Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Restoration

It was technically a crime in Seattle and the rest of the FUSA to use New Dollars, but everyone did anyway. It was technically a crime in Seattle to do a bunch of things that people now were openly doing. It was weird: the military, police, FCorps, and gangs still ran things; it was just that a free or semi-free market was tolerated. The government and gangs still took a cut, but a cut of a much bigger pie. The Limas weren’t stupid. They knew that their thefts were destroying the goose that was laying the golden eggs. They knew that they couldn’t get through another few months without a real economy providing things like food. All the corporate farms in eastern Washington that had been providing food to Seattle were now in Patriot hands, so the people running Seattle needed a new plan. They did what many collapsing socialist economies had always done: allowed a little capitalism.

Ed realized something weird, and good, was happening when he got his first inquiry about buying a house. What? Someone wanted to buy a house? That hadn’t happened for over a year, but it made sense that there would be demand. People were relocating. There wouldn’t be any new home construction for probably two decades. All that abandoned existing housing coupled with all those people who needed a home in the new place they had settled in meant people would start buying and selling real estate again.

But buy and sell with what? Ed wondered. FCards? Nope. New Dollars were the answer. Ed looked into it and found that the escrow company would do transactions in New Dollars. Ed did the sale, got a commission in New Dollars, and went out and bought some fresh vegetables with them. He couldn’t believe it, though it did make sense when he thought about it. It took a long time for the Collapse to build and it would take a long time for it to unwind, at least in Seattle where the government and gangs still tried to control things to the greatest extent they could. Ed noticed more and more economic activity and all of it being done in New Dollars. The military and police were letting all of this happen. They were even cracking down on the gangs. Some of the gangs must have been becoming liabilities or, maybe, the military and police were actually listening to people. Ed couldn’t really believe it, but the evidence pointed in that direction. Most of the really bad people in the government and gangs had been killed. That intra-government civil war and the resulting assassinations and gang wars had thinned out the hard core Limas pretty well.

At first, most people in Seattle had been silently hoping the Patriots would come in and take over. But now that sentiment was waning. Sure, people wanted things back to normal and no one would deny that the economy and freedom were booming in New Washington. But, with the healthy New Dollar economy in Seattle, things weren’t so bad that it was worth fighting another war over. Besides, just about everyone in Seattle had collaborated with the former legitimate authorities so the Patriots coming in would mean lots and lots of hangings and jailing.

A weird truce developed. Seattle was still technically in the FUSA and a kinder, gentler group of Limas was running it. But Seattle had essentially integrated into the New Washington economy and, by extension, the southern and western states’ economies because New Washington was part of that economic bloc. All while everything like New Dollars were theoretically illegal.

New Washington, too, didn’t want to fight a war with Seattle. There was no reason to. Seattle wasn’t trying to invade New Washington and the Lima terrorist attacks had gone down to almost none. New Washington was actually trading with Seattle. In fact, New Washington agriculture was feeding Seattle, and New Washington manufacturing was rebuilding Seattle. In turn, Seattle had lots of smart business people and even squirreled-away money to invest in New Washington.

In the end, New Washington and Seattle developed a relationship like the one between the Revolutionary War colonies and Canada. Many Loyalists during the First Revolutionary War fled to Canada, just like many Loyalists fled New Washington into Seattle. But the two countries—technically different countries with different currencies, but speaking the same language and economically intertwined—were at peace with each other. After a few years, it was as absurd for New Washington to invade Seattle as it would have been for the old America to invade Canada.

Which was why Ed was so glad he didn’t have to kill anyone back when the Patriots took Olympia. He didn’t want blood on his hands. He just wanted all the bad things to stop. And they slowly did.

In the year after taking Olympia, the New Washington government did several things. The very first thing they did was establish a structure for doing everything that needed to be done. This had been developed in exile at the Think Farm.

The basic structure, which wasn’t fancy and was made up as they went along, was that there would be an Interim Governor for a year, along with an Interim House of Representatives and Interim Senate. They also had interim judges.

There was one basic requirement to be an interim official: no prior ties to the old government. Every single one of the officials for the old state, especially the judges, was compromised, having done the Limas’ dirty work. Some were outright corrupt; others just went along with things that they knew were unconstitutional. Either way, they were done. New Washington didn’t need them. New Washington didn’t need their “experience,” which was basically experience at screwing people.

The Interim Government, as it was called, eventually convened a constitutional convention, or “con con,” where constitutional delegates met, drafted a new constitution and then submitted it to the people for a vote. Grant was honored—truly honored, once-in-a-lifetime honored—to be one of the constitutional delegates. It was a lot of work being both a constitutional delegate and running the Reconciliation Commission but, as Grant used to say when the Team was getting into Mark’s truck, “Is there any place you’d rather be?” When Grant was tired and stressed out over the latest problems he was confronting, he would smile. He was doing was exactly what he wanted to be doing: fixing things. He knew all the “coincidences” that had fallen in place to make it possible for him to be doing this work.

“Anything is possible when miracles are popping off all around you,” he would say.

The old Washington Constitution, which was a magnificent document of liberty if it ever had been enforced, served as the first draft of the new state Constitution. In fact, most of the Bill of Rights from the old constitution was adopted word for word in the draft of the new one. The main debates were whether to have a “pure” libertarian constitution with almost no government or a “practical” libertarian constitution with a very small amount of government.

The Interim Legislature met in the stately old House and Senate chambers, which now had bullet holes in places from the fighting, and quickly passed a handful of laws necessary to carry out the Restoration. Grant had been offered a spot in the Interim Legislature, but he thought that it would look bad if he were a “politician” and also heading up the Reconciliation Commission, which was deciding who should live or die or go to prison. Life or death decisions should not be made by politicians up for re-election. Instead, Grant took a less political spot as a Constitutional Convention delegate, which was a one-term position with no re-election.

The Interim Legislature passed laws setting a date for the first election in one year. They also passed some laws necessary to establish the framework for the rest of the Restoration, such as laws about the State Guard, newly re-formed State Police, and the Reconciliation Commission. The Interim Senate confirmed Grant as the Chair of the new Reconciliation Commission, which was not a surprise. The Interim Legislature also repealed every other law in the state to give the new Legislature a clean slate. Besides, no one was enforcing the old laws, so what was the point in having them? It was time for a clean slate. It was what people wanted, and what they had fought and died for.