Chapter Fifty-Two

In which our heroine reaches the last chapter of her journey to the USA.

Lorinda’s left eye opened. That familiar deafening noise and vibration. Another helicopter ride! Pounding her head. Tried to look around. Couldn’t move. Disembodied deep voice said “something something hospital VIP wing.” Left eye closed.

Lorinda’s eyelids fluttered open. She was in a bed, her back slightly elevated. A woman in blue scrubs that said “Johns Hopkins Hospital” on one side and “Dr. Helen Branch” on the other, sat on the bed, gazing at Lorinda’s face.

“Lorinda, darling,” Aunt Helen said in a near-whisper.

Lorinda’s eyes pinballed in slow motion around the room. She blinked. She tried to focus. She rotated her head slightly. She broke into a big smile. “Aunt Helen!”

Helen leaned forward and gave Lorinda a gentle hug. Lorinda wrestled her arms out from under the covers, sat up, threw her arms around her aunt’s waist, and hugged her fiercely. “Stimpy! Stewart!” she said when she saw him standing behind her aunt. His head was wrapped in a big, thick bandage, but other than that he looked good. She reached one of her hands out to him and he kissed it.

She glanced around, taking stock, getting oriented. She was in a large hospital room painted a relaxing shade of blue-green and housing, in addition to the bed, a desk, a desk chair, and two thickly-upholstered visitors’ chairs next to the desk. A whiteboard with names, phone numbers, and instructions (and a smiley face) in blue marker hung on the wall next to the doorway. A rollable bed tray stood nearby, holding several plastic cups and a pitcher of water. Bright daylight came in through half-shut blinds from a large window. Electronic beeps repeated somewhere off to the side.  

 Something was covering her forehead and wrapped around her head. She felt it: a rough, stretchable bandage.

Turning to Stewart, Helen said, “You’re a true hero. Both of you. I’m so proud of you, Lorinda.”

“Do I have an appointment?”

“Oh, honey,” Helen said when she realized what Lorinda was talking about, “you don’t need that appointment. You …” Helen paused, maybe not sure how to deliver this news. “Honey, you had a miscarriage from whatever you got involved in on that boat. I’ll see that you get the follow-up care you’ll need.”

It took a moment for Lorinda to digest the news. “I just can’t …”

When she tailed off, Stewart stepped in and said, “But they say you’ll be fine. I mean, completely recovered.”

“So. They put me through all that, and this is the result.” Lorinda tried to laugh. ”It’s so … what’s the word?” She looked at Stewart.

“Ironic?” Stewart said.

“That’s it. Ironic. Thank you, Janelle Stark.” To her aunt, who looked puzzled, Lorinda said, “Fake doctor Janelle Stark, the Confederation security goon who was chasing me, trying to lock me up and force me to have a baby.” She shook her head. “Who I saw kill two people. Because she was so ‘pro-life.’”

“Oh God, those bastards!” Helen said with surprising passion.

There was a knock on the door. A nurse standing discreetly next to it opened it a crack, letting in an unexpectedly loud burst of crowd hubbub. She saw who was knocking and opened the door a little further, allowing a compact young man in his mid-thirties, in an impeccable suit and long brown hair, to enter the room. He was trailed by a younger woman toting a big com pad and a big leather bag over her shoulder. As the nurse closed the door behind them, the young man made straight for Lorinda. Circumnavigating Dr. Helen Branch on the bed, the young man stuck out his hand, saying, “Lorinda Moon! I’m thrilled to meet you! I’m Connor Feldman, President Gulden’s Chief of Staff.”

“Wow,” said Lorinda, shaking his hand.

“This is my assistant, Mindy,” he said. “The president is on her way over. I wonder if we can get a few pictures for the media before she gets here.” He looked at Stewart. “Stewart Roderick, right?”

“That’s right,” said Stewart, not looking too happy about it.

“Stewart Roderick,” Lorinda said under her breath, wondering how it was that this stranger knew Stewart’s last name and she didn’t. Well, she did now.

“What’s going on out there?” Stewart said. “I thought this was a hospital.”

“Oh, it’s just the media,” Connor said. “The hallway’s a sort of holding pen for them. It’s the VIP wing, you know.” He looked from Stewart to Lorinda. “You guys are just amazing.” He turned to Helen. “We should get you in some of the pictures too, doctor.”

“Oh,” she said, “I’m not her doctor. I mean, I’m a doctor, but I’m at Johns Hopkins, not here at Walter Reed. I’m Lorinda’s aunt, Dr. Helen Branch, and I really think you ought to let them recover a bit before you start taking pictures. Don’t you?”

“Sure,” said Connor smoothly, “in a perfect world. But the president really wants to get the news about them out right away.” He spoke directly to Lorinda. “Millions of people in the USA are following your amazing journey, and they want to know that you’re okay.”

“I feel pretty good,” Lorinda said, touching the bandage on her head. “I mean, I could live without this, and I have a little headache. They must have given me some drugs, right?” Helen nodded. “It’s a headache but it feels like someone else’s headache.” She looked at Stewart. “How are you?”

“Pretty much the same,” he said.

“All right,” said Helen affably, “I can see that I’m outgunned here. Why don’t I go and when this business is over we’ll figure everything out.”

“Hold on,” Lorinda said to Connor. “I’ll do the pictures, but first I need to talk to my parents, and my brother if you can find him. And I want Aunt Helen with me.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” Connor said with a smile and a nod to his assistant, who instantly started typing on her pad. “We anticipated this, so we already set up a secure connection. Are they ready?” Mindy nodded and tapped her pad. Most of the wall across from the bed lit up, revealing Lorinda’s nervous mother and her glowering brother, in their living room, looking straight into the camera.

“Mom! Zeke!” Lorinda cried. “I’m so happy to see you! This is so great!”

“You killed dad!” Zeke yelled.

“What are you saying?!”

“He didn’t die,” Rita said. “He had a small heart attack.”

