Light Shines Through | Chapter 1
The Shattered World Series (Book 1)
Sharon | October 2041 — Seattle, Tahoma, Free Republic of Cascadia
High-pitched screams emanate from the garden, followed by the muffled response of an exasperated adult trying to sound soothing and reasonable. A brief lull, and then more impassioned screaming from the child.
Sharon Walker-Nilssen chuckles to herself, knowing exactly how this will play out: her beloved and incorrigible youngest grandson will wail at ever-higher pitches until the nanny –- or his mother –- capitulates, promising ice cream for good behavior.
Alyssa storms through the living room, heading to the porch, shooting Sharon a look that plainly reads as don’t you dare say anything, Mother.
Sharon laughs and unable to resist says, “You know he reminds me of you, right?”
Alyssa stops in front of the French door that leads to the backyard, shoots her mother an indignant look, and then sticks out her tongue at Sharon before opening the door and poking her head through.
Sharon can hear every word she says.
“Benji, clean up then come inside and say goodbye to your grandmothers and we’ll stop and get ice cream on the way home.” A whine. “No, now.” A question. “Yes, from the good place.” Another question. “Yes, dinosaur eggs, or whatever flavor you want. Now come inside and stop yelling!”
Alyssa closes the door, and looks back at her mother.
“You know who he actually reminds me of, Mother, is you.”
Sharon laughs, and shrugs, and smiles at her daughter.
“I have been known to pitch a fit as a negotiating tactic, that’s true. But good lord, Lyss, the way you ply that kid with ice cream.”
Alyssa steps across the room and grabs her coat and her bag, and raises a hand in dismissal.
“Don’t start that again. Believe me, if broccoli worked, I’d stuff his little scream-hole shut with broccoli.”
“Who are we stuffing full of broccoli? Congressman Lawton? The President of Brazil?”
Sharon turns around to watch her wife float into the room. All this time, and everything they’ve been through, and still Sharon thinks that Mathilde radiates a grace and strength that seems otherworldly, moving as if gravity doesn’t apply to her the same way it does to the rest of humanity. If she hadn’t known how sick her wife had been, she’d be none the wiser seeing her now.
Sharon holds out her hand to her wife, and smiles.
“Your grandson, Tilly. The one who can’t stop screaming, just like his mother at that age.”
Alyssa shakes her head and rolls her eyes at Sharon, and steps up to Mathilde for a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Mom, are you sure you’re up for this?” Concern edges her voice, and she looks at Mathilde as if she expects her to shatter into tiny pieces at any moment.
Mathilde waves her hand, a perfect copy of the gesture her daughter used moments ago.
“Oh, stop. I’m fine. The doctors all say that I’m fine. Besides, we’re walking ten blocks to the farmer’s market. Which I’ve done a million times before, need I remind you. And your mother has all her...people, if anything happens.” She waves her hand vaguely in the air at the mention of Sharon’s team, encompassing the whole house.
Alyssa nods, still seemingly unsatisfied, but not willing to push the issue any further. She leans over to Sharon and gives her a matching kiss on the cheek.
“Before I forget, have you talked to Dani and Byung-ho and Mike about Thanksgiving, yet? Do they know we’re doing it here?”
Sharon nods, and hugs her eldest daughter, the inveterate planner of the bunch.
“They all know. This year it’s here, just like old times.”
Alyssa smiles a half-smile, and nods, and then motions with her head towards the outdoors.
“And what about the presser? You know what you’re going to say? What they’ll be asking?”
Sharon refrains from replicating the dismissive wave, and nods, smiling at her daughter.
“I’ve got it, Lyss. This is no brainer.” She holds up her hand and ticks things off. “Tilly’s doing fine, the move to Cascadia City, how the NERA vote is going to go, Brazil and Texas and the fucking Confederates, and maybe some bullshit about inflation, again. I got it.”
Alyssa frowns at her, pulling a face that Sharon has seen so many times on her daughter she can’t help but smile.
“But what about the re-elect? They’re going to ask about the re-elect.”
Sharon shrugs, but she knows that Alyssa is probably right.
“If they ask, they ask. We still haven’t decided.” She squeezes Mathilde’s hand, and gets a squeeze in return.
