarkowski, Unuo 23, 3 PM. 85 days after leaving quarantine; 5 until citizenship.

“Another one? What the hell, Pavel.” Elizabeta barked. “Why now?”

“I don’t really have a choice, Beta. They’re going to send me where they’re going to send me.”

“I know. I just…” she paused. There were moments where Elizabeta’s emotions fried her circuits, and overwhelmed her to the point where she needed a second to think to avoid saying something rash. Her natural impulsivity when it came to blurting whatever it was that was on her mind got her in trouble more times than she could count. She’s just lucky she had been seeing a well-regarded therapist for quite some time when the bombs fell. Shooting from the hip could get you killed out here.

“I know it’s not your fault. I know you didn’t ask for it. But we’ll be citizens after tomorrow. Two days! Anna won’t be better yet, but she’ll have what she needs at least.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, she buried her head in her hands. “Two days, Pavel.”

“I know,” he replied. Before leaving his shift, Pavel had been informed that he would be shipping out for another overnight mission, this time for three days. Though Lieutenant Suarez had not told Platoon 403 much, he did tell them it would be their farthest journey yet. When Pavel protested, his commanding officer told them there was nothing he could do. It was a top priority of the Chief himself. It was going to happen.

“I built them a fucking electrical grid, Pavel,” Elizabeta said with some acid in her voice. “They can’t just delay it by a few days?”

“No, they seemed pretty impatient about the whole thing,” he said. “Besides, if I’m still around in two days it’ll be fine, it doesn’t matter where I am.”

“But you remember what happened last time Pavel,” she shot back. On the previous overnight mission, Dr. Beck had been shot in the neck by a sniper. Not much of one either; he hit her with a .22, something hillbillies used to pick off squirrels before the War. But it was enough. Plowing anything into someone’s carotid at 1,100 feet per second would do some serious damage.

“And you know how I feel about ‘if,’ Pavel. You will come back.” Tears welled in her eyes. “Don’t you ever fucking give me ‘if’.”

He held her in his arms. What else could he do? If he abandoned the mission, they would have to wait another three months for citizenship, and what would happen to Anna in the meantime? Dr. Poilievre had been frank with them – her condition was diminishing. Even with the antibiotics in just a few days, there were no guarantees. She could recover, but it would be a long and painful recovery. Months of bedrest, and even the potential for surgery in what would be on the level of a backcountry clinic before the War. Regardless, it was preferable to the alternative.

In the other room, Filip murmured. It was late when Pavel clambered in from slushy streets, exhausted both from the march and from the news. The street lamps shone bright; there was still a little while before they would be cut off to save the still-rationed electricity. Streaks of yellow fell across Elizabeta’s tear-soaked face as she arched her neck back to look into Pavel’s eyes.

“Don’t give me ‘if’,” she said. “You’re coming back.”

“I am,” he replied, moving his hand up to cradle her chin. Her mouth twisted in knots, and tears pushed through her clenched eyes. She opened them, her lips wobbling and her pupils darting back and forth across Pavel’s face, as if to take in every pore and fleck of stubble.

He kissed her, tenderly at first. Then she pulled him in, holding him more tightly than he thought she ever had.

The streetlights outside switched off.

Pavel awoke early the next morning. Having lived almost two years without artificial light, he had slowly grown accustomed to waking up with the dawn. Even here, with lighting available almost twenty hours a day, he still found himself waking up at the ungodly hour of five thirty-two in the morning. Elizabeta was quicker to acclimate; she showed no signs of waking. Before the War, he had found it endearing how deeply she slept. He had always been jealous that she could fall asleep on the train when he would just shift fitfully in his seat.

Now more than ever though, he wished she was a light sleeper. He wanted to say goodbye – not goodbye, no. See you soon. He told himself that as long as he didn’t shake her awake, there was nothing especially dangerous or special about what he was about to do. If he made it more important, more fatal, he didn’t know if he could leave the bedroom.

Instead, he kissed her on the forehead. She mumbled something. She was always talking in her sleep. He smiled a somber smile, pulling on his briefs, followed by layer after layer of his winter scavenging gear.

Silently shutting the bedroom door behind him, Pavel snuck over to Filip’s room. Fil took after his father; he was already awake examining a picture book that his teacher had given him, sounding each syllable methodically.

“The dol-phin jumped o-ver the wave,” he read, fingering the words on the page.

“Hey buddy, I’ll be back soon.”

“Oh no!” he protested, “where are you going?”

“It’s for work, bud,” he said, pulling his son in close. “It’ll be another business trip. Like that last one.”

“Okay… will you get me something?”

Pavel smiled. Before the War, Pavel had always gotten Filip and Anna some little trinket or memento whenever he left town for some conference or history symposium. Now it was no different; on the first trip, he had found a taxi medallion for him, and on the second he brought back an old briarwood pipe in a lightly scratched cedar box.

“Of course, Fil. I always do.”

“I love you, daddy,” he said, lunging into Pavel’s side.

“Love you too, bud,” Pavel replied. It took everything in his power to cover up the choking in his throat.

Tousling the kid’s hair and kissing him on the head, Pavel gave Filip his see you soon. He left a note on the small table by the front door for Elizabeta. He made sure to make it at least a little corny. He thought a sappy love letter would send her spiraling. Writing something like that would probably send him spiraling too. He wasn’t as tough as Elizabeta, and it was taking everything in his power not to crack.

It’s just another mission, Pavel said to himself. You’ll be fine.

Elizabeta awoke at six o’clock with the ringing of the city’s bells. Reaching over to grab Pavel, her arm fell limp upon his pillow. She groaned, mumbling to herself. Pulling his pillow into her chest, she breathed in deeply to take in his scent. When she was younger, she laughed at girls who did things like this. She could still think they were idiots. They were sucking in the scent of shallow athletes and college boyfriends who were by now a world away and married to someone else.

But this was Pavel.

She got up, and found Filip still in his bed reading and re-reading his book. She sat by his side, his attention hardly diverging from the dolphins and the waves. He really was just like his father. Once he had his nose pressed in a book, it was a feat to break his focus.

“Go get dressed, we have to head down for breakfast,” she said, kissing him on the head.

“Ok Mommy,” he replied.

A few minutes later, fully ready for the day ahead, Elizabeta and Filip headed towards the door. Before they left, she noticed a note on the entranceway table.

“Hey Beta. Went to get some noodles. I’ll be home soon. Love you always.”

Asshole, she thought to herself, chuckling as she mustered every ounce of willpower to keep from crying.

This is Part Eight of a series centered on Pavel Tzarkowski’s experiences as a survivor in early Nova Espero entitled “1850-01.” Follow this link to read Part Nine.

PUERTO BLANCO, F.A. - UNUO 29, 126 PM

On the hills overlooking Puerto Blanco lie the city’s historic badlands. Though some blocks are overgrown with the scrub grasses and wildflowers that once dominated the landscape, others are now occupied by dense clusters of small cottages. The homes themselves cling close to the street, with long, fenced-in yards in the back, taking the familiar form of the countless “summer villages” that have popped up on the outskirts of cities from Nova Espero to Sherbrooke.

With Ferria recently relaxing restrictions on badlands construction, such developments are springing up in the long-abandoned outer reaches of one of the nation’s largest metro areas. Realtor Eduardo Ramos sees a major opportunity in the new communities. “Before, people had to go all the way up into the mountains or across the straits to Isla Larga to get away from the city,” he tells me in the quaint but well-appointed living room of one of the new constructions. “Now, they can just go up into the hills.”

Others, like Isabela Viñas of the Ferrian Conservation Association say that the badlands provide a vital “middle” habitat for wildlife and a recreational outlet for urbanite blanqueros. “These are areas with naturally occurring tall grasses and young oak trees right near a major city,” she says at the edge of a surprisingly lush block around three miles outside the city center. “There are so many animals that have been gone for centuries that have now returned because we’ve cleared these spaces and finally left them alone. Why should we spoil this?”

In central Puerto Blanco, meanwhile, the Watson family excitedly reviews mortgage paperwork for a nascent suburban development that has bountiful parkland, new schools, and lower housing costs than in the crowded city center. “It’s an opportunity for us – we’ve never been able to own a home and now we finally might be able to,” baker and household matriarch Frederica Watson tells me.

For the past half of a century, Puerto Blanco and Ferria have struggled to figure out what to do with the thousands of acres of once-urban land surrounding Uniguita’s second-largest city. Though new policy means that more of the land can be developed than before, what should happen to the rest? Should it be urbanized, suburbanized, or left to the whims of an encroaching natural world?

The birth of the badlands

The bombings and subsequent firestorms of the Milito destroyed tens of thousands of square miles of neighborhoods, industrial districts, and commercial districts in what is now Uniguita. Nearly every major city on the continent suffered cataclysmic damage, and small, disparate settlements began springing up out of the ashes of collapsed metropolises. During the Collapse era immediately following the War, however, there was a pressure to consolidate surviving populations.

“This was a time where there were still marauding raiders in the backcountry, and warlords roaming through the plains,” says Lector Nestor Raigosa, a historian at the Puerto Blanco House of Wisdom. “Having a constellation of tiny settlements made survivors vulnerable to attack and made resource distribution more difficult.”

With improved energy infrastructure and intact construction equipment at their disposal, the Uniguitan government crafted a plan. Populations would be resettled in concentrated urban centers, and the ruined once-urban periphery of the settled areas would be cleared for agricultural use and the debris sorted and salvaged for rebuilding the cities. These depopulated and deconstructed areas would be referred to as “badlands.”

“This was meant to be a temporary measure,” Lr. Raigosa continues. “Badlands are what you would call ‘marginal’ for agricultural use. They were filled with concrete foundations, buried fuel tanks, and industrial waste runoff. It’s not very good land. But it was available, and it was defensible. That’s what mattered.”

The federal government oversaw the administration and delineation of the badlands. Thousands were put to work clearing blocks of land, sorting through rubble for usable scraps. As a result, for decades most cities contained massive yards filled with millions of bricks, pipes, chewed up concrete, and other materials that made reconstruction in the settled areas cheaper and easier. The policy also opened up land for growing potatoes, beets, and other hardy vegetables capable of withstanding the difficult soils of urban Uniguita.

As security within the Federation improved and the country incorporated the Fertile Center as an agricultural engine, the need for growing food on this “marginal” land near cities declined. With government efficiency requirements coming into vogue during the Liberal administration of President Karlo Plagad (29 PM - 40 PM), the badlands became useful as municipal service boundaries. With the Urban Service Distribution Act of 31 PM, cities were barred from distributing services out to areas within the badlands. The goal was to cut costs in sending water, power, and law enforcement out to the disconnected outskirts.

But natural population growth meant that settlement jumped these artificial urban boundaries. In places like Nova Espero and Puerto Blanco, where the understaffed national bureaucracy of the Office of Badlands Management (OBM) took years to respond to boundary expansion requests, informal settlements popped up in the outskirts. Poor and working class residents of these cities found shelter in handmade shanties and in abandoned structures that were deemed “too historically significant” to bulldoze outright during the clearing process.

One such building was the Brenntag in Nova Espero’s impoverished Southern Ward. Once an upper-class apartment house for Hegeliopolis’ wealthy elites, the building had become an overcrowded and underserviced tenement by the 40s.

“Because there were no active water lines, residents had to go down ten blocks to a municipal spigot to get their water every day,” says Marcia Polk, a docent at the Brenntag Tenement Museum in Nova Espero. “And no services – sewage, emergency services, building inspections – made them vulnerable to crime, disease, and fire.”

On the sweltering night of Septo 17, 46 PM, amid a crime crackdown under the increasingly authoritarian administration of President Enrico Carmelo, undertrained military units attempted a raid against drug traffickers believed to be occupying several apartments within the building. At the onset of the operation, a soldier launched a smoke canister into a window which ignited a fire that would consume the entire building. With no running water in the area, it took hours of firefighters scrambling to and from the nearest water source nearly a mile away to put the blaze out. As a result, over a hundred of the building’s impoverished residents perished.

“It was a catastrophic disaster,” says Polk, showing me a charred children’s book found in the aftermath.

In the years following the inferno, there grew a nationwide pressure campaign to reform the badlands system. That reform would come under President Lankolay.

A new era

Though badlands management reform was far from the top of President Erika Lankolay’s list of priorities when she took office amid a political and economic crisis in 48 PM, the issue was addressed. Just a few days after taking office, she appointed Taylor Cosgrove the administrator of OBM, who went about making radical changes to the badlands bureaucracy. With help from the Common Council, Cosgrove eliminated the federal bureaucracy entirely and created regional badlands administrations informed by federal policy “guidelines.” This regionalization expedited the urban expansion permitting process, meaning that cities would not have to wait up to five years for their applications to go through. A development boom ensued, with more formal housing, industrial, and commercial districts being built wholecloth in the close-in areas previously off-limits to legal construction.

During the Liberal administration of President Fernando Pelar in the 60s, Council further decentralized badlands management, by turning over administration to the commonwealths. Some, particularly those in the Fertile Center and the West Coast permitted wholesale redevelopment, with stations being constructed along the newly rebuilt Federal Rail lines to create commuter suburbs and “summer villages.” These hamlets became ubiquitous in the urban periphery as middle- and upper-class residents of the nation’s cities sought nearby refuge in the comparatively quiet hinterlands.

In some cities, industrial plants were exiled to the far-flung reaches of the badlands to separate polluters from the city center, with interurban lines being built to connect urban workers with their remote workplaces. Other undesirable uses were located in badlands areas, such as landfills, water treatment plants, and even prisons. In a bid to earn some extra cash, Swalabash City even sold some of its badlands back to the federal government to use as a bombing range.

Others took a different path. In the capital of the wealthy commonwealth of West Ferria, Puerto Ostra’s badlands were divided between urban development and a massive public park. The park – replete with football pitches, forested glens, artificial lakes, a renowned natural history museum, and stadiums from when the city hosted the Continental Games in 112 PM – has become a treasured part of the city’s urban fabric. In Pierron, much of their vast badlands were set aside for “re-wilding” and parkland, as was the case in other northern urban areas like Calumet and Vetludo. Some dedicated portions of their badlands to the construction of universities, including Nova Espero which has set aside several hundred acres to a new, sprawling campus for the city’s flagship higher educational institution.