“And it’s your fault!” Zeke was practically foaming at the mouth. On the huge screen, Lorinda could see that the tip of his nose was green. Manna.

“He’s in the hospital,” Rita said flatly. “Recovering. Maybe.”

“It’s because of you,” Zeke said heatedly. “These police coming to our house all the time, tearing it apart, pushing us around. You should see what they did to your room. It’s your fault, Lorinda! You’re the antichrist! You’re going to hell! You can’t hide in the USA! They’ll get you!” Rita put her arms around her son, who burst into tears on her shoulder.

“He had his heart attack here,” she said to the camera. “Right there in the dining room. We had to drag him to the car, me and your brother, and bring him to his office parking lot.”

“We left him there,” Zeke sobbed. “In the parking lot.”

“What?! Why, mom?”

“So it looked like he had it at work. Otherwise, no insurance. Now at least it’s covered by the business policy.” It was Rita’s turn to burst into tears, but she quickly composed herself, looked hard into the camera, and said, “Hello, Helen. Glad to see you’re alive. You, too, Lorinda.”

“You’re a whore, Lorinda!” Zeke shouted.

“You need to have him treated for manna addiction, mom,” Lorinda said as calmly as she could manage. “That stuff is deadly.”

“If your father lives, he’ll never talk to you again,” Rita said.

“Don’t come back,” Zeke said.

“It’s nice seeing you, too,” Lorinda said sadly.

“I miss you so much,” Helen said. Rita and Zeke turned away from the camera and the screen went dark. A moment later the wall was back to looking like a wall. Lorinda stared at it until Helen shrugged her shoulders, leaned in and kissed Lorinda’s cheek. “I thought that went well,” Helen said.

Lorinda cracked up and continued laughing, somewhat hysterically, until tears rolled down her cheeks. As she calmed down, Helen gave her a tissue. Lorinda daubed her cheeks, smiled wanly at Stewart, and took a deep breath. She turned to Connor, nodded definitively, and said, “Okay. Let’s do it.” Connor nodded at Mindy, who typed quickly on her pad.

A moment later the door opened, admitting both the crowd noise and a tall, thin, bald man with a goatee, in his forties, all in black, who carried a serious looking tripod on top of which was a serious looking camera. He was followed in by another man, shorter and stouter, with a full head of hair and a full beard, also dressed in black and carrying a second tripod, this one with an array of small lights on top. “Our official image team,” Connor said.

“Some stills?” the tall one said.

“Yeah,” Connor replied. “A few of Lorinda in bed, a few with her aunt, a few with Mr. Roderick —”

“No, thanks,” said Stewart. “No pictures of me. I don’t want to put the people I work with in the CCSA at risk.”

Conner gave him a quizzical look. “How —"

“There may be spy pictures of them with me. Face recognition, easy match, they might be able to track my friends down. You never know.” He walked to the corner of the room, behind where the image team had set their tripods.

“Lorinda, honey, I think I’m going to go,” Helen said. “They don’t need my picture. You’ll come stay with us as soon as they release you.” She looked across the room. “And you too, Stewart. We have plenty of room. Stay as long as you like.” She and Lorinda hugged again.

“Mindy has all your info,” Connor said to Helen as she stood up. “I think they’ll release her in a day or two.”

“I think so too,” Helen said as she waved at Lorinda and Stewart. The nurse opened the door just enough to let her out — and keep the chatter and shouting to a minimum — and she slipped away.

“I must look terrible,” Lorinda said, hoping to hear that a makeup person was about to burst through the door.

“Don’t worry,” said the camera guy. “The camera will fix you up.” To Lorinda’s skeptical look, he added, “It has excellent makeup software.”

The lighting guy studied Lorinda, then said, “Can you sit up a little straighter?” Lorinda did as he said. “That’s good. Great look. Have you modeled before?” He tweaked the lights a bit and nodded at his colleague, who took the camera off the tripod and circulated around the room for no more than fifteen seconds with the camera pointing at Lorinda.

“All right, that’s great,” he said, putting the camera back on the tripod. “When is she coming?” he asked Connor.

Connor looked to Mindy, who looked at her pad and said, “Right about now.”

“I’ll let you know when to come back in,” Connor said to the camera and light guys, who left their equipment in place and started for the door. At which point the door opened and, as the noise in the hallway somehow got even louder, two big Secret Service men in dark suits entered, took a few steps in, gave the room a gimlet-eyed once over, and followed the media crew out the door. Then the president of the USA entered. The nurse left and closed the door from the outside.

“Lorinda Moon and Stewart Roderick,” Connor said, “it is my pleasure to introduce you to the president of the United States of America, Anita Flores Gulden.”

Of course Lorinda and Stewart recognized her, but they were unprepared for her charisma, a force-field that nearly rendered them speechless. She was slim and of medium height, with long, dark hair. She wore a collarless beige blazer over a white blouse and matching beige trousers. With some effort, Lorinda managed to say, “Hello, Madam President.” Stewart echoed her.

“Please, call me Anita,” the president said.

“Madam President,” Connor said, “we thought it would look great if you were sitting right there next to the bed, so you and Lorinda are the same height —”

“That’s good,” President Gulden said. Without being told, Mindy rolled the desk chair over to the bed, then left the room, leaving only Lorinda, Stewart, Connor, and the president inside. As Gulden sat and adjusted the height of the chair, Connor said to Lorinda and Stewart, “We’ll be doing a live feed to all outlets after this. But first …”

“First,” said Gulden, “I’d like to talk to you about something important.”

“Have a seat,” Connor said to Stewart. “We’re not shooting yet.” To the president, Connor said, “He doesn’t want his picture to get out. Security concerns about his people in the CCSA.”

“Totally understood,” Gulden said as Stewart sat on the side of the bed opposite the president’s chair. “You know,” she said to Stewart, “the woman whose nom de guerre is Wilma Flintstone, she and I went to college together.”

“She told me that you were friends,” Stewart said. “It’s not the kind of thing you want to brag about in the CCSA.”

“Understood. We were roommates from sophomore year on. Besties.”

