Merlot jogged the trail, lungs burning with each gulp of crisp air. Days trapped in his apartment, drowning in student papers and unpaid bills, made the blue sky feel like a jailbreak. Alan's voice echoed in his head: Why write fiction instead of your own story? Merlot snorted, breath clouding in the chill. Because no one buys books about late rent and bad coffee, Alan.
Did readers roll their eyes at his work or devour it, hooked? He didn't know if it was good—just that he wanted to be remembered, even if it meant a deal with the devil. Every story needed villains clawing at the plot's edges. Enter Osa Dada, a shadow beyond the fictional Intermarium, lurking in Cascadia's wilds—a land of raw heat and untamed edges, inspired by Merlot's African journey when he was fifteen on summer break with his mother.
Sterling's left arm—useless after the injury. Racheal—sleeping with Osa, not for love, but for money. Anna—a widow, raising two children alone, her grief stitched into every line of dialogue.
Merlot didn't write to be loved. He wrote so they couldn't forget him. Even if every page dripped with hate, his name would cling to their tongues long after the heroes were dust.
His mother, proud of her Great North roots, scoffed at the president's rule. Merlot got it—Osa wouldn't bow to Intermarium's Lolita either. Borders mattered. Allegiances cut deep.
But what gnawed at Merlot was that people had to cross borders to fight in Vietnam. Why not fund their own military instead of hitching a ride on Uncle Sam's jet, while selling weapons to the war efforts and then pretending their hands were tied? Sympathy wasn't a strategy. Neutrality wasn't innocence. And free rides weren't free. The delivery charge was a little high.
Merlot had read the reports. Thirty thousand volunteers from the neighbouring borderlands had crossed over into Vietnam, fighting under a flag that wasn't theirs. Their capital stayed quiet, untouched, while their bodies were buried in foreign soil. Patriotism that didn't fit well on bumper stickers—or on resumes. It was the perfect business model: send soldiers to die, let someone else foot the bill for bullets, and call it philanthropy—heroism outsourced, tragedy put on credit.
They swore oaths to a country that didn't claim them, like leasing a car with no insurance and hoping the brakes work. No parades, no pensions, no memorials etched with their names. Ghosts in two lands: unwanted by the north, unrecognized by the south, celebrated nowhere but in paperwork.
Merlot fought for his country, and his white ass came stamped: Made in America—no refunds. He would never trade in his lucky stars for a red maple leaf. If a bullet in Saigon had found him, he'd want his name carved in the soil he bled for. Recognition wasn't vanity. It was proof he existed.
Uncle Sam picked up the tab, but he couldn't keep subsidizing Borealia's moral high ground. Wars weren't cheap, and righteousness didn't come with a payment plan. While the neighbour preached peace from a podium built with American steel, Sam was maxing out his credit—buying bullets, burying bodies, and footing invoices for a war she refused to claim. Would he ever see a refund? No—just resentment, and the insult of watching his own products marked up and resold in her territory like imported guilt.
Meanwhile, Ricky's term unravelled; he drowned stress in the bottle. Borealia welcomed war dodgers with open arms—safe from bullets, stranded in snow and bureaucracy. Refuge without work, medals, or meaning—a life jacket that left them drifting. Ricky saw it clearly: safety, yes, but responsibility? Nowhere in sight.
He knew Merlot would turn on the news and watch Uncle Sam win the argument against Borealia—not with facts, but with force. Even buried, Ricky's spirit lingered like cheap cologne on the presidential coat: stubborn, pungent, and impossible to ignore, a ghost that refused to retire quietly.
Pacifism wasn't profitable. Borealia's refusal to bankroll the bombs guarding Sam's borders was bruising his bad-boy image. Tsarina loomed larger now, flaunting 5,400 warheads to his 5,000. He was sniffling over the one thing he couldn't manufacture: heavy water. Borealia had stockpiled enough to power the planet—or end it.
He begged Borealia to join him on the dark side. Back in the good old days, she'd shipped him heavy water—fuel for reactors, leverage for bombs, even the one meant for Nippon. Like a rebel spurning the lure of empire, she turned down Uncle Sam's invitation. Old alliances didn't interest her. Birthday gifts to 1776? Only with a tariff break and a signed receipt.
He hoped Tsarina would squander his arsenal, wooing the Cossack Bride —sun-soaked and untameable. Their silence suited him; Uncle Sam had no desire to referee a family feud—especially while stewing over Tsarina's bigger stash, counting warheads like high-stakes chips and marvelling at how the house always won when everyone else cut corners.