The pressures between conservation and development became a common theme throughout Uniguita. Commonwealths, cities, and local interest groups waged war over whether or not to build housing, industrial parks, recreational facilities, or just give the land back to the heavily damaged natural world. Development pressures have won out in most places, but in others where conclusive decisions have yet to be made, those battles are ongoing.

The battle over Puerto Blanco’s badlands

“So this is the imperial-era post office, dating back to a century before the War,” says Ramos as he shows me a renovated, two story structure with a white stucco facade. “Obviously the wood beams got burned up, but I’m glad they didn’t bulldoze the shell. People love these old buildings.” Ramos radiates excitement as he points out a shockingly well-preserved fresco depicting a postman on horseback. He explains that the old post office will be a centerpiece of the still-under construction Pueblo Alto development, with realty offices on the second floor and a community hall on the first. Nearby, workers busy themselves with the finishing touches on a modular train station, meant to welcome the vacationing passengers from the bustling urban center just a few miles away.

For more than half a century, Puerto Blanco and the Ferrian commonwealth government were deadlocked over what to do with the city’s badlands. Most of those living in the commonwealth wanted to turn it into a park, while representatives from the city wanted it to open for development. With neither wrangling the necessary support for their plan, the area continued to be consumed by weeds, grasses, and trees of increasing heights. Wildlife returned to the shadows of this glittering urban agglomeration for the first time in over a century.

The constrained size of developable land gives Puerto Blanco its characteristic hyperdensity, as well as its housing affordability crisis. According to the 121 PM Uniguitan Census, more than half the city’s residents spent upwards of 30% of their monthly incomes on housing expenses. For comparison’s sake, the census also found that just a quarter of Uniguitans overall are similarly cost-burdened, as well as just a third of Nova Espero’s residents.

Housing hurdles | Percentage of residents in Puerto Blanco, Nova Espero, and nationwide who are “cost-burdened” by housing.

After decades of gridlock – and increasing fears from rural Ferrians of blanquero housing refugees crowding out their small hamlets – a deal was reached last year. The urban core of Puerto Blanco would be expanded, and further development would be allowed along major highways and rail lines. Though most of the badlands would still be blocked from development, this would more than double the developable footprint of the city.

Ramos confirms that the pent-up demand has been released on an unimaginable scale. “Our lots went on the market about two weeks ago… there were around 650 of them,” he says. “Of those 650, all but ten have been sold. People want to get out of the city, at least on the weekends.”

Around two miles away, Isabela Viñas takes me to a yet-undeveloped area of the badlands. She shows me a family of tortoises sunning themselves near a babbling creek. This area was a park prior to the War, and has become a borderline wilderness in the century and a quarter since. We also see deer, antelope, and even a brown bear cub.

“Oh shit,” she says, laughing nervously under her breath. “We should probably get out of here. We don’t want to be around if mama comes back.”

This patch of land sits around a half mile from the nearest rail line, putting it well within the developable zone if a developer chooses to build a station nearby. According to Viñas, the company Ramos works for is planning to do just that.

“It’s beautiful, it’s really beautiful. And that’s just it. The best way to keep it that way is to leave it alone,” she tells me. She doesn’t mind the hikers or mountain bikers – we see a few and wave as we navigate the “wilds” – but she explains that intense development would ruin the area.

“All of the trash, all of the pipes, all of the clearing, all of the construction – it would do a great deal of damage to the animals and the ecology,” she says. “And for what? Summer cottages and suburbs?”

Meanwhile in Puerto Blanco’s east side, Frederica Watson meets me outside of her apartment building. She leads me through the confined but tastefully decorated lobby, and over to the elevator. Built in the 70s, one must open the elevator gate oneself to enter and depart. We slowly climb to the sixteenth floor, entering her tightly-packed apartment which contains three, efficiently appropriated bedrooms.

“When this place came up and we were able to put a deposit down, we almost cried.” She explains that before this, she, her husband, and her two sons lived in an even smaller two-bedroom on the other side of the city. “It was okay when they were little kids, they were becoming teenagers, you know? If you try to cram two teenage boys in the same bedroom, they’ll kill each other.”

Even with the additional bedroom, the Watsons find the conditions cramped, not to mention expensive. Frederica tells me the monthly rent here is N4001 – more than half of her and her husband Thomas’ combined monthly income from the small bakery they run a few blocks away.

A few days before our conversation, the Watsons visited an under-construction development near Ramos’ Pueblo Alto. She shows me the brochure for the community, where a three-bedroom rowhouse can be had at a mortgage costing just N3502 per month.

“The houses all had backyards, and they’re building all sorts of new schools, shops, and rec centers out there,” she says giddily. Though N75,0003 would be a high price to pay for a home in much of the rest of the country, it’s an improvement over the N90,000 to N100,0004 price tags on three-bedroom apartments in the city.

“It’s all very exciting,” she says. Watson loves Puerto Blanco, and she and Thomas want their children to live their lives here. To them, the new developments on the outskirts make that more of a possibility.

In the historic Republic Hall in central Puerto Blanco, debates continue to rage over the city’s badlands. Commonwealth legislators disagree over what to do with the remainder of the territory, and others still want to halt ongoing development. The new legislation passed last year will likely hold – but for the thousands of acres that remain untouchable for now at least, the future is uncertain.

“We have all of this land that has mostly been graded, that has been settled in the past, and is ripe for development, and at the same time, a real estate crisis” says Liberal Member of Assembly Rodrigo Patton. “I don’t understand why this isn’t a no-brainer.”

On the other side of the aisle, rural assemblyman and member of the Alliance for Nature party Leonel Beeckman says that the land should be re-wilded, as in Pierron. “We’ve carved so many unhealable scars into nature, both before the Milito and after. It’s time we correct our mistakes.”

As these debates persist, bulldozers, construction workers, and armies of prospective homebuyers venture into what were once the city’s desolate badlands. For now, it looks like the development will be contained along the transportation arteries – but for how long, depends on the direction of the political winds in Republic Hall.

This is part of a series centered on Pavel Tzarkowski’s experiences as a survivor in early Nova Espero entitled “1850-01.” Follow this link to go to the series’ page.

As Pavel prepared for his inaugural scavenging mission, Elizabeta readied herself for her first day of work. Smoothing out the too-big button-up and jeans she had received at the Survivors Hospital, she walked down the hall to the shared bathroom. Elizabeta had gotten back into the habit of checking and re-checking her appearance, something she had ignored for much of the Collapse era. If you’re thinking about where your next meal is going to come from, do you really have the time to care if the person standing opposite of you didn’t lint-roll their trousers?

When she was a child, Elizabeta’s mother always gave her grief about her frequently unkempt appearance. Were it not for the strict dress code of her parish school, Elizabeta would have let her thick, rust-colored hair remain in its natural state with stiff shoots springing in every direction. To her, being well-groomed had nothing to do with her academic performance.

“You care so much about school,” the dour Ferrian would say. “But no man is going to marry you if you look like that. What use will your diploma be when you’re a lonely spinster?”

Spinster. What a delightfully upper-crust term for a woman who had barely made it out of the third grade and married a man who drank his wages away at the tavern around the corner. How easy it is to think in those terms when your own situation is so hopeless.

Elizabeta eyed herself in the chipped mirror as she had been trained to do. She instinctively noted her cheeks filling in after being so hollow for so long. Compared to life in the wasteland, Elizabeta had been feasting the last few weeks, consuming a wide variety of admittedly inventive spins on potatoes, the bedrock of novo cuisine. She thought of her mother, caught between the impulse of the Ferrian tradition of stuffing one’s offspring with heavy and limitless food, and the glossy fashion magazines of the imperial capital. With one hand she’d serve a heaping bowl of camarón y arroz, and use the other to point out how girthy her arms had gotten. God only knows what comment she’d make about Elizabeta’s returning figure, as paltry as it was.

Elizabeta missed her.

After her thorough self-examination, she accompanied Pavel and Filip to breakfast. Though she wasn’t the most privy to small-talk, she found the residents here fascinating. It turns out there are topics of conversation other than preservation methods for rat meat when your basic needs are met. To her right sat a young Vetludese couple, Maria and Fabio. They had traveled all the way from their marshy homeland, some eighteen-hundred miles to the north. Nova Espero, at the very end of the very southern tip of the continent, had been a final hope for them; every other settlement had either been a mirage or had already collapsed by the time they reached it or was run by a psychotic despot.

“It feels sdolcinato1, but here at the edge of the world we found peace,” she says. “Gah… I feel like I’m in a cult when I say things like that,” she follows up with a laugh. Elizabeta hadn’t liked the people she sat around campfires and shared rotten beans with in the past. They were all the toxic combination of unknown strangers in a hostile environment and people who very well could just die the day after you met them. Talking to Maria, Elizabeta could feel that familiar twinge of liking someone she just met. Not pre-emptively mourning their loss or planning out how best to take them out if they tried to steal supplies, but relishing in their laughter and finding them intriguing rather than suspicious.

After breakfast, Pavel kissed her and Filip goodbye. The cold that came in as he opened the door hit her especially hard. She had confidence in Pavel not to get himself killed, but she still despised it every time they were apart.

She escorted Filip to what was purported to be a daycare for the residents of the Gluesenkamp Family Barracks. A twenty-something with thick wavy black hair and even thicker eyebrows greeted her at the door. Martine had been a schoolteacher in a Lacaise neighborhood before the War, and going off of the children’s quiet, polite playing behind her, Elizabeta could surmise she was a fairly decent one.

“Bonjour Filip! Welcome, go on in and I’ll introduce you to the others,” Martine said, patting him on the head.

“What do you all do during the day?” Elizabeta asked. Not even the apocalypse could prevent her from being curious about her child’s education.

“Basic reading, arithmetic… the kids are all different ages, so it’s sometimes hard to find activities for them all to enjoy,” replied Martine. “Lots of them haven’t played with other kids for quite some time, so we’ve found that just being around each other has its own benefits.”

Despite the evident lack of formal curriculum, Elizabeta couldn’t help but agree. Though Filip never complained, she could tell that having only her, Pavel, and Anna to interact with bored him. Already, Elizabeta could see him excitedly approaching a group of kids drawing on old construction paper.

Elizabeta recalled the directions the Survivors Hospital had given her for her work assignment. Go down Renzi to the corner where you see City Hall, then turn left. You can’t miss the co-op.

Flurries had become billows of snow by the time Elizabeta left the Barracks. The streets were largely vacant, almost everyone already at work. Her only company were laborers across the street whose heavy breaths clouded the air as they gingerly hoisted a set of solar panels onto a rooftop.

Elizabeta looked around to the nearby rooftops, and noticed a pattern. Each bore an array of the darkened rectangles, likely salvaged from the countless homes and businesses that used them throughout the imperial capital. Solar panels – originally invented to power anti-missile satellite systems – had become ubiquitous in Hegeliopolis as the city’s electrical system continued to crumble when the Empire neglected infrastructure for the sake of military spending.

Taking a left onto Park Street, Elizabeta found her eyes magnetically focusing on what had to be her destination. Officially the Nova Espero Electric Cooperative, “the co-op” was a massive brick structure with a brightly lit sign hung over the doorway. A string of pickup trucks sat outside, charging cables filtering under a garage door leading into the building.

Stepping inside, the lobby smelled of stale preserved coffee and even staler cigarettes. No one sat behind the front desk, but Elizabeta could hear old standards blaring from the office just beyond an adjacent doorway. Making her way through the threshold, she saw a team ogling a map of the neighborhood.

“The buildings on Carrick are too tall, they’d block the sunlight if we put them on Morgan,” said one of the workers, a squat, dark-haired woman in her thirties with thick-rimmed glasses held together by duct tape.

“Okay… then maybe we can put them on the Carrick side,” replied a pale, balding man with a valiant chestnut brown combover and a dutifully ashed cigarette dangling from his mouth. “A lot of those buildings were owned by Venturo Capital, and we just found a bunch of their master keys. We should be able to get on the roofs.”

“She’s here,” said another, a pale, freckly woman in her mid-twenties wearing wiry glasses. The three turned in Elizabeta’s direction, breaking their focus.

The man introduced himself first. “Ah, you must be Dr. Tzarkowski. I’m George Andrews, the head of the co-operative-”

“It’s a co-op, George,” said the one in the wiry glasses. “No one’s the head.”

“Fine,” he corrected himself. “I’m the manager at the co-operative. The pedant here is Alice, she is our principal planner.”

He motioned to the other side of the table. The woman with the thick-rimmed glasses, already back to her work, introduced herself. “Oh! I’m Leah, the secondary planner.”

“We have a few dozen more workers here, but they’re all out sweeping the panels or hanging new ones. Alice, give Dr. Tzarkowski the tour.”

“Not my boss,” she replied curtly.

“Alice, could you please give Dr. Tzarkowski the tour,” he sneered.

“Absolutely,” she replied, motioning Elizabeta over.

Exiting the small, wood paneled front office, Alice brought Elizabeta to a room with dozens of batteries salvaged from every possible location – hospitals, old cars, and even from an old train forever moored at the ruined Imperial Station. “We had to build a frickin’ crane to get that one out,” she said, motioning to the several-ton behemoth. Salvaged copper wire sat in neatly arranged piles nearby, alongside recovered transformers from demolished utility poles. All of these were accompanied by cardboard binders, indicating the current quantity, origin, and planned destination for each component.

Despite being a head shorter than Elizabeta, Alice gave off an air of authority and confidence that both put her at edge and at ease. She seemed at once competent and dangerous, with an authoritative knowledge of the settlement’s electrical infrastructure that came with either being involved in such a system for decades or building it from the ground up. Given the circumstances, it had obviously been the latter.

