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. 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 was 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.
What gnawed at Merlot was that people had to cross borders to fight in Vietnam. Why not fund their military instead of hitching a ride on Uncle Sam's jet, while selling weapons to the war efforts and pretending their hands were tied? Sympathy wasn't a strategy. Neutrality wasn't innocence. Free rides cost blood.
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 untouched, while their bodies were buried in foreign soil. Patriotism that didn't fit well on bumper stickers—or on resumes. 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.
Swore oaths to a country that wouldn't claim them. No parades, no pensions, ghosts in two lands: unwanted in the north, ignored in the south, remembered only in paperwork.
In 1995, Uncle Sam's veterans built The North Wall in Windsor. Borealia sent volunteers—just not the granite to remember them. Fifteen years before completion, the veterans funded the wall themselves. Borealia refused to write cheques for those who betrayed the national myth of peacekeeping. At least that wall existed—unlike the southern one Dony kept promising would magically rise along the border.
Merlot fought for his country. His white ass came stamped: Made in America—no refunds. He wouldn't trade 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.
Ricky's alternative service threw the cowards a bone: jobs, paychecks, a way to sleep at night without blood on their hands. Borealia? Polite nods at the border and an unemployment line that never thawed.
Critics complained that the alternative service pay was insulting, that Ricky had given young men only two doors to choose from: slave or soldier. Ricky disagreed. He'd worked three jobs just to get into college. They called it exploitation. Ricky called it employment. Once the draft died, so would the guarantee.
Merlot had no church ties—no backing meant conscientious objection was doubtful. His father preferred a barstool over a pew. Merlot scoffed; no attendance record, no exemption. The system didn't reward no‑shows.
Merlot knew his father wanted him out of the house, but the alternative service pay wouldn't even cover a one-bedroom apartment. He could take a second job—illegally. Unauthorized work meant prison if caught. Too risky. Besides, exhaustion wasn't much of an upgrade from the draft.
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.
Merlot turned on the news and watched 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.
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. Borealia wasn't new to freeloading—every doctor's bill that landed on her doorstep was promptly stamped free. Sam couldn't even score Ozempic because she claimed it was a luxury, perpetually in "short supply.'
She ran a morality boutique: sanctuary by day, profit by night, and ethics sold separately. Sam 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 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. Prisons overflowed—cells packed not with the dangerous, but the desperate. Petty theft. Drug charges. Mandatory conscription 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. War gave men purpose, structure, and a shot at dignity. The draft wasn't punishment. A lifeline—a way out for the forgotten, even if it meant trading one cage for another.
The draft was accused of targeting the poor—so why did Dony, born wealthy, need a doctor's note to escape it? Presbyterian, unlike Ricky's Quaker roots, his church meant nothing to the draft board. Peace churches received the approving nod; the rest had to fake a limp or cough. Even the King of Rock, millions in the bank, was drafted for Germany—later, he hit up Ricky for a badge to fight the youth on drugs.
Ricky inherited Johnson's war. Johnson blamed Ricky for interfering with peace talks; however, Johnson's signature was on the bombing campaign. If Johnson truly wanted peace, why had he spent years blasting supply lines instead of opening a path to negotiation?
Ricky couldn't admit the fire was too big to smother. Hurled two more nations into the flames, stoking it only to look victorious. Couldn't bear the thought of history stamping failure across his forehead. Better to torch two more countries than let the headlines say he'd lost one.
If he faltered, what faith would NATO allies have under Uncle Sam's so‑called protection? Ricky couldn't afford allies slashing their defence budgets because they'd decided Uncle Sam's shield was more decoration than protection.
Ricky found Trudeau insufferable; the son would probably be no better. Same old act — another Trudeau dodging every cent for 'protection,' just like his father, allowing allies to fight alone. He'd green-light marijuana, winning cheers from the counterculture Ricky despised. Drugs were public enemy number one. Ricky slammed the southern border shut, choking off the haze before it poisoned Uncle Sam's backyard.
Johnson had cursed Ricky. He stepped aside before the war could ruin his reputation, handing Ricky the blame like a live grenade. Johnson retired wealthy; Ricky sank under the weight of lawyers' fees. The only "celebrity" bookings he could land were dim hotel conferences, half‑empty rooms, and the crowd were mostly drunks killing time between refills. Question time was always the worst: no applause for ending the war, just the same slurred jeer from the back row: why pour so much cash into silence?
Humiliation gnawed at him. He should be performing at the Grammys, not for those stumbling to their tables. Maybe if he hadn't cracked down so hard on draft resisters and protesters, more of them would be sitting in seats instead of remembering the inside of a cell. Admiration might have packed the room instead of resentment.
Merlot wasn't buying tickets to see Ricky—not when Ricky had bought him a one-way ticket to Saigon with no guaranteed flight home. Burn the draft card, and the travel brochure shrank to a cell with bars.
To Ricky, the presidency was a rigged table played with borrowed chips—an arena where the rules were outdated long before he arrived. He came from parents who worked themselves to exhaustion; his opponent had nannies, tutors, and trust funds at every turn.
So he "cheated": bribed, schemed, bent the machinery, convinced that once he held the office, nothing counted as a violation of the law. Campaign donations didn't just cover advertisements and rallies; they covered felonies, too. Ricky needed a refresher in law school—to learn, belatedly, that laws applied even to presidents.
