Chapter 9

A week later...

We had settled a bit more into our new routine, part of our new lifestyle, when we received a bit of a shock from the Department of State of the Republic of Florida. It was a fairly small and basic, one might even say amateurish diplomatic service, mostly interacting with the other successor states of the old American Union, such as Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Yes, for lack of a better phrase, the Deep South. The state governments that emerged so far were small, shaky, and rudimentary entities, still reeling from new administrative burdens like finding old-age pension systems to replace Social Security in the wake of the Federal Government’s collapse. The loss of federal funding to supplement their state budgets and the need to take charge of their own defense didn’t help, either.

I opened the official correspondence, which was addressed to Mom rather than me, probably due to outdated information and bureaucratic delays. As she was mine, though, and there were no longer postal regulations about opening mail (at least not for now under the new Florida Postal Service ... FPS for short), I felt no scruples or anxiety about doing so. I quickly saw that it was about Dylan somehow. I could hear Mom breathe heavier, despite the recent end of their marriage and her new status as my concubine.

“Dear Mrs. Morrell, I regret to inform you that your husband, Dylan R. Morrell, Esq., has been found deceased, his body recovered from a rebel base captured by government forces in Myanmar. He was apparently executed by the rebels, along with all other hostages held by them in hopes of leveraging some kind of deal or settlement with the central government. The insurgents were evidently Islamic separatists, that is, they wanted to secede from Myanmar and establish an Islamic state in opposition to the Buddhist majority.

“His remains have been cremated out of necessity by the Myanmarese government and will be returned to this address, his last known residence in the Republic of Florida. We regret the sorrow and grief that his passing must cause you upon learning of it. We also regret that we must remind you of the provisions of the Household Act, which require you to either remarry or else register as a concubine to an eligible male citizen of the Republic within one calendar year. If you should fail to do so, you will be assigned an eligible male sponsor by the proper civil authorities. If you have already done so for some reason, please disregard this notification.

“Please accept our condolences, which are unfortunately all that we can offer you at this time.

“Sincerely, H. Warren Lamarque, Special Liaison for Overseas Crises and Emergencies, The Department of State of the Republic of Florida.”

Mom sighed loudly and then burst into tears for a moment, as did all of my other ladies, even Lauren and Heather. I was stony silent myself, not that I didn’t care about Dylan as a human being. He was a decent enough fellow for a Jesus Freak. He had been a mostly good father to my siblings and me, despite filling our heads with psychological terrors such as the potential torments of eternal Hellfire. The fact was that I was the man of the house now and had to be strong, a human rock on whom they could depend for calmness, confidence, security, and stability. That was the flip side of my new power: it came with a great sense of duty or obligation, of personal responsibility for the welfare of my family.

“May he rest in peace. It’s a pity that he didn’t have a chance to speak to us one last time, if nothing else. Given the circumstances, I assume that he died because he wouldn’t convert to Islam and renounce his Christian faith. That or the insurgents just didn’t know what once they couldn’t force the government to negotiate terms with them. Or at least terms acceptable to the rebels.

“I’m not a big fan of organized religion myself, of any stripe, but I will respect his wishes regarding his funeral. There will have to be a service and we’ll have to work with his pastor about that issue. In the meantime, feel free to mourn as you wish. I will suspend certain requirements or duties for the next few days, so that you can properly grieve for him. That is a necessary process. After that, it’s back to normal, especially after the funeral,” I announced, even as my concubines surrounded me under Mom’s guidance to pepper me with kisses.

Suffice it to say that I had to break it off long enough to inform Alfie and his harem, which wasn’t an easy thing to do. Dylan was basically the only father that Alfie knew, and there were clearly some influences that he had a harder time shaking than me, thanks to that fact. He and my stepsisters with him would take it even harder than Mom and I would, for instance. Mom had already partially moved on from him after having their marriage involuntarily dissolved and realizing that he wouldn’t be back. The man’s own daughters would have a much tougher time doing such things.