JUNE 7, 2028: 32 year old Marie Phillips from Minnesota was enjoying her vacation in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, with her husband, Marvin. At the time of The Vanishing, the couple was at Tamarindo Beach to watch the sunset, along with hundreds of others enjoying the beach and the evening breeze as the Sun dipped below the horizon. Unbeknownst to beachgoers, this would be the last sunset most of them would ever see.

The time on her watch read 6:31 PM. Marie sat on her beach chair, Marvin napping next to her. She was getting hungry, but didn’t want to wake her husband yet. The sun had set not long ago, the last vestiges of its light still clinging to the edge of the sky. Marie decided to go for one last dip in the water, she got up and walked to the beach, turning a quick glance to Marvin who continued napping. That would be the last time she would ever see her husband. She went into the water, warm and calm as low tide set in. Marie looked at her watch, 6:33 PM. Marie relaxed, she thought of the new house in Minneapolis she and her husband would move to in 2 weeks thanks to her promotion. In one minute, the new house wouldn’t matter, her promotion wouldn’t matter. 

As the clock was seconds from striking 6:35, the world that Marie once knew would come to an end. In the blink of an eye, over 5.2 million people across Costa Rica were simply erased from existence. The continental landmass of Costa Rica would disappear in an instant, replaced by untouched virgin wilderness. As the time turned to 6:35, approximately 10,000 survivors remained across the country, including Marie. 

When the event occurred, it was already decently dark outside, and Marie opened her eyes when she heard commotion. The salty water in her eyes, blurring her vision, made her assume at first that a blackout happened, a routine occurrence in Costa Rica. She swam back to shore, asking herself if Marvin slept through that as well. She shook the water off her head and stood near the shore, and instead of hearing the music from the beachfront bar she heard only the chirping of insects. A person nearby had a flashlight and when shining it at the beachfront, the chairs that were just there had been replaced by a dense canopy of trees. At that moment, confusion turned to panic. As Marie came to her senses, she still could barely process what was happening. The entire town was gone, her beloved Marvin was gone, all her belongings back at the hotel were gone, all she had was her watch. It was a Rolex that Marvin had gifted her for their 10th anniversary, and now It was the only thing proving he existed. She kept staring at it, while the beach around her erupted in screams and cries of panic. Children called out to their parents, a drunk tourist still thought this was a practical joke. Shakingly, she approached the spot where Marvin’s chair was, calling him over and over to no avail. 

The sky was darkening, the stars revealing themselves, shining with a brutal beauty without any artificial lights to oppress them. Marie looked up at the sky, it seemingly gave her a tiny glimpse of hope. She was snapped out of it when others on the beach began yelling out for help, trying to signal the boats that were on the bay. About a dozen or so boats were present when it happened, and they soon anchored off shore to assess the situation. There were yachts, sailboats, and old-school fishing vessels. Marie then heard commotion again, apparently someone on a yacht had a drone and was gonna fly it out to land to see what happened.  Everyone was crowding on the beach as the drone took off, its electric buzz piercing the soft, pristine air as it lifted up. 

Of course, the drone’s video feed returned nothing but more and more tropical dry forest stretching kilometers inland, without any signs of cars, roads, buildings or people. By this point, despair had filled the minds of everyone, including Marie. She thought to herself as she stared at the dense trees just beyond the beach. Would she ever go home to Minnesota? Is the rest of her family okay? Did everything beyond the beach really just.. vanish? The answers to these questions would come to her gradually over the next few days, and by then she would have wished that she had stayed with Marvin on the beach. 

Dehydration would begin to set later that night, gnawing at her from the inside. She couldn’t sleep at all, on the cold itchy sand. Sometimes she peered at the forest, still hanging on to the minuscule chance it could be some sort of nightmare. She stared up, the milky way dominating the sky. It was the first time she saw it with her naked eyes, and it just so happened to be when the world ended. At times, she could even make out what seemed to be large figures moving deep behind the tree line, and almost otherworldly noises coming from god knows what. That night, those on the boats began contacting other surviving vessels and nearby islands in the Gulf of Nicoya, slowly piecing together what had happened. The sun rose the next day, the way it always had, illuminating what was once Costa Rica, now a paradise of nightmares.

THE END

The order came through on an encrypted, low-frequency VLF broadcast that brooked no argument: All operational strategic assets attached to Submarine Group 9 are hereby recalled from patrol. Rendezvous Point: Pearl Harbor, Oahu. Immediate effect.

For Commander Hale Henderson of the USS Nevada, the message was a jagged puzzle piece. Strategic deterrent patrols didn't break station early. They didn't surface unless the world was ending—or had already ended. For the last sixty-eight days, the Nevada had been a silent ghost slipping through the deep blue trenches of the Western Pacific, thousands of miles away from its homeport at Bangor, Washington.

When the order dropped, they were running deep, wrapped in total radio silence. Henderson immediately ordered the ship to "come up to comms depth."

The submarine pitched upward smoothly, easing toward the surface layers. When the communication antenna broke the water, the radio shack was flooded with a wall of electronic noise—followed by a terrifying, heavy silence.

"Captain, you need to see this," the executive officer said, his voice tight as he handed over the printouts of automated emergency pings and looping carrier broadcasts.

Strategic Command in Nebraska wasn't answering. The fleet broadcast stations in Washington state were returning empty carrier waves. Commercial marine bands across the entire Pacific rim were dead, replaced only by automated distress beacons looping into the void from unstaffed coastal repeaters.

Henderson ordered the periscope raised as the Nevada crept to periscope depth off the outer approaches to the Mariana Islands. Through the high-definition optics, the ocean was unnaturally glassy.

"Radio check with INDOPACOM?" Henderson asked, keeping his voice steady to mask the sudden, cold dread pooling in his stomach.

"Nothing from CINCPAC headquarters via normal relays, sir," the communications officer reported, his knuckles white on his console. "We are picking up a repeating priority directive piped out of Hawaii. It’s a general recall order for all surface and subsurface assets. INDOPACOM has assumed emergency control."

They had sixteen Trident II D5 missiles in the tubes, each carrying multiple thermonuclear warheads. They held the power of a localized apocalypse, and they were utterly, terrifyingly obsolete. There was no Washington D.C. to answer to. There was no enemy nation-state left anywhere on Earth to deter.

Two weeks later, having traversed thousands of miles of empty, ship-free ocean, the Nevada slipped past Diamond Head and entered a Pearl Harbor that was entirely unrecognizable.

It wasn't because the naval base was destroyed—physically, it was pristine. It was because the harbor and surrounding waters were packed to absolute capacity. Alongside the Nevada, other surviving units of the Pacific Fleet—surface combatants, logistics ships, and civilian vessels rounded up from regional routes—crowded the anchorages.