Borealia wasn't just staying out of the war—she was cashing in. While Uncle Sam buried his dead, she traded with anyone who had cash to spend. She called it peacekeeping; he called it freeloading. In reality, Borealia was running a morality boutique: sanctuary by day, profit by night, and ethics sold separately. That's why he slapped her hard with tariffs. If she was going to profit off his bleeding soldiers, the least she could do was pay a toll for the privilege.
Ricky had earned his stripes in the Navy, scraped together enough to run for office, and clawed his way through a system built to keep men like him out. He'd seen the prisons overflowing—cells packed not with the dangerous, but the desperate. Petty theft. Drug charges. Mandatory conscription, to him, was a way out—a uniform instead of a jumpsuit, a paycheck instead of a rap sheet. If the country couldn't offer jobs, it could offer boot camps. He believed war gave men purpose, structure, and a shot at dignity. The draft wasn't punishment. It was a lifeline—a way out for the forgotten, even if it meant trading one cage for another.
Borealia held the umbrella like a tourist under a borrowed raincoat—safe, dry, and smug. Protection without participation. Security without sacrifice. She watched her citizens cross the border with quiet relief. Let Sam foot the bill—she'd wave from the snowbank, sipping syrup and counting savings. She didn't just sidestep the storm—she turned it into a business model. Let him sink beneath the waves of war debt, while she profited from the raft he couldn't afford. She sipped her tea, critiqued Uncle Sam's ethics, and quietly counted the coins from trade deals that financed his bombs.
Borealia condemned Ricky's war, hosting draft dodgers, sneering from her neutral perch—and turned him into a caricature of villainy. He was the perfect target. Hated by hippies, damned by historians, and caricatured forever as the man who handed out rifles instead of real jobs. His World War II service convinced him that bullets were the only effective employment program. Being allergic to work was contagious; Ricky chased birdies while the law chased others through jungles.
Ricky saw himself beneath a halo, a safety net stitched from duty. Borealia saw devil horns as he signed enlistment orders with the same detachment as teeing off for eighteen holes. In his televised interview, he'd made a boo-boo, a tape that belonged on the bonfire with Watergate. His famous 'quote' would go down in history as a 'Rickynism'—less presidential doctrine, more punchline. It was as if he'd traded a handshake with the King of Rock for a guest spot on Trailer Park Boys. He believed his war record was a get-out-of-jail-free card—good for all crimes, misdemeanours, and constitutional betrayals. His opinion never won the popular vote, but popularity was overrated when hush money could rig the silence.
Borealia begged exemptions from Ricky's 10% tariffs, citing her dodger hospitality. Ricky's answer: No. Her frosty charity didn't earn discounts. She'd dodge another war, leaving Sam to pay. After his burial, another president would rise, chanting: Protection isn't free.
Ricky's war on drugs favoured cells over clinics. Rehab, he scoffed, was a revolving door—addicts lounged in therapy, then relapsed before the ink dried on the discharged papers. Leniency bred lawlessness. But cracks showed: overcrowded prisons strained budgets, recidivism mocked victory. The States became a warehouse for the unwanted, not liberty, but cells. Woodstock wasn't freedom to him—just filth: mud, music, wasted youth. Discipline, not daisies, was his patriotism.
Inflation wasn't born in the jungle—it was born in the silence of those who watched the fire and sold the water. If they'd offered more than invoices, maybe Sam wouldn't have had to max out his credit to keep the lights on—and slap a ten percent tariff on his neighbour's energy.
Merlot felt the ache behind his eyes when he stared at his bank balance, in the way his fingers hesitated before clicking "submit" on a grocery order. The cost of food had tripled, so he hoarded discounted instant noodles. Printer ink costs more than whiskey. Rent climbed like ivy—slow, relentless, choking the brick of his life. He used to buy books without checking the price. Now he borrowed them, dog-eared and overdue.
He stopped running and pulled the water bottle from his pocket. Borealia had perfected the art of being adjacent to conflict—close enough to profit, far enough to preach. It was like watching someone sell fire extinguishers while quietly investing in matches. His jaw clenched. The War of 1812? Maybe the plan was to burn down the White House and then offer a bucket of water—at market price.
No wonder the president was begging for help. Borealia didn't give away water. She sold it. Apparently, capitalism pairs well with passive-aggressively watching your neighbour burn—like selling sunscreen at a volcano. Merlot took another sip. The president should've planned for emergencies instead of begging for handouts. But how do you budget for disaster when the only water available comes from your neighbour's overpriced tap?
They didn't send troops; they drafted contracts. And when the fires came—literal or metaphorical—they didn't offer buckets. They offered invoices.
Borelia had mastered adjacency—profiting from war without firing a shot. Merlot wasn't writing fiction anymore. He was writing warnings.