Alyssa’s frown deepens.
“You two can’t possibly be thinking...”
Mathilde cuts her off quickly with arched eyebrows.
“Alyssa, your Mother and I are still discussing it...”
Alyssa appears to be on the verge of resorting to screaming herself, when the French door bursts open and a dirt-covered four-year-old bolts across the room. Not for the first time, Sharon wonders if the bulletproof glass in the doors is also child-proof.
The boy runs up to her, his hair sticking out in all directions, and gives her a quick hug around her knees, mumbling, “Bye, Nana!”, before shooting over to Mathilde for a similar knee-hug and “Bye, Gammy!”
Alyssa starts struggling to get the boy into his jacket and wiping the dirt off of him, but pins Sharon with a glare.
“We need to talk about this, Mother.”
“Lyss, your Mom and I are going to talk and decide, and then we’ll let you kids know. Until then, there’s nothing to discuss. I know how you feel. You’ve told me a number of times.”
She puts more steel into her voice than is probably necessary, and Mathilde gives her a poke with her elbow.
“Ma’am, we need to get going. Mr. Chuy says we’re running five minutes late.”
She turns and nods to Vanander Singh, her security team lead.
“Thanks, Van.”
In the bustle of getting everyone out of the house, Mathilde turns and whispers to her, “You know who Benji really reminds me of?”
Sharon throws a look at her wife, not realizing she’d heard the whole discussion.
“Who?”
“Ben. Benji reminds me of Ben. You know, short with crazy hair, yelling to get what he wants, and then running off to the next thing looking like a mess, and with a gleam in his eye.”
Sharon throws back her head and laughs.
“I’m sure Old Man Cohen would be thrilled to hear that you think his toddler namesake reminds you of him yelling and scheming. I can hear him spinning in his grave from here.”
Mathilde stops for a moment, feigning a realization, grabbing onto Sharon’s arm in mock astonishment.
“Or maybe Benji is Ben, reincarnated!”
Sharon laughs even harder, and leans over and gives her wife a long kiss.
“What was that for?”
“For you, Tilly. I’ve missed you. My funny, beautiful wife who can surprise me and make me laugh.”
Mathilde beams at her, a beatific grin, and gives her a quick peck, and squeezes her hand.
“I love you, too, Share. Now come on, old lady. Let’s get you to your damn press conference.”
The walk takes longer than it normally would, because Sharon is deliberately keeping the pace slow to ensure that Mathilde doesn’t feel rushed.
The sky is a perfect cobalt hemisphere, and the heat of the last several days has finally broken. Fall and winter start later than they used to. A breeze is blowing in off of Shilshole Bay, and the salty, fecund oceanic smell of the Puget Sound is strong in the air. Sharon breathes deeply, and smiles, pushing thoughts of the recently-started seawall construction project out of her mind for a moment.
It's a beautiful day, and she’s walking with the love of her life to the place where they first met, thirty-nine years ago this very day: to the spot where a scrappy social worker Sharon Walker met a firebrand political activist named Mathilde Nilssen, changing the trajectory of both of their lives forever.
Mathilde glances over at her, and squeezes her hand, flashing a radiant smile.
“You’re humming, Share.”
Sharon laughs, surprised to discover that her wife is correct.
“Indigo Girls?”
Sharon shakes her head, momentarily at a loss for the words to the song. She hums several more bars, and then sings, badly, “The sky’s the bluest blue in Seattle”.
Mathilde laughs, shaking her head, and then sings the correct lyrics in a high, fine soprano. In perfect unison, Mathilde’s voice bolstering and smoothing Sharon’s they sing, “And you pray that you will find, someone warm and sweet and kind,” and then fall into giggles as if they were schoolgirls.
A long-time neighbor, Dana Ellison, beams at them, heading in the other direction, laden down with reusable produce bags.
“Good morning! Toscano’s stand has peaches!”
She gestures to the bags by holding them both up a bit, and Sharon can see that they are brimming with beautiful fruit.
Mathilde leans in and smells the aroma of the ripe fruit from the bag.
“This late in the season? Share, we have to get some.”
Sharon agrees, and reaches out to squeeze their neighbor’s shoulder gently.
