Michelle Maria Santiago Ramos looked up as a shadow cutting across the lower back of her neck quieted the sun blanketing her for at least the past hour. She glanced up. The whale-like cargo blimp drifted what seemed like a few miles off. A pinprick mosaic of dull metallic reflections shimmered from its dense underbelly while a sharp glint reflected off one of the banks of solar panels curved alongside the dirigible's round but boxy emerald topside.
"Weren't we not do for a big supply haul 'till next month at least?" Eowyn mused beside her, her gold-tinged emerald eyes bouncing between the airship and Michelle's as she slowly finished stepping over a log. She sat down on the higher end of it still loosely connected to the rooted trunk, keeping one foot planted on the ground and hiking the other up next to her. "It's not much like Chicago to send us supplies early." Hands more accustomed to streaming across the surface of a keyboard or coaxing poetry out of blank pages wrapped themselves around her knee. As if on cue, a break in the flotilla of clouds overhead cast a spotlight on Eowyn Summers, gleaming off the shock of blonde hair amidst the sprawling wavy nest of hair gathered just above her shoulders.
"Mmm. I don't know," Michelle mused, drawing out the last syllable like a hummed tune. "The train shipments, small as they are, come on time sure but I don't know if anyone's ever depended on the airbarges to the same degree since that one got shot down in '42. All I care about is how big of a target that'll be for any of the militia boys for a few dozen miles. At least the trains are quieter, low to the ground, and head back out again before anyone can show up."
A stout and burly person dusted off their knees, ambling over from a crumbled anthill mound beneath a shriveled oak tree. "We have about an hour to get out of here and headed towards Eula before there's gonna be more eyes and guns than just our own out here."
"You both really think the militia would dare show up not just west of the city but further north of it? It's been over a year since they tried that last. They're probably still licking their wounds about it too," said Eowyn, face scrunched up as she twirled a twig between her middle and ring fingers. "I say we stay out here another two or three days at least, finish what we're doing, then head back. There's ten of us and half of us are armed."
"How many of those five have ever used a gun outside the range 'Wyn? You really think five handguns is enough to keep us all safe if a raiding party meant for an airbarge? Come on now, be serious," quipped Michelle.
The dull hum of the airbarge faded further into the background as wind rustled the half-dried leaves clinging to the clustered nests of branches above. Eowyn gave the twig a few final, hurried spins and flicked it over the other side of the log. An exasperated sigh seeped out as she shook her head slowly, "Just Korsica, Talim, and myself. And, if it wasn't obvious, Talim and I have different levels of risk-tolerance let's just say. Kor, Michelle, Sara, what do you think?"
Talim Mora Erakat shooed a few straggler ants off their tan-amber leaf-patterned pants and shot a look at Eowyn through a few short, tightly coiled loops of jet-black hair that fell down across their chestnut brown face. Eowyn resolutely held the gaze for a few seconds in return and then cast her eyes around at the growing crowd.
"We stay longer then folks probably don't need to come back out here for at least another few months, right?," asked a tall, masculinely cut and dressed person, shifting a sagging backpack. The silkiness of their voice undercut by the uncertainty behind the words. A flock of birds shot out of a nearby tree with the crack of a branch far inside the forest.
A mid-sized person with a shaved head and thick, circular sunglasses offered, "I'd rather cut and run, we've been out here a week already. We thought we'd have two weeks but it is what it is."
"Sara, you know we need another week at minimum to wrap up the soil sampling and, look, Taemi you're in the middle of resident interviews right?" Eowyn responded. Squatting next to a low tree stump where a laptop sat perched, Taemi shrugged, muted clacks still coming out of the laptop. She opened her mouth, turned her head, and noticing how many eyes in various forms of agreement and disagreement with each other stared back at her, promptly refocused on the laptop. "See? She agrees."
Mthunzhi's voice pipped up again, more confident this time, "Eowyn's right, we have folks doing scientific experiments and setting up ecological monitoring equipment. If we just cut and run now, we're cutting and running - stuff's gonna get left behind. Are y'all absolutely sure that militias are gonna track here if that whale is floating off all the way over there?"
"No and that's because they've already passed us," came a voice hidden behind a tree deeper into the woods.