Voters begged Ricky to cross legal lines if it meant putting him in power, insisting it was "in the nation's best interest." Ricky claimed to speak for the silent majority. Bombs don't need votes—just silence disguised as consent. To Ricky, war crimes ranked with traffic tickets—annoying, procedural, easily waved away.
Ricky compiled an enemy list—anyone who had looked at him like he wasn't tall enough to ride the presidency. His cabinet had better bury the break‑in deep, far beneath the claws of the press vultures. Any government officials who got caught would be treated to the courtesy of a "conspiracy" charge-Haldeman, Ehrlichman, the fall guys.
Had Ricky ended conscription early, Merlot might have shrugged at his misdeeds; dragging you out of Saigon makes any schemer into a hero. Instead, the war dragged on until 1973—years passed, Ricky's pledge—because promises weighed nothing against a six-figure rain of bombs. Conscription didn't end for moral reasons; it ended when pretending to win got too expensive.
Ricky called for peace "with honour," which meant refusing to say the word defeat out loud. Never to be called dull, Ricky was interesting; his last job ended not in labour, but in whispers, headlines, and televised outrage.
By 1970, NATO allies cut their defence budgets, either convinced Uncle Sam would shield them forever or judged his armour—gouged by endless jungle patrols—not worth the repair bill. Hit a nerve with Ricky: the war would drain the U.S. economy, with allied support insufficient to ease the impact.
Ricky believed prolonging the war with the blue dragon would buy Uncle Sam time to win. Instead, it bought him crowds—angry protesters flooding the streets. Merlot's mother was among them, candle in hand outside the White House, her voice worn raw by chants for peace.
The war was unpopular, so Ricky doubled down, punishing anti-war activists and jailing draft resisters. Ironically, the crackdown fuelled suspicion; people began to wonder what he'd done behind closed doors to get into office.
Watergate aside, Ricky's fall was sealed. Voters had endured a war they never chose and a draft they never endorsed. By the time conscription ended, forgiveness was non-negotiable—his second term had begun, and the dead didn't bargain. The press fixated on the crimes Ricky committed to get into office, not the far bloodier ones carried out while he held it.
If Ricky hadn't bailed, it would have been a slam-dunk impeachment like Billy's, who viewed the West Wing as his casting couch. Billy's steamy affair with the sizzling intern went up in flames, and incinerated his wife's White House dreams; America recoiled at the thought of him returning as First Gentleman.
Ricky needed cash; funding break‑ins isn't cheap. He sold his memoir—turns out scandals were the only thing worth buying. His sins had market value; his innocence did not survive the transaction. He couldn't crawl back to the small house his father had built, the one where he'd shared bedrooms with his brother. His dignity was too high; he wasn't downgrading from a furnace to a wood stove. Florida was gone, and he was running out of real estate to pawn for his lawyers' silence.
Damn, the journalist was too sharp—Ricky could have made millions if remorse had been stretched thinner, dragged out over more sittings like bad therapy sessions turned payday. He could blame the questions: why didn't you burn the tapes? Matches aren't free. The confession aired; the market shut, no second bidder. He hadn't played hard enough for his sins.
Borealia condemned Ricky's war, hosting draft dodgers, sneering from her neutral perch—and turned him into a caricature of villainy. 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 in the bonfire with Watergate. His famous 'quote' would go down in history as a 'Rickynism'—less presidential doctrine, more punchline.
As if he'd traded a handshake with the King of Rock for a guest spot on Trailer Park Boys. 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. Popularity was overrated when hush money could rig the silence.
Borealia begged for exemptions from Ricky's 10% tariffs, citing her dodgy hospitality. Ricky's answer: No. Frosty charity didn't earn discounts. She'd dodge another war, leaving Sam to pay. After Ricky's burial, another president would rise, chanting: Protection isn't free.
Ricky's war on drugs favoured cells over clinics. Rehab, he scoffed, a revolving door—addicts lounged in therapy, then relapsed before the ink dried on the discharge papers. Leniency bred lawlessness. Cracks showed: overcrowded prisons, strained budgets, and 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 she'd offered more than invoices, maybe Sam wouldn't have had to max out his credit to keep the lights on. Slap a ten percent tariff on Borealia's energy.
Merlot felt the ache behind his eyes when he stared at his bank balance. His fingers hesitated before clicking "submit" on a grocery order. The cost of food had tripled, so he hoarded discounted instant noodles. 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.
Stopped in his tracks and pulled the water bottle from his jogging pants' 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 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 Uncle Sam was grovelling. Borealia didn't share water; she sold it at a premium. Capitalism pairs perfectly with passive-aggressively watching your neighbour burn—like selling water in the middle of a wildfire. Merlot took another sip.
Uncle Sam should've stocked up for emergencies instead of pleading for handouts. How do you plan for disaster when the only water flows from Borealia's overpriced tap?
Borealia didn't send troops; contracts did the fighting for her. When the fires came—literal or metaphorical—buckets weren't offered. Only invoices arrived.
Mastering adjacency, Borealia profited from war without firing a shot. Merlot wasn't writing fiction anymore. He issued warnings.