Tower of Babylon Pt. 04

At the end of the Second Epoch, as we call it now, billions woke up to find out that it had been a shell game, as they suspected, all along, and of course, they ended up facing empty cupboards while the world burned. Those that didn't starve in the mass famines ended up littering fresh battlefields in regional warfare across the globe. There was always profit to be made, just with less people. Those who kept balance books looked at it as a great opportunity: if eternal growth is not really feasible, then the bust after the boom was not only inevitable but a requirement.

This one just ended up being the biggest of them all. Of course, when the chips fall, things can get a bit messy but that was always a risk, and management of that risk just meant making sure someone else was left holding the bill.

The Silicon Valley elites lost a big chunk of their home turf to a tactical nuclear strike from an unknown actor but the survivors managed to relocate and reform into the Monterey Polity that controlled much of the Pacific coastal area. The State of Jefferson finally became a reality as the region was allowed to become a buffer to the north but it was really a dependent satellite as it lacked the technological resources of the Polity, sustained by their highly automated fabrication plants that replaced the collapse of international trade. It would be years before the global network rebuilt itself. Much of the rest of the vast tracts of land between the coast and the Rockies became no-man's land although some old metropolises became city-states. A brief, bloody war erupted over control of the Colorado river until a cease-fire, breached many times, was reached. Every few years, factions still vied for advantage along its great length.

Much of Southern California returned to the dust due to losing access to this vital resource compounded when the flow from the Sierra's was confiscated and redirected to the Polity. Millions perished or migrated in the reset and Greater Los Angeles and outlying suburbs shrank to a shell of its former self, yet-with New York a smoking ruin-still remained the largest urban center on the continent, now centered on the Enclave which was anchored by the Gladstone Group's media empire.

Texas once more became independent and the South rose into the Confederated Combine. In one particular region, there was a group called the First Families who had prepared well for these times. Consisting of religious extremists formed around a charismatic leader known as the Founder, a mysterious person who had seized upon the troubled times to tie together a loose group of polygamist zealots under a new doctrine of patriarchal authoritarianism. Originally under the banner of the New Dominion, there were five families who comprised the core of the budding religious state. It was a bit of an oddity, as the mega-corps that were rebuilding international trade from the ashes of the old world were leery of working with true believers but from experience they knew how to deal with them. Everyone has a price.

The Dominion of Protectorate States, as it became known, was originally highly conservative in nature, centered on a governing structure established by the heads of the first five families as Elder Proctors who held equal but authoritarian power. The Founder, at the time, was the wealthiest and most powerful of the five families. Their heavily armed compounds had become regional safe havens which attracted refugees from all directions, for both security as well as self-sufficiency. Although the details remain shrouded in secrecy, they had come to control advanced biogenic technology that allowed for mass production of protein and next generation GMO agriculture—and no choosy beggars who preferred starvation.

Hence, they were able to subsist through the dark, desperate, years. They rigidly controlled who could join their cooperative, using the ancient policy of bridal compensation in order to bind themselves with various warlords and strongmen. Their biggest gain was getting a segment of the old military to support them but, once again, the details of those early years are closely held by the Five families.

Either way, the original United States, now headquartered across the Potomac in Arlington had friendly relations with the budding Protectorate, allowing it to expand into the Mid-West uncontested. Their primary enemy became the Combine as they directly competed for resources, including women, who had become valuable property once again as the golden age of feminism had been brutally repressed except in places such as the Polity.

So, how did the Protectorate become the debased, rigidly, hierarchical place in later years? At first, there had only been two classes: a member of one of the Families was automatically a citizen, everyone else were the "others" or essentially the underclass. They were not given the full benefits of a family member, including the right to own property and wives. Of course, it's difficult for such a rigid system to expand quickly if it excluded too many people, and the jealous masters of their various houses cared not to share, so another method had to be evolved to offer the military an opportunity to participate in society instead of revolting against the first families.

Based on the old Roman notion, mercenary contractors had the opportunity to be given landed title and at least one wife based on service to the Protectorate. They became the "middle" class much like the samurai of feudal Japan and thus two Tiers became three. They jealously guarded their privilege.

Over time, the Protectorate recaptured a significant chunk of the old nation and became its most powerful single entity although the Polity, with its Pacific ports, was still the most prosperous and technologically advanced despite its small size. On the other coast, the Federal government eventually became a puppet state and the heritage of the old legislative system, although ignored by just about all the other factions, came under the Protectorates control.

A mock senate was established and remained the only standing body of the original Congress. Although they kept the same, historical, total number, in practice several seats were held by the same individual such that only a few dozen people actually made any legislation when they felt like it. The ruling families ratified new laws, including legalizing polygyny, bonded servitude, and restrictive citizenship and voting rules. These were later consolidated into the Tier caste system, and voting was mostly haggling by the S-Tier citizens in informal gatherings although they allowed the peons to have a half-day off on those rolling dates. Their votes were not actually counted.

Society's descent into Roman style debauchery accelerated as never before. The exact flexion point of this arc has been endlessly debated. The Protectorate's own founding myth officially marks the revelation when the Great Founder, who went by the name Jefferson Chauncey Fremont (most likely an affectation and not his real name although no historical record survives to prove otherwise,) had his awakening on his road to Damascus. Reconstructed from various Protectorate tracts, the account describes a young Fremont at the nadir of dissipation during the waning years of the old United States, having found his way across the border into the dens of iniquity, drinking and whoring until he ended up at one of the infamous donkey shows.

Upon witnessing the debased scene, instead of profound disgust, the stories recount the Holy Spirit that had arisen in Fremont's loins. He had seen something meaningful in the eyes of the whore who had thrown herself, in despair, into the full throws of copulation. (Re: The Tijuana Beatitudes, circa 2xx7. EFT DOI 23.11.HA-3321)

Quote: "Blessed are the sluts, whose sheen is testament to their completion. For their flesh is a gift from the Lord, for their own pleasure as well as for man, who anoints them with his sin and carries it forth. They are fertile fields, whose fruit bears witness to the eternal reclamation. Those who can see, shall see."

Fremont equated the whore with the suffering of the Christ, and indeed this revelation was commonly depicted in Protectorate era art and even living sculptures although the beast was customarily replaced by analogues. In the great rotunda of their capital is an obscene replica carved from marble under which a supplicant could re-enact the moment with a detachable prosthetic.

By sympathetic association, then, the humiliation of womankind was as full of holiness as the passion of the original Christ.

No wonder that this mythological scene is generally viewed as the driving principle for the deportment laws Fremont pushed forth after establishing the new state. In that view, the hapless women who were subject to those rules were not merely victims but participants in their enlightened elevation to the heavens. Instead of merely walking in the footsteps of Christ, the heresy argues that they are copulating in honor of the exaltation of the Tijuana Whore, also known as the Witness of the Divine.

Of course, in those times, his heresy was violently rejected; indeed, he was cast out of many churches as a vagrant and arrested several times. (Re: The Tribulation of Chauncey Fremont. Electronic copies lost during the purge or encryption locked.)

Opposing scholars argue that the true turning point happened a couple decades after the official beginning of the Protectorate States when Fremont was in his dotage, and somewhat infirm in both mind and body, and that it was one of his most devoted wives who laid the true foundations of what became to be known as the Rules of Female Manners. Deeper, more controversial rumors exist that Fremont did not die, but was reborn with genomic re-encoding, as a slave woman; the argument goes that only a woman can be eternally saved in the purest reading of the doctrines. The One True Witness theory was not widely circulated during the era of the Protectorate (as even discussion could result in imprisonment. or exile, or worse) but the supposition remains.

That will be a story to be continued in later chapters...