"Glad you got the invite and decided to finally join us Kamara-Sheehan," shouted Talim, voice cracking a bit. A freckled, more-pale-than-tan middle finger drifted out from behind the tree for a few seconds before drifting back as lazily as it appeared.
"Next time put some cash in it and I'll show up quicker, I've told you that before Talim-dearest."
"Alright," said Michelle, "how do you know we aren't about to get dropped on sis? Which faerie swung by to whisper sweet nothing in your ears?"
Rustled leaves and a few snapped twigs accompanied Korsica's medium-height, solid but lithe frame rounding the trunk. Her arms glistened dimly beneath a sheer, tan sun hoodie, an drab olive green tank top beneath that tucked into baggy, many-pocketed cargo pants fixed in place with a thick black belt. "Because, I read the frickin' intel briefings we get every morning and I read the note summaries of the bi-monthly logistics check-ins. Because I know that the Chicago garrison wants to try to draw out the militias into a trap this week so that a crucial medical shipment next week by rail doesn't get waylaid. Because I had my radio on instead of flirting around with my junior to hear that the airbarge's advance security detail just got into a firefight with a platoon-sized militia force four miles northeast of us," she finished gruffly.
Talim kicked a few rocks near their foot, "All the more reason for us to leave, Kor." With the last word, they sent a rock sailing far into the woods and launched off the fallen trunk with a push. In a few steps, they'd crossed through most of the loosely assembled group and came head to chin with the red and silver-headed woman. "I read the briefings too and I didn't like it, not a lick of it."
"Wait, I'm sorry do you think Tal' has been flir-" chortled Michelle.
"'Elle, can it. I'm not in the mood. Talim, it'll be over as soon as it starts and Chicago was clear that they intend to make it clean," Korsica cut in. "I don't really care if you don't like it, but they knew we were out here doing this work and approved the ambush anyways. At least this way, we'll know for sure there won't be a patrol or a raiding party that drops in on us or anyone else for a few months. This area will be way too hot for most all the militias, save maybe Corinth Battalion."
Taemi whistled a brief birdsong and waved at Korsica and Talim, "Hi, yeah, so like can I go back to setting up the stream gauges and tidying up the resident interviews? We need to have those setup before we leave, not after, no mater when that ends up being. No stream gauges, then no idea how our forest restoration and water management strategies are doing no further than just a few miles out from Eulassia and that's not how water tables work."
"Michelle and Mthunzi, go with Taemi and help her get the gauges setup - as many as you can," replied Korsica. "Eowyn, everyone can direct any further questions they might have to you for the next few minutes while we go have a little chat." She gave Talim's hand a brief, gentle squeeze as she brushed briskly past, dropping a laden backpack off on the group next to Taemi's stump. Talim loosened the scarf around their neck and dropped their backpack off where they stood, then turned to follow. Sara made eye contact with them, her eyes suggesting she tag along. They shook their head softly. She shrugged and headed off towards Mthunzi, who was already sauntering back the way she had come a few minutes prior.
Nothing but the sound of boots sifting through grass and the occasional grunt from nearly tripping on a hidden root passed between Korsica and Talim for a few minutes. The forest thinned to a fuzzy border against a fallow field when Korsica broke the silence, "Take out your binoculars and focus them northeast. There should be a half blown-apart warehouse out that way." She leaned against a tree and turned up her thin hood, gazing towards the far horizon as well. Talim found the outline of the building and adjusted the focus to make out a chorus of bodies strewn about a few rugged, damaged vehicles. Panning across the rest of the grass and debris-strewn asphalt parking lot, the grim spectacle only played out further and culminated in a slowly advancing line of six armed, uniformed people.
"You were right. They got all of them." Korsica started to reply when a radio crackle in both of their ears stopped her.
"Ripple, Creek. Bird's loose. Out"
"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," hissed Korsica as Talim started scanning for any movement in the fields between them and the building. "They at least could've said if they were on foot or if it's a vehicle."
"My guess would be on foot judging by the shape their vehicles by the warehouse were in. Those barges usually pack something on them too, right?"
"Not officially no. So for our purposes given that this isn't exactly a super public operation? No just flying, whales," came a terse reply from Korsica. She swung the rifle slung across her back to her side and lifted it up against her chest, checking the breach and safety as she did so. "Should I call Eowyn, Michelle, and Sara over?"
