The day following the explosion, President Biden was sworn in by Justice Sotomayor at the Annapolis Naval Academy. By then, FCC and US Army personnel had occupied media facilities and imposed a blackout on TV and Internet. All news came through Fox, Newsmax, and One America Network, and smart phones had become obsolete overnight. Three more days had elapsed before the nation became aware that two Presidents claimed the office.
"We're really lucky, y'know."
Carol dropped her puzzle to her lap. "Lucky?!"
"Sure. We've been through the worst of it, we're out in the middle of nowhere, and weren't ever really in much danger."
Rural America was mostly unchanged - the boondocks were pretty much controlled by extremist Republican militias anyway, so the potential for conflict just wasn't a factor. As for liberals who happened to live in the country, most of us had learned to maintain a low profile even before the election. Although organized militias didn't pose much of a threat to our lives, we had learned that property was at risk. A rainbow flag or a Biden/Harris sign was an open invitation to vehicle and structure damage - and painted words and symbols that left nothing to the imagination.
Those of us who lived full-time in our RVs were more fortunate. The physical address on our voter registration rarely gave a clue as to our actual location. Even as registered Democrats, we could be pretty hard to find. When voting rolls were made public in detail last October, it was first seen as foreign interference to disrupt the election. But once Wikileaks dumped the tables, the militias began to use the data to seek out and threaten the opposition, especially in the suburbs where whole families went missing. And in the days after the January call to arms, few Democrats were safer than us.
"And I don't have enough testosterone to pose a threat to myself - or to you either!" I forced a laugh.
The pandemic had taken an unexpected turn. A new worldwide strain had evolved - Covid-19b - that became deadly in the presence of testosterone in the bloodstream. Like its predecessor, it could be transmitted by victims who had not yet developed symptoms. The mortality rate rose from less than 4% to nearly 30% in just two weeks - and virtually all who succumbed to the virus were males between the age of 14 and 50.
The country had been more divided than ever before, but not along geographical lines. Even as the perimeter around the White House expanded to include all of the Army and Air Force facilities from Philadelphia to Richmond, local police forces began to shift their loyalty back to their own communities. From the beginning, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gilday had opposed the actions of the Trump regime and stood down all forces, including the US Marine Corps. Denied access to Marine One, Trump was effectively confined to the White House. In the absence of a clear-cut chain of command from the very top, commanders of Army and Air Force bases throughout the world took a wait-and-see attitude and maintained an alert status of DEFCON 4.
On February 14, the largest nonviolent demonstration assembled on American soil became known as the Valentine's Day Women's March. This one was different. More than two million women converged on Washington DC despite challenges posed by transportation disruptions and nomask militias. And once they arrived, they didn't go home.
"This is all the same coverage we've seen for weeks." I raised the remote.
Carol reached over and stayed my hand. "I want to see this again."
A swarm of two million women is a powerful force. Surprisingly, a few of them were armed, but that's not where they got their power. They rotated in and out of the Lafayette Park command center and they kept the space between Constitution Avenue and H Street filled with bodies spaced six feet apart. And through it all, they managed to get their basic needs met. They picked up after themselves. They were supported with an infrastructure of transportation - mostly cars, vans, and SUVs - to shuttle them to local hotels that were committed to the cause. Food trucks cruised peacefully through the crowd until surrounded by hungry demonstrators, unable to proceed further until their food was gone.
The demonstrators now included military officers, both women and men, sympathetic to a constitutional Biden presidency. Some of the military units that guarded the grounds had been persuaded to join the demonstrators - along with their armor. The militias disappeared. The perimeter guard had become so porous that the grounds of the White House were flooded with women demanding the capitulation of the usurper. The organizers enforced a 100-foot exclusion zone from the mansion itself, marked only by police tape but respected by all. The only other visible gap in the crowd was on the south lawn where Marine One and its companion aircraft landed to deliver food and supplies for the demonstrators, and took off with anybody needing medical attention.
The arrival on Tuesday of the big green Marine helicopter was no surprise - but the passenger who emerged from the aircraft was. President Biden was welcomed with a roar of approval from all over the District.
Carol put her puzzle aside. "This is the good part."
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