“Almost every single building in the City is electrified in some way. They may only have lights, but they do have power,” she told Elizabeta, giving the contextual spiel. “Right now, basically none of the buildings are connected to any sort of grid. That means that if they have a panel on the roof, that panel sends a charge to the battery in the basement.”

“But if the panel is covered by snow, or the battery malfunctions…”

“No power, no lights,” finished Elizabeta.

“Exactly,” Alice replied. “For the apartments or offices that’s not the biggest deal. It’ll be dark. Whatever. But when it’s the hospital… things can get a little hinky. They have backup batteries and a massive array to feed them, obviously, but you can only cram so many batteries into basements and hallways before it becomes a hazard.”

“So that’s where you come in,” Alice continued, bringing Elizabeta over to the hanging mezzanine office in the back corner of the warehouse. Unlocking the door revealed a well-kept office space, with shelves full of electrical infrastructure texts alongside plant and grid schematics.

The real centerpiece of the office, however, took up the back corner adjacent to a window overlooking a perpendicular alleyway. There, sitting on a simple birch desk was a monument to an earlier age. Gleaming in its cheap brown and gray plastic casing, its green and black screen shimmering, the Tawiponapska 64 greeted Elizabeta with its cathode ray tube smile. Computer terminals had been a new form of technology prior to the War, but Elizabeta the electrical and chip engineer was well-acquainted. She beamed with excitement when her department accidentally overpurchased a set four years ago, and she was able to get away with taking one home. She had missed the whir of the hard drive, and that distinct, staticky hiss that came when you turned the thing off for the night.

The startup screen, glowing in its effervescent green glory, simply read:

“So, apparently the company that owned the terminal was Erachnian,” Alice told her. “We haven’t figured out how to change the language settings yet, or if there’s even a way to do it.” Pointing to an adjacent Erachnian to Hegelionic dictionary, she explained they’d been able to navigate through the menus and software using it, but it had been a tedious process. Alice directed her to a sheet tacked to the corkboard above the computer, with a basic rundown of commonly used terms and their Hegelionic translations.

“Essentially what we need to do is design a grid, and map it out. Pencil and paper is fine for rough drafts, but this computer has the software to create and run grid models…”

“EnergyMap?” Elizabeta interrupted.

“Oh thank God, you know the name,” Alice replied. “From what I know, it’s the same software just in Erachnian. Hopefully most of it is muscle memory for you.”

Elizabeta sat in the creaky, aging office chair and cautiously approached the machine. Typing in the user information hastily written on an index card and unceremoniously taped to the monitor, the list of options appeared. Alice showed her the notebooks containing battery, panel, and transformer quantities, efficiency notes, and potential grid maps. All she needed to do was model the grids and see if anything would explode.

Alice wished her luck, and began to retreat out the door.

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” she said. “George was really excited when you got assigned.”

“Thanks, Alice,” Elizabeta replied. The pleasantries of office onboarding. What another strange rediscovery.

After her first day at work, Elizabeta exchanged farewells with the other “worker-members” of the Nova Espero Electric Cooperative. Despite being mid-afternoon, the air was still frigid. The snow had stopped, but the streets remained covered in a thick pallid swamp of brown-gray slush. Before heading home, Elizabeta headed over to the General Hospital just a few blocks away.

Despite being likely the largest settlement in the post-War world, Nova Espero was still at its core a small town. The Aid Corps officers running the front desk had learned Elizabeta and Pavel’s names over the past few days, and greeted her warmly as she stepped in from the cold. Donning the paper mask handed to her by the officers, Elizabeta made her way up to the children’s sanatorium “wing” – really just a set of two adjoined meeting rooms on the second floor. Inside were ten or so beds, eight of which held a child or at least evidence that one had slept there recently. Some of the children in better condition, including Anna, were playing in a small area filled with toys, puzzles, and games. She felt a twang of pain as her eyes trained over to the two ailing in their beds.

“Mommy!” Anna shouted, as she bolted over to Elizabeta. Were it not for her occasional hacking cough, Elizabeta wouldn’t have known she was even sick. Anna was still the same, 6-year-old bundle of energy she had always been.

“Look at what I made!” Anna yelped, pulling a piece of paper from her bedside table. It was a drawing of her, Elizabeta, Filip, and Pavel entering the city gates. “It’s all of us… we’re safe now!”

Suddenly, an Aid Corps officer entered the room. “Time for medicine!” he said with the tone of a teacher telling their students it was time to come in from recess. Each of the children tumbled into their cots, as a number of other officers prepared needles. Elizabeta watched as, one by one, the children were administered their antibiotics. She could barely help from crying when they got to Anna, and gave her what was almost assuredly a placebo. Apparently, she didn’t hide it particularly well. Because the masks covered most of the face, one’s attention was drawn to the wearer’s eyes. And Elizabeta’s eyes were often traitors.

“Are you okay, Mommy?” Anna said.

“Yes hon, I’m okay,” she replied. It wasn’t until after she kissed Anna on the head and exited into the hallway that she released even stifled sobs. There was nothing she could do but wait out the clock. She was rebuilding their infrastructure from scratch with tools only she knew how to use, and Pavel was risking his life in the wastelands of Hegeliopolis. Why was that not enough? Why did their daughter have to pay the price?

Elizabeta wiped away her tears and swallowed her rage. She trudged down the stairs, and shuffled out the General Hospital’s front door. She sent a final glance towards her daughter’s window before making her way back to the family barracks.

It was cold.

This is Part Seven of a series centered on Pavel Tzarkowski’s experiences as a survivor in early Nova Espero entitled “1850-01.” Follow this link to read Part Eight.

FEDERELO #313 - UNUO 23, 126 PM

Out each side of the eastbound Federelo 13:00 service from Nova Espero City to Puerto Blanco lie great, unending expanses. Out the south-facing windows, the Great Southern Sea forms a blanket of choppy blue waters, interrupted only momentarily by the crane of a crabbing vessel or the sail of a pleasure yacht. Even in the dead of winter, the climate here is sufficiently comfortable to entice the nautically-minded to take to the waves.

To the north, the waves are much more violent in their height and ferocity. Waves of stone and dirt form vast, unending torrents across the landscape, as sheep graze lazily on the hillsides. The hilliness of Nova Espero and its borderlands with West Ferria leads many to believe that this is not a plateau scored by the receding glacial ice, but a mountain range. Smooth breezes lightly brush the tall grasses that thrive here, and send a brief chill up the spine of the watchful shepherds. This region is a vast rural empire, intermittently interrupted by the dense, crowded industrial cities of the southwest.

This train is fully booked, with many from the cosmopolitan centers of business along the Golden Coast going back and forth for the first time following the vacation-heavy holiday season. Here are some of the conversations I had – and overheard – while aboard the crowded train.

Roberto, 51, is a single father of two returning home to Puerto Blanco. He gives an air of confidence based on his appearance, though one could tell after just a few minutes of talking with that he has deep, unshakable anxieties about his children specifically and the state of the world more generally.

“We’re at peace now – sure – but I still remember how it was when I was a kid. We’d have these drills at school because one day, any day, the Ylrikians could come hopping over the border. And then there was the civil war. I got drafted and sent to boot camp right when it was ending, thank God. Not to disrespect those who died but, what use was there dying at that point, y’know? They wanted to leave, most of us didn’t want them around – why should we bleed ourselves to death to bring those racist inbreds back? The civil war, that awful war in Erachnia. That insurgency in the Crescent Islands, those revolts in Ylrikia – the 90s were rough. It felt like the world was falling apart.

“There’s something in the air right now, I can’t quite explain it. It feels pretty similar to that time. There aren’t any horrifying wars, but something feels too… static? Not like unmoving, but like the zap you get from a blanket. There’s too much energy. Things are boring, seemingly. But that’s how it felt in 90. All that energy was just building up though. Then history happened. It feels like that now. Like history’s about to happen.

“Thankfully my kids are too young to get drafted into whatever history’s about to happen. I don’t believe in any of the propaganda. There isn’t much worth dying for except the person lying next to you, and the kids sleeping in the next room over. Simple as that.”

Violeta, 21, is a student at the National College of Art in Nova Espero returning home to her small, West Ferrian town for the weekend. She shows me a number of sketches, urban scenes drawn from the vantage point of some of the innumerable benches in the city’s public spaces. She shows me Libero Square, the Lankolay Promenade, a street market scene out of Little Ferria. She likes to add fantastical elements to real-life situations, such as elves lining up to purchase fish sandwiches from a food cart, or a dragon clutching the belltower of the Nova Espero House of Wisdom.

“I think I’m proudest of this one, I call it ‘Dumbstruck.’ It’s exactly how I felt when I came to Nova Espero. When you get here, the train doesn’t do a good job of showing how the city is. You kinda sneak in from the north through a tunnel. So you get off the train and the first thing you see is this giant hall, with all the flags of the commonwealths on each side. There are these massive murals, showing folks surviving after the War, farming the land, rebuilding the cities. And you’re just like – WOW! Puerto Blanco is big, but this is CRAZY.”

Violeta shows me “Dumbstruck.” It depicts a stuffed bear wearing a beret, much like the one she is wearing now. The bear is looking agog at the splendor of Federal Station, and its massive arched ceiling, stained glass windows, and bounties of flags, murals, and schedule boards.

“I’m going to give it to my mom for her birthday,” she says. “She’s the one who pushed me to go to art school. I think she’d really like it.”

Peter, 29, is a commodities broker on one of his many business trips between Nova Espero and Puerto Blanco. Born on a corn farm in a part of Libero that even natives would call “the sticks,” Peter always had a fascination with agriculture. Not the typical fascination that comes with driving tractors or breeding cattle, mind you, but a fascination with the logistics and numbers and spreadsheets involved in the complex world of industrialized, capitalized agriculture. After going to Libero State University to study the economics of commodities, he soon found himself at the Pierron Board of Trade, the largest commodities exchange in the country.

“It was wonderful, you know. They always talk about the northern lights up there in those parts, those flickering lights that go off in the night sky. They were beautiful. But nothing beat the lights on the trade floor of the P-BOT. The courtiers scurried across the floor, shouting orders. “Achetez du maïs!” one would shout to buy corn futures, another would yell, “Vendez de l’acier!” to sell steel. Everything was in Lacaise up there. You have to learn it to earn your triennium at LSU.

“I got tired of the cold, though. The Puerto Blanco Board of Trade is smaller, but the weather’s better. Constant sunshine versus those godawful winters. There’d be two feet of snow on the ground, and those courtiers would still be on the trading floor. I still get to work out my Lacaise muscle though; the Puerto Blanco BOT also uses Lacaise for business.

As we pass through the borderlands between Hegelion and Ferria, Peter points out the massive stands of cortezada trees spreading out over the hillsides. The brown, curled bark from these trees is harvested each year to support the habits of the 80% of Uniguitans who regularly chew, smoke, or drink cortezada and its derivatives. Peter, with a pack of Piolek Slim cortezada sticks poking out of his pocket, sees dollar signs in those trees.

“Each one of those trees, debarked, is a year’s worth of corty for the average user, right? At forty cents a pack, three packs a day… that’s over 400 notes a year! And there’s millions of those trees out there. Corty trading is the big ticket item in these parts, it’s definitely the most valuable crop in the south.”

He shows me his fresh copy of El Manual General de Agricultura Sudadera - 126 PM, the farmer’s almanac published each year by the Campesino Press in Puerto Blanco.

“‘Buy into an index fund and let it ride,’ is that advice everyone gets, right? People try to overcomplicate finance, but for most people, that’s the winner. Day trading is for idiots. But this book? There’s something magical about it. I buy it every year, and the long-term weather forecasts have yet to fail me. I make bank off of this book. I don’t even care that you’re going to publish this, because everyone – everyone! – thinks I’m nuts when I talk about it. Buying this book is like buying an index fund. It’s a sure bet. And this is looking like a good year to buy corty futures.”

Two older women with thick, Old City Nova Espero accents discuss Anton Korczak, the hard-scrabble, working class Populist councilor who is widely expected to seek the mayor’s office in 126 PM.

Woman 1: “Tony ran last time, he lost.”

Woman 2: “So what? You can be anything in Nova Espero. If you’re a loser, you can be a winner too.”

This is the first part in a multi-part retrospective on the life and political career of former President Phillip Gladstone (43 PM - 126 PM).

WALLACETOWN, E.H. - UNUO 20, 126 PM

The bells of the Wallacetown Fosterian Church rang five times to announce the funeral service for former President Phillip Gladstone. Gladstone, 83, died peacefully in his sleep on Unuo 10th at his rural East Hegelion cottage. A longtime resident of the region, Gladstone built a reputation as an honest man with integrity; his law practice here was known for taking unwinnable cases without expectation of payment, and in his later years, his name regularly appeared on the list of principal donors to the region’s charities. As the commonwealth’s premier, he championed a program that established a scholarship for East Hegelion’s children, and helped build up its educational system to be among the best in the Federation.

Beyond East Hegelion’s borders – and even beyond Wallacetown’s borders – President Gladstone’s legacy is not defined by his educational efforts or his admirable legal career. It is instead defined by his wartime presidency, and his handling of the conflict that ripped the nation apart.

The pages of the Uniguitan press will be filled with countless memorials to this fascinating and controversial figure, and Dispatches will be no different. This three-part series will document the early life, the rise, and the fall of Uniguita’s troubled eleventh chief executive.

A Wallacetown youth

Born to two teachers in 43 PM, Phillip Gladstone was always known to be a voracious reader. His neighbor and primary school teacher Pauline Carmichael told the Universalo upon his election to the Presidency that she often reprimanded him in class for rushing through his work to read his latest book. “He would burn through his biology, or math, or what else have you,” she said. “And you’d see him five minutes after class started nose deep in whatever new thing he got from the library.”

Neither an exceptionally good nor exceptionally poor student, Gladstone excelled in his reputation for charity and goodwill towards his neighbors and fellow students. One classmate, Erica Salazar, recalls him defending a disabled boy who had been repeatedly bullied by classmates. “He was the only one who would stand up for Donny,” whose legs had been paralyzed by a bout of polio. “When those kids picked on him, Phil would stand in front of them and make them go through him first. He got the crap kicked out of himself a lot, but Donny looked at him like he was a superhero.”

