The North American Union

South Region

2043

9:22pm

The boys were trying to cut through the ropes of the cover over the swimming pool. They'd cut through most of it, and they were on the last couple of lines.

Mary watched them, sipping her rum and Coke. There was more rum in it than Coke. Marisol had about ten small bottles of it that she said her cousin had snuck her during the last Family Weekend. It was making Mary light-headed, but in a nice way. She had a vague understanding of why Madison clung to her bottle of Chardonnay from the moment she opened her eyes until the triplets found her passed out somewhere in the house.

This was one of their free weekends. The academy thought that if they let them go wild a few weekends a year, they could get it all out of their system, and there'd be less misbehavior later. Teenagers would always be teenagers. So, they bought them food, sequestered them to one part of the base, bought them beer, and let them stay there the whole weekend. Not too much beer, of course, and they weren't completely unmonitored. There were cameras all over the base, so someone was watching them, making sure they didn't do anything stupid.

But the boys looked like they were getting ready to do something stupid.

Mary watched them from the group of girls she was sitting with. The girls were playing "Marry, Bang, Kill," and Mary was halfway paying attention. She was mostly paying attention to the boys, particularly Simon. When they took their shirts off to jump into the pool, Mary turned away, blushing. It felt wrong to see Simon without a shirt on, even though she kind of wanted to.

"Your turn, Mary," Dominique said to her.

"Oh," Mary replied. The rum made her feel less guarded. That was probably the point. That was probably why they were playing this game.

Mary turned back to the boys. "I guess I would marry Jamal, bang Simon, and kill Hector."

No one said anything, and when she turned to look at them they were all staring at her wide-eyed.

"I mean…I'd marry Simon." Her cheeks were flushing again. "Kill?"

"Um, we were talking about the sergeants," Jessica said.

"Oh my God!" Marisol exclaimed. "You'd bang Simon Doggett? What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What? He's my friend."

"Yeah, but he's weird."

"What's so weird about him?"

"I don't know. He's kind of mean, too."

"He's only mean to sluts," Dominique said, winking at Mary.

"Shut up! Island trash!" Marisol kicked over Dominique's drink, and it spilled everywhere, making all of them stand up.

As Dominique and Marisol continued to fight, Mary looked back over at Simon.

"Hey! Hey, Mary," Jessica said, gesturing for her to come over.

Mary went over to her.

"So, my sister gave me these pills," Jessica whispered. "It's low-dose so this thing doesn't pick it up." She pointed to her throat. "And it doesn't interfere with what they give us. If you really want to go there with him, I can give you some."

Mary shook her head, her face flaming. "No, no. We're not like that. It's not like that."

"Yeah, but if you want it to be," she looked over at Simon, then at Mary, smiling suggestively. "Let me know."

"But how do you know they even work and it can't be detected?"

She nodded over to the group of boys. "Jamal and me. Three months and absolutely no one knew. They seriously work."

Mary looked back over at him, feeling embarrassed about this conversation and what she'd just revealed to her friends. But she was also intrigued. No one would know?

She had told Dominique about when she and Simon went to the memorial, but she hadn't told Dominique everything. She wanted to keep that a secret. For now.

Mary and Simon had gone into the Caribbean section, after the US, to visit Haiti, because Mary told Dominique she would. A hologram of Toussaint-Louverture had followed them around, telling them in French about the Revolution. But neither Mary nor Simon understood French, so they'd had to request subtitles. French wasn't taught in Union schools; only English, Spanish, and Arabic.

When they walked out of the trapezoid, they were still holding hands. He kept glancing nervously over at her, and she did the same. He stopped her a few feet away from the gate.

"I think we should take a picture in front of it, so we can remember when we came here. Do you want to?"

"Okay."

Simon held up his phone, pulling her to him, his head resting against hers. Mary had liked being close to him that way, but she had been disappointed with the image. Simon looked nice, but she always thought pictures made her look like she had a fivehead.

They continued to walk out, towards the trains, when he stopped her again, just by the fountain where sculptures of the first presidents stood in it, saluting the Great Seal of the NAU.

"Um…," he began, nervously looking back at the trapezoid.

"What? Did you forget something?"