“It’s good to see you! We have to get down there for a little...thing.”
Dana smiles and nods. “Oh, I know. I saw the gaggle forming. Good luck, and congrats!”
Sharon squeezes the woman’s shoulder again, and smiles her thanks.
“And if you’re making any of your famous cobbler...” she nods knowingly at the bag.
Dana laughs, fine lines crinkling in a face that has known a lot of smiles, and says, “Oh, you know I will. I’ll leave some with Marcus.”
They thank her and part ways, and as they get closer to the market, Sharon sees that the good weather has brought out a crowd, which isn’t surprising. The Ballard Farmer’s Market has been a beloved tradition in the neighborhood since the turn of the century, every Sunday, rain or shine, except during the quarantines of the pandemics, and for a couple of weeks at the beginning of the war.
In the depths of the depression after the Catastrophes, Sharon and Mathilde had pitched in to help keep the event running in those times when community had seemed like the only thing they had left, and the rest of the world had seemed shattered beyond recognition.
As they approach the squat, brick belltower on the spot where Ballard’s city hall had once stood before its annexation into Seattle more than a hundred and thirty years prior, Van and his team begin to materialize out of the crowded street around them. With quiet efficiency, the agents gently create a path through the crowded Sunday market, causing a small ripple of awareness through the tide of humanity.
A crowd has gathered; curious citizens in the outer ring, surrounding a decent sized knot of press. At the very core, is her Chief of Staff, Tony Chuy, in from the Government Complex in downtown just for this event, and deputy Press Secretary, Lizette Calderon. As they approach, smatterings of applause break out, cluing in more of the market crowd as to what’s happening. To their credit, Sharon thinks, most of her neighbors don’t care what’s about to happen.
Sharon shakes her head ruefully at her wife, and sends an apology with her eyes. Mathilde reaches up to touch the kerchief wrapped around her just-returning hair, white now, rather than silvery blonde, and returns a smile and a shrug that says, you knew this was what we were getting into, dummy, so let’s get it over with.
As they step up onto the curb near the small bell tower, Sharon leans in and whispers, “Sorry it’s not more private, love.”
Her wife shrugs again, and laughs. “Oh, please. Nothing in our lives has been private for the last twenty years, darling.”
“That’s not true.” Sharon replies, feigning hurt. “Nobody paid us any attention the year after Ronklin won.”
“Right,” Mathilde agrees, “for nearly eighteen whole months, everyone forgot the war’s most famous social-worker-lawyer-turned-battlefield-general, Old Man Cohen’s hand-picked successor, until she was drafted out of retirement to be opposition party leader. Again.”
It’s Sharon’s turn to shrug. “Well, the country needed me,” she says with dramatic flair, “and besides, it’s all been very calm since then, hasn’t it?”
Her wife rolls her eyes, and sighs.
At that moment, Tony Chuy calls out from the gaggle of photographers and reporters he and Lizette have been herding on the street in front of them.
“Madam President? Madam First Lady? Are you ready to go?”
Sharon looks at her wife, the First Lady of the Free Republic of Cascadia, who smiles at her, eyes filled with love and affection, and nods.
“We’re ready, Tony,” she calls out.
She leans in and kisses her wife, on the very spot where their love had first blossomed, all those years and so very many changes ago. The growing crowd cheers and applauds, and a hundred lenses catch the moment for posterity.
Goddamn I’ll be glad when this is all over, thinks Sharon, as an errant cool breeze runs a chill down her shoulders and arms.
Thirty minutes later, and things have gone almost exactly as planned. Sharon has taken a number of questions, but she can feel Mathilde flagging next to her, the heat of the day and her recent chemotherapy cycle getting the better of her wife.
She had begun by thanking the crowd and her neighborhood, and noting the importance of the day and the location. She had then announced that Mathilde’s treatment was nearing completion, and that she was, mercifully, cancer-free, which got thundering applause from the crowd. Not for the first time, Sharon had mentally noted that her wife’s popularity exceeded her own by some rather large margin, and justifiably so, she thought.
Slightly less popular was the announcement that by the turn of the year, she and Mathilde would be moving into the recently completed presidential apartments in the New Complex in Cascadia City.