Despite his average academic performance, Phillip gained admission at the University of East Hegelion in 61 PM. The prolific reader first aspired to be a history teacher, following in the footsteps of his favorite instructor from his grade school years, Paul McKay. Years later, McKay told the Wallacetown Courier that he was disappointed that Phil had chosen another life. “I’ll always be proud of him to be sure, he’s a hell of a kid. But politics? C’mon Phil.”

After completing his triennium at UEH, Gladstone married his girlfriend Anna Coates, and enrolled in the University of Nova Espero’s prestigious School of Law in 64 PM. A freshly minted attorney, he first worked for a small criminal defense practice in Nova Espero.

Upon his father’s death in 69 PM, Gladstone returned to Wallacetown to help settle his affairs. Though he initially planned only to stay temporarily, he found that Wallacetown had declined rapidly since he left. Once a thriving mill village, the rural burg had declined rapidly with the closure of its paper mill three years prior. Caught in the throes of unemployment and a parallel drug epidemic, the community lacked effective legal representation for the indigent. When he found out that his childhood friend Robert Bosley had been arrested on charges of stealing from a local pharmacy, Gladstone jumped at the opportunity to defend him.

“He didn’t hesitate, not for a minute,” Robert tells me. Sober for nearly 35 years and now the owner of a general contracting firm in East Hegelion’s capital of Bradford, Robert says he owes his life to the former president. “He helped me get off with probation, on the condition that I go to rehab. I’d probably be dead if it weren’t for Phil.”

A promising legal career and entry into politics

From the late 60s until the mid 70s, Gladstone established himself as a well-respected advocate for Wallacetown’s poor. He served as a public defender for hundreds of clients who could not afford legal representation. He was known for keeping good relations with the local judge, and ensuring that those who were eventually sentenced served as little jail time as necessary, and managed to orchestrate dozens of deals to keep his clients out of prison.

The vast majority of his cases were crimes of despair and deprivation – petty theft, public drunkenness, vagrancy. As the 75 PM East Hegelion election approached, the local chapter of the Conservative Party approached him as a candidate for the town’s Commonwealth Assembly seat. After some demurring, he eventually obliged. Though he handily won the Conservative nomination, he faced stiff competition from the local Populist incumbent.

John J. Wallace was a local luminary, a direct descendant of the town’s namesake and born wealthy from the brisk business of the Wallace Paper Company. A progressive black sheep in an erstwhile conservative family, Wallace entered politics in the aftermath of far-right President Enrico Carmelo’s failed coup in 47 PM. That year, he defeated the Conservative incumbent campaigning on promises of reform in government, work for the unemployed, and restoration of national dignity. For the next three decades, he served as a stalwart progressive in an otherwise conservative region, championing union organizing efforts and increased benefits for workers in the working class town.

By 75 PM, however, times had changed. The paper company that bore Assemblyman Wallace’s name had collapsed, taking with it much of the town’s jobs and any goodwill for the Wallace family. Though most didn’t blame the mill’s collapse on John, conservative propaganda blaming the closure on the ballooning costs of the unionized workforce worked its way into everyday conversation. To those not in the political know, John Wallace was just another member of the family that killed the town’s economy. For others, he was just another progressive Populist whose naive, well-intentioned policy had robbed the town of thousands of good-paying jobs.

Even so, Gladstone faced an uphill battle against the incumbent. Even despite the troubles of the past few years, Wallace managed to handily carry the elections of 67 and 71. His advocacy for unemployment insurance, support for the jobless, and a renewed push for local public works projects earned him support, as did the memory of longtime residents who remembered the deprivation they faced prior to the Populists’ landslide victory in 47 PM.

Wallace pilloried Gladstone for his proposed policy program of deregulation and tax cuts. Gladstone, meanwhile, portrayed Wallace as an out-of-touch, outmoded relic of the past. “Today’s problems call for today’s solutions, and today’s leaders,” one pro-Gladstone poster read. The energetic 32-year-old with his young wife and son offered a startling contrast to Wallace, who would be celebrating his 72nd birthday on the day of the election. While Gladstone navigated the two scheduled debates with ease, Wallace stumbled over his words, frequently lost his train of thought, and was gaffe prone. In the second debate, he referred to the event’s host, the Wallacetown Woman’s Association, as a “fine girls organization,” and on several occasions called his opponent “Peter.”

Despite these setbacks for the incumbent, polls indicated a tight race. On Election Night, other ridings were called within minutes; Wallacetown took hours. Precinct by precinct, the vote totals were counted.

08-01 - 331 Wallace, 320 Gladstone.

08-02 - 299 Wallace, 298 Gladstone.

08-04 - 312 Gladstone, 308 Wallace.

It all came down to Precinct 08-03, a well-to-do but socially progressive clutch of homes on the outskirts of town. At 11:04 at night, four hours after the polls had closed, the results came in.

08-03 - 320 Gladstone, 310 Wallace.

In one of the closest races in the Commonwealth’s history, Gladstone defeated Wallace by four votes out of 2,496 cast – a margin of just 0.2%.

“Phil was as surprised as we were,” says neighbor Peter Lackman. He shows me a photograph of the election night party, complete with green and white streamers, blue rosettes, and the cheering party faithful. While the others look jubilant, Phillip looks bug-eyed.

“No way he thought he was going to win. No way.”

That night, a journalist from the Courier asked Gladstone how he felt about his victory. The typically erudite lawyer, whose reading lists contained works with word counts well into the hundreds of thousands, simply replied: “Shocked. I’ll give you more in a day or two.”

For the next several years, Gladstone served as a moderate in the Assembly’s opposition. He proposed a number of pieces of legislation concerning educational reform, increased funding for public defenders, and reduced sentences for those charged with petty crimes. He developed a reputation as a clean politician, pragmatic legislator, and surprisingly adept political horse-trader.

Former Assemblyman Thomas McElroy, a one-time seatmate of Gladstone’s told me a story about Gladstone’s prowess in persuasion.

He had this bill, his kind of hobby horse, to help fund free trade school for all East Hegelions. A lot of us thought it was a good idea and it kept getting introduced every year, but it never had the votes to cross the finish line. After Phil Gladstone introduces the bill though, he spends the next week and a half on the phones, taking assemblymen out to dinners, and finding which votes and sponsorships he’d be able to trade. Then comes the day of the vote. 173 to 171. He had figured out exactly how many votes to count, giving himself a couple to spare in case someone got sick or cold feet. It was remarkable.

His finesse for vote counting led to his quick ascent to becoming the Conservative’s whip following the 79 PM election. He rose to commonwealth-wide prominence when he helped expose a corruption scandal that ensnared dozens of members of the then-majority People’s Party.

With the death of the Conservative leader ahead of the 83 PM election, Gladstone was quickly elected to replace him. Leading the party as an anti-corruption attack dog and policy moderate, Gladstone offered a cleaner and more technocratic alternative to the ailing People’s Party and the increasingly radical right-wing Security and Justice Party. Gladstone’s Conservatives easily carried the election, establishing a firm hold on the East Hegelion Commonwealth Assembly that would not be broken until 115 PM.

In the economically devastated Wallacetown, Gladstone’s ascent to the premiership of one of the wealthiest commonwealths in the Federation was a source of pride. Douglas Polk, who was 17 at the time of Gladstone’s election and is now a member of the town’s council, remembered people celebrating in a local pub. “Over at Gaston’s, we were all cheering. The bartender wasn’t even checking people’s ages; I had more beer than I’d ever had before that night. We were all just so happy that one of our own got elected to something prominent, to a position of power to make a difference here.”

‘Mr. Make-a-Deal’: Gladstone as East Hegelion premier

As he entered his premiership, Phillip Gladstone aimed first to investigate and eradicate corruption that had been pervasive in the commonwealth’s government for the past decade. East Hegelion cooperated with federal authorities to prosecute dozens of officials for their involvement in the land sale scandal that had roiled the previous Populist administration.

Outside of cleaning up government, Gladstone’s government prioritized educational reform, reducing government regulations, and cutting government spending. Gladstone came under fire for cutting government pension expenditures, and faced a dramatic strike from public employees across the commonwealth. Gladstone used his personal experience in negotiating in the courtroom and his amicable personality to defuse the protests, resulting in a smaller cut of the pension program.

Following the strike negotiations, Gladstone developed a reputation as a skilled dealmaker between the different groups vying for power and resources in an increasingly cash-strapped commonwealth. One of his greatest accomplishments was striking an advantageous hydroelectric power-sharing deal with neighboring Kaplo, ensuring that the commonwealth’s vulnerable industries had access to affordable energy. In 86 PM, Gladstone’s government successfully encouraged a number of local governments to consolidate services in order to cut costs. These deals earned the premier the moniker of “Mr. Make-a-Deal” among the fawning local press.

Meanwhile, the increasing radicalization of the far-right reared its head in the commonwealth. The Security and Justice Party formed a substantial third party in the Assembly, and persistently criticized Gladstone’s government from the right. Analysts believed that the Conservatives were fearful of alienating their own ultraconservative wing, and activists charged Gladstone with oftentimes acquiescing to the far right’s demands.

In 87 PM – an election year in East Hegelion – a case exploded in the rural hamlet of Bellingham where the owner of a hotel refused service to a Lacaise couple, Marianne and Jean-Phillipe Clarendon. Though the Constitution bars discrimination on the basis of “race, sex, ethnicity, or native language,” by the operators of such public-facing businesses, there had been persistent systemic issues of linguistic and ethnic discrimination throughout the rural areas of the commonwealth. Though Gladstone’s administration eventually came down publicly on the side of the Lacaise couple, they wavered – for weeks, the government’s official position had been to let the case play out in the courts.

“I honestly felt betrayed at the time,” says Jean-Pierre Gachet, a member of Wallacetown’s sizable Lacaise community. “The couple even spoke Hegelionic to the hotel owner – they were only speaking Lacaise among themselves. My family came down here to work in the mills. We’ve been down here for generations, and that could have just as easily been my wife and I.”

He continues, with some bitterness in his voice, “we thought Phil was different. That the Conservatives had changed. But with how they handled the Clarendon case, it felt like he was just another Conservative.”

According to later interviews, in addition to his response to the onset of the civil war, this was one of his greatest regrets in politics. He told the Universalo in 112 PM that he, “still thinks about the Clarendons each and every day.”

“I did bad by them. It was political cowardice, I’ll admit to that. And that cowardice haunts me, if I’m being frank.”

Battling for the soul of Conservatism

Like with his earlier movement into local politics, Gladstone was hesitant to make the jump to the national stage. By 88 PM, the 45-year-old former public defender was tired of politics. The Clarendon case had clearly worn on his conscience, and the increasingly bitter tone of national politics was offputting to the generally staid and meek former public defender.

Unfortunately for Gladstone, the Conservatives’ moderate bench had grown increasingly shallow in recent years. Though plenty of moderates existed in the Common Council and as premiers, none had the governing experience and general popularity of Phillip Gladstone. Though he might face some pushback in the Terre de Lac region for his handling of the Clarendon case, Gladstone was still the frontrunner among Conservative moderates in terms of name recognition and preference for the 88 PM Conservative primary.

At the same time, the Conservative Party found itself increasingly divided between the moderates and the ultraconservatives. The latter took a more permissive view of the constitution when it came to issues regarding linguistic and ethnic protections, hoping to capture the votes of far-right citizens of the north, who began casting ballots for the Security and Justice Party in the twenty years prior.

In the Federation’s north, commonwealth governments routinely found themselves in federal courtrooms as a result of discriminatory laws and practices. In Richardsland, for instance, the commonwealth government passed laws making Hegelionic the sole official language and rejecting any paperwork written in another tongue. This effectively made it illegal for non-Hegelions to do business there, and the Constitutional Court eventually ruled against Richardsland, calling the legislation, “not only in gross contravention of the Supreme Law of the Land, but also the core values of the Nation.”

These commonwealths also frequently created policies that directly or indirectly harmed the immigrant Central Mountain People and Crescent Islander communities. To criminalize the Central Mountain People’s extended family structure, the governments of several commonwealths capped the number of bedrooms that could be built as a part of a home. Laws barring public employees – including teachers, physicians, clerks, and anyone else employed by the state – from having tattoos, were meant to box Crescent Islanders out of government positions.

Though not a northerner himself, the ultraconservatives found their avatar in Howard Sanck. Polling at around 44% among Conservatives, Sanck was an ardent far-right member of the party and the only credible Conservative to declare their candidacy. Sanck spoke to audiences of SJP members, promising them a “clean future” with “clean streets, clean government, and clean people.” He pledged to reduce immigration from the Central Mountains and Crescent Islands amid those regions increasing repression from the Ylrikian Empire, and savage cuts to Uniguita’s generous social safety net. “We have people who have never worked a day in their lives mooching on people who are struggling to pay the bills,” Sanck told a largely Hegelionic audience in the immigrant-heavy city of Port Williams. “It’s time to end the gravy train, folks.”

It was a speech Sanck gave in Wallacetown on Duo 17, 88 PM, however, that convinced Gladstone to seek the presidency. Appealing to the town’s unemployed millworkers, Sanck promised to “kick out the freeloaders, kick out the people who can’t even speak our language, and kick out the people who are poisoning our nation’s blood.” Many in the audience cheered wildly, hearing their frustrations and their prejudices outlined so clearly by a prominent figure for the first time.

For others, it elicited the opposite response. Gregory Beck, a local resident who attended the rally but eventually voted for Gladstone, said that the speech was shocking. “I had never heard someone talk about things like that, definitely not a Conservative. I think it woke me up, a little bit.”

The Duo 17 speech struck a particularly raw nerve with another Wallacetown native. “It was the most hateful, vindictive thing I had ever heard,” Gladstone later told a biographer. “It made me sick to my stomach. It was un-Uniguitan. This is a nation built by people from all over, who speak a wide variety of languages, and who believe in a variety of Gods. Sanck didn’t love the Federation. He hated it. He wasn’t a Conservative – he was a radical.”

