At the library, Merlot slouched in the chair across from Alan, who was engrossed in his manuscript. "This Dynasty Tower bombing in your story. " Alan said, glancing up, "It's got 9/11 written all over it."
Merlot nodded, his eyes distant. "That administration kicked off a war. They sold fear like futures—invested in chaos, and watched the dividends roll in."
Alan flipped a page, frowning. " Jared's escape from Cascadia? It's straight out of the Khmer Rouge playbook—hunting down anyone with a brain. In Cascadia, they're arresting people for speaking the wrong language, like if Canada made French the only tongue and jailed English speakers."
Merlot chuckled. "Cascadia's my dystopian spin on that kind of madness. A regime that locks up folks for thinking too much or speaking their mother tongue? Picture Quebec's language laws cranked to dystopian extremes. Don't worry about Jared—he's safe with Pat now, out of the madness."
"How do I know Jared won't get the Dan treatment? You love to write people out of existence the minute things get interesting."
Merlot smirked. "I've got a long list of characters to torment. I can only get to one at a time."
"Why add Logan to the mix?" Alan asked. "Aren't there enough names for readers to juggle?"
"Logan's just a cameo," Merlot said. "He won't stick around long."
Alan sighed. "Do you think there will ever be a world with peace?" Alan raised an eyebrow. "These days, a full-time job doesn't even cover two weeks of rent."
Merlot couldn't argue. Living under Uncle Sam's roof was getting crowded—and he'd been there first. So why was he facing eviction while newcomers poured in like it was a family reunion? Even Borealia was sending her people over, chirping, 'The more, the merrier.' He'd downsized from a one-bedroom apartment to a bachelor apartment. A living room felt like owning an empire.
Uncle Sam didn't care that Borealia couldn't house her own. Not after she torched the White House centuries ago. You don't burn a man's home. Then beg for a room—not without paying steep interest.
Borealia saw Uncle Sam as a generous host. Didn't mind the crowding because he hated being lonely. Generosity was never free. Not in Uncle Sam's house. He'd boot anyone from his treaty party who couldn't cough up coverage. Border patrols thickened on his side, but Borealia left the gate open. Rage swallowed him whole; in his crusade against drugs, he swore Borealia wasn't carrying her share. She slammed the gate shut after Uncle Sam's threats, claiming the credit as if her virtue wasn't tariff-coerced.
Borealia splashed cash on her parliament's glow-up while she begged Uncle Sam for a free jet ride, treating his defence budget like a personal Uber. Uncle Sam demanded compensation for the ride, so she whined that their relationship was "over." He laughed. It had ended centuries ago, back when Borealia pinned the White House blaze on the "tea-drinkers," dodging her role in the 1814 inferno. She'd scheduled her big birthday bash after her colonial crimes, because after the cake was cut and the anthem played, no one could charge a country without a name. Her excuse for the fire? No prime minister to blame—just a crowd saluting the King like it was a national pastime.
Uncle Sam saw through it—her excuses were as old as their border, a tired script of deflection. Then the atomic bomb. Borealia had built a lab for 'research,' not for 'mass destruction." Coincidence that her former lab employees are in Sam's desert. When suspicion brewed, she shuttered it, pointing at Sam: "His bomb."
Borealia claimed innocence to Nippon, blissfully forgetting that her signature on the 1943 Quebec Agreement said otherwise. Her defence? She was running an Airbnb for nukes, shipping uranium like cake mix, convinced she and Uncle Sam were baking pastries, not global annihilation. Accused Uncle Sam of branding the missile to tarnish her peacekeeping image. He snorted. Maple leaves? Never his style. Stars were. He didn't apologize for who got flattened—especially not those who'd "provoked" him first.
To Borealia, the tea-drinkers were as innocent as she was. Sure, they'd helped build the bomb, and yes, they'd burned down the White House—but harmless, in her book. Uncle Sam muttered: Borealia's favourite bedside reading, Nice North, Mostly Innocent.
Borealia phased out her weapons after the 1969 treaty—future offenders, not old collaborators." She retired her nuclear‑capable systems with the timing of someone cleaning the house five minutes before guests arrive. Was Uncle Sam just babysitting the hardware she no longer wanted to host, or was she polishing her "harmless souvenirs" in her peacekeeping cabinet?