The Supreme Court and the Environmental Court and their respective staffs had relocated to the new capital several months ago, and the Unicameral Congress was in a prolonged fit of coordinating its more than one thousand members to set up shop across the Cascades. Now that Mathilde’s health was on more solid ground, Sharon felt she had to lead by example, and prove that the hundreds of billions of dollars spent in the last decade on the political hot potato that was the newly constructed seat of government was not, in fact, the boondoggle that many people believed it to be.
The people of Ballard, it turned out, were more concerned about losing the claim to fame of being the Neighborhood of Presidents.
The next question had been about escalating tensions in the complicated dance over petroleum resources between Brazil, Texas, the Yucatan Republic, and the New Confederacy. The truth was that she wasn’t a fan of the governments of any of those nations, reserving the bulk of her antipathy for the meddling superpower that Brazil had managed to become in the wake of the Catastrophes, and the malignancy that was the New Confederate States of America. But she had kept her face neutral, and her answer bland, and used the moment to switch to her hard sell on the upcoming vote on the Nuclear Energy Regulation Act.
Fourteen months prior, teams of scientists at the Cascadia National Laboratory and at the University of Tahoma had announced that they’d made a breakthrough on stable, self-sustaining, efficient nuclear fusion. While Cascadia had spent the last twenty years moving towards more green energy production, like much of the remaining developed world, it was frustratingly dependent on fossil fuels for key energy needs.
Sharon had advocated loudly for a push to build fusion generation resources –- but been astonished when a surprisingly well-coordinated alliance across the political spectrum had pushed back. To her mind, the NERA bill being debated in the Unicameral now was a foolishly rushed attempt to shut down the building of any new nuclear power generation, be it fission or fusion. It was gaining ground based on the toxic combination of lies, misinformation, and apathy that had been the downfall of democracy for the last eighty years.
When pressed, she boldly predicted that NERA would fail, ushering in an era of safe, inexpensive power generation. In truth, Tony and her advisors suggested the vote was much too close for comfort.
As she had predicted, the reporter from the Cascadia Economic Journal had tried to pin her down on inflation, but she repeated her administration’s finely honed non-answer, and then ad-libbed a tie back to the NERA vote, and how a new source of cheap power would help with inflation numbers.
She glanced over at Mathilde, and just as she was about to wrap up, Devon Meacham from The Stranger asked her a particularly inane version of the re-election question.
“Madam President, as you consider running for president again, what do you say to the people who claim that you are ineligible for another term in office?”
“Well, Devon, I’d say that those people are wildly misinformed.”
“Meaning what, Madam President?”
“Meaning that the Cascadian Constitution is very clear on this. We incorporated the language of the old American 22nd Amendment into the body of our constitution, as any Cascadian schoolkid can tell you. In part so that it can’t be overturned, like the 22nd was.”
“But some people say you’ve served your two terms, ma’am.”
Sharon shakes her head, kindly, as if she were speaking to a beloved but slow child. She smiles.
“When Ben Cohen...when President Cohen, may he rest in peace, died in office, I was sworn in as President to serve out the remainder of his second term. Which I did. It was less than half a term, and so it counted as his.”
She pauses, and beams out at the crowd, cueing them that she’s about to share something funny.
“And then, disappointingly, I lost my re-election bid to Alexander Ronklin.”
Some people in the crowd boo and hiss. She waves her hands for silence.
“And you’ll remember that Ronklin was impeached, and his Vice President, Eric Bucatini was sworn in as president.” She laughs now, an amused-to-be-retelling it kind of laugh. “And when Bucatini had to resign just a couple of months later for the same corruption charges without a VP yet in place, Speaker Alvarado was sworn in as president.
“When I beat Maria Alvarado and Marcus Theroux in the election of ’38, I was elected president for the first time, despite having already been president once. The Cascadian Constitution is clear that I am legally able to be elected president a second time.”
She pauses and smiles at the reporter, who she is quite certain knows all of this in detail.
“So, my question for you, Devon, and your followers, is this: am I the second President of the Free Republic of Cascadia, or am I the second and the sixth all at the same time?”
She beams at him, and the crowd laughs along with her at this old and oft-told joke.