Stewart was surprised. “That she didn’t tell me.”

“We’ve stayed in touch,” Gulden continued. “It’s not so easy with her behind the Iron Curtain, but we have our ways. She’s the bravest person I know. She’s told me all about you, Stewart. She holds you in the highest regard, which means I hold you in the highest regard. I just want to say that, in my opinion, you’ve done more than your share of work in the CCSA and we welcome you to the USA with open arms. I hope you’ll stay. If there’s anything you need from me, the line to Connor will always be open. Any idea what you’d do with yourself here?”

Stewart smiled. “The first thing I need to do is…” He looked at Lorinda. “Recover from what we’ve just been through. Do a little thinking. A little sleeping. Regroup.”

“Do you ever consider finishing your PhD?”

“I’ve thought about it,” Stewart said. “That was my original path.”

“If that’s what you want, I can write a very persuasive letter of recommendation when the time comes,” the president said. “And I’m pretty close with the presidents of three Ivy League universities. Make that four. Plus Stanford.” Lorinda was almost certain she saw him blush. Gulden took a breath, and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, it was clear that she was ready to get down to business.

“So, Lorinda. And Stewart. As Connor knows, I’ve been accused of talking too much, and too fast. I’ve tried to slow myself down when I give speeches and such, but right now I’m not going to rein myself in. I’ve got a lot I want to cover and we don’t have a lot of time. So I’ll start right in.

“What I say here is between us, understand? Completely off the record. And just so you know what I mean, you may hear me say things on the record that are different, or even that contradict, what I’m about to tell you. Sometimes being in politics means you have to trick some people into doing, or believing, the right thing. I’m afraid you sometimes have to lie to get to a higher truth. But I’m not going to lie to you. Because of who you are and what you’ve been through, I think of you as being untrickable. And even if I could, I wouldn’t want to trick you. I respect you too much for that. And I want to earn your respect. I want you on my team for the right reasons. I trust you not to tell anyone what I tell you in private here. But you should know that if you slip and tell someone, and it gets out into the world, I’ll deny it — and, to be blunt about it, I’ll be the one who’s believed. But I sincerely hope it never comes to that. Are you following so far?”

Lorinda and Stewart both nodded.

“Good. All right. The first thing I want to get out of the way is this. Do you have any idea how those CCSA security forces knew you were going to be on the USS Raskin?”

“Janelle Stark,” Lorinda said, “the CCSA security person who was chasing us, she said they have the best — what did she say?”

“’The finest intelligence agencies on earth,’” Stewart said. “I told her that was ridiculous. It almost got me killed.”

“You were right,” Gulden said. “Their intelligence agencies suck. You know how they really found you? I told them.” She paused to allow that to sink in.

“You … you told them we were there?” Stewart said. “Why?” Lorinda could see on his face that he was suddenly torn between respect for Gulden and anger about what she’d done.

“Well, not me personally,” Gulden said. “But the buck stops here. I authorized the leak through a double agent, if you must know.”

“But why?!”

“You weren’t meant to be put in any danger and I’m mortified that you were. And of course I apologize. The plan was for the subs to surface before those pirates boarded the Raskin. Or, preferably, while they were climbing up their rope ladders. You ask why, Stewart? We’re making a propaganda film posing as a documentary, that’s why. Lorinda is now famous in the CCSA. And here, too. Fame doesn’t last if it’s not tended and curated. Sure, we could have put you two in an airplane and flown you here, but no one wants to watch someone boarding an airplane. We wanted something memorable, a battle scene that no one would ever forget. We wanted to show the CCSA going to ludicrous lengths to chase down one pregnant woman. And we wanted to show them being crushed by the superior and much more powerful forces of the USA.”

“Literally crushed,” Lorinda said.

“That,” said Gulden, “was not in the script. And you — I can’t stress this enough — you were not meant to be put in harm’s way. The submarines surfaced a few minutes late. I’m told there was some kind of communications snafu. Whatever it was, we’ve started an investigation and there will surely be consequences for whoever screwed up.”

“They almost killed us,” Stewart said. His voice was calm but his eyes were burning.

“But they didn’t,” Lorinda said. “I totally get it. The movie’s going to be amazing. And us getting beaten up’ll make it even more amazing.”

Stewart’s mouth fell open. He gave Lorinda a look of shocked disbelief, as though she had suddenly morphed into a bird. Or Joan of Arc.

“Again,” the president said, “I apologize. And I’ll never forget your sacrifice.” She looked at Stewart, who was quietly seething. “Stewart,” she said, “I know you’re angry. And I don’t blame you. You feel like you’ve been used, a pawn in a game you maybe didn’t even know you were playing.” To Connor she said, “Cancel my next meeting, and tell the shooting crew to hang tight — this could take a little longer than we scheduled.”

Connor, seated in one of the guest chairs, took out his com and started tapping on it. Gulden continued. “I want to give you a little background on how we got here. How I got here. You may know a lot of this, Stewart, but I especially want you, Lorinda, to understand what’s behind all this. I don’t want you to think that we put you at risk for frivolous reasons.

“To back up ... many years ago, before The Split, a group of wealthy and powerful citizens of the old USA came to the conclusion that there was no reconciling what at the time we called the red states and the blue states.” She paused, thought for a second, then continued. “Actually, I want to start a little earlier than that. I think I was triggered by a slogan the GOP started using: ‘It’s not political, it’s Biblical.’ I was disgusted, of course. And I thought about how it was like the 1600s, when they kicked the worst of the religious assholes out of Europe, because no one could stand them, and sent them to North America.”

“Excuse me,” Lorinda interrupted. “What’s the GOP?”

“The Republican Party,” Stewart gently said. “The political party of the red states. They started out conservative and became religious and fascistic.”

“And here they were, the spiritual descendants of the same people, hundreds of years later, still being intolerable reactionary assholes. But now we couldn’t just send them to another continent that they could colonize —”

“And despoil,” Stewart said.