She was dismantling her rockets for The Cossack Bride—because every proper wedding needs a modest arsenal. Missiles meant for defence or chaos were now gifts, polished like fine china. Tsanaria, that jealous groom with tanks instead of wedding rings, had already torched half the guest list's houses. Borealia opened her doors wide. Humanitarian, obviously.
Her disarmament looked angelic on paper; the decommissioned rockets became party favours. Uncle Sam fumed—he'd hoped for a few warheads, not another lecture on inventory ethics. The uranium pipeline? Closed for "peaceful purposes only." Exporting rockets apparently qualifies as humanitarian aid.
She couldn't police Uncle Sam on his uranium stash. Hard to scold a man when you're thinking of buying one of his bombs. Uncle Sam remembered her temper flaring when the Fat Man plutonium arrived in her research labs. She claimed she had no love for the bomb, insisting she didn't want to be dragged into Uncle Sam's bromantic obsession with it, especially when it risked smudging her peacekeeping brand.
Uncle Sam wanted a straight answer: was she buying or not? Borealia swore the general‑purpose bombs were different— perfectly compliant with the nuclear agreement, as if a stack of signatures could soften the physics of a blast. Nippon raised an eyebrow: contracts decided which bombs Borealia could keep? Why hadn't she signed the forms before the plutonium ever crossed her borders? Borealia maintained that the detonated was Uncle Sam's fault, not hers. She had provided labs, logistics, and legal signatures—everything but the finger on the trigger.
Nippon said the tea drinkers hadn't wandered into war by accident—Deutschland had rained fire on their cities from 7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941 — the Blitz still echoed in their bones. Borealia objected, claiming the bomb was meant for Nippon after his surprise attack in Hong Kong. In 1942, she handed the tea-drinkers a billion-dollar arsenal, so they could survive Nippon's ninja raids without collapsing. Why was Borealia playing Santa with no bill, while Uncle Sam footed the real postwar tab and fought the bloodiest island-hopping campaigns against Nippon's ninjas? Borealia helped rebuild their cities—no hammer raised for the White House while she fanned the flames abroad.
He thought friendship, with Borealia came with perks—ships, guns, a little gratitude. Instead, he found that victory has many fathers, but the bill always finds the same doorstep. He pleaded empty pockets. Borealia said the tea‑drinkers'—were her favourite customer, and favourites get rescued. She couldn't risk her factories going dark, because her favourite customer had stopped buying. The tea-drinkers strolled past the debt trap Uncle Sam fell into, raising their cups while he spent decades paying for the privilege of friendship.
He scanned the guest list—far too long for his liking. Trimmed it with the weary precision of a host who'd run out of chairs, patience, and border‑processing staff, giving the cold shoulder to anyone who tried to slip in after the invitations went out.
The guests raged at Uncle Sam for turning them away. Anger at him was nothing new—he'd never apologized to Nippon for the two bombs that forced surrender. He wasn't Borealia; he didn't lose sleep over not saying sorry. Uncle Sam knew the Cossack Bride had never intended to marry Tsanaria—the sort of man who brings tanks to the altar and acts shocked when the bride runs. She saw the strike coming—when the music stopped, Sam would be left finding beds for her overflowing guest list.
The wedding's cancellation was inevitable once Borealia stopped sharing her whiskey and slapped tariffs on every bottle. Uncle Sam wasn't attending a dry wedding. Bring the booze or stay away. Empty-handed, Borealia earned nothing but scorn; Uncle Sam remembered every unpaid debt. He never got a gift that never came due unlike the tea-drinkers when they marched off to war.
The Cossack Bride had no intention of giving him a room unless he paid for it—she insisted her guests get free housing, because it was supposed to be her "special day," the one Tsanaria had so rudely ruined. Sam wondered why she had to live so close to Tsanaria; her crises always landed on his doorstep. He shut the door on her late guests; he wasn't giving up his room. No, he wasn't sharing it with Borealia either. She'd already put tariffs on half his exports; he wasn't about to let her tariff his pillow.
Uncle Sam opened his door to see the Cossack bride, distraught. In a fit of imperial rage, Tsanaria had destroyed her guests' homes. He didn't flinch. The welcome wagon was closed. Borealia's offering barely soaked the soil. Half the Golden State lay scorched by wildfire.
Get your own room. Especially when the wagon was packed beyond capacity.
A walking contradiction, Borealia swore she never touched a warhead, then bragged about "nobly" dismantling her arsenal in 1987—like a whiskey lover boasting about quitting a drink they swore they never had. She seethed when Sam didn't credit her for the 1945 bomb, as if she deserved a gold star for the mushroom cloud. In the same breath, she'd snarl at him for quoting her old boast: "The atom bomb? World's greatest scientific achievement!"