Then he leaned in quickly and pressed his lips to hers. It lasted about five seconds, then he quickly walked off towards the trains, shoving his hands in his pockets, turning to look back at her, smiling bashfully.

Mary didn't know what to do. She was too stunned to move for a second. She brought her fingertips up to her lips. That was the first time she'd ever kissed a boy. And here she'd been thinking she never would because she was sixteen and all her friends already had. Some of them had done much more.

On the train ride back, he continued holding her hand, as she thought about that kiss. She'd liked it. At one point during the ride, he pulled his hand away, then put his arm around her, but not without awkwardly bumping her side with his elbow.

"Sorry," he said.

"It's okay."

He was looking at her, like he was contemplating something, then looked around the train car. There were only a few other people on the train with them, sitting several seats in front of them, absorbed in their phones.

He kissed her again, but it was slower this time, and longer. He pulled her closer with his arm, and placed his other hand against her cheek, stroking it with his thumb. Mary liked how it felt. He was really good at this. She carefully put her hand over his, encouraging him to keep it there. He seemed to like that. When he pulled away, he smiled at her, and she smiled back.

"That was nice," he said.

"Yeah," she agreed.

It was nice. She hadn't stopped thinking about it, and Mary was thinking about that day now as she watched him with the other boys, but she saw he'd put his shirt back on and was coming over to her. Oh, God did he see her staring?

"Hey," he said to her, grinning broadly.

"Hey," she replied with the same grin.

"Oh my God," Marisol said, rolling her eyes.

"Do you want to come walk with me?" He asked.

"Okay," Mary replied, taking the hand he offered to her.

"Wow, you guys are just so adorable!" Marisol's sarcasm wasn't very subtle.

Mary could hear Dominique and Jessica telling her to shut her face as they walked away.

They walked around the perimeter of the closest building, away from everyone. They walked in silence for a time, but it was a comfortable silence.

"So, I told my grandmother about you," he said after a while.

"Did you?"

"Yeah. She said she'd like to see you sometime. She said she was at your baptism."

"Was she? I don't remember that." But Mary felt like that was dumb thing to say. Of course she wouldn't remember since she'd only been a year old.

"Yeah. She said my grandfather was there, too. And Dean Skinner's dad."

"Really?"

Mary was puzzled. Why were all of them there? She'd only seen her family in the pictures.

"Why would they all come to my baptism?"

"Maybe your grandparents wanted to show you off. I mean, look at you."

Mary blushed and she didn't care at all if he saw it.

They'd discovered that his grandmother had been at her grandfather's funeral. Mary remembered her grandmother calling the woman with her Monica, but she hadn't known who the woman was at the time. And Mary's grandmother had been at his grandfather's funeral. He said he remembered a red-headed woman there, helping his sobbing grandmother out of the memorial into the chapel. The connections between them fascinated them, and here they were now at the academy together. It was all very strange how it had worked out.

Simon led her over to a gazebo by the marshes. People used to not be able to come here for the pythons, but they'd erected an electric fence in front of it to keep them out.

Mary came here by herself sometimes, going through a gate to outside the fence, to see the python she'd saved. She'd named it Samantha. That name had just popped into her head, and she'd heard her grandparents talking about a Samantha before. She wasn't sure if Samantha the Python was actually a female, but she liked Mary. She would come up out of the marshes when she heard Mary's voice, coil up beside Mary, resting her head on her lap, wanting her to pet her as if she were a lapdog.

But Mary didn't want to tell Simon about that. She wasn't sure if his family was like hers. Or if he was like her. She didn't know if she wanted to reveal that part of herself just yet.

They sat there for a while quietly, hand in hand.

"So…" Simon turned towards her.

"So…" Mary repeated.

"I, um…I really want to kiss you again," he ducked his head after he said it. His nervousness was endearing to her. She wasn't used to boys being nervous around her, or wanting to kiss her.

Mary smiled and pulled his face to hers to kiss him, and it felt like fireworks were going off in her head. They kissed for a long time, making out in the gazebo for what felt like hours. After a while, he cautiously put his hand up her shirt to touch her back, and she just as cautiously put her hands up his, sliding them up his stomach and chest to feel what she'd seen earlier. She liked it. She could feel something stirring awake inside her that she'd never felt before, but they quickly stopped. Someone was probably watching, and they would get in so much trouble.