“Exactly. Anyway, end of digression. So … before The Split, I was one of the youngest among a group of influential people who had concluded things had gone too far, that it was a waste of energy to try to patch up the cracks that had developed between red and blue.

“Many in the red states were talking about seceding — you know, the South shall rise again and all that, reliving the Civil War. Most people in the blue states were appalled by that kind of talk, but after a while we in this — I’ll use the word — elite group were surprised to find ourselves agreeing with them, that separation was the only way forward. We’d had it with them blocking legislation, screwing around with our courts, our politics, our elections, the very basis of our democracy. And we were blocked by our own Constitution from doing anything about it. Do you know about the Electoral College, Lorinda?”

Lorinda shook her head.

“Let’s just say that it gave the red states a lot more voting power than the blue states.”

“That’s crazy,” Lorinda said.

“I’m sure Stewart can tell you all about it if you’re interested. In any event, we were also sick of carrying them, financially. Money was always flowing from the blue states to the red states. And we were sick of the racism and the sexism. We’d had it with their cartel of fascist media demagogues who, for decades, had become the only source of news for thirty-five or forty percent of the country. It was a world that George Orwell could have invented —”

“If he’d had a better imagination,” Stewart interjected.

Gulden laughed. “Right. He couldn’t have imagined that there were a lot of people who wanted Big Brother to be watching them. And so, in summary, we were sick of living like that. We had so many good ideas, there was so much we could accomplish, and they were holding us back. We came to the conclusion — we, this group of powerful, influential Americans—that we were already two separate countries. We had two different and distinct ideas of what ‘America’ meant. And even if we had to give up forty percent of the population, and a whole lot of dirt and trees, and a chunk of gross national product, we’d be better off making a clean break. Parenthetically, our economic projections indicated that it would take only fifteen or twenty years to grow back to the same size economy we had before ditching the red states.

“So what did we need from this divorce? When it was time to get specific it wasn’t so easy to figure out. It was excruciating, in fact. We in this group banged heads for years. In a few cases we had to wait until some old-timer died to be able to move forward. But we finally came to a compromise we could all live with.

“During this time we were in touch with our counterparts in the red states, who had pretty much reached the same conclusion about getting a divorce. Of course, no one on either side wanted an actual war, a shooting war, aside from the most retrograde, dug-in, out-of-touch red-staters.”

“Meaning,” Steward said, “the gun nuts, and the Johnny Reb hotheads, and the idiots who think armed combat is glamorous.”

“Don’t forget the wannabe martyrs,” the president said. “The next step was in some ways the hardest: to convince a majority of our own blue-state citizens that splitting up was a good idea. We launched a massive — here’s that word again — propaganda campaign to get people to see things our way. Some of it was overt. Politicians talking about it, editorials and op-eds, straight-up advertising. Some of it was more subtle. I remember there was an old Janis Joplin song, ‘Ball and Chain,’ that you started hearing everywhere in the blue states. We pushed it out there and kept pushing it. The red states were our ball and chain, you see, and after a while everyone was singing along.”

Lorinda had no idea who Janis Joplin was, but this didn’t seem to be the time to ask.

“Finally, the majority of Americans — blue staters and red staters — had adjusted to the idea that splitting the country was not particularly crazy. The red staters came around first. Because of course they did. After all those years of Civil War talk, and secession fantasies, and ‘states’ rights,’ and Don’t Tread on Me bluster, and their desire for a ‘Christian’ nation. They were sold!

“But after a while polling showed that blue-staters had also come around. At last we were ready to start over, new Constitution and all. We finally had a couple of national referendums and there it was: a big majority for splitting up.”

Stewart and Lorinda were rapt. It wasn’t every day that you got to hear the inside story of a major world event from the lips of an actual participant. “I thought that a lot of blue-state politicians opposed The Split,” Stewart said.

“Definitely at first,” said Gulden. “But we managed to flip most of them early on. After that, a lot of the resistance was for show. They were pretending to resist, waiting for public opinion to catch up. It was all part of the plan. They loudly resisted, then gradually — and very publicly — came around, starting to say that splitting up was better than remaining in an abusive marriage. The whole thing was scripted so it wouldn’t look like a bunch of the rich and powerful jamming their ideas down everyone else’s throat.

“Things finally got real and we started negotiating with our red-state counterparts. We made huge demands at first — outrageous demands. Gradually, we started caving in, or pretending to cave. At the risk of appearing immodest, I was the loudest voice for playing it that way, and I had to argue against many powerful, and much older, men, who didn’t want our side to lose face by pretending to be weak. I said it was political jiu-jitsu: We needed to flatter them into submission, and that’s exactly what we did. The conservative media swallowed the bait, and that meant that the entire red-state population swallowed the bait. Their media couldn’t stop crowing about how strong they were and how weak we were. It was a classic ‘don’t throw me into the briar patch’ strategy.”

Once again, Lorinda looked confused. “Don’t … what?”

“Connor can talk to you about that after I leave,” Gulden said. “Their media and their politicians started saying it proved that God was on their side. Hah! So finally the hard-core negotiations began. Skipping the small stuff, we insisted that Texas had to come with us, that it was a dealbreaker, that it was a natural blue state.”

“Texas!” Lorinda was shocked to learn than anyone could ever have pictured Texas in the USA.

“I know,” Gulden said. “Of course they stood firm. After a while all they cared about was making sure they got Texas. In the media it was ‘The Great Texas Debate.’ I was at the negotiating table in Windsor and I actually managed to cry a few times when we talked about Texas. I should get an Oscar for that.”

“Windsor?”

“Windsor, Ontario, Canada,” Stewart said. “The famous Windsor Conference where they negotiated The Split.”

“In reality, we wanted nothing to do with Texas. When we finally threw in the towel on Texas, and hung our heads in make-believe shame, they were so exuberant they didn’t notice that we’d walked away with everything we actually wanted, like the trade deals for manufacturing in the CCSA. And the floating exchange rate. We argued against that, you know. We insisted on a locked exchange rate, so that the USA dollar and the CCSA dollar were permanently linked: one US dollar equals one CCSA dollar, forever. The harder we argued, the more they were convinced that they needed to beat us, that their dollar would soon be much more valuable than ours. It was almost sad. They didn’t have a single economist who could look at the big picture honestly and model the future movement of the two currencies.”

