Warren slept until noon and Cheryl and Scott let him get up on his own time. He took a shower and put on a fresh outfit before venturing out. He found them in the kitchen drinking coffee. Cheryl got up and got a cup.

"Coffee?" she asked.

"Uh, yeah, thanks. Black."

The kitchen table was big enough for a half dozen people at least and the kitchen was huge. Warren tried to remember... Scott was a software developer or something, Cheryl had some kind of business. He sipped the coffee... hot and bitter and and doesn't even taste good. Like life. He supposed he should say something, since they seemed to be waiting for him.

What do you do after seven years in prison? What do you say? You deliberately cut off contact.

Yeah, who wants people to see them in prison? Stripped of humanity.

"Thanks," he said after a while. "I'll try not to be too much trouble until I find a way to go somewhere."

"Why go anywhere?" Scott asked. "You want to live again?"

"How do I do that?" Warren asked. "I'm fifty years old with nothing. If I had the energy - and the means - I'd make some people pay before going out but I don't even have the energy means."

"I'd say you have the energy," said Scott, "you seem in good shape physically and mentally. The means - if you have the spirit - are always obtainable. Want to give it a try?"

"I'm game," Warren replied. "What do I have to lose?"

"Just your life, but they've already taken a big piece of that. How about we get started?"

---

"I'm semi-retired," Scott said. "and don't have to keep office hours. How much do you know about the situation these days, the government and all that?"

"Nothing," Warren replied. "I shut it out, didn't even have a TV. I figured the world was going to hell fast and didn't care."

"You were right about that," said Scott. "Some people are trying to stop it. The people who put you in prison are some of the ones causing the problems - you might encounter some of them if you get involved."

"I wouldn't mind that," Warren said. "What's the plan?"

"When you had a couple of years left," said Scott, "the political situation went south. Another Democrat was elected president - I use the term elected loosely as fraud was again the deciding factor - and while Republicans held the Senate by one seat that didn't matter. Mass arrests like after January 6 but an order of magnitude or two greater. Law enforcement personnel - Border Patrol and ICE and FBI people, state police in places that worked with the feds - there are something like four to five thousand - I suspect that's a conservative number - are in prison, held without bail for four years now."

"Is there a bright side to this?" Warren asked.

"Depends on what you call bright," Scott replied. "People who had sense always figured that without disarming the population the central government could never achieve the kind of control that Russia and China - and smaller states - had over their populations. At a conservative estimate the number of people defined as preppers was in the thirty million range and even more wouldn't go quietly. Fifty million at least were going to be trouble and that seems to be the case."

"Fifty million?" asked Warren.

"That's probably somewhere near the top," Scott said, "but the Viet Cong were a couple hundred thousand, the IRA way less, and other guerilla forces tiny in comparison to the forces they faced. But the establishment was unable to eradicate them. What the present regime here is facing is much bigger. And we have some advantages besides the country being too big for them to control - outside help."

"Outside help?"

"Among other things," Scott said, "there are enclaves of expats who managed to get a lot of money out of the country to safe places. And then there's Atlantis."

"Atlantis?"

"You must have heard something even then," Scott said. "The big island and appeared and got really big."

"Yeah, some of that. How does that figure in?"

"The short story is that Atlantis - about the size of Australia with several island groups that make it much larger - has considerable power for its population of just a few million - somehow they got their hands on some nukes and were able to dissuade the U.S. and NATO from messing with them - and apparently massive wealth. One story is that it's the ancient Atlantis risen again and they found all kinds of stuff. Some dissident organizations here are in contact with them and they - most inhabitants are from the U.S.A - have an interest in how things go here."

"That' pretty wild," said Warren. "I guess I have a lot to learn but there's notning else to do."

"Tomorrow," Scott said, "we're going to a meeting. The first part is just some people talking to an unvetted audience - there will almost certainly be government agents present - but afterwards I'd like you to meet someone. Today we're going to the range. You were pretty good with guns before, let's see how quick you can get back."

"I can't have guns," Warren said.

"You're not on parole," Scott said. "Nobody checking up on you and they can't put you back in unless you commit another crime... an actual one anyway. Or... anyway you have some objection to breaking the law?"

"Nope. Lead on."