A reporter from Portland she recognizes calls out: “But Madam President, you didn’t answer the question –- are you running again?”
Mathilde, with her flawless political instincts, steps forward and takes her hand, squeezing.
She smiles at her wife, and gives her a discreet peck on the cheek. She pauses as much for dramatic effect as to gather her thoughts.
“We’ve had a lot to think about as a family recently, as you know. We’re talking about it. We’re being very deliberate, and we’re close to making a decision. I promise that as soon as we’ve decided for sure I’ll let you all know.”
There are some nods at this, and a bit of applause. She smiles again at her wife, and turns to thank the reporters and neighbors for coming out. She glances at Tony and gives him the quick nod, arched eyebrow, and wink that is their shared code for all done, get me the hell out of here.
“Are you a racist?”
The question lands in the gentle scrum of the presser wrap-up like a small bomb, and it is only years of practice that prevent Sharon from flinching. She feels the flush of a wave of fury wash across her, and knows that as she turns to address the questioner, that only Mathilde and Tony will be able to see the anger on her face.
In fact, Mathilde is gripping her arm tighter, and as she swings her gaze around, Sharon can see the fearful frown and head shake from her chief of staff. She gives him a small wink that she knows will do nothing to reassure him, and finishes her pivot towards the questioner.
“Pardon me?” She intentionally puts the tones of her own grandmother’s voice into her words, the noble imperiousness the grand lady had passed on to her; she who had been proud and unbowed despite having witnessed true hardship and evil in her own long life.
“I said, are you a racist?”
The young blond man steps forward a bit from the crowd, and Sharon sizes him up. A stocky, athletic build. What in the old days would have been called All-American farm boy good looks. Something in his bearing whispers military to Sharon, and over her time on the frontlines of the war she’d become quite adept at discerning the small tell-tale signs that differentiated the branches. There is a look in his eyes that she knows, having shared it in her own time and way -- ready for battle and flush with excitement. He is leaning imperceptibly into the space, trying to assert himself through body language.
“I’m sorry, Marine, I couldn’t quite hear you,” she says, and pauses. “Old ears.” She smiles and shrugs trying to convey getting old sucks, but what’re you gonna do?
But he’d flinched when she’d said marine, and so she knows she’s right, and Tony’s frantic handwaving in the corner of her vision notwithstanding, she is going once more into the breach. She gives him and her security team a signal that means relax, I’ve got this and leans into her gaze on the young man. She gives him credit; he only falls back half a step when she steps towards him.
She holds for another beat, the crowd of reporters and onlookers around them focused, waiting with bated breath. Her power is building up around her like a mist slowly rolling in and accreting in the gathering silence that she knows she need never break, and that inevitably, he must. It’s funny, really, how quiet a day can be, even on a busy street at the farmer’s market, in a moment like this.
The man stands a little taller and squares his shoulders. She can see the resolve to repeat the question in his eyes the moment before he himself realizes he’s going to do it.
“Madam President, I asked if you are a racist.”
Sharon smiles, a genuine smile this time, radiant in the knowledge that she has already won. Whatever bias this man was bringing into the question, whatever he thought of her personally, it had only taken a minute for him to cave on his initial battle line -- his refusal to use her title the first two times he’d asked his question.
What she had known, that he could not possibly know, is that she would have happily waited all day in silence for him to accord her the respect she was due. Well, she thinks, not all day. It is hot, and I need to get Mathilde home, but waiting a really fucking long time would have showed this child who he’s messing with. In her mind’s eye, her grandmother nods and grins at her. Her own smile grows wider at the thought.
“Have we met?” she asks him, stepping forward again.
“Uh. No, ma’am.” he replies, again off-balance at the unforeseen direction this conversation is going. He glances back at a blond woman who Sharon now sees is with him -- his colleague/girlfriend/sister, diligently video recording the interaction, and looking almost as uncomfortable as the interlocutor.
“You’re new to the beat?”
“Ma’am? Yes, ma’am.” he replies, quickly catching on that she is playing along with the charade that he’s a legitimate reporter. She raises an eyebrow at him, inviting him to continue.
“Troy Caldwell. With...with the Statesman, ma’am.”