The Conservative Party, save for the presidency of Fernando Pelar from 60 PM - 68 PM, had been largely locked out of power federally since Conservative President Enrico Carmelo’s ill-fated self-coup attempt in 47 PM forty years earlier. In recent elections, however, the Conservatives had come so tantalizingly close to victory. In 80 PM, the Conservatives won 47% of the vote to the Populists 53% in the second round of voting. In 84 PM, the split had been a maddening 51-49. By 88 PM, the nation found itself fatigued with the incumbent Populists and in the midst of an economic slump heading into its third year. The Conservatives seemed to be on the cusp of a political rout. Most pollsters and analysts believed that whoever won the Conservative nomination would be the next president, even if the nominee was the polarizing Sanck.

It was in this once-in-a-generation context that Gladstone found himself. The idea of an inevitable Sanck presidency was unfathomable. And while there were a number of moderate candidates at this point, none of them had the individual resources, energy, or name recognition to take on a lion of the Conservative right like Howard Sanck.

After a marathon series of phone calls, trial balloon polls, and conversations with Conservative notables, Gladstone announced his candidacy on Trio 17, exactly one month after Sanck’s Wallacetown speech. Over the next five months, Gladstone and Sanck traded places at the top of the polls numerous times. Gladstone chastised Sanck’s closeness with the SJP, while Sanck charged that Gladstone was a false conservative.

After a bitter and heated primary contest, Gladstone emerged victorious – the primary on Okto 4 yielded a 53-47 victory over Sanck. Sanck conceded the election, though he promised to “take [Gladstone] to task in representing the voices of the tens of thousands of red-blooded Uniguitans who voted for change in the Party and the Federation.”

Over the next twelve weeks, Gladstone would serve as the party’s standardbearer in one of the most politically turbulent times in the Federation’s history. What was supposed to be a coronation and a capstone to an impressive political career became a slugfest – laying bare for the final time the deep divisions in Uniguita that would tear it apart less than three years later.

This is the first in a multi-part retrospective series on the life and political career of the late President Phillip Gladstone (43 PM - 126 PM). Subscribe to this column to receive an alert when Part Two is posted.

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KETFOLYO and FEKETEFOLD, Z.H. – UNUO 13, 126 PM

Hundreds of legislators and onlookers pack the gilded chambers of Parliament Hall in the Zoldish capital of Ketfolyo. Members of the Conservative Party, recently elected the majority, applaud as their leader Laszlo Barcza takes to the podium. Just a few moments ago, Barcza was voted in as the commonwealth’s first right-wing premier since the end of the civil war more than thirty years ago.

The dentist turned politician greets the chamber with a characteristically wide smile, saying quiet thank yous into the microphone and saluting his allies with enthusiastic waves.

He begins in a manner characteristic of a typical, largely formulaic regional inaugural address. “Thank you, to my fellow Zolds,” he starts, “for putting your faith in myself and this Government to carry out the duties ascribed to us in our great commonwealth’s constitution.” Barcza congratulates the class of newly sworn-in freshmen members of parliament, applauding their “zeal and determination for participating in the public square and in public service.”

As the speech continues, however, it takes a harsher tone. “For a generation, our people have been taught to be ashamed of our Zoldishness,” he says. “To be ashamed of our faith. To be ashamed of our heritage and our history. Well today, that generation of humiliation comes to an end, and Zoldhegyek shall raise its head to a restored dignity.” This line earns enthusiastic applause from his fellow Conservatives, and looks of nauseated contempt from the Liberals, Populists, and other members of the Zoldish opposition.

Barcza chides the media and Nova Espero for their ridicule of the mountainous, highly religious commonwealth. He derides the former People’s Party-led government for making Zoldhegyek a “laughing stock” and for being the, “most brazenly corrupt administration the Zoldish people had ever seen.” The premier promises an end to the “radicalization and shaming” of Zoldish youth in the commonwealth’s public schools, and a renewed state support for religious schools.

The Uniguitan left has long prided itself on its “cleaning” of the once-archconservative region, setting up a liberal government in the aftermath of the civil war. Thirty-one years after peace was established, however, the right has come back with a vengeance. In last year’s general election, the local chapter of the Conservative Party won an outright majority in the chamber for the first time.

The ruling party losing ground when a member of their party is in power in Nova Espero is not uncommon. Given Populist President Adamo Lojaleco’s sagging popularity, the Poppies expected a bruising cycle. When Election Day came, however, the results were catastrophic, with the party losing 77 of their 145 seats. “We thought we’d lose the icing,” one Populist legislator told me. “Instead we lost the whole cake.”

The whole cake | Change in the composition of Zoldish Parliament from 121 PM to 125 PM

Barcza’s ascent inspires shock, anger, and fear among the Zoldish left, ethnic minorities

In the highly-educated, white collar Kanyar neighborhood around a half-mile down the Fekete River from Parliamentary Hall, the results of last Dekaunuo’s election were a shock. “Barcza is a lunatic,” Anisa, 31, tells me. An employee of a local homeless shelter and lifelong supporter of the Liberal Party, Anisa says that she doesn’t know a single Conservative voter. “Maybe I’m in a bubble, but there’s no way it’s that lopsided, right? So many people live here, and no one I know voted for them. Do they all live out in the hollows?”

In this tony ward, its streets lined with upscale coffeeshops, new apartments, and fashionable barbers, the windows display signs in support of Zoldhegyek’s ethnic, religious, linguistic minorities, who face continuous attacks from the right. During last year’s campaign, Premier Barcza faced criticism when he said that Pravish speakers needed to “get literate,” and that followers of the Mohengduist faith were, “impotents busying themselves with feminizing society.”

“He and the rest of the Conservatives are hateful bigots,” says Pawel, an ethnic Prav and Communalist voter. “Barcza learned how to dress things up in a friendly way, but we know who he really is.”

He points out another sign in a nearby window. It reads “Barcza bűnös!” – “Barcza is guilty.” It refers to allegations Barcza faced during the election related to his past involvement with the far-right extremist group, the Zoldish National Army (ZNH). Some charged that he participated in the group when it engaged in an attempted ethnic cleansing of Pravish people from Zoldhegyek during the Bloody Week of 91 PM. In 123 PM, Barcza was acquitted of federal charges related to his ZNH membership. As the case was dismissed primarily on procedural grounds – the defense discovered crucial evidence had been harvested during a warrantless search – many on the left continue to believe the allegations against the new premier.

“He’s a murderer and a thug. I’ll never forgive the People’s Party for botching that investigation,” says Pawel, whose uncle was killed by ZNH forces during the Bloody Week.

Contributing to fears among the left and Pravs in particular is the increase in far-right extremist activity in Ketfolyo. On the eve of Barcza’s inauguration, hundreds of members of the group “Brothers of Zoldhegyek” marched through the Pravish neighborhood of Alsodal. In Kanyar, posters calling for the “death of leftist scum” were plastered on lightpoles in the days leading up to the election.

“I hope things stay peaceful,” Pawel tells me with some anxiety in his voice. “Knowing the nationalists though, I doubt they will.”

The Zoldish hinterlands celebrate the Conservatives’ rise

Sitting on the front porch of a service station in Feketefold, a rural hamlet fifty miles from the Zoldish capital, Magdalena, 73, provides a much sunnier assessment of the new government. “They’re going to take our nation back. They’re going to sweep out the house, and take our nation back.”

“Sweep out the house!” – “Seperjük ki!” in Zoldish – is a common expression on yard signs, flags, and bumper stickers out here. Starting out as a Conservative promise to root out corruption and “career politicians” in Ketfolyo, the phrase became wider in scope as the campaign increased in temperature. Wielding a broom at a rally on Deka 19, the Conservative candidate for Feketefold’s seat told a crowd that it was time to “sweep out the human trash that pollutes our streets!” Even after harsh rebukes from the media and her opponents, the candidate refused to recant the remarks.

“Why should I apologize? I was telling the truth.” MP Timia Kalyos tells me at her constituency office. “The people clearly agree. Why should I disagree with the people?”

Feketefold is a typical representative of Zoldhegyek’s shift rightward over the past several years. Prior to the civil war, the area consistently voted for members of the right-wing Security and Justice Party. When the party became entangled with the northern secessionist movement and was banned in 92 PM, the area shifted its support towards the People’s Party. The longtime Populist MP for the area, Matias Zsigo, trended on the conservative side of the party and placated his constituents with large public works projects and well-placed nods to the region’s religious traditionalism. In 107 PM, for example, Zsigo was instrumental in passing a mandate for schoolchildren to learn about Zoldish saints in secular schools.

Things have changed over the past few years, however. The Conservative Party, which gradually gained ground among the commonwealth’s right-wing throughout the 100s and 110s, capitalized on the local unpopularity of the progressive Populist government of President Adamo Lojaleco. They agitated on concerns over Zoldish language education in Zoldhegyek’s schools, pillorying Zsigo for voting in favor of a bill that would allow for limited Pravish instruction in select regions of the commonwealth. Kalyos called him a “fake conservative,” who failed to truly understand the needs and wants of the area’s residents. Wealthy conservatives from Hegelion and Ferria dumped tens of thousands of notes into the region’s campaigns, plastering Kalyos’ face and voice on the airwaves, at bus stops, and in newspapers.

The Conservatives’ campaign worked. Despite regularly winning elections by upwards of 30 or 40% in prior years, Zsigo was ousted by the Conservative Kalyos by nearly ten points in the Dekaunuo election. His story wasn’t unique, either. Dozens of Poppies lost seats just like Feketefold to culture warrior Conservatives across the commonwealth.

Ricardo Zaszik, a local carpenter and longtime People’s Party voter, tells me why he voted for Kalyos. “The Poppies didn’t listen to us anymore,” he says. “We didn’t want a new school, or new roads, or a new bus route. We were fine with things here the way they were. What we really wanted was our Zoldhegyek back: with a Zoldish language, Zoldish culture, and a Zoldish God.”

Looking forward, to this year’s elections and beyond

According to the latest Universalo poll, President Lojaleco has an approval rating of just 43%, and political analysts expect his People’s Party to lose ground in the Common Council in this year’s midterm elections. Though a blowout like that in Zoldhegyek is far from likely to occur, the Conservatives have been picking up ground outside their traditional heartland in rural Hegelion and Ferria, the Central Plains, and the well-heeled suburbs of coastal cities. Conservatives have noticed increased membership from working class wards of major cities, and traditional industrial Poppie strongholds like Terre des Lacs and Sherbrooke.

Though the national Conservative Party is much more moderate than that in Zoldhegyek, the far-right is increasing in strength. Roughly one in four Conservatives polled told the Universalo that they would vote for Barcza or far-right Common Councilor William Updyke in their party’s presidential primary in 128 PM. Even so, the moderate Conservative premier of North Hegelion Howard Cate says that people like Barcza, “are a hazard to the party.”

“When people like him come in and hurl slurs and invectives, they make us look like cretins,” says Cate, another potential contender for the Conservative nomination. “They’re too extreme, they’re too radical, and they’d never win on the national level.”

Though Cate’s words seem to ring true in the polling data, it remains to be seen what potential strength the ascendant far-right could wield even as a minority faction. How beholden would a Conservative majority in the Common Council be to figures like Barcza and Updyke? To what demands would moderates like Cate need to concede?

We should watch Zoldhegyek very closely – it could portend for things to come.

This is part of a series centered on Pavel Tzarkowski’s experiences as a survivor in early Nova Espero entitled “1850-01.” Follow this link to go to the series’ page.

Wet, dirty snow crunched under Pavel’s boots as he and the rest of Platoon 403 trudged through the shattered streets of Hegeliopolis. In the hour since they left the gates of Nova Espero behind, a crust of one to two inches had formed on the already icy pavement. The precipitation had increased in intensity, piling onto Pavel’s shoulders and sending a shockwave of frigid snowmelt down his back.

With some food in his stomach and knowledge that his wife and children were safe beyond strictly guarded ramparts, Pavel gave himself time to truly look around for the first time. In that dazed and panicked state on Deka 28, 1766, Pavel had paid little attention to the re-arrangements in the streetscape that the War had brought. Old, familiar facades of upscale downtown shopping arcades, trendy nightclubs, and fashionable restaurants had been rendered into rubble more reminiscent of burned-out meteorites than former pieces of architecture. Trees in medians had been reduced to mangled stumps, their branches and leaves long reduced to atomized carbon now dimming the sun in the sky above.

As they neared the Great Imperial Way, the buildings themselves began to more closely resemble the tree stumps. Great stone bastions of the military, the bureaucracy, and the church had been reduced to ashen heaps and feeble colonnades. The way itself had always been an impossibly wide chasm separating the medieval Old City from the modern New City, but the near whiteout conditions made it appear to be an endless plain. Were he not walking alongside Corny Atwater, he feared that he could become lost amid the blizzard.

“So, you never really told me what happened after everything,” Corny said, breaking the silence made heavier by the insulating snow.

“I was working at the library when it happened,” Pavel replied, huffing and puffing, quickly remembering with clarity how much walking through the cold sucked the energy out of him. It brought back memories of meandering through the snow drifts to get to the one-room schoolhouse back in Kravozhodwo.

In between breaths, Pavel regaled his former mentor with his woes of the past two years. Hobbling through the firestorm-ravaged remains of Hegeliopolis, finding his family in his old basement. The different camps, settlements, and roving gangs that all provided some temporary protection. The Tzarkowskis “going-it-alone” periods that frequently ended with an all-too-close brush with death.

From his experiences sitting around countless campfires listening to the stories of other survivors, Pavel knew that his story was not particularly unique or interesting. And yet Corny patiently listened.

“What about you?” Pavel said, the sweat mixing with the slush in his increasingly saturated coat. “You weren’t even around when everything happened… you just disappeared one day a couple summers back.”

