©1998 Stephen Voss
I ,and Lady Corkindale, had set out this morning to a town in the Virginia republic. Lady Corkindale was looking quite lovely. She was from Prime , I was from Marketplace. I had noticed that all the young ladies from Prime seem like they should be in Jane Austen novels. not Sarah! While she had the good breeding and clever wit about her, she also had a keen instinct for adventure and in addition was a very good pistol shot, with both hands! She was also into wearing shorts and short sleeved blouses both of which are frowned on by Primers and her upper class family. I on the other hand had a profit motive, but we both realized we had to pay for adventures somehow especially after her family cut her off last year!
I had heard of a world where the United States had collapsed supposedly because of some superflu in 1918. Luckily for us this superflu had long since burned itself out but not before killing 99.7% of the population at the time. The only group really immune on this world were the American Indians. With the white ghosts gone they had retaken their lands. Strangely enough they did not seem hostile to us, Lady Corkindale explained that so many white people had died on this world that any white survivors were treated quite well out of sympathy and had since intermarried with the surviving races something about beggars could not be choosers. It had been 60 years since anyone had seen a young purely Caucasian person in Virginia. The tribal mixture in this area is Cherokee, African, Hispanic, and some Caucasian
A wagon had carried us North to what we found out was the Potomac river and we crossed on canoe over into their Washington DC. It was overgrown with weeds where some of the buildings were not even recognizable. The skeletons were everywhere,although not as many as one would think, apparently most people were buried. You might think us tomb robbers, but there was no one in the city to be offended.
We made our way to the national archives, we pried open the door and made our way through the halls to our goal. We had hoped against hope that it would be there,and we were not disappointed. The Triad of holy documents , the declaration of independence, the constitution and the bill of rights. In mostly intact state. We managed to recover the documents, which we figure are worth a pretty penny back on Marketplace. We also managed to loot the long abandoned souvenir shop and managed just as an act of kindness to secure copies of these documents for the peoples in the surrounding areas. Lady Corkindale was so happy well...I wont go into that here.
The odd find was a body in a Park Service uniform, it had only been dead a few years. Lady Corkindale called the poor fellow "Last of the Americans". He apparently had stayed at his post far beyond the call of duty.
We thought about the ITA ,but then we realized that if this world is officially listed , it will have Corps all over it and these people despite their primitive 19th century technology deserve to live in peace. However we might come back again for a more social visit,due to the kindness of the people. However just so ITA wont be too mad, we will come back with enough pictures, artwork and research to make all the "boffins" happy as Lady Corkindale likes to call them.