Talim stopped the binoculars over a thin windbreak a few fields away, "No, no I see them. Two people, kitted out but hurting. Here, Korsica," they put the binoculars down and half stepped towards her as they stuck out their muscled arm. "Look."
Korsica finished tying her hair back into a tight ponytail and grabbed the binoculars, stepping into the boot-shaped depressions Talim's boots had left in the tall grass. "Poor guys, yeah you're right one of them has a busted arm and the other looks like a shambling wreck with a leg bleeding that bad." Her bright, spring green eyes swung away from the binoculars towards the person close enough to hug her. "Do we try to catch them or are we supposed to, how'd you put it, 'Do this cleanly'?"
"I'd prefer to have a chat with these guys for once, it's pretty rare we catch them completely off guard like this and last I'd heard none of the outreach efforts have made much progress."
"A rotating cast of talking heads doesn't help much on their end, to be fair to us."
"Let's go for them, see if we can't get them to surrender, and be ready to finish this if not. Can you let the others know while I check my gear?" replied Talim. Korsica nodded, hand already depressing the talk button on her headset as she turned away to grunt through the message.
After a few moments, they both crouched down and started snaking a path through the forest a dozen feet from its fringed border. Korsica unclipped a green, pale amber, and tan camouflaged bucket hat off her belt and put it on. Pausing at the intersection with a long, school bus-wide windbreak, Talim put the binoculars up to their face again. Beside them, the other's head slowly swung around while they did so. Talim whispered, voice tender and delicate as reeds gently rubbing against each another with the coaxing of a mid-summer breeze, "One field's length over, they're sizing up making a break across the field." They lowered the binoculars down and made a series of hand movements joined soon in concert with Korsica, the result being the pair moving a few hundred feet further east along the wind break. Korsica lowered herself slowly down below the swaying top of the prairie grasses, draped in the shadow of pine trees looming overhead. Directly besides her, Talim knelt with one knee on the ground and canted their rifle into their shoulder. They made eye contact with Korsica and then looked back up towards the figures staggering their way across the field.
"Stop! Don't move, don't breathe," they bellowed, their usually caressing voice erupting with a thick, crackly roar.
One of the figures stumbled and fell down, followed by a sharp cry and a litany of clipped curses. A pair of hands shot into the air from the one still standing. Talim ground their teeth and tensed. As they began to open their mouth, the fallen figure managed to arranged itself into a laid back posture, struggling to raise its arms. "They're up, they're up!" came a strained, exasperated voice. Neither person in the windbreak moved, Korsica still barely visible amidst a tangle of bluestem and cordgrass. "I, uh, w-w-we're injured alright? Look, we were just attacked."
"We need help," wetly coughed the standing one, lowering one arm to draw it across their chest in an attempt to hold their side. A few coughs racked them before they continued, "What do you want?"
"Drop your guns, drop your mags, drop any knives you have. Then, step back ten steps. You on the ground, little worm boy yeah? You can crawl back," Talim yelled in response.
The grounded soldier began throwing dull, dented magazines from various pockets on their vest before dumping a sidearm from it's home on their waist. They started scrambling back although making pitifully little ground as they exerted considerable effort to do so. A dull thud next to them followed by metallic clacks as a rifle and magazines were angrily dumped marked the other's compliance with the Eulasian's order. They measured their steps back to match the end point of their partners ardent effort. As they raised their hands back up to full height, coughs interrupting the effort a few times, the gruffly shaven and haggard-looking person threw off the black baseball cap with a red and gold seal on their head. "Alright, what now, Red? That's what you are right? From Eulassia? This is a long way from home."
"Gringo don't try me, it's getting way too hot. I ask the questions, one of you answers, and then we go to what's next. Any other ideas come out of your pretty little ginger head and I'll add one final thing to come out of it." Talim's eyes shifted briefly to the airbarge descending into the treeline, seemingly a few miles further off than it had been a half-hour prior. "Question one: Who are you with?"
A yell jumped from the now-squirming figure on the ground, a shock of long, thin silvery hair slinking loose as their head jerked back and forth. Their hands wetly grasped their oozing upper thigh, the pant leg around the wound ragged and torn. Unperturbed as they brought their foot back, the other responded with their raspy, yet higher pitched reedy voice, "Qali defense brigade." Chuckles mixed roughly with coughs abruptly spilled out of them. They brushed a gloved hand across their mouth and looked quite nearly amused to see it come away stained darkly with spots of blood.