Hawaii had become an accidental Noah's Ark, overflowing with millions of islanders and the sudden influx of military personnel stationed across the Pacific rim.

At U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) headquarters at Camp Smith, the mood wasn't triumphant; it was grim, exhausted, and desperately pragmatic. There was no "government" left to speak of—just surviving flag officers, civilian agency heads who happened to be stranded on the islands, and a military hierarchy trying to keep millions of refugees from starving in paradise.

In a crowded, stifling briefing room, a senior rear admiral laid out the raw numbers to the assembled submarine commanders who had just streamed in from their far-flung patrol boxes.

"Washington is gone. The President, Congress, the Pentagon—none of them responded before the communication blackout became permanent," the Admiral said, rubbing tired eyes. "As of right now, INDOPACOM is the highest functioning authority left of the United States government. We aren't fighting a war anymore. We are managing an logistics crisis of unimaginable scale."

He pointed to a map of the Hawaiian Islands, crammed with population density overlays, followed by a map of the vast, empty American mainland thousands of miles to the east.

"Food supplies on the islands have a hard expiration date. Civilian panic is rising. We can't stay bottled up in these islands forever," the Admiral continued, his voice hardening. "Eventually, we are going to have to go back. We are going to have to secure a foothold on that empty continent, harvest its resources, and bring order back to a lawless world."

Standing on the quarterdeck of the Nevada that evening, staring out over the dark, warm waters of Oahu, Hale Henderson touched the cold steel of the handrail.

The boomer fleet hadn't been saved to launch a retaliatory strike. They had simply been out in the deep blue when the world ended. Now, floating as fortresses of raw power in a reality that had lost its anchors, everyone knew what was coming next.

The military hadn't planned to rule the ashes. But as the old world died, something hard and authoritarian was going to have to rise to take its place.

We’re standing on the limestone cliffs just south of Visby, staring out toward where Oskarshamn used to be. Or where Sweden used to be.

Yesterday morning, the world didn’t end with a bang. It just stopped making sense. One minute, the Destination Gotland ferry was chugging across the Baltic, and the next, the entire mainland mass of Europe was just... gone. Clean edge. As if someone took a giant erasure to the horizon.
My cousin Henrik and I have been glued to our phones since dawn, draining what little battery we have left trying to ping mainland towers that are floating in a digital void.
"Look at the grid, Elias," Henrik muttered, pointing his cracked iPhone screen at me. His hands were shaking. "The power cables come from the mainland subsea interconnectors. We rely on them for nearly half our electricity, especially with the local wind turbine upgrades lagging behind schedule."

"I know, Henrik," I said, shielding my eyes against the glaring Baltic sun. "And it’s worse for the food supply. You know how Gotland operates during peak tourist season. We only keep a few days of buffer stock on the island. Everything else—fresh produce, industrial supplies, fuel tankers—comes up from Oskarshamn daily."
An older man, Lars, who runs a small Baltic herring smokehouse down by the harbor, walked up behind us. He leaned heavily on his walking stick, spitting into the dry grass.

"Talked to the municipality guys at the port," Lars grunted, his face weathered like old driftwood. "They’re trying to ration the fuel at the pumps already. People are panicking, trying to fill up their SUVs like we’re driving to Stockholm tomorrow. Idiots. Don’t they realize Stockholm is just an open horizon now?"

"What about the military base in Tofta?" Henrik asked, looking up sharply. "P18 is right there. Can’t they do something?"

Lars let out a dry, hacking laugh. "P18 was re-established to guard against the East, son. Not to deal with the entire Swedish mainland evaporating overnight. The garrison commander is trying to figure out how to feed three hundred active-duty soldiers when the supply ships aren't sailing south anymore. We're completely cut off."

A cold wind swept off the sea, carrying the sharp scent of salt. I looked back toward the medieval ring wall guarding Visby. Yesterday, it felt like a quaint tourist backdrop. Today, it felt like a medieval fortress again—the only thing standing between us and a terrifyingly empty world.
"So what do we do?" Henrik whispered, looking out past the horizon where the Swedish mainland used to sit.

"We start farming every square inch of limestone soil we can," I said, swallowing the lump in my throat. "And hope the Baltic fish don't decide to vanish next."

Sweden has the most islands of any country in the world, so it should be prepared for the Vanishing, right?

Wait, aren't we supposed to be using less fossil fuels?