"I really like you a lot," he said shyly, pushing a strand of her hair behind her ear.

"I really like you a lot, too."

As Mary sat there with him, looking into his sparkling green eyes, she thought she might go see Jessica tomorrow. She wasn't sure if she would do anything like that with him, but she was just as equally unsure that she wouldn't. She should be prepared, though, in case that time came. Because she was terribly afraid that when that time did come, the only thing she would be able to say is yes.


The North American Union

West Region

2049

7:02am

"Well, there's no scar. I don't see where an incision was ever made," the SRP was saying. "Do you see anything?"

"No," Gibson replied. "There's nothing there at all."

Mary had her head back, and they had both leaned down to look at her neck for the metal disk. They were annoying the life out of her already, and the day had only just begun. With their heads close like that, she felt like knocking them together like The Three Stooges.

The SRP stood upright. "Are you sure it's even there?"

"Yes!" Mary said, exasperated, as she pointed to the spot just below her thyroid. "It's right there!"

She was also grumpy because she hadn't slept at all. She'd paced around her room all night thinking about everything: Leonard and what was going to happen tonight and how she was going to tell him, and then seeing Simon. Oh, God. Simon? Really? After all this time? What were the odds that he would just fall out of oblivion right here and right now? And then replaying and over-analyzing everything the SRP had told her. That made her the most anxious of all, because she wasn't sure if this woman was trustworthy. Her grandmother hadn't thought so, so why should she? And how would her grandmother feel about Mary allying herself with this woman? She wouldn't be happy about it at all.

Mary had wanted to call her last night, even if it woke her up, and just tell her everything. All of it. Everything that was happening right now, but she couldn't. She was going to have to deal with that later. One thing at a time, she told herself. And the first thing she was going to have to deal with was Leonard Hosteen and telling him about her parents. And if he didn't run away screaming, then…

Oh, then…

It made her nervous, but in a good way. When she thought about him, about being with him in that way, in his bed, it made her heart pound and the butterflies in her stomach morph into bats. She hadn't let herself think about it too much, but now she couldn't stop.

"Where are you at in your cycle?" The SRP asked.

Mary stared at her, horrified. "Don't ask me that with him standing right here!"

She looked at Mary for a minute, then turned to Gibson, waving him away. "Leave us."

Gibson's face reddened. "Okay, okay." He turned towards the door. "Ma'am," he said curtly, saluting her before shutting the door.

"And stay out of my head!" She called after him.

"Stay out of your head?" Mary asked.

"Alright," the SRP said, sitting down in front of her. "Where are you at?"

Mary sighed. "It's the perfect time, believe it or not."

She hadn't believed it herself when she counted the days. She was at the perfect window to conceive. And plus it was a full moon, she always reached this point when there was a full moon. The timing of this was too perfect. It was eerie.

"Great. And you know, right? You know he has to…you have to let him..."

"Oh my God! You have to stop!" This was getting far too personal and uncomfortable. The SRP was making it into something else, and it was making Mary angry. She didn't want to talk about these things with her. "I know, okay? I know. I'm not stupid!"

"I didn't say you were stupid. But the way you looked the first time we talked about this, I thought maybe you didn't know."

"Of course, I know!" Mary snapped, then quickly wished she hadn't said that.

The SRP had a tremendous gift for drawing things out of people, making them reveal things without much effort at all. It was maddening. She was good at making Mary say things and admit things. Mary didn't like it.

"Are you okay?" The SRP asked her, concern creasing across her forehead. "You look exhausted already."

"I didn't get any sleep."

"Were you thinking about what I told you?"

"Yes."

"You think I'm a terrible person?"

Mary looked at her for a second. "I don't know."

She nodded like she understood. "Sometimes we have to do things that are not entirely moral or ethical for the greater good."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Doesn't it? What do you think you're doing right now?"

"This is different."