Nippon was licking its wounds from Wake Island when the mushroom cloud arrived. The last thing he needed was Borealia, clapping from the sidelines and calling the bomb 'Great teamwork.' Borealia demanded a Nobel Peace Prize, as if incinerating cities were acts of diplomacy.
Uncle Sam wasn't surprised when outrage followed Borealia's bid for a peace medal. He hadn't forgotten who handed him the uranium. If Borealia had been more generous with the kickbacks, maybe he'd still call her a partner instead of that "difficult northern neighbour."
In her cities, the protests weren't against war—they were against her, and the quiet little stockpile she kept tucked behind the curtain. To pacify the mob, she dumped her nukes on Sam, faster than the tea-drinkers once dumped matches into Boston Harbour the swore she'd never even seen a matchbox.
Now, nobody dared mess with Uncle Sam and his nuclear stash. Still, he felt like he'd drunk spoiled whiskey. Borealia ghosted the non-proliferation party she'd invited him to. Makes a man wonder if those old labs in Chalk River are humming.
Borealia said she was too polite for bombs, too neutral for grudges. History kept the date: December 7, 1941—she went to war with Nippon before Sam laced his boots. Borealia claimed Nippon came out of the shadows like a ninja—ambushed her tea-drinking friends in Hong Kong, leaving her no choice. Nippon shot back: Borealia 'camp' didn't look much different from Deutschland's.
She turned away a ship of Deutschland's refugees. Had they come from Nippon, she'd had a camp waiting for them—her brand of hospitality. Did she not leave Nippon's people homeless? She swore she didn't know what Uncle Sam plotting, even as she watched her heavy water loaded onto his trains.
Borealia welcomed war criminals fleeing justice while rejecting the refugees fleeing them. 'None was too many,' the slogan bragged. Perhaps a better background check was in order—only a small number of cases were pursued. By 1994, Deutschland's criminals were safe on her soil. Uncle Sam regarded her as a haven for the guilty, not the innocent, yet she scolded him for whom he booted. Welcome, anyone with a heartbeat? Forget it! He had morals… and a very long blacklist.
Borealia insisted they were "relocations," not imprisonments. Not forced labour, just patriotic volunteers—happy to work for free under guard and barbed wire. They didn't like warm houses anyway; barns with padlocks were better for the national character. The property. Not stolen—just confiscated from anyone who'd prospered too much.
Deutschland said it took ownership of its sins. Borealia filed her paperwork in a cabinet labelled 'Oopsie Daisies,' then locked the door with the satisfaction of someone who'd just solved alcoholism by redefining 'addiction.'
She asked Nippon if her 1988 apology made them square—threw some cash at his people like hush money at a crime scene, then smiled like it was a group discount on forgiveness. Nippon said it was too late for that—like showing up with flowers at a funeral you caused. Borealia shrugged. "Uncle Sam said I was helping him set the standard—just north of morality." She insisted her camp was miniature compared to Deutschland's. The barbed wire was to keep the moose out.
The 'atomic reaction' wasn't outrage at war—it was recoil from Borealia's shadiness. History remembers Los Alamos with fire and fallout. Montreal? Gone before the questions started. Borealia knew when to leave a burning house—especially one she helped build. When the mushroom cloud rose, she wanted credit for the science and none of the ash. She said she disarmed while the reactors glowed. Wanted to have her fallout, dodge it too. Take home a peace medal for the trouble.
Uncle Sam knew Borealia had friends—plenty of them. The tea-drinkers had torched his house with her in tow. She claimed the matches were theirs, not hers—just borrowed flame. Uncle Sam was done watching Borealia gaslight her friends—especially when she kept calling him one of them. Borealia didn't abandon nuclear weapons; she outgrew them, then retroactively called it ethics.
Alan set the manuscript on the table to sip his coffee. "You haven't wrapped up a single thread in your story."
"The war between Technate and Intermarium will end," Merlot said. "Because all good things must come to an end."
"I thought the book was about Intermarium being at war with Ossory?" Alan raised an eyebrow.
"That war's done," Merlot replied. "Ossory won its independence. Broke free from Lolita's grip."
"So what's next?" Alan pressed.
Merlot grinned. "If you're that curious, read it. I can only tell you so much."