"Strike one. Answer my question," Talim's voice cut across the field.
"Just trying to get to know you is all, ma'am. We're Corinthians. I'm Saul and my better half down there is Paul. Who are- oh wait, my apologies," more sodden coughing interrupted Saul before he continued, "no questions, that's right."
Talim gave Korsica's left foot the barest hint of a nudge, "Question two: Why were you out here?"
"Ma'am, you and I both-"
"Call me ma'am again and that's strike two."
"Oh, so they have a gender. Interesting.
"Strike two."
"Fair enough. I'll cut the fluff at this point then. We were out here to raid that juicy little blimp that's probably setting down over at that airfield near Eulia. You already knew that and you want to know why we'd go after so obvious a target. Stop me if I'm wrong."
Korsica started to gently, nearly to the point of conversationally, negotiate her way through the prairie, slowing to a near-imperceptible crawl a few feet from the edge of the prairie grasses. The other Eulassian shifted their weight a bit and glared at Saul. Waves of grass undulating under the caress of a soft wind filled the small space opened by the fading of the last, distant sounds of the airships engines.
"Alright, uh...So can we go? Or do you just want me to keep talking?"
"Can I get a medic or something, please?" wailed Paul.
"We'll get you both to a medic," Talim said as Korsica leapt forward and crossed half the distance between the two pairs within a few seconds. "But that depends on your answer to the third question."
Korsica's honeyed, faded Chicagoan accent stepped into the scarce space left by Talim's pause to breathe, "Were you involved with the Salem Campaign?" Talim, weapon still trained firmly on the captured men, came up besides Korsica after a measured, brisk walk.
The boyish grin tugging at Saul's face soured into a malicious smile but Paul's haggard voice responded first, "I was, he wasn't. I saw it through, start to finish. Y'all want me then? Gonna take me back to your dorms then have a little basement force femme sesh, huh? Y'all wanna take my little worm and turn it into a fuckin-" silver hair flew as Saul's booted foot followed through where his partner's head had been, a yell ripping through the air followed by muffled whimpering. Paul's body twisted at the waist, head and shoulders heaving with heavy sobs while his lower half strained to stay put. All of the left side of his dark grey cargo pants stained a deep, blackened red all along his left side. His dirt-soiled, blood-spattered shirt hanging somehow even more loosely off his frame.
"He often forgets his manners, especially in the presence of such God-fearing folks as yourselves," cooed Saul. "He's correct though and spoke the truth. I wasn't involved with the Salem campaign, much as I wish I was. Wasn't my time, still had to go to high school and all that." He pointed with a bloodied, gloved hand at Korsica, scrawny, pale forearm showing a bit where his drab olive green field shirt had slogged down. "You're old enough to have been in Operation Saving Grace though." Flaming licks of an anger birthed from the glowing, buried embers of shame kicked up in the gold of Korsica's eyes. "Aha, there we go! Come on, few of y'all Alliance cowards have had enough experience let alone training to move like you do. No, you were part of the folks that got shipped out to Israel in '26. You and him aren't too much different then, are you?" Saul's dark brown eyes twinkled as his face relaxed into an uneasy grin. He doubled over coughing and dropped to one knee to steady himself. Beside him, Paul gathered lose snatches of strength barely sufficient to force out a solemn groan .
"Aight, that's three. We're done." Korsica shot a stern look at Talim, eyes narrowed to gaps in sandstone. Talim continued, "I didn't come out of the shade to have some twink larper run his mouth about stuff he knows nothing about."
"T, no. We need them."
"Lady's right, I think," Saul managed between wet, ragged breaths. He looked over at Paul and tilted his head slightly. "Hey, Paul. Paul. Paul!" Eyes alight came searching, hungrily, back from Talim and then Korsica. "Hey hey hey! Where's that medic you said you'd call? We answered-"
"You didn't answer shit and, what's more, you nailed that sack of shit with your boot," Korsica spat and circled around to the otherside of the pair. Talim merely flexed a few muscles and shook out one foot, taut and wiry biceps dotted with beads of sweat. "He dies, that's on you preacher boy."