"Oh, no it's not. You're breaking about a dozen laws right now. And if Hosteen's Council found out he had a family without their consent, he'd be pulled out of office immediately, and with no one qualified to replace him, we'd all have to deal with Avenham for six more years. Avenham. Plus, do you really think other Guard members would be pleased to find out that a fellow Guard member was allowed to keep her position while starting a family? Think of the outrage that would cause. And me? I wouldn't be reelected if it ever came out I'd been helping you."

"I didn't ask for your help! You asked me, remember?"

"No, I don't, because I didn't ask you to do a damn thing."

Mary opened her mouth to retaliate, but she couldn't remember when the SRP had actually asked her to do this. She could have sworn she'd asked her, but indeed she hadn't. God, she was good at this; persuasion and manipulation. No wonder her grandmother didn't like her.

"But remember the point of all this," the SRP said, her eyes softening. "There is a greater good to this. All of this is temporary. In eight years, when your contract is up, you and him can take your family anywhere and do as you please."

"Why can't we just wait for eight years?"

Her smile was wide and sweet. "You don't really want to wait that long to be with him, do you?"

"No, but…well, I meant wait eight years before we had any children. I'll only be thirty. There'll still be plenty of time."

"But you're very young and healthy now, and this is the best time in a woman's life to start. Why put it off?"

Mary wasn't sure how to answer. She knew women that didn't start having children until they were in their forties and fifties. Delaying motherhood was easier now than it used to be. But she supposed it was better to start now, although she wasn't sure yet how many children she wanted or he wanted. It occurred to her just then that had never been discussed.

"Well," the SRP said, standing up. "We're just going to have to enlist a doctor that will forge your medical reports. I don't think there's a way we can turn that thing off."

"What about my grandmother? Or my mother? They're both doctors."

"Oh, no. You can't tell them about this."

"Why not? They wouldn't say anything to anyone."

"It's safer for them if they don't know anything. Besides, the way your grandmother is treated, it wouldn't be long before NAU intelligence found mention of it in any correspondence between you. We have to leave family out of it. At least at this stage."


As Mary left the room later, feeling irritable, tired, and frustrated with the SRP, Gibson walked alongside her down to the motorcade waiting on them. The SRP had told them to go ahead and she'd be along in a minute with the other South Guards. She'd interrupted her conversation with Mary to take a call that she clearly didn't want Mary or Gibson in the room for.

"You don't have to start doing that yet," Mary said to him crossly. "I don't need to be escorted to the car."

Gibson nodded and walked slower, moving behind her.

"You know why she talks like that to you, don't you?" He asked her quietly.

"What?" She turned to look back at him as she walked. "Like what?"

"Bossy, condescending, abrupt. You know how she is."

"You know her better than me."

"I do. But she talks like that to you for one reason and one reason only."

Mary stopped, and turned back to him. "What?"

"Jealousy."

"What would she be jealous of? She's the President."

Gibson opened the door for her as they got in the car. Mary wasn't sure why he did that. That was her job.

He looked at her for a minute as they sat there waiting, as if she was supposed to figure it out. But she had nothing to figure out.

"Because you're young and you're beautiful," he said finally. "You've found someone that loves you the way everyone wants to be loved. That time for her, that possibility for her, is over."

Mary just looked at him, trying to see if he was being sincere. It was strange hearing him call her beautiful. He was one of the few people that had ever said that to her. She could count them all on one hand.

"And you get to have a family, too. That possibility is also over for her, and she knows it. This is all she can do with her life now. Those men she worked for, she definitely helped them, but they took away so much from her."

Mary wasn't sure if she believed him. The SRP had always seemed far too self-assured to be jealous of anyone. But she also hadn't thought about the SRP being the romantic or sentimental type.

"She loved someone once," Gibson continued. "He was a monster. But that was the last and only time she's ever loved anyone like that. She's had to accept she will be alone for the rest of her life. It's a difficult thing to realize and accept. You won't ever have to do that, and she envies you for that."

Mary was getting ready to ask him who the man was, when the door opened and she got inside, the other Guard members getting in, too.

"Are we ready?" She said smiling at them, her gaze resting on Mary.

That question had a double meaning for Mary, but Mary could see then, in her face, in her eyes, that her smile had something else behind it. Something painful, regretful, and lonely.


When they pulled up to the WRP's home, Mary felt instant butterflies. Leonard was back now, and she hoped like hell Simon wasn't there. It shouldn't be a problem, but it was. She didn't want to see him or "catch up," as he put it.