“Indeed? Good. Good for you Troy. The Statesman is a fine paper. It’s one of the ones we helped to save back when I was Vice President, you know.” She nods and smiles at him, and once again is amazed at how simple human reflex has him smiling and nodding right back at her.
“And you were born in Yampahpa state.” It’s a question, but not really a question, and he knows it.
“I was born in Lewiston.”
She wracks her brain for a split second. Is that Nez Perce or Shoshone? she thinks. Sometimes even she has a hard time with the geography of the new Cascadian states. She claps her hands like his answer has delighted her.
“So you’re a native-born Cascadian? Well, you’ve got one up on me then, you know. I was born in Oakland. California. Back when it was the United States.”
He flinches, a very small twitch, at the name of the old nation, and Sharon adds that to the mental checklist she’s building about this interaction.
“I was born in the United States, too. In Idaho.” he says, but quietly, as if a ghost has stolen half of his breath.
Sharon nods, “Of course, because you’re twenty...?”
“Twenty-four.”
She nods again, and flashes him another smile, this one with a bit more wolf in it, the way she knows she can.
“So, Troy Caldwell, twenty-four, born in the fine city of Lewiston, Nez Perce State, brand-new reporter with the Statesman, you want to know if I’m a racist, why, exactly?”
She flashes a glance at Vanander Singh, who has been slowly walking up behind Troy as she says all of his details out loud, and she ensures that Troy sees the small shake of her head that she gives to Agent Singh as the man takes his place half a step behind the ersatz reporter.
Sharon can see the realization bloom in the man’s head, that none of this has gone the way he’s planned. While he has been willfully convinced that he was luring Sharon into a conversation that could be politically damaging, she and her team have been sizing him up, determining that he wasn’t a true threat -- or that he wouldn’t follow through on his threat -- and most unexpectedly, she has now given him a large national media platform upon which he is going to ask his question and fail.
Credit to the man, though, because he gathers himself and launches into the part of his speech that she’s sure is quite well rehearsed.
“You and your government have been engaged in racist policies for years. Policies that have stolen land, property and money mostly from white citizens, especially poor Eastern whites who never wanted to be a part of Cascadia in the first place. You settled refugees on our land to dilute our political strength. You say your policies are promoting equality, but you’re only interested in clinging to power and running for a third term, because you won’t get out of the way for other people to run.”
There’s a look of real anger in the man’s eyes, and Sharon can see that he genuinely believes what he’s saying. For some reason, that glimpse of his anger dissolves all of hers, and in its place, she is filled with an oceanic sadness.
Sharon nods at him, and gives him a small, sad smile.
“Well, we cleared up the whole question about if it would be a third term earlier, Troy. But you want to know if I’m a racist?” she asks.
His face is still flushed with anger, and the nerves from asking his question up close. He gives a sharp nod.
She sighs.
“Yes, Troy. I am a racist. Of course, I’m a racist.”
There’s a rumble that passes through the crowd, a murmur of disbelief, and a frantic checking among the reporters to ensure that their devices are powered on and recording.
“I’m a racist, Troy,” she says again, “and so are you.”
“And so are all of us,” she says, waving her hand to encompass the entire crowd. “We all are, because we were raised in a racist society that built its power on the backs of black and brown people, and immigrants and indigenous people, and yes, on the backs of poor white people, too. And it concentrated that power in the hands of a very select few who counted as citizens. Who, by the way, for the vast expanse of history were defined as white men who were wealthy enough to own land.
“So I grew up, in old America, as a racist. A racist against Latino people and Asian people and First Nations people who were different from me. A racist against white people who hated and oppressed me, and especially against the white police officers who killed my brother. And also, as a racist against Black people. Against my own people. Against me, myself, because society taught me that I was not worthy or equal, and it reinforced that message every damn day, in a million little ways that are too numerous and exhausting to try to enumerate here.”
She pauses for a moment, to let the tension build. Children are laughing in the distance, and the silence around her is a bubble of unreality in the larger sphere of the market hubbub.
“But I’m also an antiracist, Troy.
“And since I realized in my twenties that I could only ever be a racist or an antiracist, and that the only way I could forsake racism of all kinds was to work every day to be better, to be an antiracist in all things I did and said, I have been working towards that goal. Maybe I have failed from time to time, but on the whole, I think I have not.
