Miranda

Two days before we were due to leave for Prospera, Mattis’s military campaign ended with the surrender of Canada. US troops arrived in the capital Ottawa accompanied by Mattis himself and the stage was set for the final surrender of the Canadians. We watched the events taking place live on CNN with Frank, Kristin and Cathy in the living room of the farmhouse. The moment had been inevitable for a long time but seeing it actually taking place still sent a shudder through our bodies. What we were watching gave rise to so many questions the answers to which we couldn’t guess at. Everybody’s primary concern was of course safety and whether to expect a crackdown in the wake of Canada’s surrender as Mattis strove to exert his dominance over the country. The entire population was reacting to the events that were taking place with fear and with no communication from Mattis or Prime Minister Benfield in the immediate aftermath of the completion of the coup they would remain in a state of fearful uncertainty for a while longer. In the farmhouse nothing was said; Cathy, Frank and Kristin were in too much shock about what had happened and wanted, like the rest of the country did, to learn more about what was to be their fate before they reacted in any meaningful way. Only when the four of us returned to the cottage was something said about the extraordinary events that had just transpired.

“We should leave for Prospera soon, before the Americans send their people up here,” Hannah said.

“When the rest of us get back we’re going to have to deal with them anyway, so there’s no rush,” Kevin responded.

“I don’t want to risk us leading them back to Prospera, who knows what will happen if they discover it?”

“I don’t think they’d be very interested in Prospera; they’ve gotten what they came for, I’m sure all their focusing on now is consolidating their victory,” Lisa said.

“Do you think Cathy and her parents will be okay?” I asked Lisa.

“There’s no reason for the Americans to behave belligerently toward the Canadian population anymore. As they seek consolidation it’s in their own political interest to start gaining the support of the Canadian people.”

“That doesn’t mean violence isn’t going to flare up from some other source,” Hannah said.

“What other source? #OI is dead, there’s no resistance left out there,” Lisa responded.

“So in the end brute force wins,” Kevin said.

“That’s the way things work in this world, how they’ve always worked,” Hannah said.

Mattis’s victory had a decidedly unjust feel about it that sickened all of us, not just Hannah. In this instance Hannah was right about the way they did things in this world being inferior to the way things were done in Prospera. As human beings, intelligent beings, we were capable of solving problems in better ways than through the use of overwhelming brute force. The terrible truth about this world was that the problems that plagued it were so complicated that the most effective way of dealing with them was through the use of brute force, making violence an inevitable part of life in the outside world.

Lisa and I had decided to accompany Kevin and Hannah on their trip back to Prospera after concluding that we couldn’t in good conscience allow them to make the journey on their own. We set our departure date for two weeks later, giving Kevin and Lisa enough time to square their absence from work with their employers. During that two week period was when the war reached its climax and we could all see that the end was in sight. Mattis and Prime Minister Benfield addressed the world the day after Canada’s surrender and laid out the path forward for the two countries. Mattis began by stating that the United States had ceased all combat operations in Canada and that there was nothing for the Canadian people to fear. US troops would be remaining in the country to maintain security and help facilitate the sensitive transition process. The United States would not be occupying Canada; rather Canada would be absorbed into the United States in a process that would see the creation of a completely new country: The Conglomerated States of North America. The soon to be former provinces and territories of Canada would become states and would be granted a certain amount of autonomy under the agreement; most importantly Prime Minister Benfield had succeeded in allowing them to keep their healthcare system that provided universal coverage. The American system was something of a disgrace, covering only 65% of the US population. The Canadian public was told to expect new administrators that would be despatched to their towns over the next few months to take over the running of their towns. Prime Minister Benfield pleaded for cooperation and peace during the transition process. “The country has suffered enough,” he said, “It’s time to accept this new state of affairs and make the best of it.”

Frank, Cathy and Kristin found little to be comforted by in the words that both men had spoken during their joint address. They’d just been told that henceforth they would be living under the leadership of a man who had shown himself to be severely lacking in the departments of compassion and restraint. Their anxiety about what the future held for them was palpable, pervading the entire farmhouse and filling it with tense silence. To escape from it Cathy was spending increasing amounts of time with us in the cottage. Our travel plans were of particular interest to her. We’d told Frank and Kristin that with the war being all but over we wanted to take a trip back home to see how everybody there had fared since we’d left to come up to Huntingdale. They accepted our story, wished us luck and asked if they could help us in any way, an offer we politely refused. Cathy of course knew that we were lying having known from the first time she’d met us that we were of strange origins. She was careful to not push too hard for an answer to where we were really going, which didn’t make her enormous curiosity any less obvious. I for one didn’t see why we couldn’t take her with us and allow her to have a quick look at Prospera from atop Guardian Mountain. My idea was, expectedly, not met with any kind of enthusiasm, Hannah being the most vociferous objector.

“Absolutely not! We are not to take the risk of allowing Prospera to become known to outsiders.”

“How can you call Cathy an outsider? She’s been like a sister to us for months.”

“She’s not from Prospera, that makes her an outsider.”

“What about us? We prefer living here in the outside world to living in Prospera, does that make us outsiders?”

“Of course not, you’ll never be outsiders, but Cathy and anyone else from this world always will be.”

“I can’t believe after all this time you don’t trust Cathy, we’ve all been through so much together; she was there for you on the night of your miscarriage.”

“It’s not about trust; I trust Cathy, it’s just not a good idea for her to come with us.”

“But…”

“Hannah’s right,” Kevin interjected.

“Why?” I asked him.

“It’s a dangerous journey and we can’t guarantee her safety; how would we explain it to Frank and Kristin if something were to happen to her?”

“This time we’re going to be taking the gun with us and ample food, we’ll be fine.”

“Nevertheless it’s a risk that we shouldn’t be taking.”

I thought about it for a few hours and I came around to Kevin’s opinion that bringing Cathy with us was far too risky. I just wanted to do something for Cathy to show our appreciation for how much she’d helped us. Where would we have ended up had we not met Cathy? We’d been so unprepared for the modernity of this world I was almost afraid think about it. For everything that she’d done for us we owed her more than we had to give. What we could give her was the truth, to satisfy her perennial curiosity about where we’d come from, breaking down the last remaining barrier between us.

I was going to miss Cathy greatly while we were gone. I was the closest to her and for a long time I’d been bursting to tell her the truth about us; my own protectiveness of Prospera held me back from doing so. The place had left an indelible mark on all of us that no matter how long we were citizens of this world would always be with us. Returning to Prospera and seeing it once more having been in the outside world for so long might help to lessen the importance of it and allow us to embrace the outside world more. Unfortunately for Hannah the mark that it had left on her was too large for her to leave it in the past. Things wouldn’t be the same without her, especially for Kevin. The journey that we would soon be taking together needed to be made as special as possible, as the final memory the four of us made together it required no less.