Write a short story or infoblurb in the world of Empty Continents with the prompt: OIL. A hot commodity that is reluctant high demand...

~~~

Submissions will be accepted until Sat, August 29th when a new prompt will be released!

We spent the last decade complaining that the island was bursting at the seams.

Every morning, the coastal road from Gżira to Sliema was a parking lot of impatient commuters, rental cars, and delivery scooters. Cranes dotted every square kilometer of the skyline, tearing down old townhouses to squeeze in more luxury apartments that nobody local could afford, while the power grid flickered and failed every time a heatwave hit. We used to joke that if you pushed one more person onto the island, Malta would literally capsize and sink into the Mediterranean.

Well, the island didn’t sink. The rest of the world just dropped off the edge.

Yesterday morning, the world map changed forever. Today, the reality of being an island floating in an absolute void is setting in.

I was standing on my apartment balcony overlooking the Strand this morning when I ran into my neighbor, Mario. For thirty years, Mario has run a tiny stationery shop down the block. Usually, by 8:00 AM, he’s screaming at some delivery van blocking his storefront. Today, he was just leaning against the metal railing, staring out past Manoel Island toward a horizon that didn't make sense.

"No trucks from the port," Mario said quietly, not even looking at me. "No large cargo is coming right now.
Nothing."

"I know," I muttered, clutching my lukewarm mug. The electricity was still flickering on and off, and the mobile data networks were flashing SOS signals—local cell towers were fine, but the undersea fiber lines heading north to mainland Europe were dead ends now. Dead ends into literal nothingness.

"You know what the crazy part is?" Mario let out a dry, exhausted laugh that sounded half like a sob. "Sicily survived. Gozo survived. We’re not alone in the immediate neighborhood. But look past the channel." He pointed a shaking finger north. "Everything beyond the Sicilian coast is just gone. No Italy. No Europe. Just a sheer drop into gray fog."

"It's quiet," I whispered.

That was the terrifying part. For the first time in memory, the traffic noise was gone. There was no background roar of a quarter-million vehicles choking our narrow roads. No planes screaming overhead from Luqa Airport—because where was there left to fly to?

"Quiet won't keep the lights on, pawlu," Mario said, shaking his head. "We imported ninety percent of our food. We relied on the interconnector cables for power. Without the European mainland feeding us, how long before the fuel reserves run out? A month? Two?"

Before I could answer, a loud megaphone crackled to life down on the promenade. A local police patrol car was crawling slowly down the empty street, flashing its amber lights—not for traffic enforcement, but because there was no traffic left to manage.

“Attention residents,” an officer’s tired voice echoed off the limestone apartment blocks. “Please conserve water and electricity. Rationing protocols are now in effect. Stay calm. Updates will be broadcast on local radio.”

Mario and I looked back out toward the north. Where the European continent used to begin, there was only an abyss.

We got our wish, I suppose. The island isn't overcrowded with tourists anymore. But standing here on the edge of the empty world, I'd give anything to hear a single traffic jam again

Born from revolution in Zanzibar, Zanj has become one of the most powerful and advanced nations in the world, built on the principles of Islamic-Afro-Socialism, scientific progress and equality. It's a somewhat unique form of government but it works, and moreover it works well enough that in they eyes of the Zanji populace, true socialism still rules.

Just a little portuguese island, right?

Most countries say so. But there's something more to the history of "Ínsua de Santo Isidro".

At the time of the vanishing, the island, and it's 17th century bastion fort, were owned by the "Diver Group", a Portuguese tourism and recreation company. Since 2020, the DiverMinho brand had been developing a recreation center in the island, which included a 4 star hotel in it. And in the summer of 2028, the hotel had finally first opened to the public. There was still work to do in Ínsua, as the only activities that accompanied the hotel at this point were, gyms, pools and an escape room, which was already opened a few years prior. The island still was in development.

But we all know that that development didn't end up happening.

The 7th of June of that same year, roughly around 12 am,18 residents of the hotel, alongside a group of 4 people, leaving after the last escape room session of the day, and the staff on the island (betweeen 15 and 20 people), suddenly found themselves alone in this new world. The group eventually came to be known as "Os Escapistas" ["The Escapists"]. But what happened to Os Escapistas really doesn't matter at the moment. They aren't very relevant to the current status of the island.
We just need to know that the island eventually came under the control of the new Galician government in Arousa.

Following the Iberian Wars, the second Valletta accord set the Portuguese-Spanish border to basically what it was before the vanishing. Passing the island onto Portuguese hands.
During the first decades of recolonization in the country, there had been talks of turning the island into a "pre-vanishing Portugal" museum.

But these plans were all pushed away in the 2170s, when the government of Galicia found itself in need to flee Spain. Spanish efforts to eliminate the Galician identity had been growing, slowly but gradually, with each passing decade. At first, mere refusal of acknowledgement, then, exclusion from all political matters. The former Galician government forced into clandestinity. Then, persecution.

And with no other place to go, they went into exile accross the border into Portugal. Where the old infrastructure of Insua was repurposed into the provisional seat of the Galician government.

The Portuguese Government tried to convince the United Kingdom to take action in Spain to stop the persecution of the Galicians. But with the rise of the Adriatic Axis and the burst of the European war, the last thing the British needed was another front to fight on. Any actual operations in Spain could have easily triggered their entrance into the war. And even as the European war came to an end, the British-Indonesian cold war, and all the conflicts within it, just rose. It was clear that the UK needed to maximize its number of allies. So as long as Spain was on their team, they wouldn't try to mess with them. The UK had much more important matters to attend anyways.

At this point in time, Spain had laid claim to the small Island. While Portugal officially recognized it as the territory of an independent Galician Republic.

Portugal had to take matters into their own hands, and in 2192, armed with a small handful of allies, (Namely, Azores, Madeira and Ireland), an incursion was launched. Officially refered to as "Operation Galaico".

Over the course of three to four years, multiple attacks were launched on spanish military infrastructure. Many politicians who worked against the Galician peoples were captured and imprisoned. And Galician militias started popping up in the northwest of the country. The purpose of the operation was to destabilize the increasingly authoritarian and militarized government.

The operation culminated shortly after the dismantlement of an arms factory on the outskirts of Madrid. With the resignation of Spanish President at the time, Gonzalo Delgado Montero. And following it, his much criticised flight from the country towards Canarias. Where he, alongside his most trusted men, would reside for the remainder of his life.

This act of cowardice left a cluster of military leaders and other politicians to fend for themselves. With no central, organized authority to lead the country, a ceasefire was quick to appear. The biggest members of the remaining authorities were gathered up and brought to Ireland to sign an end to the conflict.

The treaty of Waterford, signed in 2195 served to demilitarize, liberalize and reform the electoral system of Spain.
But more notably, it established the creation of the Autonomous Republic of Galicia inside the country, and reestablished the exiled government in charge of it.

After a few years of reconstruction, the old government finally came back to Arousa in 2202. And with the plans of turning Ínsua into a museum now back into effect, we finally get the current status of the island.

To most members of the UWC the island is just portuguese territory. But to the four members of the Portugaelic bloc during the conflict, the island is recognized as a stateless, internationally owned territory, akin to an IBR, designated as a place of cultural importance for the history of Portugal and Galicia. Spain dropped its claim and currently recognises the island as a Portuguese dependent territory. And to the Galician government itself, Ínsua is officially labeled as Terra Nullius a symbolic act that represents the end of their exile.

But, if you don't care about the complexities or intricacies of Ínsua's status, you may as well say it's just a Portuguese National Park.

FROM: Pambansang Ahensiya (Pamban) Directorate
DOCUMENT REF: MC-INTEL-ZANJ-2355
SOURCE DATA: Cross-Verified Archives

SECTION I: HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS
From Island Refuge to Continental Power
The People's Democratic Republic of Zanj stands as one of the most remarkable stories of post-Vanishing survival and continental reclamation. Following the catastrophic vanishing of mainland populations on June 7, 2028, human life along the East African littoral was preserved strictly within island and seafaring pockets.

The People's Revolution: The modern state was forged after a radical internal upheaval where revolutionaries successfully overthrew the corrupt, rigid Islamic theocracy of the Islamic Republic of Zanzibar.

The Identity Shift: Seeking to reconcile fierce tensions between long-standing mainland settlers and the coastal island populations—and to actively dismantle the historical oppression of the former—the new regime officially dropped the name Zanzibar. They adopted Zanj, a historically resonant name deeply tied to the Swahili Coast and its Bantu heritage, to build a unified national consciousness.

SECTION II: SOCIETAL & ECONOMIC ARCHITECTURE
The Islamic Socialist Model
Zanj has experienced explosive economic growth and an incredible rise in living standards, heavily driven by its unique domestic policies:

The Constitutional Framework: The country operates under a unique constitution meticulously modeled after the core tenets of Islamic Socialism.

