Prelude

The Reevaluation had been in the works for decades, although very few knew about it in the early stages. For the early stages the gears of democracy could and would need to be used. This took time, but large groups of people are both predictable and gullible, and with the correct manipulation can be convinced of nearly anything.

Around 20 years Before Reevaluation (BR) the usefulness of the fiction that society was choosing its leaders had exhausted itself. With full control of the military and the finances of the country all The Party needed was one good disaster to convince everyone that drastic changes were needed. While they were perfectly willing to create that disaster themselves as luck would have it they wouldn’t need to. On March 15th, 19 BR, a coalition of international and homegrown left wing terrorists had had enough with The Party’s growing power and continued push toward a more autocratic government. They decided to blow it up.

Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court were all leveled by relatively small home-made nuclear bombs. All Supreme Court justices, the President, the Vice President and most members of congress were dead. But the true heads of The Party were not, and they were far better prepared to determine the new course of America than the left wing had been.

Reprisals were nearly instant. Terrorists and suspected terrorists were shot in their homes. Social media was mined for sympathetic posts and the authors were locked up or, in extreme cases, shot. The leaders of the group blamed for the attacks were hanged in front of the temporary new Capitol building in Richmond. Eventually though, the world continued on. The terrorists had hoped that their work would rouse the silent majority to take back over the government but this did not happen, and instead the response had scared everyone away from the notion of criticizing the government.

They did not criticize the government when the following year’s elections were cancelled. Or the year after that. Even had they wanted to, they would’ve found it quite hard to say anything once the government nationalized the Internet and heavily regulated the content. There were many ‘black sites’ on the dark web, but as many of them were honeypots set up by the government as were real resistance nodes.

By 5 BR many had noticed that the government was practically devoid of women. Not just in leadership positions, but nearly all clerks, attorneys, judges and workers were male. Laws on women’s rights were completely gone, crime against women were being routinely unprosecuted and there were rumblings that something bigger was in the works. Later on the government began purchasing or repossessing buildings in most cities without saying anything about the eventual use, and in 1 BR they began hiring thousands of employees for a mysterious job who’s training required them to be sent away and sequestered until they were needed.

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