“All you had to do to get what you wanted was argue against it?” Stewart said.

“Pretty much. One day the history of all this will be written. Maybe,” she said conspiratorially, “you’ll be the one to write it. Well, PS, within the first year after the Moratorium, the US dollar was worth around three CCSA dollars. A year later it was over six. Today it’s much higher than we dared dream.”

“You guys are not very nice to the poor old CCSA,” Lorinda said mischievously.

“I guess we’re not. You want to hear something brutal? We’re secretly supporting McWeeny in the upcoming CCSA election. He’s, excuse my language, out of his fucking mind. If you think the CCSA’s in bad shape now, wait until you see what it’ll be like under a McWeeny administration. We’ve done the economic modeling, and it’s not a pretty picture. But whether or not he wins, we have exactly what we wanted: a Third World autocracy on our border churning out excellent, low-cost manufactured goods for us. It’s very selfish, right? Realpolitik. Stewart knows what I mean.

“In the grand scheme of things, our never-ending skirmishes with the CCSA are minor annoyances. The real battle for us and our allies is the fight against fascism, all around the world. Can we crush it, once and for all? I don’t know. There seems to be a permanent subset of humanity that consists of, to call it by its technical name, authoritarian personality types. They crave an authority figure — the more absurd the better — telling them what to do. For some reason, they need Big Daddy. I’m just glad that we have a captive supplier of excellent low-cost consumer goods, which keeps our citizens happy and helps our overall economy to focus on big issues like climate, peace, and dismantling global fascism.

“Does this mean we like having the CCSA as a neighbor? No! It’s a terrible neighbor. Aside from its insane politics, there’s the pollution. The annoyance attacks — like what you just experienced in The Corridor. The pandemics that flourish in a place where science is considered unpatriotic. And, of course, the fact that the continental USA is no longer a contiguous nation — you can’t drive from Maine to California without going through Canada. The Canadians have been wonderfully cooperative, but still … Here’s a secret for you. You’ve heard about the proposed North Dakota Purchase?”

“I saw CEO Waldrip and McWeeny debating about it,” Lorinda said.

“The secret is — now don’t tell anyone or we’ll have to charge you with treason.” She winked, just in case Lorinda didn’t get that she was joking. “In a couple of weeks you’ll hear that it’s a done deal. North Dakota will become our twenty-sixth state.”

“And the CCSA will be down to twenty-four,” Stewart said.

“Wait,” Lorinda said. “You mean you’re buying a state from us? From them, I mean.”

“Why not?” Gulden said. “Thomas Jefferson bought Louisiana from the French. But yeah. It’s wild, isn’t it? Then again, it’s business! We need the land, they need the money. And we’re pretty far along in the negotiation to buy strips along the top borders of Montana and Idaho.”

“Another Corridor,” Stewart marveled.

“Bingo!” she said, then cast a quick glance at Connor, who left his seat, scurried to the rolling bed tray, poured a cup of water, and handed it to Gulden. As she sipped it, he returned to his chair.

Lorinda took the opportunity to jump in. “Okay, but hold it,” she said. “There’s something I don’t get. The Split happened a long time ago. It’s a done deal. There’s no need to sell people on it any more. Right?”

“Basically, yes,” Gulden said.

“So why do you need to keep doing propaganda? Why are you doing this movie about me? Who are you going to show it to? Will you hack it into the CCSA to show how bad their government is? Or maybe you’re going to show it to your own people here, to show them how good you are.”

The President put her cup down, shut her eyes for a moment and nodded. “That’s a good question. I’ll tell you why,” she said, opening her eyes. “Many years ago, long before The Split, politics was boring. The Left and the Right met somewhere in a reasonable middle, and stuff got done. The Left got progress, but slowly. The Right hated progress, but it was slow enough to be tolerable.

“The problem with the Left was that it was too nice. And self-satisfied. They grew complacent with the slow pace of progress. It was as if they didn’t want to upset the people on the Right by pushing too hard. And they were so convinced that they were correct, they just assumed that sooner or later everyone else would see the light and come around to their world-view. In the meantime, the people on the Right, the conservatives, they weren’t complacent. They felt … aggrieved. And they made up their minds that they were going to win, at any cost, and at every level. They became fanatics as the Left became lazy. Their work was practically invisible at first. They took over local school boards, state legislatures, the kinds of political races that had zero national media coverage. After a while, policies and platforms and ideas became irrelevant to them. All that mattered was winning. They won by injecting fear into the discourse. This wasn’t new, but the scale of it was, especially once they’d built their own media ecosystem, independent of the existing media: TV, radio, newspapers, websites, even churches. Its job was to scare people about … well, about anything and everything. Especially about “the other”: foreigners, strangers, people who looked different and who maybe didn’t speak English. It turned out that it wasn’t hard to do in low-population-density areas, where people didn’t get around much and had minimal contact with anyone who wasn’t a mirror image of themselves. And — surprise! — it was exactly those places that got an extra voting boost from the Constitution.

“It took the Left forever to realize that the Right was winning. That a big chunk of the overall population had been propagandized to ignore the conditions of their actual lives, to vote not in their own interest but according their supposed identity. By the time the Left woke up, the Right was well on its way to owning the Supreme Court and Congress and the whole goddamn country. And, again, this was in the service of a political party that was confident enough to come right out and say that they had no ideas and no policies — that all they wanted was power and money, money and power.

“That’s why The Split was such a triumph. It was a huge relief to be rid of them. No more ball and chain. But we don’t — I certainly don’t — want to squander what we gained with The Split. We can’t be complacent. I thank them for teaching us how this has to work. I’m committed to a constant, permanent campaign to remind people in both countries that the USA has the right ideas and the CCSA is a fucking nightmare.” She sighed and gave Lorinda a little smile. “Well. You asked.”