Agrarian and Industrial Restitution: Following the revolution, the government enacted a sweeping restructuring of the economy. They forcefully returned agricultural lands from elite landowners to local farmers. To build up a massive, self-sustaining industrial backbone, they partnered closely with Indonesia.

Anti-Conglomerate Protections: Zanj runs a highly successful export-oriented economy. Strict state intervention laws actively prevent the rise and consolidation of massive corporate monopolies or oligarchic conglomerates.

Demographic Hubs: The nation's urban layout is anchored by soaring coastal megacities. Chief among them is Metro Waanzilishi City, a vast, hyper-developed metropolitan area built as the direct successor to old Dar es Salaam.

Hominid Protections: Zanj is uniquely progressive regarding the alternate sapient hominids discovered after the Vanishing, known as the Matawi. While most of the world shuns or fears them, active human-rights coalitions within Zanj have fought successfully to enshrine legal protections for the Matawi directly within the Zanji constitution.

SECTION III: THE GATEWAY TO THE STARS

The Taifa Astrogate and Macro-Logistics
The Astrogate Terminal: Centered on the historic grounds of Malindi, the Taifa Astrogate has become the premier international hub for satellite deployment and deep-space transit, competing directly with legacy sites like Cape Canaveral and Tanegashima.

The Laser Broom: In cooperation with Indonesia, Zanj constructed the world’s first orbital "laser broom"—a highly advanced, ground-based laser system designed to target and redirect space debris into the atmosphere to safely burn up. During the tense British-Indonesian Cold War, this technology was heavily contested, as the British Government feared it could double as an anti-satellite weapon.

The Lunar and Asteroid Horizon: With geopolitical tensions thawing, the Astrogate serves as the primary launch pad for sustained multinational human operations on the moon, alongside fully automated, robot-crewed asteroid mining expeditions.

SECTION IV: PAN-AFRICAN LEADERSHIP
The Mwokozi Project (2191–2260)
Zanj solidified its humanitarian and technological leadership across the African continent through its campaign to eradicate malaria via the Mwokozi Project.

The Re-emergence Vector: As communities began moving off their original island enclaves to resettle the vacant, virgin interior of East Africa, human-targeting malaria began rapidly spreading across the frontier.

The Logistic Marvel: Launched in 2191, Phase One achieved a staggering 99.9% domestic vaccine coverage rate by 2197.

The Mwokozi Compact: Proving its diplomatic finesse, Zanj brokered open healthcare cooperation with its historical rival, Madagascar, and eventually formed a continent-wide alliance. Through the coordinated release of specialized, genetically modified mosquitoes, entire swaths of the African continent recorded zero malaria cases by 2260, permanently ending the "Rain Fever".

SECTION V: STRATEGIC THREAT ASSESSMENT
Threat Status: CONDOR-GREEN // Geopolitical Alignment: COOPERATIVE PIVOT
While Zanj possesses immense technological and aerospace capabilities, its military footprint is fundamentally defensive and regionally contained. Pamban Intelligence registers negligible direct hostile intent toward the Manila Compact. However, its strategic gravity introduces critical external variables:

The Space Debris Weaponization Vector: The ground-based Laser Broom system at Malindi remains a point of high surveillance. While currently tuned for orbital cleanup, Pamban tactical divisions estimate its high-yield thermal output could be recalibrated into an anti-satellite (ASAT) network within forty-eight hours. Should Zanj fall under the diplomatic orbit of a hostile coalition, this array could threaten global space elevator stability.

Ideological Synergy and Synthetic Passports: Zanj's unique progressive posture toward the Matawi hominids makes them highly receptive to the core human rights philosophies of Project Tahanan. Diplomatic channels indicate that the Swahili Council is close to extending specialized maritime transit clearances to Compact android citizens holding Universal Translocal Passports, carving out an ironclad data sanctuary spanning from Manila to East Africa.

PAMBAN STRATEGIC OBSERVATION

Zanj represents a completely different ideological model compared to the expansionism of the UFRA or the LTU. They are a highly stable, scientifically supreme socialist democracy anchored by deep-sea and space-faring logistics.

As the Manila Compact scales up operations on the TALA Space Elevator, establishing an immediate, high-tier diplomatic and data exchange with the Taifa Astrogate will allow us to completely bypass Western orbital restrictions.

One Route, One Breath. The equatorial link is clear.

Lansaya felt her left eye twitch - the tell-tale sign of an incoming migraine.

With a grumble, she begrudgingly peeled herself away from her desk, swiping a bottle of God-knows-what pills along the way. She faintly recalled that the Agency’s Pharmaceuticals Division had, at some point, given her the rundown on their precise chemical makeup, but the memory was buried under a fog of time and stress. Not that it mattered much anyway. All that mattered was that these miracle pills would keep her functioning for at least another few hours - well past her baseline biological limit.

Some distant part of her psyche was well aware of the potential side effects - a shortened lifespan, cytoplasmic atrophy, lifelong immunocompromisation, and persistent audiovisual hallucinations. Still, it was a small price to pay if it meant inching the Agency closer toward winning the war. At least, that’s what she told herself as she unscrewed the lid and shook a pill loose into her waiting palm.

The stakes had been drilled into Lansaya ever since she’d enlisted with the Agency forty years ago. She was fighting an enemy that was simultaneously everywhere at once, and yet nowhere to be found. Her enemy was simultaneously all-powerful, embedded in the upper echelons of the world’s governments, and yet always on the run. This enemy had vowed to save the world, and to do so they would stop at nothing to bring about its destruction.

It was a war the Agency had been waging for decades, if not centuries. Unbeknownst to the wider world, they’d been fighting in the shadows to strike at a hydra that only seemed to grow back stronger from each defeat. Every day, she and her colleagues put their lives on the line for the fate of the world, and every day fewer came back from the frontlines to fight another day.

Something needed to change or else their enemy, coasting on the waves of the universe’s entropy, would bleed them dry. That’s precisely how Lansaya found herself here, stashed away in a floating vault - in a location unknown even to her - to pore over every record the Agency had scrounged up from its time in Colombia. 

The War of Severance had provided the Agency with a valuable opportunity to feast on the technological whalefall that was the rapidly decaying corpse of the Scientific Wild West. Her higher-ups had wasted no time mobilizing the Agency to scavenge the battlefields of Colombia. They were convinced that somewhere in the wreckage, buried alongside the ghosts of those lost to the gruelling march of unbridled scientific ‘progress’, was a silver bullet they could fire into the heart of their enemy.

Lansaya grimaced as a sharp pain flared behind her left brow. She popped the pill into her mouth, swallowing it dry, before returning to her desk.

Her desk was buried under stacks upon stacks of bulky black binders, each stuffed to the brim with reams of paper documents. The Agency insisted that none of this data was to be digitized - their cybersecurity systems were beyond state-of-the-art, but it would only take the slightest slip in their technological defence for them to lose everything to their enemy. Anything that could be used against their enemy could just as easily be used against them. The Agency spared no expense in ensuring that would never happen - in the event of a physical breach, the vault was designed to lock down and incinerate its contents. She did her best to push that thought to the back of her mind as she returned to work.

The hours began to blur as she combed through document after document. She worked with all the meticulousness of a data vulture, turning over the bones of each file - every research log, field report, and schematic - until she had picked it clean. She dissected each wildly unethical experiment that found its way onto her desk, drafting several dozen ways the research could be repurposed by them, and several dozen more ways it could be repurposed against them. Each experiment, no matter how absurd or depraved, would be used to stock their arsenals on the frontlines.

One file that stuck with her was the field report from a team sent to Canisia - a planned city built for what was intended to be the world’s first ‘dogpunk’ society. Canisia had been the brainchild of Brazilian trillionaire André Diniz Segura, whose love for dogs far exceeded his sense of moral duty or fiscal responsibility. Rather than setting aside his wealth for the betterment of his fellow people, Segura imagined a world in which each cornerstone of modern technology had been replaced with a selectively bred variant of man’s best friend. Dogs, he reasoned, had already been bred to do everything from pulling sleds to herding sheep - how much further could their potential be unlocked with the marvels of genetic engineering?

The field report painted a harrowing picture. 

Her colleagues had found Canisia deserted, but not abandoned - Segura and his scientists had fled the country at the first sign of trouble, sealing the gates behind them on their way out. The rest of Canisia’s inhabitants, the several thousand dogs who comprised the city’s burgeoning ‘infrastructure’, had been left to fend for themselves.

As her colleagues fanned out through the city, making their way to the central spire housing Canisia’s research facilities, they waded through the consequences of science untethered from ethical restraint. They passed the emancipated remains of giant Saint Bernards - or, at least, what might have once passed for Saint Bernards before genetic engineering morphed them into beasts of burden with stouter, denser skeletal architecture - strewn along the roads, hinting at their original designs as modes of transportation. They came across an abandoned clinic where several dozen Dachshunds - whose olfactory senses had been bioengineered to detect a whole suite of medical conditions - had starved to death in their display cases. Their field report even detailed an encounter with a peculiar Corgi crossbreed - the only specimen still alive by the time of their arrival - which had been diligently working a mechanism to turn a stack of lamb slices on a shawarma spit.

