My father's family can proudly trace itself back to a signer of the Magna Carta. My mother's doesn't go back quite so far—her parents were Polish Jews who'd survived the Holocaust, and took every opportunity to tell me their story. After my bat mitzvah, I started reciting it along with them. They took the hint and stopped. I quickly (and with few regrets) moved on to studying my father's family history. The Armstrongs had had an ancestor at every major battle and political movement in English history.

The summer I turned twenty-two, I spent a month in London visiting some distant cousins. And that's how I met Arthur Kirkland.

Lord Armstrong (my great-uncle) and Lord Kirkland were two of a very few real lords left in what was now the British Senate. One of my cousins introduced us at some kind of dinner for Senators and their families. He was barely older than me; definitely a little young for politics. And he'd come to the dinner alone.

He turned out to be a student of British history; we hit it off amazingly. My great-aunt noticed, and did everything in her power to make sure we saw more of each other. "He's a lonely boy," she said when I asked about him. "He's lived alone for a hundred years; don't you think he deserves some happiness?" At the time, I thought she was exaggerating, smiled, nodded, and forgot about it.

Kirkland and I kept in touch online over the next couple of years. I finished my master's in linguistics, and spent the summer after that working for him. It was great—I wasn't much more than a secretary, but I got to meet all kinds of interesting people from around the world, speak with them in their own languages, and get closer to Arthur.

He'd been distant early in the summer—he blamed it on an awkward breakup—but I worked him back out of his shell. Maybe I did a little too well; the first time we had sex was in mid-July. Not that I'm complaining—that night, I felt like the whole weight of the Holocaust had been lifted off me, and replaced by something that fit me much better. My world was no longer the one my mother's parents lived in.


The next day or two was wonderful…but then I sensed that Arthur was pulling away. At first I thought he'd suddenly remembered that he was my employer; but no, there was something deeper going on. Finally I asked him what happened. He gave me an odd look. Then he went down to the kitchen, found a bottle of sherry, and got drunk enough to tell me.

He wasn't just Arthur Kirkland, the second-rate politician, he said unsteadily. He was England, and sometimes the whole United Kingdom, in some nebulous metaphorical way, and there were other people out there who were Nations as well. I didn't understand at first, but over the rest of the month I reasoned it out, and the strange people I was dealing with over the phone and online began to make sense. Arthur began telling me stories about his childhood, and I gained a new perspective of history.

Then he said one thing at the beginning of August that almost ended it all. In the interest of honesty, he said, and because he was offering me a permanent job on his staff if I could handle the truth.

He hated to say it (he said), and had put off telling me because he didn't want to hurt my feelings (he said), but he didn't love me. Couldn't, because he was a Nation and I was a human. "Don't get me wrong," he said, "I need you. I am, in part, defined by my relationship with you—and that's a great thing politically, because it keeps the goddamn newspapers from asking questions."

"So that's it? It's all about politics?" I asked bitterly.

"You're helping to keep the existence of the Nations a secret. If I were single for too long at a time, people would wonder whether I was a homosexual."

"And are you?"

"That's beside the point. They would ask, I'd be looked at more closely, and someone would discover that I've been working for the government, or the royal court, for as long as records have been kept. They'd keep digging, and the Nations would be discovered."

"What happens then?"

"Chaos. Power plays. Governments and corporations would fight for control of the Nations, even though that's not how we work. We reflect the will of the people; we can't control it. But the ones in power wouldn't understand that. The whole structure of the world would fall apart. So I need you, to help me keep that from happening. Do you understand?"

I didn't, at the time. I just felt hurt and angry. "So are you gay?"

Arthur sighed. "Not as such, it's more like—" and then his cell phone rang. It was Alfred, the United States of America, calling to ask Arthur out.


I refused to talk to Arthur that night. There was too much going on in my head. I'd gone into what I thought would be a great job and a healthy relationship, and had ended up as a political gambit for a bisexual immortal who didn't even love me.

I felt no better the next morning, and was startled out of my gloom by the house phone ringing. I answered with a fake smile. "Kirkland residence."

"Am I speaking to Sarah Armstrong?" The voice was female, middle-aged, and German.

"This is she."

"So, is Mr. Kirkland everything you dreamed of?"

What the… "May I ask who's calling?"

"This is Dana Einstein of the Hungarian Ministry of Culture. I would appreciate it if you could meet me for lunch at eleven today." She named a café I was familiar with.

I checked my calendar. I had nothing else going on that day, and although I had no fucking idea what was going on, this Dana Einstein was giving me an excuse to get out of the house. I accepted, with reservations.


A/N: There was a proposal a few years ago to replace the House of Lords with a mostly-elected Senate. This is a world where it happened.