"He's got a family, two kids and a wife! Don't you care?"
Korsica laughed, "Suddenly Corinth Battalion gives a fuck about families? Y'all killed a few thousand folks not even five years ago in a little place called Toledo, most of them refugees from what little was still standing in Detroit."
"He's gonna die!" Saul shrieked, chestnut eyes burning within a fireplace of wrapped by weighty stones of worry and hate. He dropped himself fully to both knees at the older man's side and turned him over, brushing off dirt and plants strewn across the weathered face. Korsica exchanged a nod with Talim and slung her rifle back across her back. Talim grunted her discontent.
"Stay with me brother, stay with me," Paul heaved as he started compressions. Talim whispered something into her radio.
"Saul, don't waste your breath. We aren't not gonna waste ours," Her eyes fixed on Korsica who now held a tourniquet in one hand, lowered down onto one knee a few feet away from the two men. "He's gone, whether or not we waste time and effort on him. Probably wasn't going to make it out of this field with that wound bleed at any rate. Bad luck." Saul's soggy, laden breaths continued apace, the crack of a rib breaking the quiet draping the field. Korsica placed the tourniquet back into its holster on the backside of her belt and kept her eyes on the silver haired Corinthian. "Someone's coming for you, they'll get you patched up and taken care of. Oh... by the way, I came up with a fourth question while you were belching a lung a few minutes ago before the festivities started." They smiled sweetly, teeth brilliant in the sun, like an artist at their debut showcase. "What happened to the Republic of Texas garrisons you backwater freaks had socked into Muncie and Bloomington? There's word on the street but I prefer for godly men to tell me what to think."
Saul ignored them and put his cracked lips to his fallen brother's, while Korsica closed her eyes and looked away.
Talim spat and a grin born of spite came out, "10 seconds to make up your mind. Ten. Nine. Eight."
"Their faith was tested and found lacking," Saul paused to catch his breath and wiped a soiled arm across his brow. "Those Texans," a word less said than dragged out of a deep pit, "were mainly there just to get access to our web servers to setup bitcoin mines and, worse, tempt our young women into sin. They also made faggots of some of our men." He threw an exhausted attempt at a smirk over his shoulder at Talim and then turned to look at Korsica, the silver ribbons in her burnt amber hair shining brightly as the sun peaked around a cloud. "We shoulda sent the whole gaggle of them your way instead of back to their dust bowl of a home. Seems like the type your people keep company with. At least God shall wipe clean the earth once again soon."
"Alright, that's enough you two," Korsica snapped, turning her head back to look the young twenty-something man in the eye. The low whine of a heavy-duty electric motor settled into the space left by Saul's efforts. "I think it's time to wrap our gift up."
Saul pulled a small, black dulled and dented rectangle off Paul's belt, gripping it with a claw-like hand and thrust it underneath his own jaw. Words slid off his tongue and between his lips but each syllable was lost to the tumult of sound that followed, mouth moving in orations known only to him. Talim raised her rifle anew, the line extending from it ending at the pale sandy beach fringe where the young man's temple met his matted hair. Staggering back, Korsica yelled, "Put it down! Put it down!" Saul finished whatever ritual he'd planned long before and cast his eyes up to the heavens. Puffy, grey clouds set against a smothered, pale blue sky reflected off his eyes, chest heaving in jagged spurts. Talim bellowed a final warning.
"Christ is king!" flew from the man, followed by a sharp crack. Two throatier cracks immediately slammed into Saul's head. A faint shower of blood wet the fallow field. His body slumped forward and then tumbled across over its fellow corpse. Talim ripped the air and their throat with a scream, "Fucking god damnit!" Korsica lay unmoving, legs splayed in front of her as she rested on her arms. "Kor, Kor! Hey!" They snapped clapped their hands. "You good?"
Her unfocused eyes drifted to Talim and back down to the two bodies, "Eh, ah. Yeah. All good." Korsica let out a quick breath.
"What the hell? Fuck. Why would he-" The radios in both of their ears popped and bristled with activity, "We're fine. No just have them come still, we won't need a medic though. He just popped himself like a can of beans, guess they keep a single use on them."