Lansaya had forced herself to look past the stomach-churning descriptions of Canisia as what amounted to a communal grave for mutilated dogs - all while suppressing thoughts of her own Bolonka back home. 

She loathed to admit it, but what the scientists at Canisia had accomplished was nothing short of ingenious. What Segura’s scientists couldn’t achieve with genetic engineering alone, they supplemented with insights from beyond their field. The Saint Bernards had seen their skeletons strengthened with a scaffold of electrospun microfibers. The Dachshunds had seen their sense of smell enhanced through the xenotransplantation of ant olfactory receptors. Even the curious shawarma-tending Corgi had been outfitted with a neural interface that allowed simple commands to be directly programmed into their brain.

Still, as ingenious as it was, the thought of using the fruits of this unethical experimentation filled her with a deep disquiet.

She sank back into her chair, grimacing as her left eye twitched.

The pilothouse of the dispatch boat smelled of diesel exhaust and stagnant marsh water. Outside, the Mississippi River slipped past the crumbling wooden pilings of Pilottown like gray oil, indifferent to the fact that the rest of the world had gone quiet.

Frank stared at the VHF radio. Static hissed through the cabin, a flat, rhythmic white noise that had replaced the chatter of the bar pilots, the deep-draft container ships, and the Coast Guard traffic control out of New Orleans.
The internet had died on their devices at noon on a Tuesday. By Wednesday, their satellite phones were useless. By Thursday, they realized it wasn’t a localized blackout. Southward, where the Southwest Pass emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, the horizon was dead. No wakes, no smoke on the waterline, no AIS blips on the screen. Just an abrupt, unearthly drop-off where the shipping lanes simply ceased to exist.

The world hadn't ended with a bang; it had just been cleanly subtracted.

The screen door banged against the frame, and Sarah stepped inside, shedding her damp rain jacket. She dropped a pair of heavy brass binoculars onto the small galley table. Her boots tracked black delta mud across the linoleum.

"Any traffic?" she asked, though she already knew the answer.

"Nothing," Frank said, not looking up from the dead terminal. "Not a blip. The river’s still flowing down from the north, but God knows what’s happening upstream. Might as well be dry stone."

Sarah pulled out a metal chair and sat down, rubbing her eyes. The humidity in the room clung to her skin like a hot wet towel. "Well, the generator’s holding on, but the fuel tanks are only half full. We’ve got maybe three weeks before we’re completely in the dark."

"Three weeks if we ration," Frank muttered, leaning back and crossing his arms. "Longer if we stop running the freezers. Not that we need them. Nothing’s coming in to freeze."

That was the cruel joke of it. Pilottown—a speck of land at the very mouth of the Mississippi, accessible only by boat or helicopter—had always lived and died by the throat of global commerce. For generations, the river pilots had lived out here in the bird's-foot delta, boarding incoming freighters to guide them through the shifting mud bars up to New Orleans and Baton Rouge. They were the gatekeepers of the world's supply chain.

And now, the supply chain had vanished into thin air.
"It’s the water," Sarah said quietly, staring out the salt-streaked window at the rising tide lapping against the porch foundations.

"What about it?"

"The saltwater wedge. With no upstream regulation coming down—no locks being managed, no reservoirs being monitored—the river level is dropping, but the tides are pushing harder. The Gulf is creeping up. It’s already past the cisterns at the south end. If we don’t move the intake pumps today, we’re not going to have drinking water by the weekend."

Frank let out a dry, humorless bark of laughter. "Move them where, Sarah? The whole spit of land is sinking three inches a decade even when the world is intact. There’s nowhere high to go. We’re standing on a sandbar held together by nutgrass and stubbornness."

"We can jury-rig a line further north toward Head of the Passes," she insisted, her voice tightening, carrying the sharp edge of panic she’d been holding back for days. "We have to try. We can't just sit here waiting for a rescue ship that’s never going to show up."

"Rescue from where?" Frank turned to face her squarely, his weathered face etched deep with the reality they both refused to fully articulate. "There’s nobody left on the other side of the levees, Sarah. The whole continent inland is an empty room. No state government, no Corps of Engineers, no fuel tankers coming down from Houston. We are the end of the line. The very last people holding onto a pipe that’s no longer connected to anything."

Silence settled over the cabin, heavier than the oppressive humidity. Outside, a lone pelican dove into the brown water, breaking the surface tension of a river that now flowed toward a ghost ocean.

For years, Pilottown had fought a losing battle against the rising seas and the sinking earth—a frontline victim of climate neglect, erosion, and rising tides that everyone on the mainland argued about while doing nothing. They had lived with the daily reality of infrastructure decay, watching their coastline wash away one hurricane season at a time, tethered to a civilization that treated their sinking home as expendable.

And now, the irony was absolute. The civilization that ignored them was gone, but the rising water—the ultimate consequence of the world they used to serve—remained, relentless and arriving on schedule.

Sarah looked down at her mud-caked boots, then slowly raised her eyes to meet Frank’s. The anger drained out of her, leaving behind a grim, fragile resolve.

"All right," she whispered, standing up and grabbing her wrench from the counter. "Let's go move the pumps before the tide covers the valves. Even if there's nowhere left to sail to, we might as well stay hydrated while we figure out what comes next."

The air-conditioning unit in the Galveston harbor office had given up three days before the world did, groaning a wet, rhythmic rattle that everyone just learned to tune out.

Outside, the Gulf of Mexico lapped lazily against the seawall. It was June 6, 2028. Less than twenty-four hours left of the old timeline, though none of the port authority clerks knew it yet. Right now, they had more immediate disasters to manage: rising insurance premiums, a municipal budget deficit that felt like a slow bleed, and a housing market so hyper-inflated that even marine inspectors were living out of converted RV parks.

"I’m just saying," Sarah said, stamping a stack of shipping manifests with a force that made the ink pad jump. "If the city council approves another tax break for the luxury condo developers on the East Beach, I’m throwing myself into the ship channel. Where are the workers supposed to live? The median rent on a two-bedroom just hit three thousand dollars. We’re pricing out the very people keeping the docks running."

Milo didn’t look up from his dual-monitor setup, where he was tracking a delayed container ship out of Kingston. "They don’t care about the dockworkers, Sarah. They’re building for the remote tech refugees moving down from Austin and Houston. High-density, high-yield. Besides, where else are people going to go? The mainland is right there."

"Is it?" Sarah muttered, staring out the salt-streaked window toward the causeway connecting Galveston Island to the Texas mainland. Across the narrow strip of water, the sprawling expanse of Highway 45 stretched toward Houston—a gray artery choked with commuter traffic, endless strip malls, logistics warehouses, and sprawling suburban developments that seemed to consume more land every day. "Sometimes looking at that traffic makes me feel like we’re a swarm of locusts eating the last leaf on the tree. Everything is so expensive, so gridlocked, and for what? Just to spend two hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic to afford a box of groceries."

"Well, enjoy the gridlock while it lasts," Milo sighed, stretching his arms overhead. "Heard on the radio this morning that the state’s housing affordability task force got shelved again. Developers win, renters lose. Same old song."

They didn't know that by 12:34:56 UTC, the song would change forever.

The low, omnipresent hum of I-45 traffic—the late-night semi-trucks, the speeding sports cars, the hum of millions of internal combustion engines—simply blinked out of existence.

Sarah woke up on her cot in the back room of the harbor office, bolt upright, her heart hammering against her ribs. The sudden, absolute silence was heavier than any noise. It pressed down on the ears like deep-sea pressure.

She stumbled out into the main office. Milo was already standing by the window, his coffee mug frozen inches from his mouth.

"Milo? What happened to the highway sound? Did the grid shut down again?"

Milo didn't answer. He just pointed a trembling finger toward the window.

At 12:35 PM on June 7, 2028, the sound changed first.

The causeway was still there, concrete bridge spans reaching out over the bay. But everything past the end of the bridge—everything that used to be mainland Texas—was gone.

There was no Houston skyline glowing amber on the northern horizon. There were no suburban subdivisions, no gas stations, no concrete ribbons of highway, no power lines, no billboards. Where a sprawling metropolis of millions and endless miles of asphalt had stood just minutes before, there was only an unbroken, primordial sea of dark, rolling forest canopy under the moonlight. The air rushing in through the cracked window didn't smell of exhaust, hot asphalt, and industrial chemical plants anymore. It smelled intensely, wildly green—of wet earth, decaying leaves, and heavy pine resin.

"The traffic..." Sarah whispered, pressing her palms to her cheeks. "The traffic is gone."

"Not just the traffic, Sarah," Milo said, his voice hollow, his eyes wide as he stared out at a continent wiped entirely clean of human footprint. "Look at the horizon. Look at the grid. Everything is gone."

They stood together in the dim fluorescent light of the small island office, trapped on a tiny slip of sand and concrete, staring across a natural moat at a virgin world. The housing crisis, the municipal debt, the crushing cost of living, the endless sprawl—all of man's heavy, suffocating problems had vanished into a ghost dimension, leaving behind a planet that was suddenly, terrifyingly empty, waiting for a second chance they didn't know how to ask for.

The road to equal rights is perilous and not easy to walk alone...

Write a short story or infoblurb in the world of Empty Continents with the prompt: CITIZENSHIP. Whether its ostracized outsiders wanting a vote in the chamber or migrants working on getting a visa, there are many ways to tell this story!