“I know there are people in the CCSA who secretly like the idea of re-uniting,” Stewart finally said. “And McWeeny talks about it. I mean, he says that you talk about it, but I assume he’s projecting.”

President Gulden shrugged. “It could happen. Over time. But not until everyone — okay, let’s say ninety-five percent of the population — in the CCSA realizes that it was founded on stupid premises by corrupt imbeciles who were intent on subjecting and stealing from their own citizens. Just like every other authoritarian regime. We need to crush them. Or should I say, we need to help the citizens of the CCSA crush the corrupt imbeciles who run the place. The battle doesn’t end until we know the imbeciles are too far gone to rise from the dead.” She took a deep breath. “That was quite a download, wasn’t it. Sorry I’ve gone on for so long, but I needed you to see what the stakes are here. So! Lorinda Moon! Are you with me?”

“I think I am,” Lorinda said. She was inclined to give a more positive answer, but something inside told her to hold back a bit, leave a little room for negotiation.

“Stewart?”

“Madam President … Anita … you’ve made certain things very clear,” he said, “and I appreciate that. Maybe I’m just not cut out to be a politician, but, to be honest, some of what you’ve said …”

“Makes you feel ill?” Gulden said with a smile.

Stewart laughed. “I don’t know if I’d go that far. I’ll just say that it makes me a little nervous.”

“I advise you to get that PhD,” she said. “Once a year I’ll even come and give a guest lecture in your class. If you and your students can handle it.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Yes. I’m with you.”

“Good. I have three more years in my administration. I want you two to be with me for those years. I want you to be available to tell your stories about your life in the CCSA. I want to have our people hack your media appearances into CCSA media when we have a message we want to send them. If there’s anyone you want us to extract from there — parents, family, friends — we can often arrange that. You’ll be my special envoys, not just to people here and people in the CCSA but around the world. You’ve never been to Paris? Rome? London? Tokyo? I’ll give you some good luggage recommendations. We’ll send you to spread the message that I think you already want to spread.

“Let me be clear about why you’re perfect for our needs. First, we want to always be undermining the confidence that citizens of the CCSA have in their politicians, their government, their country. All you need to do is tell your true stories.

“Second, we need to keep the pressure on our own allies to maintain their boycotts of the CCSA — other than their manufacturing deals, which are similar to ours. Hearing from you, Lorinda, how you were brainwashed and persecuted, and from you, Stewart, about what you suffered — I know your story — and how you channeled your anger and sorrow into saving other women from … your wife’s fate, hearing from you will keep reminding people around the world that the CCSA is a poisonous state. You are proof that the human spirit can outlive and outsmart fascism. But we can’t just say it once and walk away. We have to say it every day until we win. I want you to be with me, with us, saying it every day.”

“I’m afraid Lorinda will have to do all this without me,” Stewart said. “If I don’t keep a low profile I’m afraid I’ll get people like Wilma into deep trouble.”

“Of course,” Gulden said. “It’s just so easy for me to picture you next to Lorinda barnstorming the USA. But we can’t put anyone in danger.”

“Thank you,” Stewart said. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to argue with you about it. I can’t imagine winning an argument with you.”

“I appreciate that,” she said. She nodded at her Chief of Staff.

“Ready for the camera?” Connor asked.

“I’d better be,” she said. As Connor went to the door to signal the media crew to come back in, and Stewart retreated to his post behind the tripods, Gulden quickly explained to Lorinda that they were going to speak on camera for a little while, to be broadcast live around the USA — and even onto some billboards in the CCSA.

The two media guys entered, practically on the run. The first guy got behind his camera and fiddled with it, then put on a set of headphones. The other one approached Gulden and Lorinda with a couple of tiny microphones, which he stuck to the president’s blazer and to Lorinda’s hospital gown before returning to his station and slipping on his headphones. Connor and Mindy, who’d come in with the media guys, joined Stewart behind the camera. The president slid her chair a little closer to Lorinda, who raised the top part of the bed until it was almost vertical and she was sitting up straight. The cameraman cocked his head as he listened to directions coming through his headphones, then did a countdown with his fingers — five, four, three, two, one — and nodded at the president.

It was as if Anita Flores Gulden had been tapped by a magic wand, as if she were a cartoon everywoman who’d just swallowed the potion that turned her into a superhero, as if she were suddenly lit from within. Lorinda saw it. She felt it. And, somehow, she instantly incorporated whatever it was — a jolt of energy? a contact high from a charismatic leader? — until she, too, felt transformed. Suddenly she was calm and strong and, despite her banged-up head, feeling very smart.

 “Good evening,” President Gulden began, gazing warmly into the camera. “I’m here at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, with a very special person. Her name is Lorinda Moon, and just yesterday, with the help of the USA Navy, she escaped from the CCSA, pursued by a gang of heavily armed CCSA security hoodlums in a fleet of stolen speedboats. There were camera crews on the scene, and you’ll soon be able to see how it played out. The good news: Lorinda survived! Hello, Lorinda Moon.”

“Hello, Madam President.” Lorinda was beaming.

“How does your head feel?”

Lorinda patted her bandage, saying, “It’s been better, but I’ll live.”

The president returned her smile. “Why were they chasing her? What was Lorinda’s crime? All she wanted was a simple medical procedure, an abortion. As you know, that’s illegal in the CCSA because, not to put too fine a point on it, it’s a religious-authoritarian-misogynist state.” She paused to give her words time to land. “Women there are second-class citizens who aren’t trusted — aren’t allowed — to make their own health decisions.” Lorinda made eye contact with the camera and nodded knowingly. “And their war against women isn’t the only thing that’s wrong there. Their population is shrinking at an alarming rate, a result of poverty, terrible health care, and the stupidity of their enforced anti-science bias. And let’s not forget the constant flow of people escaping the CCSA and seeking asylum here in the USA.” She leaned forward and gave Lorinda a hug, then sat back and turned to the camera. “Welcome, Lorinda.”