"Tal we gotta go, get everyone and let's go. It was already an open question of whether or not someone was supposed to be home for dinner. That was way too loud. Wait, shit," Korsica pushed herself up onto her knees and hefted Saul's corpse off of Paul's. She dug around in a few of the various pockets layered across the older man's vest. "Shit, we leave right now." Her right hand pulled a cracked, plasticy candy green cylinder the size and shape of a dry erase marker from the left breast pocket. Black text burned into the plastic in bold letters along the side read, "Break if captured. One-time use transponder. Keep out of water." Below that, in white text thinly bordered with black was "1 Corinthians 10:13" She made a pass around both of the dead men's necks for dog tags and switched to checking pant pockets when that effort came up empty. Talim kept talking with the rest of the team via radio.
"I don't care! Drop it or pack it and then get in the trucks. We can't stay here," they tapped a different button on the small dongle connected to their earpiece. "Again, I am telling you that we are leaving. No! Pull your folks out and send that barge back to its home. This whole escapade has made enough of a damn mess. We're sticking to local comms only from here, get back safe." Korsica came up alongside them, both now staring down at the bloodied, dirtied bodies strewn a few feet away.
Korsica opened her mouth and closed it again before turning to face her partner. She crossed one arm over her rifle and hugged it to her chest. The shadow of her hat brim darkened all her face but for her eyes, burrowing into Talim's. "Talim, I know you lost a lot when the FEDS blew out Detroit but, damnit, you can't go and do this." She held a hand to their mouth, "Don't you fucking dare try to excuse this! Just don't. I've lost people too, all of us have. That doesn't give us license to go and goad people like this. He was wound up like a toy and you just pulled on the string. Now? Now? All the work that Taemi, Mthunzi, Eowyn, all the others were working on is scrapped. We'll have to come back and it'll be more dangerous next time. You know what Corinth is gonna do when they don't just see what happened to the platoon but find these two bodies out in a field like this? There's gonna be hell to pay, you bitch." She laid a shoulder well into Talim as she gruffly made her way slowly towards the treeline where one of the trucks had nosed its way through.
"Kor," Talim trailed off and grabbed her shoulder. Korsica didn't turn around as Talim continued, "you haven't borne the loss that I have, felt it's weight deaden in your arms nor strained to hear its faint peals stiffled by blue lips. We all have lost, sure, but that doesn't make it equal. I don't give a shit that he's dead, you think he would've made it back to Chicago? That Jesus juice they pump each of these young guys up with is what got him to put one through his brain. It's that which got him to use his buddy as cover like that. Fuck!" they shook their head. "No, you're wrong that this is on me. We're bringing too few folks to protect too many people trying to do stuff that it just isn't the time for. It's Spring, we know the highest number of raids happen around this time. It was a mistake to come out here and these two dipshits winding up dead in a field only confirms that." They let go of her shoulder as Eowyn and Michelle came running over. Ignoring the simmering animosity between the two people, Eowyn squared up with Talim.
"Do you understand how much work just got thrown aside? What the hell were you both thinking, especially you Talim! God."
"Eowyn, not now we're leaving. I'll bring you both out with a smaller team in a few weeks and we'll finish your work at least. Tal is gonna have to figure out a better plan for everything else," Korsica interjected. She put an arm around Michelle and guided her back towards the trucks, "I tried my best to get you two new, fascinating men to interview but my dearest friend back there teased one a bit too far." Eowyn shot a look at Talim's cinnamon-rubbed face as they sauntered toward the truck.
Michelle, looking at the pair of bodies a few fields over, asked, "I don't think either of you are ok. What actually happened?" She jogged to catch up to the other three. Reaching the lead vehicle, Talim opened the door and handed their rifle to someone inside and turned to face Michelle behind them.
"I helped a sick man see heaven."
Introduction to the Eulassia History Project
Eulassia - Second EcoCity of the Great Lake's Alliance Nueva Isla Program.
