Red-orange twilight reflected off the glassy lake’s surface and onto a mountain face of flat slate—far too flat to be anything natural. Someone, man or monster, had carved into the mountain long ago. Whatever it was had been destroyed, not by wind and weather, but by explosives. The scorch marks and craters from the demolition still scarred the mountain, and scars that would still fester for a few more centuries, if not more.
Below the scorch marks, but still a couple hundred feet above the mountain’s base, stood a lone man on a levitating steel pulpit gilded in mahogany. He was surrounded by a buzzing cloud of camera drones just a shade smaller than his fist. He looked at his notes, then down to the crowd of thousands below him. There were thousands, sitting on chairs, picnic blankets, or just the bare dirt.
The spotlights switched on, illuminating The Reverend and showing the mountain’s scars in even starker contrast. “My brothers and sisters, rejoice! For this day, even more than every other day, is the day that The Lord has made! The day that WE have made through him!” The customary cheer came, and The Reverend looked down, bashful. Once the roar dulled, he began again.
“It has been thirty-five years since OUR Declaration of Independence, and twenty-eight years TO THE DAY of our Dream coming true, and our Greatest Struggle finally ending with the treaty signed AT THIS VERY SPOT." His voice broke for a second as he pointed his index finger at the monument below which memorialized the treaty signing. The Reverend then turned to the side, gesturing to the pockmarked mountainside.
“We also must not forget those who made these craters, firing the first shots of our war for independence decades before it was officially declared.” That got further applause, which The Reverend once again waited for before continuing.
“And not just the brave men and women of our recent past, but Tubman, Brown, Truth, Lincoln, DuBois, Roosevelt, Dr. King, Malcolm, and of course the great man for whom this country is named. I would name them all, but my voice is already half gone. Every last one of them helped all of us get what we deserved, our God-given birthright, regardless of who tried to get in the way. Not like the false ‘founders’ so many of us older folks had to learn about under the Old Regime.” That line got the most cheers of the night so far.
“Yes my Brothers and Sisters, today we celebrate victory, for them and for us. Through our combined struggle, we turned the darkest night into a brilliant day.” The Reverend broke into a true grin for the first time and looked at the flag rippling in the breeze at the foot of the mountain.
“Our flag is emblematic of that struggle. We fought for its right to fly here by ourselves. Did we receive any help from the ‘North?’”
“NO!” The crowd’s answer came before the Reverend had even finished his sentence.
“We did not. The merchants of the Chesapeake were too cowardly to send us anything other than corporate platitudes, and the bureau-aristocrats of Acela were too busy gossiping and backstabbing each other to even notice we existed.” He paused.
“And yet, despite fighting alone, our focus on the truly Good, our True North, not their false north, combined with the help of the Almighty God above, won us our freedom.” The Reverend said as he stared at the golden Polaris symbol on at the flag’s center.
“But our freedom, glorious as it is, is not enough by itself. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, and there is still a lot of injustice on this continent, from the hoity-toity honky tonks of Nashville, to the slaver mansions and Antebellum nostalgia of Charleston, where they’re building new plantations on the sea, to the dystopian techno-state of Miami.” The crowd weren’t just cheering now; they were yelling, waving their fists in unison with The Reverend.
“But as we learned in our Greatest Struggle, we cannot fight all of these at once, not if we want to succeed. Therefore, I say we must do what which will help the most people. And that means destroying the Sinful Empire of hatred, iniquity, and oligarchy to our South. An Empire of the Sun so cruel it would make the Aztecs shiver. For too long, they’ve trodden on both their own people and our brothers and sisters in the Caribbean! Surely they must be stopped?” The Reverend ‘asked.’
“YES!” Came the responding cry from the crowd, playing along.
“And are we just going to sit here and wait to help, while the cries of the oppressed can be heard not just by God’s own ears, but across our very much man-made borders?”
“NO!”
“I cannot wait any longer either my brothers and sisters! I am ready to stand with them, and to stand with you. I promise you this: As the sun sets on us today, so it shall set on them forever! God bless us all!” The Reverend clenched his fists one last time for the cameras, then smiled as they turned off and the platform began its controlled descent back to Earth. The Reverend was still in the clouds, as was his audience. He’d made sure of that.