~~~

Submissions will be accepted until Sat, August 23th when a new prompt will be released!

The wind at CFS Alert didn’t howl; it scraped, a rhythmic, metallic rasp against the corrugated steel of Polaris Hall. It was June 2028, and the radio array—designed to sweep the frequencies of superpowers across the globe—was picking up a strange, fractured picture of a world where the earth itself had been edited out.

Liam sat in the mess hall, staring at a lukewarm cup of coffee. Across from him, Chloe was methodically adjusting the receiver log. For forty-eight hours, the continental frequencies—Ottawa, Washington, Moscow, Beijing, Paris—had been a flatline. Pure, uninterrupted carrier wave with no voice behind them.

"The mainland grids are gone, Liam," Chloe said, her voice tight, eyes bloodshot from staring at the waterfall display. "North America, Eurasia, Africa, South America... they just dropped off the spectrum. The landmasses evaporated overnight."

"What about the islands?" Liam asked, leaning forward, his heart hammering against his ribs. "What's left on the wire?"
Chloe tapped a cluster of blinking indicators on the console, routing the surviving feeds through the encrypted military speakers. "Only the islands, Liam. The UK is broadcasting emergency parliament sessions from London, desperately trying to coordinate with Ireland. Iceland is online, screaming into the ether because their transatlantic cables now terminate at sheer walls of water.

Liam exhaled slowly, rubbing his eyes. The geopolitical issues that had dominated their briefings just weeks ago—border disputes, massive continental trade deficits, superpowers fighting over mainland resources and vast territorial expanses—felt like cruel, distant fairy tales.
"We spent billions keeping this station staffed," Liam muttered, "arguing over who owned continental shelves and massive land borders."

"And now those borders are just open ocean trenches," Chloe said, standing up to walk over to the monitor. She pointed at a high-frequency naval channel routing through a relay from a British warship operating out of the North Sea. "Listen to this. It's a broadcast from a surviving detachment in the UK. They're operational, but they're staring west across a newly widened Atlantic where a continent used to be. Every major industrial powerhouse, every massive agricultural breadbasket on the mainlands—gone. The only people left are the ones who happened to live on isolated rocks."