“Well,” Corny said, tutting his teeth. “I bet you can guess if you really try. I was at Fort Fortuna when the bombs fell.”

Fort Fortuna. Truthfully, Pavel could have guessed, but he didn’t particularly want to imagine it. “The Cinderblock” as it was colloquially called, Fort Fortuna stood on a spit jutting out into the Great Western Sea at the end of Hegelipolis’ peninsula. It had been constructed with seaward-facing cannons when the greatest military woes of Hegeliopolis were Ylrikian men-of-war emerging from the distant horizon. Around a decade back, the Empire had transformed it into a prison for the growing population of individuals held for political crimes – liberal professors, republican operatives, newspaper editors who refused to toe the imperial line. Rumors of torture and sadistic guards emanated from that place like a high-powered radio wave. Pavel didn’t know if they were true or another propaganda technique from the government to keep the “radicals” on their best behavior.

“After the war, the guards just up and left,” he continued. “They left the cells open. And just left!”

“You sound disappointed,” Pavel replied.

Dr. Atwater stared ahead, thinking for a brief moment.

“You know what,” he shouted. “I fucking am. Those bastards beat us to a pulp, whipped our feet until they were raw, and soaked our bedsheets in coyote piss. If they really thought we were dangerous enough to treat us that way, wouldn’t they have just shot us in the head?”

Pavel had only really seen him heated that way one other time. When the newly appointed dean of history announced the new “patriotism guidelines” for the department’s publications and coursework, he could’ve sworn Corny was going to have a heart attack.

“And they just left the fucking cells open,” Corny said in a huff. He had spent nearly a year and a half at the Cinderblock.

“I don’t know where they went,” Corny added, raising his shoulders in a shrug and then slapping his hands at his side. “I remember the fires in town. There isn’t a chance in hell that they made it through all of that.” Glancing over at Pavel, Dr. Atwater realized he was speaking to a living counterpoint.

“I mean present company excluded,” he finished, “there’s no fucking way they made it through all of that.” Pavel noted a hint of fear in his voice with that final note. Some might see confronting their torturer outside the walls of their prison as an opportunity for revenge, especially amid the anarchy of the apocalypse. But Pavel suspected that such a circumstance would only cause Corny to relive a million nightmares.

“We’re here,” Lieutenant Suarez barked over the howling wind. The sorry squad of frozen ragamuffins shivered in the shadow of the hulking Dr. Erich V. Dolemayer Imperial Electrical Engineering Institute. A concrete mass with darkened windows gored into the side, the institute proved an imposing structure. “Let’s head inside,” Suarez said as he calmly stepped over the shattered glass of the sliding door. “Beck, you take point. Everyone, keep an eye out for any holdouts.”

The crew passed through the harsh, gray lobby in a breeze. The receptionists’ desk and the rotting entranceway rug were covered in a fine layer of snow, each errant gust pushing in a blast of white-gray powder. A modernist sculpture dominated the central hall, depicting a figure touching the ground with a bolt of lightning striking his upward-facing index finger.

Kara brandished her revolver, passing ahead of the rest of the platoon. Shining a light down the stairs leading to the basement, she led the way towards the institute’s subterranean library.

At the foot of the stairs was an ice-cold puddle of melted snow. Peering upwards, Kara and the others could see that water was continually leaking from the paltry street-level window above.

“Shit,” Kara said with exasperation as she shined her light down the library’s wall, revealing multiple windows leaking water directly onto the bookshelves below.

A few yards away, a clatter erupted. The members of 403 drew their weapons and aimed at a pile of fallen ceiling tiles. Pavel’s chest grew tight as he speculated what lay beyond. Suarez motioned forward to Boulanger, and the two slowly approached the source of the noise.

Suddenly, a rat of some ungodly proportions burst from the rubble, screaming between Suarez and Boulanger, darting past the rest of the platoon. Pavel let out an involuntary yelp as the dog-sized abomination scrambled up the steps.

A moment of silence passed before Corny let out a cackle, slapping Pavel on the back.

Lieutenant Suarez, unfazed, gave out his orders. “Alright everyone, you have your lists. Find as many of the volumes as you can,” Suarez ordered.

“Yeah, if they’re not moldy heaps by now,” Kara grumbled into her respirator.

Platoon 403 spread out among the stacks. A precious Journal on Electrical Grid Organization here, a slightly damp copy of Dr. Tristan de Champres’ Photovoltaic Cells and Hydroponics there. Each went into a plasticine sleeve for protection from further harm from the elements.

“Hey Pavel, check this out.”

Dr. Atwater led him over to a rank of carrels, each with an attached safe. They likely contained the notes, papers, and other belongings of long-dead graduate students.

“It looks like the guards didn’t pop any of them open,” Corny said, eyeing up and down the aisle. “Maybe it wasn’t worth the effort.”

“Watch this,” Pavel replied.

He had learned this trick from a less than noble classmate at the Imperial University, and had only used it once when he stupidly left his apartment keys in a friend’s safe. These carrel strongboxes were so cheaply made that they could be easily opened by jamming a flathead screwdriver behind the locking mechanism and simply popping it forwards.

Whipping out a weathered multitool from his breast pocket, Pavel jimmyed the lock for a second or two before hearing a metallic, internal clunk.

“Holy shit Pavel,” Corny said with a smile, “I never knew you were cool.”

Pavel and Dr. Atwater went up and down the carrels, breaking each safe open. They primarily contained notebooks, miscellaneous unhelpful readers, and sticky notes for meetings that had long been cancelled.

“Whoa ho ho!” Corny exclaimed as he reached into one of the safes. “Look at this!”

Dr. Atwater pulled out a darkened bottle of wine covered in a light film of dust. Perhaps a sort of contraband kept by one of the notoriously overworked engineering students for emergency use during late-night study sessions.

“It’s, uh.. ah, Vino de Concordia,” Corny said in a cartoonish Ferrian accent, raising his pinched thumb, index, and middle fingers in the air. “Concordia… hey boss, isn’t that where you’re from?”

Emerging from the bookcases, Lieutenant Suarez took the bottle from Dr. Atwater’s hands. “Viñedo Prats… that’s a good label,” he said, raising the bottle in the air before shoving it into his bag.

“Hey! We found it!” Corny protested.

“And we can all have a glass,” Suarez replied, walking back to the shelves, “once we find what we’re here for!”

Corny bore the look of an aggrieved child. “You know what pisses me off the most? He’s telling the truth,” he grumbled. “I almost wish he’d just drink it.”

Row by row, shelf by shelf, rack by rack, Platoon 403 slowly plied their way through the Phyllis J. Coleman Engineering Library’s stacks. The other carrel safes proved fruitless, though a professor’s office did yield a plastic-wrapped copy of Electrical Infrastructure in Undeveloped Areas. Together, the squad managed to cross off sixteen of the thirty-one textbooks, journals, and other valuable artifacts on Dr. Beck’s list. Given the firestorms that immediately followed the War, finding so many paper documents was an archivists’ triumph.

They celebrated with a late lunch, sitting at a table likely once occupied by huddles of engineers sketching notes and schematics into overstuffed folios. True to his word, Suarez popped open the wine bottle, pouring a generous serving into each of the scavengers’ aluminum cups.

Pavel had never been a connoisseur of fine wines. The various particularities were lost on him – to the child of working class Zolds, wine was wine. Given that his last exposure to alcohol was an old campmate’s crude attempt at what he called “meadshine”, however, he found the Vino de Concordia to be exceptionally delicious.

They paired the vintage with packed rations of rye bread, chunks of peppered potatoes, and ham slices produced from canned, “pig product” manufactured before the War. Like all of the food in Nova Espero it was spare. But eating fresh potatoes grown in what was once the Imperial Garden was certainly better than nothing.

Over their meal, the members of Platoon 403 gave Pavel some helpful information on surviving in Nova Espero that the polished, government-approved presentations of the Aid Corps wouldn’t have necessarily shared. Kara told him that the Night Markets on the weekends, where off-duty guards and licensed merchants sold “nonessential” items seized during initial sweeps of the ruins, were a solid spot to get everything from cigarettes to watches to toys for the kids. Corny said the cooks at the cafeteria on Sutherland Street were the nicest, but the food at the one on Hornby was the most palatable. Frederic warned him to never, under any circumstances, head over to Delancey Street on the north side of town. That’s where the Public Health unit cremated the bodies they found during their sweeps.

Suarez spoke very little. A man of few words to begin with, he was focusing the entirety of his attention on the Vino de Concordia. As the others offered more insider knowledge, Pavel noticed the sweet and somber look of satisfaction on the Lieutenant’s face as he no doubt recalled the tastes of home. He could sympathize. Pavel still dreamed about the chewy, gingerbread pierniki from his father’s bakery back in Kravozhodwo.

Soon enough, they had finished their rations and the final drops of wine had been drained. Pavel, Dr. Beck, Dr. Atwater, Frederic, and Lt. Suarez packed up and prepared to head out. The draft from the shattered cellar windows provided a preview for the cold that awaited them outside.

The earlier blizzard had given way to that clear, biting cold that always follows it. Despite the perpetual, gray-brown haze above, the particulates in the air appeared to be weighed down by the fallen snow. Platoon 403 made muffled footsteps as they trudged back to the City’s gates.

Nearing the former Imperial Way and separated from the Lieutenant by some distance, Pavel gave Corny a nudge..

“So the lieutenant… what’s up with him?” He even asked the one thing that few true introverts ask of another silent figure: “Why is he so quiet?”

“Oh Suarez? I think he’s just like that,” Corny replied. “He was like that at the Cinderblock too.”

“He was at Fort Fortuna?”

“Oh yeah. Apparently he was a bigshot in some underground republican outfit over in Ferria,” Corny continued. “He had already been there for a year or two by the time I got in. At least that’s what he told me. The man isn’t exactly an open book.”

Soon enough, the gates of Nova Espero appeared ahead. The mid-afternoon sunlight rapidly gave way to twilight, whose onset appeared to grow earlier and earlier with each passing day. Platoon 403 made it through the City’s threshold just as the exterior watchlights clicked on.

Returning his weapons and handing over the documents he recovered to Kara, Pavel bid farewell to his colleagues.

“No one died. I’d say it was a stellar first day, wouldn’t you?” Corny said.

Pavel chuckled. “I would.”

“Take care buddy… say hey to the family for me,” Corny finished as Pavel waved and began to walk back down Renzi Street.

Take care. Say hey to the family. What a wonderful sentiment to make a comeback. Were it not for the boarded up windows, the pain of his feet in his too-large boots, and distant, unmistakable smell of burning flesh, Pavel could pretend for an instant that he had just met Corny for dinner at an upscale Old City eaterie.

When Pavel arrived back at the barracks, Filip and Elizabeta were getting ready for dinner.

“How was your day?” Pavel asked his wife, as he pulled his son in for a hug. The daily check-in. Another cherished rediscovery.

“Work was fine… I visited Anna at the sanatorium. She seems to be having fun with the other kids.”

Pavel asked about the hospital in a way that any good father would: did the doctors seem professional, was the building clean and orderly, did everything seem sterile? Not as though they could just whisk Anna away to another facility if this one proved to be dire – maybe this was just the instinct of a pre-War Hegeliopolitan, accustomed to multiple, well-appointed hospitals and clinics in short proximity.

The Tzarkowskis proceeded to the dining room for their supper, again a potato-heavy meal accompanied by some of the first products of the City’s fledgling fishing industry.

The meager fire once again crackled to life.

It was warm.

This is Part Six of a series centered on Pavel Tzarkowski’s experiences as a survivor in early Nova Espero entitled “1850-01.” Follow this link to read Part Seven.

PORT WILLIAMS, N.H. - UNUO 4, 126 PM

As the rest of Uniguita rings in the new year with fireworks and raucous celebration, Phillip Keahi holds a party of a different sort in Port Williams’ Little Tewangarato.

“Tonight, we begin the final leg of the long march to the freedom our ancestors fought and died for,” Keahi says to a joyous audience of around a hundred. Bearing small paper Crescent Islander flags, they fix their gaze on the silver-haired, 52-year-old newspaper editor at the podium.

“Last night, the Ylrikian parliament finally passed Bill 629 – our people will get a vote on independence!” The crowd cheers. Even those three generations removed from the Islands’ shores engage in the rapturous applause.

A recent history of the Crescent Islanders, and conversations with the diaspora

The massive archipelago of thousands of islands forms a tectonic huddle just off the eastern shores of the Ylrikian mainland. Independent at the time of the Milito, the Crescent Islands had been a pawn in the geopolitical struggle between Hegelio-Ferria and the Ylrikian Empire. Though no missiles struck the islands on Deka 28, it still felt the effects of the War – widespread famine, mass starvation, wars of independence, ethnic score-settlings that boiled into genocide. Modern studies estimate that anywhere between 85% and 95% of the island chain’s population perished as a result of the Milito’s wide-reaching aftermath.

The deeply damaged and divided island chain made for an easy target once the reconstituted Ylrikian Empire ran out of uncontested land to conquer on Kagzmerak. The massive westernmost island of Moturato was controlled by a loose confederation of communes before being conquered by the Ylrikian Empire in 33 PM. Over the next five years, the Ylrikians would conquer every single island, atoll, and barrier reef in the chain, save for the kingdom of Tarangay.

Over the next several decades, the Ylrikian colonial government would implement and maintain a severe system of cultural control. 93-year-old Taho Kiwi, an Islander Uniguitan immigrant who came to Port Williams in 42 PM described conditions on the islands:

“Schoolteachers would rap us on our knuckles if we spoke our language. We all had to speak Ylrikian, all the time. Our parents were terrified. If a ‘Child Health Monitor’ came to the house and caught us speaking our language, they would send us off to boarding schools. The girls next door went away because of that. We never saw their parents again either. A lot of parents seemed to go missing too.”