“It’s so great to be in the USA,” Lorinda said.

“You should know that when those CCSA zealots attacked her — physically attacked her — Lorinda suffered a miscarriage. That’s right. In the course of trying to capture and force her to have a baby in one of their prisons for pregnant women, they injured her and caused a miscarriage. They could have killed her. The cruel stupidity of it!” She patted Lorinda’s shoulder. Lorinda considered doing the same to the president, but thought better of it. “Once Lorinda fully recovers here at Walter Reed, we’re going to help her get settled.” She turned to Lorinda, making sure to hold a flattering three-quarter view for the camera. “When you’re ready, if you’re willing, I’d like to offer you a job.”

“I’ll need a job,” Lorinda said enthusiastically. “What kind of job?”

“I’d like to send you on an extended tour of the USA, to tell your amazing story, answer questions about life behind the wall in the CCSA, and —”

“I can show that documentary you were talking about!” Lorinda exclaimed.  

“I think that was a yes,” Gulden said to the camera.

“Yes,” Lorinda said. “Definitely. It’s a yes.”

“I’m so glad to hear that,” the president said. She was about to launch into a little wrap-up speech, but Lorinda spoke first.

“You know, Madam President,” she said, “my family moved to the CCSA during the Great Moratorium, when I was about seven, and after that we hardly went anywhere. Most people in the CCSA never travel. I can tell you just from this last week, when I was on the run from Texas all the way to Georgia, that travel is an eye-opening experience.”

“Your enthusiasm is contagious,” Gulden said.

“But, Madam President … Anita?” Lorinda started, before Gulden could get in another word, “I’ve thought of something else I can do after that tour of the USA. What if I become the host of a show where, every day, there are different guests, and they talk with me about all kinds of interesting things.”

“A … talk show?” the president ventured.

“Yes! What a good thing to call it,” said Lorinda. “Here’s how it can work.” She was obviously figuring it out as she spoke. “Every week I’ll go to a different place around the USA, and each day of that week I’ll host my show at a different bar or restaurant in that town. I could be standing or sitting behind the bar, and my guests could be, like, sitting on barstools across from me. There’d be no limit to what we could talk about.”

She glanced over at Stewart, who was staring at her in amazement.

“Well —"

“I think at first the guests would mainly be educating me about their town or city — remember, I grew up in a place that doesn’t really believe in education, and we were given a very distorted view of this country. I mean, we were taught that everyone in the United States is on the verge of starving to death because of all the poverty. That’s obviously not true, so what else am I misinformed about? We’ll find out on the show. And sometimes maybe I’d get a celebrity guest who grew up in that town, or has a house there, or always wanted to go there, and we’d talk about that. And maybe I can end every show with an interview of a local bartender who has a special cocktail recipe that no one’s ever heard of before.” She had a quick afterthought. “Or I can show them one!”

The president, who had marshaled all her will power to keep herself from making Lorinda stop talking, said, “That’s a good idea for a show, Lorinda. Now —”

“So I spend a week in one town, and then the next week we’d go to a different town and set up shop there. You know, now that I think about it, Anita, maybe I don’t even have to start out on that tour you were talking about.”

“You’re saying —”

“I can just start, on day one, with the talk show. I mean, we can run the documentary right there on a screen at the bar, and I can talk about it with the customers. We can keep doing the show for as long as people want to watch. Or until I’ve been all around the USA. Maybe we can call it ‘Lorinda Moon’s Bar Tour.’”

Lorinda paused. The President, stopping herself from responding immediately, waited a beat, and then said, “You’re going to go far in this country.”

“I just have one more thing I want to say, Madam President. When the USA Navy rescued me, they also rescued a very good friend of mine.” She looked at Stewart, who was cringing. “He and the people he worked with got me all the way from Texas to Georgia while we were being chased by CCSA security people. If he wants to, he can be my co-host, and we can tell his story along with mine. I mean, as soon as it’s safe for him to talk about it.”

“That’s all really great, Lorinda,” Gulden said, desperate to regain control of the narrative. “We’ll seriously consider helping you launch your show.”

“Thank you, Madam President,” Lorinda said. “Will you really be able to? Help me?”

“I think you have an excellent idea, and I’ll certainly use whatever influence I have to help you get it off the ground. You really need to get some rest now. Thank you so much for inviting me to speak to you despite the pain you must be in. And on behalf of my fellow Americans, thank you for honoring us with your presence here. You’re an extraordinary human being, Lorinda. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of you in the coming months.” She finished up with that warm gaze into the camera, saying, “Thanks for watching, everyone.”  

“And … out,” said the cameraman. “Good work.”

The instant the camera was off, so was Lorinda. It was as if she’d been disconnected from a power source. She was ready for a nice, long nap.

President Gulden stood up, straightened her suit, shook Lorinda’s hand, and said, “Lorinda Moon, you’re a real piece of work.” Lorinda was puzzled by the expression, and Gulden picked up on it. “It means you’re a lot more formidable than you look. In the best possible sense. You’ll go far. And you’ll have me as a fan.”

“Thank you,” said Lorinda. “I think.”

As the sound-and-light guy inconspicuously scooped up the two microphones from the two women’s clothes, Connor approached the president. “A word?” he said. As Stewart sat down on the bed, shaking his head in wonder at Lorinda’s performance, Connor and Gulden moved as far as possible from everyone else. Connor held up his com so she could see the screen.

“What am I looking at?” Gulden whispered.

“It’s the real-time ratings of the segment you just did, minute by minute.”

“If I’m reading this right, they start out down around two-fifty K, then start to go —”

“They start rising two minutes in. Then they go through the roof. Twenty-five million, fifty-million … Lots of people recording it too. And here’s the best part. In the InstaPoll after it was over? Yes or no to the statement ‘Lorinda Moon should have her own talk show.’ Close to a hundred percent said yes. I’ve never seen one-hundred percent before.”