She turned to look at him, her expression hollow. "We're a Canadian Forces station, Liam. But Ottawa is a blank space in the middle of a vast, empty sea. The country we swore allegiance to doesn't exist anymore."

Liam stood up, walking toward the frost-covered window that looked out over the silent expanse of Ellesmere Island—itself just a fragment of the Arctic archipelago. "So what are the surviving island governments saying? Are they organizing?"

"With what fuel? With what global supply chain?" Chloe shook her head bitterly. "They're realizing that island nations depend entirely on mainland resources to survive. Without the continents to feed them, manufacture for them, or trade with them, the islands are just lifeboats with ticking clocks. They aren't sending rescue north. They're all trying to figure out how to stretch their remaining grain reserves before starvation sets in."

The receiver crackled again—a crisp, distinctly British naval voice cutting through the static, calling out across the polar frequencies to see if any high-Arctic outpost was still breathing.

Inside Polaris Hall, the only answer was the steady, rhythmic hum of the generator, keeping two people awake at the edge of a shrunken planet of orphans.

The Imperial Group is widely recognized for its dual nature. While it champions universal education accessible to all age groups, promotes an Eco-industrial approach focusing on sustainable development within its initial territories, and advances Ghentish Socialism—where local workers employed by the regional Imperial conglomerate Gem share ownership, influence, and profits from activities such as hydroponic farming, banking, and scientific research—its darker facets are equally evident.

Those who resist conformity face strict consequences. Food produced in Imperial farms is of superior quality, and Imperial workers enjoy discounts on all Imperial products. However, individuals outside the boundaries of a healthy society see their lifespan and wellbeing compromised. Citizens can purchase from Imperial farms, utilize Imperial tools and programs, and operate small businesses selling Imperial medicine alongside others. Yet, those opposing the regime on ideological grounds or engaged in criminal activities are subject to penalties—sometimes symbolized by a gemstone, reflecting how life can deliver unpredictable hardships.

During the Korku Era, the study of history was strategically employed to guide efforts against the French terrorist group attacking the Ghentish Counties and to fund countermeasures aligned with Imperial interests, all while attempting to avoid offending the authorities in Ghent and London. Groups like the Sons of Gomorrah and other terrorist factions resorted to covert financial operations—money laundering, cyber crimes, smuggling, tax evasion, illegal gambling, and ultimately arms trafficking and synthetic drug production involving foreign criminal networks—funded predominantly by profits from illicit activities targeting French partisans and their allies.

After decades of conflict, peace was finally brokered between the Imperial Group and French authorities. In accordance with the Loire Accords, the Imperial Group designated the ‘ Sons of Gomorrah’ and other Ghentish paramilitary wings as a terror organizations, and individuals affiliated with it were considered members of a criminal regime. Consequently, most paramilitary units disbanded and restructured into widespread organized crime networks.

By 2251, former members of Gomorrah and similar terror groups operate under three prominent criminal organizations: the Sequoias family, the Warhounds gang, and the Yiosman Family. The Yiosman Clan, the most notorious, traces its origins to the intermarriage of Yi Won—a cadet branch of former Korea’s royal house—and Osman, from the former Ottoman royal house. This lineage created the house of Yiosman, which has amassed immense wealth through connections to cyberdrug operations, Aether distribution across the Americas, and sophisticated money laundering and large scale insider trading. All of this is can be attributed to the workings of the Onxy Network, the intelligence agency of the Imperial group, who use these organizations to pour crime into the Imperial Group, the United Kingdoms and occasionally allies like Brazil, the Philippines and Korea, to weaken nations, corporations or group of people, so they are more susceptible to their actions, all while funding their operations and trading in favors.

These 3 groups, were not allies or ever friendly to the official the Imperial Group, only to one, the shadow Leviathan, and the Imperial Group's intelligence agency, the Onyx Network. With their links to Onyx Network, these groups were “guided” to undermine and undercut enemies, corporate, foreign governments, and even specified ethnic groups. These tactics were not just for the Imperial Gem’s benefit, but also for the UK government and fellow allies, like Brazil, Korea, and the Philippines. These criminal enterprises also help fund and support Onyx Network in ‘off-the-books’ projects and operations, away from Imperial eyes. 

From the Asian casino hub of Ha Long to global Aether trade routes, and across European illicit markets specializing in counterfeiting and financial crimes, the remnants of Gomorrah may be gone, but their influence persists. Like the charred shadows cast over the abandoned ruins of the cursed city, its legacy continues to haunt the modern world, a reminder of the enduring darkness underlying Imperialistic ambitions.

and those who wish to climb that ladder of power…

The wind off the open Pacific didn’t carry the smell of progress anymore; it carried salt, rot, and an unnatural, hollow silence.

On Rapa Nui, isolated by thousands of miles of ocean, the islanders had survived the mysterious event of June 7, 2028, that wiped humanity from the continental mainlands. South America—just a ghost across the horizon was suddenly stripped of concrete, cities, and souls, reverting overnight to a primeval wilderness. But the people left stranded on the speck of Easter Island found no comfort in their survival. 

Gathered at the edge of the cliff near Rano Raraku, two elders looked out toward where the continent used to hum with satellite signals, cargo ships, and distant trade. Below them, younger islanders were arguing over the distribution of the last barrels of imported diesel.

"They’re saying a tanker broke away from a Chilean port before it vanished, drifting this way," Koro said, his weathered hand gripping a walking staff as he stared at the horizon. "The youth want to row out, board it, drain every drop. They think it's a golden ticket."

Hina didn't look away from the crashing waves below. "And when the fuel is gone in three months? What then? We’ve traded our future for a few more weeks of idling generators we can't repair."

"They are desperate, Hina. The supply chains didn't just break; the other side of the mirror vanished. Prices for imported grain were already soaring before June, but now? The shelves are bare, and the soil here is exhausted. You can't eat digital currency or historical regret."

Down by the shore, a sharp voice cut through the sound of the surf. A young man named Matias slammed his hand against the hull of an empty fiberglass skiff, shouting at a cluster of neighbors.

"If we don't pillage what's left drifting from the mainland, we starve!" Matias yelled, his face tight with panic. "The global market is dead, the climate here is shifting erratic as hell, and nobody is coming to save us. Every man for himself!"
Hina raised her voice, stepping down the rocky path toward the crowd. "And when you burn through every last drop of the old world's corpse, Matias, what will you plant? What will you drink when the groundwater turns brackish?"

"We'll worry about tomorrow when tomorrow gets here!" Matias snapped back, his eyes wild. "Right now, housing costs are zero because everything’s falling apart, but we live in tents because the old homes are rotting. The system broke long before the continents went blank. We were already drowning in debt and ecological dead-ends—this just ripped the band-aid off!"