Those who were fortunate enough to flee amid Ylrikian conquest spread across the globe, primarily settling in Tarangay and Uniguita. On Uniguita’s western seaboard, cities like Port Williams took in thousands of refugees. Now constituting around a third of the city’s population, they make up a major force in the city’s politics, economy, and culture. Islander Uniguitans have founded businesses that have thrived, others have found long careers in city hall or the Common Council, or have gone on to lead illustrious careers in cinema, radio, and television. For nearly a century, there was little appetite among the diaspora to return.

Over the past 25 years, there’s been a change in tone for some. Democratization in Ylrikia in the early 100s brought hope and greater autonomy to the Crescent Islands. They elected their first parliament in 103, and it has been led by the openly nationalist Crescent Islanders People’s Party and its charismatic chair George Waimea since 117. Some members of the Islander community have returned to their ancestral homeland. Others have stayed put to wait and see. Some have anxieties about the right-wing Loyalty & Prosperity Party returning to power, and quashing the significant gains accrued over the last quarter century.

The vast majority, however, see themselves staying in Uniguita for no other reason than they see themselves as being Uniguitan. According to the Port Williams Te Karare, 94% of Uniguitan Crescent Islanders have “little to no interest” in moving to the Crescent Islands.

“Port Williams is my home. Uniguita is my home,” says Abigail Kekoa, a 21-year-old student at Port Williams College. “There’s nothing for me to really ‘go back’ to; all of my family’s here, all of my friends are here. I don’t even speak an Islander language. Nobody in my family does, except for my grandma.”

With the passage of Bill 629, Phillip Keahi isn’t looking for a massive tidal wave of Crescent Islanders to head westward. His aspirations lie somewhere else.

“All of us in the community, here in Port Williams and everywhere in Uniguita, have one primary hope for the Islands,” he tells me minutes after stepping off the stage. “We want our cousins on the Islands to breathe the same free air that we breathe, whether it be in Uniguita or in Tewangarato.”

Keahi, the editor in chief of Te Karare, uses his platform to advocate a firm, nationalist position for the Crescent Islands. Founded in the 30s by the first wave of Islander immigrants, the newspaper has a long tradition of advocating for Islander rights both in Ylrikia and in Uniguita. The paper’s previous head, Hoku Kane, faced threats to his life after publishing a wide-reaching expose on Ylrikia’s boarding school program.

“They put a bomb in his car,” Keahi tells me, showing me a 86 PM front page depicting a mangled four door next to a curb. “Just because he told the truth. Because the truth was too dangerous for them.”

Though he has no plans of moving to the Islands – “too far away from the grandkids” – Phillip has hope in the proposed referendum.

“We cannot leave our nation to the whims of some future emperor or prime minister who wakes up and remembers how much they really, truly hate us,” he tells me, tears welling in his eyes. “We need freedom.”

Others, particularly in Port Williams’ business community, have concerns about the potential ramifications of independence. Arthur Mahelona, the chief operating officer for Western Imports, says that an independent Crescent Islands might bring trade headaches.

“We have a free trade agreement with Ylrikia. Who’s to say that Waimea would keep it going?” he asks me, showing me a video of the Islander premier promising stronger protections for domestic industries. “He’s going to run up the tariffs and imports are going to drop like a stone.”

Others, particularly Ylrikian Uniguitans, have concerns over an independent Crescent Islands’ treatment of Ylrikian residents of the archipelago. James Kimura, whose parents grew up on the islands before immigrating to Uniguita in the 90s, has his doubts. “You hear what Waimea says. He calls us all imperialists, and that we have to ‘go home.’ What if the Islands are our home?”

Though Waimea himself generally espouses ethnic unity in his vision of an independent Crescent Islands, members of his party have faced controversy for remarks concerning Ylrikian Islanders. The Islands’ deputy premier, Gregory Keohokalole encountered blowback last year after referring to them as “invaders” and “parasites.” Though he clarified that he was specifically referring to Ylrikian business interests in the region, the remarks left a bad taste in the mouth of many Ylrikian Islanders.

“I just don’t trust them to do right by our people,” Kimura tells me.

Ylrikian Government says election will be free and fair – though potential voting rule changes loom on the horizon

The Ylrikian Consulate in Port Williams maintains its government’s official position that Ylrikian unity should be maintained. At a press conference on Unuo 2, Consul General Kaori Takebe told reporters, “the Government passed legislation mandating a vote on the status of the Crescent Islands in Septo of this year.” She continued, “while we will ensure that this vote will be conducted in a way consistent with currently established democratic processes, the Government wishes to emphasize that the Crescent Islands are an integral and valuable part of our great imperial family. Crescent Islanders are equals and friends to those living on the mainland, and their loss from our national fabric would be detrimental to both peoples.”

Critics charge that those “currently established democratic processes” are under threat. Just days before Bill 629’s passage, another piece of legislation was introduced by Ylrikia’s far-right Loyalty & Prosperity Party. At present, all members of the Ylrikian diaspora going back four generations can have access to Ylrikian citizenship, and by extension, Ylrikian voting rights. This would include almost everyone in the Ylrikian Islander Uniguitan and Crescent Islander Uniguitan communities in Port Williams.

The new bill, Bill 877, would change access to citizenship and voting rights. Only those who were either born on Ylrikian soil or their children would be able to vote in Ylrikian elections, including the upcoming referendum. This would revoke the voting rights of almost all of the Crescent Islander community in Uniguita, while maintaining voting rights for the majority of Ylrikian Islanders Uniguitan.

“This is what they do when they think they’re going to lose,” Keahi tells me. He shows me a full page ad set to be placed in Unuo 5’s issue of Te Karare, imploring eligible Crescent Islander Uniguitan voters to alert their elected representatives to oppose the bill.

The Loyalty & Prosperity Party is in the opposition in Ylrikia, though some analysts believe that the bill could pass with help from vulnerable members of the increasingly unpopular incumbent center-left government. “The Liberals are getting hammered on immigration,” says Jordan Kita, a professor of Ylrikian studies at the University of Nova Espero. “Tightening up citizenship laws could give them some credibility on the issue ahead of this year’s elections.”

Looking forward

Two days after New Year’s, James Kimura invites me to a meeting of the Ylrikian Uniguitan Civil Rights Association, better known by its acronym YUCRA. The light brown, birchwood walls are covered in photographs of meetings in decades past, rallies in front of the Common Council building in Nova Espero, and a plaque honoring Harry Sakai, the first Ylrikian Uniguitan mayor of Port Williams. In addition to advocating for Ylrikian Uniguitans’ rights, YUCRA often holds town halls where members can share their opinions on developments both in Uniguita and in Ylrikia.

The principal item on tonight’s agenda is commentary and debate on the Crescent Islands referendum. Paul Matsumoto, YUCRA’s president, calls the meeting to order and solicits members’ comments.

“I’m glad they’ll be able to vote,” starts a member calling herself Charlene. “But I don’t believe for a second that the natives will respect settlers’ rights.” Her remarks are met with a smattering of applause.

“The nationalists are a gang of racists, and they’re going to kick out all of the settlers if they can get away with it,” says a man in his 50s. Another member, Charles, argues that, “the Crescent Islanders were unfairly conquered, and I’m glad that there is a peaceful path for them to achieve freedom.”

Across town, the office of Te Karare hums with life. Phillip Keahi and volunteers are running a phonebank, contacting local residents to verify their voting status in the Crescent Islands and urging them to contact their representatives in Ylrikia.

“This is our first, great chance at national liberation,” Keahi tells me. “We cannot afford to waste it.”

PUERTO OSTRA, W.F. - DEKADUO 21, 125 PM

Powdery, ashy flakes of snow froze the faces of passersby. Icicles hung from the signs of defunct businesses and the rotting hulks of burned out vehicles. In what was once a city of light jackets and perhaps thin gloves on a particularly brisk day, continuous weeks of sub-freezing temperatures and a constant flurry had taken their toll. By the middle of that first winter following the War, the people of Nova Espero were freezing, mourning the loss of their countless dead relatives, and not only starving themselves, but watching helplessly as their children grew hungrier with each passing day.

But in that moment, the residents of Nova Espero found a means to express camaraderie and community. Rather than succumb to the misery of their situation, they chose to huddle in the comparatively better-insulated inner sanctum of the hastily reclaimed City Hall. There, they shared memories of parents, sisters, and brothers, uncles, grandparents, and cousins, many of whom were presumed to be gone in the aftermath of the War. Despite their hunger, they celebrated the most recent haul of canned goods, and passed around a miraculously unearthed bottle of Swalabash whiskey. And after all of this, they gathered around a particularly impressive bonfire built with scrap lumber assembled by their collective effort.

Such was the first Fellowship Day in Nova Espero, though the name itself wouldn’t be formalized for quite some time. Some communities celebrated similar impromptu festivities, while others recontextualized the traditional Solstice holiday of the Old Fosterian Church or the Lacaise Hivernal. One settlement in what is now West Ferria celebrated “Cockroach Day,” where residents drank through stores of upland wine and feasted on game meat, dressing as cockroaches to celebrate their inexplicable survival through the preceding months.

In more conservative regions like Carvón and Concordia in northern Ferria, the lowlands of northern Hegelion, and the Fertile Center, old religious customs dominate. The Old Fosterian Church still commands a substantial presence in these parts, and Solstice celebrations continue here just as they did before the War. The theology of the holiday holds that the winter solstice is a reminder of how God’s love is still present even on the darkest of days. Celebrants attend religious services and exchange gifts, though even here, Fellowship Day bleeds through. By the 20s, many communities began capping the festivities by gathering around a bonfire in their towns’ central squares, and memorials to the recent dead became common fixtures in the narthexes of Fosterian temples.

Just as Uniguita’s cultural norms, desires, and economy have evolved, so too has Fellowship Day. Gift-giving traditions borrowed from Fosterianism rose in popularity with the return of the consumer economy and increased prosperity among Uniguitans. According to Universalo archives, in 10 PM just 23% of Uniguitans celebrated the winter holiday with gift-giving activities – scarcity made it a luxury that few could afford. Polling data from 124 PM, meanwhile, shows that two-thirds of Uniguitans, “exchanged presents, cash, or other gifts” as a part of Fellowship Day activities. This bears out in other data too: economic slumps notwithstanding, retail sales in the weeks preceding Dekaduo 22 are on an upward trajectory year over year, with the Federal Association of Commercial Retailers projecting a 3.38% increase in sales from last year.

Meanwhile, other traditions have fallen by the wayside. The previously cited 124 PM Universalo study found declining participation in the more communal aspects of the holiday, such as feasts, bonfires, and religious services. The Parizeau Syndrome epidemic of the late 100s exacerbated the decline in participation in community events, though their steady erosion was evident even before then. Despite an uptick in participation in religious services and communal feasts in recent years, there seems to be no indication that it will recover to pre-epidemic numbers anytime soon.

These gloomy statistics seem to be uncorroborated in Puerto Ostra, however.

The percussive boom of a marching band ricochets off the stone facades of the city’s historic downtown, as the Sociedad Honorable de las Cucarachas – “The Honorable Society of the Cockroaches” – practices ahead of tonight’s festivities. Covered in elaborate, papier-mache mockups of the insect, drummers bang their instruments while the brasses and woodwinds bleat out traditional, uptempo arrangements. Vendors in the nearby central plaza hawk holiday wares to parents as their children snack on cockroach and cricket lollipops.

“It’s really fun,” nine-year old Imelda tells me. “The roaches are gross, but the music is really fun.” Her mother, Rosa, says that it gets the kids out of the house during the holiday break. “It’s definitely a lot better than them melting their brains in front of the television,” she says.

“It’s tradition!” her husband Rodolfo chimes in as he unfolds chairs for his family to watch the imminent parade. He shows me an old photo of him as a teenager, decked out head to toe in cockroach regalia. A one-time tenor saxophonist for the Sociedad, Rodolfo bubbles as he describes the old days. “Too many people now just stay locked up inside,” he laments. “They don’t want to do things like this anymore.”

Despite Rodoflo’s complaints, the 125th Cockroach Day Parade appears to be well-attended. Excited families, couples, and inebriated students from the nearby college cheer on the bug-bedecked marchers as they wind their way through town. The rhythm is enchanting, and the dancers impressively complete complex moves under the presumably heavy weight of their costumes.

“La reina!” Imelda shouts, pointing at an approaching float. The Cockroach Queen – clothed in a sort of plastic cockroach chainmail dress, with two antennas shooting from her immaculately styled hair – waves and flashes a grin at the cheering spectators. “We love you, Kiki!” shouts one particularly enthusiastic huddle.

“We’re so proud of Enriqueta,” gushes the queen’s mother, Maria. “She trained all year for the pageant and I think the judges saw that,” she continues. “Though she would have been our Queen regardless.”

While the parade continues, a company of the town’s master chefs prepare a gargantuan feast. Employing likely every cooker and smoker in town, dozens of grillmasters lay down fat, well-marinated slabs of boar chops and venison steaks. The smell alone is intoxicating – one can only imagine the taste.

“My grandad cooked, my dad cooked, and I cook,” says Camelia Ponderosa, 17. She says her father hoped to have a son to carry on the tradition, but that those hopes were dashed by the early death of her mother. “He trained me like I was a boy,” she continues. Standing nearby, her father Nestor beams with pride. “She’s a lot better than I was at her age. Cami’s a star.”

Thousands of celebrants swarm the prepared carnivales, the gigantic, carnival-like tents set up to hold the hungry festival-goers. Thirty volunteers operate the mammoth buffet lines, doling out the traditional game meat, mashed potatoes, and hearty vegetables. Employees from Viñedo de Concordia, a major regional winery, serve up sizable glasses of a fresh red.

The meal is fantastic, complemented by the lively atmosphere. Families and neighbors share laughs, and kids chase each other between the long, wooden tables. After the feast, many of now stuffed and slightly tipsy revelers go outside where a significant bonfire has been set up.

Phillip Parker, a tourist visiting from Nova Espero, say, “Fellowship Day has nothing on this.” He tells me that he attended the City-organized bonfire held downtown last year, but that it doesn’t hold a candle to Puerto Ostra’s celebration. “This is insane. The fire’s huge! And the food’s amazing!” he says through an open smile.