“Can’t argue with numbers like that,” Gulden whispered. “Looks like she’ll be getting her show.” Then, out loud, she said, “It was good to meet you, Stewart. We’ll have you two over to the White House after you’ve recovered. I hope to see you very soon.” Connor nodded to Mindy, who tapped on her pad. Two seconds later the door opened and the wave of hubbub rolled in, followed by the same two Secret Service men. They stood by the door, waited for President Gulden to exit, and followed her out. Those in the room heard the roar of “Madam President! Madam President!” even after the door closed.

“I’ve never seen anyone do that to her,” Connor said to Lorinda.

“Do what?” Lorinda asked.

“Say so much before she interrupts. Talk before she does. Force her to do your bidding.”

“What?! What did I force her to do?” Lorinda was truly puzzled.

“You’re going to get your show,” said Connor. “She supported you in a live feed. Now she has no choice. Polling shows that millions of people saw it and voted for you to have a show. She can’t back out of it — she has to stand behind you. If she’s behind you, it’ll happen. And why would she even want to back out? It’s a brilliant idea, and she’ll get some credit for it. Remind me to buy stock in your production company.” He reached for the doorknob, then remembered something. “‘Please don’t throw me into the briar patch.’ It’s from a folk tale passed down by slaves in the Old South. It’s probably illegal to talk about it in the CCSA.”

“Uncle Remus,” said Stewart. “Book by Joel Chandler Harris, around 1880. A major piece of cultural appropriation. Arguably. And you’re right: banned in the CCSA.”

Connor smiled. “You two are full of surprises. I’ll see you soon in the White House.”

He opened the door and stepped into the fray. 

THE END

Thank you for reading the serialized novel The Split, now concluded.

PREVIOUSLY in THE SPLIT!

Chapter One. In which we meet our heroine and her dainty little gun.

Chapter Two. In which Lorinda demonstrates her bartending virtuosity.

Chapter Three. In which our heroine receives a promotion and prepares to celebrate.

Chapter Four. In which our heroine proves herself an immoral citizen of the CCSA.

Chapter Five. In which our heroine goes to church.

Chapter Six. In which Lorinda contemplates her future, ignores Pastor Doug, and gets something unexpected from Emmie.

Chapter Seven. In which Lorinda learns something that threatens her big dream.

Chapter Eight. In which our heroine freaks out.

Chapter Nine. In which our heroine says the forbidden word as an unwelcome visitor arrives.

Chapter Ten. In which two unpleasant men perturb our heroine.

Chapter Eleven. In which our heroine seems to have found a solution to her problem.

Chapter Twelve. In which that black truck follows our heroine all the way to Austin.

Chapter Thirteen. In which Lorinda lashes out.

Chapter Fourteen. In which our heroine gets a taste of life in the big city.

Chapter Fifteen. In which our heroine meets a fellow bartender and has a drink.

Chapter Sixteen. In which Lorinda once again takes a swing with her little pink gun.

Chapter Seventeen. In which our heroine prepares to escape.

Chapter Eighteen. In which our heroine gets in a truck with a couple of slightly scary strangers.

Chapter Nineteen. In which our heroine learns that she’s got a long way to go.

Chapter Twenty. In which our heroine spends a night in a gas station.

Chapter Twenty-One. In which our heroine learns about the enclaves of the CCSA.

Chapter Twenty-Two. In which our heroine learns way too much about the enclaves of the CCSA.

Chapter Twenty-Three. In which our heroine experiences liberty run amok.

Chapter Twenty-Four. In which our heroine’s escape is disastrously derailed.

Chapter Twenty-Five. In which our heroine finds herself back at the gas station.

Chapter Twenty-Six. In which Stimpy, on the road to Revelation, reveals Ren’s real name.

Chapter Twenty-Seven. In which our heroine manages not to crash the car as she learns more about CCSA enclaves.

Chapter Twenty-Eight. In which Lorinda and Stimpy enter Revelation.

Chapter Twenty-Nine. In which our heroine has pizza for the first time and readies herself to be an old fogie.

Chapter Thirty. In which our heroine finally gets to experience the Rapture Ride.

Chapter Thirty-One. In which our heroine’s long-awaited Rapture Ride experience is interrupted by some unwelcome visitors.

Chapter Thirty-Two. In which our heroine triggers the Rapture…or something.

Chapter Thirty-Three. In which Lorinda and Stimpy slip out of Revelation under cover of pandemonium.

Chapter Thirty-Four. In which our heroine trades arms for freedom.

Chapter Thirty-Five. In which our heroine does a bit of tactical shooting.

Chapter Thirty-Six. In which our heroine heads for the greens in a chartreuse truck.

Chapter Thirty-Seven. In which our heroine hears a ghastly story on the way to the enclave of golf.

Chapter Thirty-Eight. In which our heroine begins a crash course in the plutocratic lifestyle.

Chapter Thirty-Nine. In which our heroine continues her crash course in the plutocratic lifestyle, then crashes.

Chapter Forty. In which Lorinda and Stimpy tour the President Donald J. Trump Memorial Christian Golf Resort and Beautiful Residences.

Chapter Forty-One. In which our heroine has to leave the Donald J. Trump Memorial Christian Golf Resort and Beautiful Residences right quick.

Chapter Forty-Two. In which our heroine hurtles toward another scary place.

Chapter Forty-Three. In which our heroine remains under a bedspread as her fame grows.

Chapter Forty-Four. In which our heroine finally emerges from under the golden bedspread.

Chapter Forty-Five. In which our heroine unexpectedly encounters her nemesis.

Chapter Forty-Six. In which our heroine is set free, then captured again.

Chapter Forty-Seven. In which our heroine has a brush with Zone Z justice and makes a shocking announcement.

Chapter Forty-Eight. In which our heroine continues her journey in a Cadillac limousine.

Chapter Forty-Nine. In which our heroine makes her exit from the CCSA.

Chapter Fifty. In which our heroine meets a USA cabinet official and takes a short trip up The Corridor.

Chapter Fifty-One. In which our heroine participates in a battle at sea.