The former United States of America had changed its name in response to the St. Mary's outbreak on its own soil, to The Sovereign Security Union (SSU). Unlike other nations, one of the objectives of the SSU was to target terrorism and anyone caught in alliance with a terrorist on an international scale.
The English propaganda from its radio waves and television media, had understated the strength of the SSU, leaving themselves to look the victor, but in reality, the contrary was the truth. One thing was for certain, the country had become godless. Prothero had been correct on this account. The religious dissimilarity of the duel world powers is what ultimately caused the relationship between the two to sever. With the acts of terrorism in the U.S. in early millennium, the problem escalated. After all, how could a nation possibly fight a faceless enemy with no distinction? The country became plagued with terrorist activity and in the end she sought to fight back the only way she knew how; by eradicating the social freedoms that she fought so hard for almost three hundred years to preserve.
Just as what happened in England, the citizens of the former United States were brought to compulsion by fear, not just by the government, but also by forces unseen. Because of the religious correlation to terrorism, the country had all religion banned except for the political religion of the state regime which in essence was no religion at all.
What was once deemed impossible became reality.
The domestic policy on the St. Mary's virus implied that the country's citizens were expendable. The known cure issued to essential and military personnel only, coupled with the religious intolerance, sparked civil wars that had escalated from the survivors of the disease and the fighters of freedom. To no avail. They fought a nation with the strongest military in the world. After 14 years, and what had seemed like endless fighting, the majority of people willingly gave up their rights again out of fear of terrorism.
The new age brought with it a new concept in monitoring its citizens; a small computer chip the size of an eyelash called The Identity Monitoring System or IMS, was developed to be injected subcutaneously into the skin. Once introduced as a means of tracking medical records and the like, it became used more extensively as a means to track the identity, birth records, record of convictions, taxes and amount of currency or monetary worth a person had, subject to government control. The state mandated its use so that it became the means of living for buying such necessities as food, clothing, and shelter.
As always, with any new technology, the government successfully sought ways to use this device as a weapon that could be tracked and used via satellite. Something originally created for the common good became like the first airplane; created for travel but eventually dropped the first atomic bomb. IMS was used to eradicate any individuals that posed a threat just by sending a signal to the brain; the victim would die within moments. It was perfect, undetectable, and could be used as a weapon with results that an autopsy could not detect.
Like its parallel world England, no one would suspect the government would be using such a weapon against its own populace…