Tomorrow, millions of Uniguitans will awake far too early to their children hammering on their bedroom doors, begging them to wake up so they can open their presents. They’ll receive new mugs, books, and games, or from the uncreative but still generous, envelopes stuffed with cash.

Fewer will go to bonfires, communal feasts, religious ceremonies or the other hallmarks of Fellowship Days past. And while it would be improper to judge anyone for how they celebrate a holiday, I will say that there is something so special about the community events of Fellowship Day. At the communal feasts, you’ll reconnect with people you haven’t seen in years, make new friends, or meet a kind family that just moved to the neighborhood and is desperately looking for playdates for their kids. At the risk of being overly sentimental, the Fellowship Day bonfires will not only heat you up in the very literal sense, but also have the potential to kindle connections with your neighbors.

Fellowship Day once was – and for many still is – a day of camaraderie and warmth amid the depressing, frigid heart of winter. As loneliness increases and civic participation decreases, we would do well to bring back the “fellowship.”

This is part of a series centered on Pavel Tzarkowski’s experiences as a survivor in early Nova Espero entitled “1850-01.” Follow this link to go to the series’ page.

Pavel’s eyes fluttered open to the clatter of bells outside. Ringing six times, they were a wake-up signal to Nova Espero’s slumbering populace. The cooks in the city commissaries had been up for around an hour, preparing the day’s breakfast for hungry workers. After breakfast, some would make their way towards scrap processing sites to pick apart the washing machines, refrigerators, and random bits of metal and wood brought in by the scavengers the night before. Others would bleach cans of food, sorting them by age, quality, and contents. Guards yawned as they walked their rounds throughout town and climbed atop the ramparts.

The dining room of the Gluesenkamp Family Barracks reminded Pavel of the archaic bed and breakfast he and Elizabeta had stayed at during their honeymoon. The walls were covered in ornate wood adornments that miraculously had survived the firestorms that immediately succeeded the War. The fireplace crackled with a small, marginally effective flame. Pavel felt the warmth on his cheeks and nose as his back shivered.

The food served was eclectic, but filling: apricot preserves, rye bread, canned pork, and beans of some variety with a glass of reconstituted powdered milk. The cooks at Gluesenkamp, residents themselves, were headed by a former sous chef who had a knack for presentation. Even this collection of what would have passed for prison food before the War was intentionally plated and prepared to seem a lot more appetizing than it actually was. Elizabeta, a spice fiend who had gone hungry for so long, swore she could taste red pepper in the pork.

Filip, though he was still fussing over Anna’s absence, found himself temporarily sated by the preserves and bread. The once-picky eater had learned the value in becoming a human garbage disposal, but occasionally something caught his fancy enough for him to truly savor it.

“Apricots are good!” he babbled, a small fleck of half-chewed bread splatting onto the miraculously unstained tablecloth. Pavel and Elizabeta couldn’t help but stifle a laugh. Filip had been responsible for a disproportionate number of the Tzarkowskis’ smiles over the past two years, and was likely the reason that they didn’t bear the permanent frowns characteristic of many survivors.

The Tzarkowskis returned to their suite, preparing themselves for the day ahead. Pavel helped Filip get dressed for daycare, sending him off to go “potty” before they headed out the door. Elizabeta put on the slightly-dressy – maybe a shade below business casual? – jeans and a collared shirt the Office of Survivor Services had given them on the way out from the Hospital. As Pavel put on his well-worn fatigue shirt and rumpled canvas pants, Elizabeta pulled him aside.

“Hey,” she whispered low enough so that Filip wouldn’t hear. “I love you, but don’t you dare leave me alone with them.” Elizabeta was not one for serious, heartfelt clichés. There was a half-joke, half-seriousness in her voice.

“I wouldn’t dare,” he replied, with a wink. He could still be smooth around her sometimes, or at least he thought so. She rolled her eyes and nervously laughed, sucking her lower lip into her teeth.

Kissing Elizabeta and Filip goodbye, Pavel stepped out of the Gluesenkamp Family Barracks onto Renzi Street. He was greeted by the ashy snowflakes that had come to dominate the region’s weather in the past two years. Even in the month of Deka, previously the heart of autumn, the weather was raw and uninviting. The air had been hovering just north or south of the freezing mark the past few days, meaning that old fire hydrants and light poles had a thin layer of bright gray frosting while the street was frigid and soaked.

Starting down Renzi, Pavel noted the other workers making their way to their shifts. They greeted their coworkers and neighbors, shoving their ungloved hands into their pockets to stave off the cold. They shared cigarettes and talked about the party that happened over the weekend, and how that cook over from Kells Street can really take a punch.

As they approached the major nodes of industry at the center of town – the Scavenger’s Union Hall, City Hall, the food processing plant, and the scrapyard – the narrow lanes of Nova Espero became clotted with the employees of the first shift. Members of scavenger patrols bunched up with one another like cliques of classmates before the school doors opened, waiting for their officers to emerge from their pre-dispatch meetings. Pavel, though he was nominally just another scavenger, had been told to go into the Union Hall to meet with his patrol.

Pavel politely squeezed through the tightly huddled, shivering assembly, breaching the three-story office building after some considerable effort. Blasted by a wave of surprisingly strong heat, he could feel the frost melting. Now he only shivered from nerves; he had been down this road many times before, but introductions to a new “work unit” or “guard patrol” or “labor detail” in successive settlements and survivor camps never got easier. A lifelong introvert, nothing froze Pavel up quite like breaking the ice.

Walking down the hall, Pavel quickly found the door to room 109, what appeared to be a former training room of some kind. He was sure it was the right room, but he found it empty.

Taking a seat at one of those somehow universally uncomfortable desk-chair hybrids, Pavel scanned the room. The walls were bare, save for a few pre-War employee training posters. Free of windows and therefore further insulated from the cold, 109 was the kind of warm and stuffy place that could very well lull a bored trainee to sleep during their after-lunch course. He hoped that the sanatorium was just as warm, and that Anna was comfortable in bed with the stuffed swamp demon she had inexplicably managed to keep with her throughout the past two years.

Pavel was jarred awake from his musings by the opening of the door. His blood pressure spiked from the unknown entity entering the room. One after another the scavengers laughed at each other’s inside jokes – the worst thing you can hear on the first day. Established connections were impossible to break into. Would he forever be an outsider in this pre-existing cadre?

One of the faces, however, caught his eye. Pavel stopped shivering.

Thank God. A life preserver.

“Pavel?” the man with light brown hair that formed a lowercase m-shaped outline on the top of his head. “Holy shit, Pavel!”

Cornelius Atwater had been a professor of history five years Pavel’s senior. Seemingly carved out of marble, the handsome and unfailingly witty “Corny” had been Pavel’s favorite in the department. When Pavel arrived as a wide-eyed graduate student at the Imperial University, Dr. Atwater had taken a shine to the mute, shivering waif that ended up at his doorstep.

Taking him under his wing, Dr. Atwater helped build Pavel into a more confident academic, if not more a confident man. Even the affable, brilliant, bestseller-writing Atwater could not accomplish that. Pavel, despite years of therapy and his best efforts, always had some sort of resentment towards people like Corny – why did things always seem to go their way, so effortlessly? – but he was not immune from Dr. Atwater’s spell. He loved the man.

Atwater, still his usual, backslapping self, yanked Pavel into an embrace.

“How the hell are ya? You know,” sweeping his arms around the room, “considering everything.”

“I’m doing… I’m doing okay,” Pavel meekly replied.

“Oh God, how are…” Corny clinched his eyes shut and smacked his palm to his forehead. Corny was many things but not subtle. “Elizabeta… and Anna and Fre- Filip! Filip! How are they?” Two years after the War, there was a sort of taboo about asking people about loved ones. It too frequently reminded them of some much-too-recent tragedy. Corny had always felt himself somewhat immune to social niceties and norms; it was strangely reassuring to see that hadn’t changed.

“They’re here,” Pavel stammered. “Anna’s sick, but she’s getting help, at least.”

Corny at least knew well enough not to probe further. “I’m sorry to hear that, Pavel. She’ll pull through. She’s a tough kid,” he said, clapping Pavel’s shoulders.

“Everyone!” Dr. Atwater shouted. Wrapping his arm across Pavel’s back, Corny introduced him to the others in the unit.

“Pleasure to meet you,” said Kara Beck, a forty-something former electrical engineer with auburn hair threaded with gray. “You’re not Elizabeta Tzarkowski’s Pavel are you?”

“I am actually,” Pavel said, a short chuckle escaping his lips.

“She was always such a pain in the ass,” Kara continued. “I hope she’s doing well.”

Next was Frederic Boulanger. A stocky, red-headed man with thinning hair and an incomprehensibly thick beard, Frederic had been a farmer-come-scientist for the Agriculture Ministry prior to the War. He gave Pavel a firm handshake and a gruff “bonjour.”

Last in this compact unit was Lieutenant Antonio Suarez. An imposing figure – Pavel could have sworn he had to duck to get through the door – Suarez was a man of sharp, severe features with deep purple bags under his eyes. Meticulously cropped jet-black hair covered his scalp, and in an age where razors were hard to come by, he was impeccably clean-shaven.

“Hey boss!” Corny barked.

“Dr. Atwater,” he started in a tone that could be charitably described as resigned. “Dr. Beck, Mr. Boulanger, nice to see you.” His eyes shifted over to Pavel.

“Ah, Dr. Tzarkowski, welcome. I’m not one for icebreakers, so we’ll just get into the meat of the assignment.”

Deferential to authority to a fault, Pavel had just found his new favorite novo, one that really spoke his language.

“Dr. Beck, I assume you’ve brought your materials with you?”

“Yes sir,” she replied. Kara smoothed out a chart of Hegeliopolis’ old inner core, including what was now Nova Espero and the immediate surroundings. Circled in red marker was the Empire’s electrical engineering institute, around a half mile to the east.

“We’ll move in this way,” Suarez gestured out the City’s southern gate, moving eastward along Echevarria Street. “The Guard cleared it a few days ago, so it should still be good to go into the building… Dr. Beck?” She smoothed out another map, this one of the institute’s electrical engineering building. “We’ll make our way down the main corridor here, down this staircase, and into the library.”

Scanning his eyes across the members of the squad, Suarez continued. “The Public Health unit said the basement wasn’t too bad, but there was plenty of mildew. So I’d wear your mask if I was you.”

“I have lists of documents we’ll be looking for,” Dr. Beck said, handing each member of the unit a piece of paper with a series of journal volumes, schematics, and books. These were certainly out of Dr. Tzarkowski’s wheelhouse: The Hegelio-Ferrian Journal of Electrical Systems Management, Solar Power in the Northern Territories: A Study of Low-Sunlight Photovoltaic Power Generation, “Standardizing Modular Substations in Rural Vetludo.” Though if Pavel knew anything, it was how to find a supposedly unfindable item in a library.

“Sound good?” Suarez asked, looking at the assembled crew. No one responded.

“Good. Let’s head over to the armory.”

Lieutenant Suarez, Corny, Pavel, Kara, and Frederic made their way out the front door of the union hall. The snow was picking up now, leaving a light film of white on the pavement below interrupted only by bootprints and the thin tiremarks of passing bicycles. The scavengers had all left for the armory after participating in likely identical meetings to Pavel’s, save for the comfort of a warm classroom.

The armory itself abutted the City’s outer walls. A strangely castle-like structure, heavy stonework flowed downwards over a pointed, lancet archway, ushering in guards and scavengers alike.

The four juniors waited as their senior walked up to the armory desk and gave the attendant officer his information. “4th Scavengers Company, Platoon 403, Lieutenant Antonio Suarez.”

“Hey Tony, how’re ya doing?” the lieutenant behind the rank responded.

“Fair to middling,” Suarez coughed.

The corporal went further into the building. Peering over the counter, Pavel watched him going into what was presumably the kennel, unlocking a cage, and pulling out a massive black bag.

Lugging it onto the counter, he grunted.

“Did you sign in?”

Suarez merely motioned to the nearby ledger sheet.

“Alright, all good Tony. Safe travels.”

Emerging from the armory, the four watched as Suarez dumped the bag on a nearby bench and unzipped it. He pulled out a submachine gun and two magazines, handing them to Atwater; a revolver and several additional rounds of ammunition to Beck; a pump-action shotgun with a half-full bandolier of shells to Frederic; and finally, a carbine with a cracked, wooden stock to Pavel.

“Do you know how to shoot one of these things?” Suarez asked Pavel.

“Of course,” he replied. There was no way a member of the pre-War intelligentsia would have made it in this world with his fists alone. He had been on enough “combat details” to know how guns worked and where to point them.

“Okay,” the lieutenant said skeptically. “Load it.”

Pavel hefted the rifle under his armpit, gripping the magazine in his left hand. He placed it tenderly into the catch at first, then smacked the heel of his palm into the bottom until he heard a click. By pure instinct, he pulled the bolt back to chamber the first round, as he had done in tense situations a hundred times over in the past two years.

“Hey dickhead,” a guard shouted a few yards away. “No rounds in the chamber inside the walls, clear the fucking chamber!”

“S-sorry!” Pavel stammered. The other members of Platoon 403 stifled their laughter as Pavel released the magazine onto the cold concrete below, shaking as he attempted to clear the round.

“Don’t worry about the guards,” Atwater said sardonically. “They’re just assholes. Don’t think that they’re above you.”

Platoon 403 made their way towards the gate, flung open for the exiting guards and scavengers. Stopping on a sidewalk just beyond the parapets, Pavel cautiously reloaded his rifle, waiting to do so until he saw the others do the same.

The snow was coming down harder now. The flakes dampened the laughter of guards cracking jokes with one another, officers barking orders, and the clicking and beeping of radios coming online. Behind him were the city, its warm beds, and its bright lights. Ahead were cold, darkened corners, and the blinding, gray-white void.

This is Part Five of a series centered on Pavel Tzarkowski’s experiences as a survivor in early Nova Espero entitled “1850-01.” Follow this link to read Part Six.