“Give me liberty, or give me death!” Ben James said, poking the air with his fork to emphasize. I smiled back at my husband as he enjoyed the steak I’d grilled in the backyard. He was telling me about the second Citadel he wanted to create, this one affiliated with us, run like ours, but on Mars. We had enough wealth and weapons from his father’s early Bitcoin purchases to create multiple cities if we wanted to. And Ben James wanted to.
I looked over at our daughter, Marla, dutifully whipping up sandwiches for her brothers before they came home; she was beautiful, the sun shining behind her long hair as a breeze blew through our kitchen windows and gently rustled her sundress in the hot summer air, her apron accentuating her slender waist. We made eye contact, deep understanding and knowing passing between us. My youngest daughter, 6 year old Eloise, sat at the table doing her reading lesson.
In Ben James’ citadel, every child was home schooled. Some of us moms cooperated to lighten the load, teaching another’s children for a year or two, then switching it up.
“They say Mars is like the Old West,” Marla said. I turned away, knowing before either spoke another word how this conversation would go. “Survival is so difficult that women must be willing to act like men, to do everything men do, whether because there’s so much to do or because the men die.”
Ben James set down his fork, eyebrow raised as he assessed her. “Perhaps those boys just haven’t figured out how to be masculine yet,” he said. “That behavior would not be tolerated in my citadel on Mars any more than it is here. No woman of mine will ever work for another man. I won’t have whores in my family, or in my Citadels.”
Marla got a sly look on her face. “So what does that make the men working for other men?” she quipped slyly. “Didn’t you used to work for—“
Ben James’ chair made a painful screech on the floor as he exploded to his feet. My husband and my teenage daughter stared each other down, and I wanted to grab her arm, pull her back, tell her to stop being a rebellious and impulsive child. In a Citadel, the word of the Sovereign was law. And he could exile you, or worse, on a whim.
“You’re a young, chaotic woman,” he said quietly. “You cannot understand how the worlds work. You have everything you need. As a family, we are free from the tyrannies of the State. And you are lucky enough to be where you belong. Women are most happy in the home, cooking, working with children. I will hear no more of this foolishness.”