She and the other Guards opened the car doors, saluting the SRP as she got out with Gibson as they usually did. But when they got inside, the SRP abruptly turned away from Mary, going to down another hall, with the other Guards on either side of her. Surprised, Mary turned to go with her, but Gibson had come up behind her, taking her arm and leading her away.

"What are you doing?"

Gibson looked over her head, nodding at someone. Mary turned to see As He Stands nodding back, looking this way and that, and then disappearing down another hall. Gibson took Mary into the room with all the artwork.

"What -?"

But he turned to leave, closing a door behind him, locking it. On the other side of the room, she saw As He Stands close that door and lock it as well.

She didn't have to stand there long to find out what was going on. Leonard was standing in there by the Maori statue.

"I hope that didn't alarm you too much. I just couldn't wait to see you," he said, walking over to her.

When she saw him, the nerves and irritation from earlier dissipated. His presence put her at ease; he made her feel safe.

He put his hand to her cheek, looking into her eyes. Mary liked looking into his eyes now that she could see it there: a glowing abyss that she wanted so much to fall into and never come out of.

"I missed you," he said softly.

"I missed you, too." She meant it. She had missed him, even while visiting her grandfather and the clinic, she had missed him. But it hit her the hardest when she saw him.

She thought she would die if he didn't kiss her right now, and when he did it felt different this time. There was something else behind it – anticipation, a longing for what was to come. She felt like her knees were going to give out. If this was how it felt to kiss him….then what was she going to feel later?

It seemed to have the same effect on him. He pulled away and leaned his forehead against hers, taking a deep breath, like he was trying to compose himself.

"There's going to be a ceremony later," he said after a minute. "I've asked a Navajo elder and a priest to preside."

"A ceremony?"

"Yes. A marriage ceremony."

Mary looked at him, surprised. "But we can't do that, right? I thought we couldn't do that."

"We can't legally. But I wanted to do this with you the right way, the honorable way. Don't you want that, too?"

"Yes, of course," she said, still in disbelief. Was he really going to marry her?

"And I don't think I can stand another day without calling you my wife."

The jagged edges of a memory came into Mary's consciousness just then, but she quickly shoved it away. She didn't want to think about that right now. All she wanted to think about was him and that he was going to be her husband, and she was going to be his wife. This was all too much. She felt like her heart might explode.

"We'll have to go soon. I have a meeting, and we'll have to go in separately, but I wanted to show you something first."

He pulled out his phone and pulled up an image of the Andromeda Galaxy. He zoomed into star clusters until he found the one he was looking for. There was an arrow pointing to a tiny light, off a little way from its neighbors, with the words "Mary Scully" right beside it.

"That's your star."

She felt tears sting her eyes as she looked at it.

"I told you I would name a star after you," he smiled down at her.

Oh, God, did she really have to tell him? The loss, the tremendous loss this would be, was now even greater. She didn't have to tell him. No. She couldn't now. And everything was fine, right? Her children would not be humpbacked freaks. They would be just fine.

"Are you okay?" He asked her, as she put her fingers at the corner of her eyes to keep the tears away.

"I just never thought I'd have a star named after me."

"I'd name a million stars after you."

Just then, she heard a lock on one of the doors click, making her jump. Gibson opened the door. Had he been out there the whole time? The other door also unlocked, and As He Stands opened that door.

"I'll see you later," he kissed the top of her head, and left with As He Stands.

Mary walked out with Gibson and he led her down a hallway and through rooms she'd never been in before.

"Where are we going?"

"You can't both come in the same way or at the same time. Someone might notice."

Mary thought that they'd orchestrated this rather quickly. How long had they been planning this? And how did Gibson know his way around here so well? Had they been practicing?

But she stopped thinking about all that when she realized the decision she'd just made: she wasn't going to tell him. She didn't need to, did she? Their children would be fine, and she couldn't lose him. She just couldn't risk it. And if they couldn't tell their families, then what would be the point? She never saw or talked to her father anyway. It was almost like he didn't exist.

So, now she had the next part to deal with. The part where she would become his wife, the part where she would go to bed with him, and the part where she would hope and pray their first child came sooner rather than later.


