I would need help. I hated asking for help, just hated it. Always did, even when I was upright and even more so after the event. It’s just the way I am. But I had to deal with reality: no matter how independent I was, even with Mighty Chair, Cher, and Van, I would struggle to make that trip by myself. There were going to be situations in which having someone with me could make all the difference. It wasn’t going to be Jenny, wherever she was. At a meeting six weeks earlier, we had been given emergency contact information; it was one use only, only for real emergencies, and don’t be surprised if there was no response.

Trying to save American democracy, I decided, definitely qualified as an emergency.

After reaching Van without incident, I opened my tablet to eBay and thumbed through to the designated page. It was an array of old baseball cards for sale. I searched until I found the wildly overpriced Ted Williams 1954 Topps card being offered for $18.95. I ordered it, using a fictitious name and a made-up address and credit card information, but included the phone number of one of my remaining burners.

While waiting for a response, I drove to Tysons Corner Center, one of the largest malls in the region, and parked outdoors roughly equidistant between two exits. Hiding in plain sight. The lot was about a third full. I backed into a space between two black SUVs; I didn’t need room on the passenger side because I had no intention of getting out. Homeland Security could easily trace my plate number, but I doubted anyone would be looking for it. The space was as safe as anywhere else; no one would notice me sitting there.

The sun finally had come out; I checked Y’s electric gauge and noted the solar panels were working. I opened up my devices. There had been a continual flow of posts from all over the country. Many of them, presumably, were part of the government propaganda campaign. But among the cat videos, birthdays, recipes, opportunities to earn $2,000 a week working from home, photographs of unusually large-breasted women at supermarkets, and other clickbait, I found some information that might have been valid. Might being the operative term. According to several Facebook posts, there had been a minor uprising at the Mexican border just south of San Diego as thousands of Californians tried to cross the border, but it had been quickly quelled. In Northern California a significant number of people were fleeing into the hills. A group of renegade Apple employees supposedly had founded their own nation; they announced it would be governed on Groucho Marxist principles and named it Freedonia. True or not, I liked it. There were no other posts indicating resistance in other military districts.

The rest of the news was disheartening. In Military District 4, the Upper Midwest, district military governor Damon Burns had announced the creation of a Junior G-Person organization for children twelve and under; the goal was to enlist boys and girls in “the fight against terrorism” by teaching these “young patriots” how to recognize and report anything suspicious. The first Young Patriot’s Medal had been awarded to Chicago sixth grader Tommy Fenton for alerting law enforcement when he discovered his science teacher was spending nights in the school’s science laboratory.