Date of Founding: May 1st, 2031
Date of Final Report: Spring 2041
We live in worlds which rise uneasily and unsteadily from the fertile ashes of the old. Shadows darken and haunt these newborn aspirations yet in this struggle hope gathers strength. No longer does the United States bully, coerce, whip, and strangle the ragged masses, nor does its frilled European mirror reflect its sickly light any longer. The Reformed People's Congress collectively governs what formerly we might have separately called China, two distinct Koreas, and Japan. Africa Unified, cherished AfrÚni, holds together as best it can a continent bereft by new regimes of climate and country. Redoubt islands cling forlornly onto shrinking landmasses with the now albeit with now unlabored breath in this post-colonial, post-capitalist landscape. Burgeoning socialist republics dart Central and South America, with a unified Venezuela-Panama providing glimpses of new futures. Europe remains assembled in a union, neo-liberal states enfeebled by decades of fits are finally torn as those movements mature into uprisings. Across a fragmented North America, war has shredded the formerly United States into
Resulting from the continent-spanning destruction of infrastructure (roads, bridges, water and other natural resource facilities and pipelines, other civic services), the Great Lakes Alliance Communities Council started the Nuevas Islas program. The program developed during the course of a year of discussion between muniPlan councils within each Alliance city along with the Miami and Bodwewadmimwen communities of the northern region of the lands formerly called "Indiana" under the now-defunct United States of America. Program goals were, and largely remain, practical development of new ecologically balanced city centers, provision of additional city centers to humanely address population overloads due to continued migrant and refugee arrivals (averaging around 20k economic migrants and 30k climate-political-economic migrants per calendar year across Alliance cities since 2026), improvement of agricultural lands within program region scope and increase in agricultural output across the Alliance, improvement of working relationships with neighboring sovereign nations, and expansion of the Alliance's protective border in response to increased raiding activity near major city centers in the southwestern areas of the Alliance territory (namely Chicago, Gary, and Peoria).
Following the wholesale flattening of Alliance city Detroit in 2028 during a months-long Federalized States (FEDS) Air Force carpet bombing campaign, official deliberations began within the Chicago and Milwaukee [idk steering but like do not say that] committees about the establishment of additional cities for the purpose of Alliance survival plans, refugee support and resettlement, and towards the creation of buffer zones. These conversations escalated following the Alliance's still-contested decision to carry-out the subbombing contingency in the FEDS-controlled Washington DC. Distilled out of months of conversations held in-person across numerous Alliance cities and online through hybrid webinars came the program soon to be known as Nueva Islas.
Eulassia (often referred to as "Eula" or "Eulia" by residents, themselves called "Eulas") is the second of the three current nascent city-states in the Nueva Islas program. At present, this is the only program city to operate under all three municipal growth programs of the Alliance: Ecocommunities Development Program (Nueva Islas), Renewed Forests Ministry (RenFOR), and Resettlement Program for War, Climate, and Asylum (REPAS). Population growth has been substantial since the founding of the city 2031 by a seed group of 5,000, now having reached 90,000 full-time residents. Public housing redevelopment and construction, alongside municipal infrastructure improvement projects, have been the primary focus of the city's two governing councils as a result. Conversion of the former Goshen downtown area into a dense urban core had been substantially completed by 2034.
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As comrade-residents of an Alliance city, we take pride in contributing to this history. It is through efforts like this that we are able to reflect on where we have been, consider what we do today, and more effectively plan for a tomorrow that involves all and not just a select few. Our collective past in the ruins of the old, fallen nation (that farcically-named "United" States of America) runs deep and red with the physical and mortal contributions of tens of thousands of fallen comrades. In remembering them, in honoring their ardent dreams, there is a new dawn which proudly crests the forested horizon; those rays of sunlight which bathe our faces are the parting gifts of those who fought for something they knew they would never see. Trees surround us today that were watered by the sweat and the tears of enslaved, displaced, enfeebled, slavishly-employed, or otherwise subjugated people. This collective project aims not to settle lands for neither capital nor conquest but, rather, our socialist aim is the liberation of the land and the people. The springs of revolution flowering the earlier parts of this century now blossom once more into their full, resplendent glory with this new dawn. As it was said in Palestine (may her rivers always run free), we repeat now here: from the Lakes through the Trees, may our lands live free.
- The comrades, residents, and scholars of Eulassia, second city of the Great Lakes Alliance Nueva Isla
The following history was developed, drafted, and researched by members of the Nueva Islas History Project team, numerous Eulassia community members (listed in the appendix of this report), and scholars from the Miami and Bodwe nations. This history was compiled and edited by Eowyn Summers and Michelle Maria Santiago Ramos.
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