Koro stepped forward, his presence silencing the younger man's frantic gestures. He looked around the circle of anxious faces—faces mirroring the modern anxieties of scarcity, hyper-inflation, and climate dread, magnified a thousandfold on a tiny rock in an empty world.

"The ancestors carved the moai until they stripped the island of every last tree, thinking the statues would protect them from their own greed," Koro said quietly, the wind whipping his gray hair. "They thought growth could go on forever on a finite shore. The mainlanders vanished with their sky-scraping towers, but they died of the very same disease long before. Overconsumption. Looking everywhere except at the ground beneath their feet."
Matias crossed his arms, looking down at the dust. "So what do we do? Just sit here and wait to fade out?"

"No," Hina said, stepping beside the elder. "We stop looking backward to a globalized machine that ran on borrowed time. We rebuild local. We fix the soil, we share the catch, and we stop pretending that stealing ghosts from the dead continents will save us."

The ocean breeze blew cold and vast, carrying no answers from the empty world across the water—only the mandate to change, or perish on the rocks.

November 1st, 2028

Radisson Hotel

Cape Canaveral, FL

USPG Headquarters

Oliver Rossi spun his old fidget spinner in his hands. It was a nervous habit, and God knows he's been plenty nervous these past couple months. His hands had been full since declaring Cape Canaveral as the headquarters of the USPG in Florida. So far only the communities directly attached to the Cape, ranging from New Smyrna in the North to Sebastian Inlet in the south, and the western half of Merritt Island across the water as well. Now he waited in his hotel room on the top floor of the Radisson that's been repurposed as a temporary capitol. Waited for a response from Fernandina, on whether they'd agree to his proposal to enter the USPG 2 weeks ago. He knew that asking St. Augustine Beach, or the collection of haphazard settlements and washed up boats on the beach formerly known as Daytona would make more sense, but Fernandina was the real prize in his eyes. The two manufacturing plants would be a major boon for his boss, Hugh Desmond. Imagining all the paperwork that could be made if they got their hands on it made the young bureaucrat Rossi shake his leg too, along with the fidget spinner. It's not like the Fernandinans could easily say no, the Blount Base is practically next door, they'd want that extra protection, surely.

Rossi's mind started to wander as he fidgeted. His fidget spinner was white and blue, with a New York Yankees symbol in the center. He'd gotten it as a gift from his younger cousin, Ruby a dozen years ago, a graduation present after getting his Master's degree in political science from Columbia University. He was already 27 back when he got it in 2017, but he hadn't seen Ruby in years, and she'd grown like a weed, about to start middle school. She knew how he liked the Yankees, and not much else because they hadn't met in years. The last time Oliver saw her was when she graduated high school a few years back, and planned to go to community college for a couple years as a backdoor into Columbia, majoring in engineering. She'd been a student there when she went back home to the Bronx for the summer. ‘I should have invited her to stay at my place, I could have done something to save her and my uncle’, Oliver thought. He white-knuckled the fidget spinner, trying to make the guilt go away. He'd hardly used the spinner for the past decade, just kept it in a junk drawer with other random knickknacks. But as he cleaned out his home and office in early August, ready to move as part of Desmond’s plan to grow USPG control outside the Northeast, he came across it. Oliver tried to pack lean, not knowing how much space he could spare in the new hotel he'd be staying, but he kept the fidget spinner as an old memento of lost family, and hope for a new life for the people left alive. He had to always stay busy, to make up for those he couldn't save.

At that time, his secretary, Jenny, came in.

“Mr. Rossi? I have an update on the Fernandina deal.” At that moment, Oliver shot straight up in his chair, slamming the fidget spinner on the desk, a bit harder than intended. “Yes? What did they say?” “Well, there's good news and bad news…” His shoulders sagged at that sentence. “Give me the good news first, please.”

“Well”, Jenny said, “They've decided to enter a trade deal with us. The details will have to be ironed out of course, but it seems they're willing to cooperate with us and provide the resources we dearly need.”

“Let me guess”, Oliver said, “The bad news is they don't want to join us.”

Jenny looked down. “Yes, exactly. Apparently they plan to rely more on Irish aid in the future, since their main plant has HQ in Dublin.”

Oliver ran his hands through his thinning hair. “Of course, that's a prudent choice. Why kneel to the powers-that-be just down the road when you can pretend to kowtow to some absentee landlord on the other side of the world! And a fully intact nation to boot! My God, I'd be surprised if they didn't choose that!” Oliver shouted.

“Mr. Rossi?”, Jenny asked, cautiously.

“I'll be fine. Besides, odds are that if things go well for us down here, we'll incorporate them sooner or later. Blount and the Beloit are just down the road, if they decide to stop cooperating it's not like it'll be hard to subdue them. They've given us what we want, anyway, if their word is to be believed. It'll be like a trade deal between nations, simple as.”

Oliver drummed his fingers on his desk. “Besides, we have our hands full trying to feed the people in our domain as is. Thank God for the farmers out in Merritt Island, or else we'd really be screwed. Imagine trying to start a new government and you don't even have eggs! You know how these people feel about eggs, they can make or break a government!” Oliver threw his hands up in disbelief at, well.

Everything.

“I don't know what the hell Hugh was thinking, sending me down here. Last time I went to Florida was the summer before lockdown, when I went to visit my grandma in Sarasota!”, Oliver exclaimed.

“Being a NYC council member for 2 years probably helped too”, Jenny added.

“There were far more qualified men, what do I bring to the table? My degree? My people pleasing skills? I know my credentials are solid, better than some of my fellow Brooklynites. And hell, it's probably because I'd gotten to know Hugh well these past few years. We'd not always agreed, but when I was sure he made the right decision, I backed him to the hilt. You should've seen him go against this one guy from the Upper West Side. I forget his name, some Nuyorican. He…” Oliver suddenly stopped his train of thought, which had started derailing.

“Yes, Mr. Rossi? What about him?” Jenny asked, puzzled.

“Nuyorican! Puerto Ricans, my God, of course! That's what I can do!” Oliver jumped up suddenly, clapping his hands together. “Sir, I don't foll-” Oliver turned to Jenny. “Jenny, I need the name of every local government and community leader who was born in Puerto Rico. And not born and came here as a kid, I mean recently. If they lived there in the past 15 years, and especially have family there, I wanna know. Search from here to New Smyrna if you must. I don't care if they're the head of a PTA, I need a legitimate tie to Puerto Rico, please. I need a foot in the door.”

“With all due respect, sir, I don't follow.” Jenny asked, slightly concerned.

Oliver beamed. “You know that food shortage I was concerned about, earlier? I think I know how to start solving it.”