Gibson looked around the room carefully. There was West Guard posted on one wall, but none of them was Simon Doggett. He was probably on the grounds somewhere, walking a puma maybe, but thank God he wasn't in here.

And Mary and Hosteen were playing this off very well. She was over on the other wall with the South Guard, looking straight ahead like the rest, her expression neutral. But he knew what was going on in her head. She was drowning in the warm and inviting waters of love.

Hosteen hadn't looked at her either. He was looking at the monitors where Burns and Avenham were teleconferencing in. But his head was full of her; he'd wanted to do more than just kiss her in that room earlier. It might be a challenge to keep them apart until they could be together safely. Love can cloud a person's judgement.

Gibson had to concede that Hosteen was a good man. He didn't mean her any harm. If this had been Burns or, God forbid, Avenham, he'd done everything he could to get Mary away from them.

Burns stared coldly at all of them from the monitor. His face had hard, sharp features as if it had been carved out of the ice from within the Region he managed. Someone had turned Avenham the wrong way, so he wasn't facing them directly. He was looking off to the side. Didn't he know he was facing the wrong way? He was wearing a baseball cap with two hands sticking out of the top. When he pulled a string he could make them clap, which he did every time one of the other Presidents started talking, but mostly when Burns was talking.

"I don't think 2054 is reasonable," Burns was saying. "That's not enough time to train a crew for a voyage of that length."

"Hosteen and I already have trainees on standby," Covarrubias said. "We took the old NASA facility in the South, and trained volunteers. They understood the training was voluntary until we were all on board. They're already halfway trained. We'll only need a few more."

"I don't like that," Burns said. "You two shouldn't be doing that without telling us. And don't mention NASA. That agency was a toilet. We're not going to do it the way they did. We shouldn't even be using that facility."

"You've had trainees in the Yukon for years, Julian," Hosteen said. "And you didn't get our permission for that."

Burns looked outraged anytime one of them caught him in a hypocrisy, as if he had the right to do that and no one else did.

"What about the hotel?" Avenham chimed in, still staring in the wrong direction.

The rest of them looked at each other for a minute.

"Hotel?" Hosteen asked.

"Yes! We can't have the terrorists and communists building hotels on the moon before we do! That's how they recruit people. Remember all the hotels of the Old Republic? People went into hotels and came out terrorists all the time!"

Avenham genuinely believed what he was saying, and someone had told him to say "terrorist" and "communist" a lot early on his political career. But those terms were very dated, and he said them all the time in all sorts of nonsensical ways. The other three had just learned to let him talk, and then continue on with their conversation.

"So, how many more trainees are we talking about?" Burns asked, his face getting red with annoyance.

"We were thinking ten more. Maybe fifteen," Hosteen replied.

"Old Republicans!" Avenham shouted. "Get them out of my Region and send them! Let them build our hotels! I am so sick and tired of the money I have to spend to track them! Put them on the damn moon! I took on this burden so the three of you wouldn't have it, and you haven't given me a cent!"

Avenham didn't take on any burden; the first ERP had decided that, but hearing Old Republicans made Gibson think of Mary's grandmother. He glanced over at her, while Avenham continued his rant, and the other three tried to get him back on track. Her grandmother had no idea what was happening, and she should know.

He still didn't know how the SRP was planning to take their children. Would she pay the midwife to tell Mary it had been a still born? Would she be so depraved as to switch out a live baby with a dead one and have Mary and Hosteen think it was SIDS? Maybe if he talked to Dana Scully about this, he could somehow convince the SRP to give him the children, and he could take them to her. He was beginning to hope Mary wouldn't conceive too soon. He was going to need more time for this.

He decided to look up Dana Scully in the registry when he had a chance. Or was she Dana Mulder now? He wasn't sure if she ever changed her name. But how was he going to do this? He'd never been away from the SRP for any length of time. He didn't have any family, so what would he tell her? He would come up with something, but he wasn't sure what.

This was going to be difficult, but he had to try. He had to find a way to see Scully without Mary, the SRP, or anyone else finding out. Otherwise, Mary and Hosteen would lose their children, and he knew that it would break both their hearts.