“When our progenitor nation, the United States of America, tore itself apart in the Catastrophes, we didn’t know if we could build anything new. We didn’t know if we could build anything at all! We didn’t know if we could win our freedom to self-determination, and we didn’t know if we could survive. But we did know that we had to try. We hoped and prayed that the shattered ideals of that old country could possibly be made true here in this small corner of the world.
“Benyamin David Cohen and I, and many others, we gave over our lives, and our best efforts to that task. Many of you joined us in those efforts! During the war I was a general -- an accidental general, you all know the story -- and I helped us secure the unified Cascadia watershed. During the Exodus, as we were taking in millions of people of color fleeing the New Confederacy, and Heartland, and Texas, millions of religious refugees from Quebec and Deseret, millions of people of conscience of every color afraid of what our former brethren were becoming, we were simultaneously trying to build a new nation from the ashes of the old, while feeding every mouth. A new nation where everyone could live in peace. A nation where everyone had a home and a job.
“We embraced the ideas of liberation capitalism, and human sovereignty, and deeper economics. We took risks, and we took bold action, because to do nothing, to change nothing, would have been to surrender and die.
“And yes, sometimes we took land. Mostly, we took it from large corporations who are, in fact, not people. We created the Environmental Court to help to arbitrate those decisions, while keeping stewardship over the earth and the waters in our protection.
“And sometimes we did the equally hard thing of giving some that land back to the people who belonged to it first. To the Duwamish here, to the Haida Gwaii, the Nez Perce in your home state, to all the First Nations where we could. And then with the Reparations, Reconciliation, and Restoration Acts, we set up the New Grange Fund, and gave forty acres and a tractor and books on permaculture to everyone who wanted it, so that more than a million family farms bloomed with abundance for us all.
“We put that land into the hands of people who would love it, and who would work it, and who would help us to build and feed this nation.
“We did do that.
“I did do that. I helped to create those policies, and I helped to implement them, and I’m not sorry about it. Not even one little bit.
“But I think you are asking another question, hidden behind your first question, and so let me answer that, too.
“You are asking me if I hate white people.”
She pauses, and she’s looking directly into his pretty blue eyes, and she sees the truth and the shame there, as every other eye is focused on her.
“And the answer is: of course I don’t. How could I?”
At this, she leans back and grabs Mathilde’s waiting hand, long years of marriage and partnership having told her subconsciously that her wife had come to stand again behind her shoulder as she spoke. Mathilde, her beloved partner, slid into her role as political prop as easily as breathing, and steps up to stand fully beside Sharon, delivering a perfectly timed kiss.
In that one moment the years melt away, and she is thirty-two, meeting this amazing woman on this exact spot, filled with the hope and spark of new romance, and dreams of a future life well-loved and well-lived.
She breaks the kiss, and comes back to the present, and looks at Troy, and the woman she is now convinced is his sister, who is gently tugging on his arm trying to pull him away. As they blanch at her gaze, they both seem to shrink in the moment.
“But what I don’t like, Troy.” She said leveling him with her biggest grin, and pulling out her wagging finger in the same way her beloved Nana had done from time to time.
“What I don’t like is assholes. Of any color!”
The crowd around her explodes with laughter, in palpable relief, and she can feel the air around them relax.
Troy and his sister begin to try to slip through the throng, and she hollers to her lead security man who is already sidling up to the man as he tries to beat his retreat.
“Go easy, Van!”
The agent frowns and nods at her, and then turns to his business, gently resting his hand on the fake reporter’s shoulder.
Sharon holds tight onto Mathilde’s hand, and looks at her wife. “Do it”, Mathilde whispers at her, her eyes alight with a fire that nearly forty years has taught Sharon to pay attention to. She turns back to the gathered reporters, feeling the electric thrill of the moment.
“There’s one other thing we have decided just now I should tell you,” she says loudly, causing the crowd to fall silent instantly, all eyes and ears and lenses immediately returned to her.
In her mind’s eye, her grandmother is there, smiling, standing with a fictional president from an ancient TV show about a vanished country.
“I am running. I am running for another term to be your president, and I’m going to win, too!”