Patagonia (Vilcabamba AU)

[Thuktun F]

As he looked at the itinerary for the day, President Harris Moffat VII had a spurious feeling of, well, something. Cognitive dissonance? No, not quite. Irony definitely had a strong claim, but still not quite there. It was one of those sensations that were so specific, so fleeting, that trying to make a word for it was a fool's errand because it'd never come again.

He supposed it was almost a feeling of historicity, of seeing what the future textbooks were going to say about you, and by God was it not good. That, he supposed, could round up cognitive dissonance and irony and label it part of the parcel.

Meeting with Earth Dignitary, that was the line that did him in. As president of the free United States (of which only Wyoming was completely his) Moffat had hosted plenty of dignitaries, but none of them had been Earth dignitaries. Whether Krolp or human crony, they had all represented the homeworld of those four-legged sons of bitches.

Matter of fact, the only "Earth dignitary" he'd ever dealt with was his own Secretary of Alien Affairs, whenever lanky Jim made a short jaunt to Krolp-occupied America (or the Viceroyalty of Tukelk, the Krolp insisted rather forcefully). That'd been the case for the first five years of his emergency term as President of the United States and Prime Minister of Canada, just as it had been for his father and all the other Presidents Harris Moffat before him.

Well, it had been the case.

There was a knock on the door to the Oval Office, which finally was Oval after five terms of dreaming and five years of infuriatingly troubled construction. Without looking up from the itinerary, he called out, "Enter."

Secretary of Defense John Adams Munoz awkwardly stepped into the office, visibly conscious of his hooves scuffing the carpet. His six-piece suit was wrinkled, a plain sign he'd been far too busy the past week.

"Mr. President," he said in English, snapping a salute.

"My fellow American," Moffat replied.

That he was, despite all appearances. Munoz's great-grandparents had been taken prisoner during the crushing success that had been the North Platte War, President Harry Moffat IV's greatest achievement. The Krolp had tried to muscle in on frontier towns in free America more than two hundred years back in order to get some prime snarfar-growing turf, and in turn Moffat IV had managed to destroy nine of their settlements.

That didn't sound especially impressive, until you realized that fewer Krolp had died conquering damn near the whole planet, three hundred years back.

Either way, the Krolp had then decided that the free US was too much trouble fighting over snarfar when they had bigger fish to fry, and a lot of the captives found they preferred the luxury of being wined and dined by inquisitive American scientists over maintaining farming equipment in hick country. Damn shame Moffat IV had to return Sub-Governor Tuprilchn's preserved head, after twenty good men died taking it.

"Mr. President?" Munoz asked again.

"Hmm? Oh, sorry, John. Just thinking." Moffat looked down at the itinerary. "What are the latest intel reports on our new neighbors?"

The US might've certainly fallen on hard times, but he still fancied that it had a damn good spy network, if only because the spies were the same species as the target.

"Not very promising, Mr. President," Munoz replied, in that unique accent all Krolp had. "It seems that they are going through with the Hindu Kush sweeps after talks with the Emirs went south last week."

"By the- Christ they're actually going to do it?" Moffat shook his head. "Even the Krolp gave up on that after the first uprising."

"It really seems that when they mean everyone, they mean everyone." Munoz stomped a hoof, his kind's way of reacting to bullshit, then sheepishly tried to pretend he hadn't scuffed the carpet. "I recommend we start pulling up our reserves, and contact the bases, tell them to get ready for a real fight soon enough."

The President leaned back in his chair, letting out a long sigh. "Send out word to our contacts in occupied territory, but we'll hold off on real mobilization for the time being. They gave the Emirs a grace period after their talks, after all."

"Speaking of, Clarkson wants to brief you before you meet with the, er, Earth dignitary."

"Tell him he can come in," Moffat replied.

Munoz snapped a crisp salute. "Mr. President."

"My fellow American," came the now-traditional reply.

The secretary trotted out of the Oval Office. Moffat swiveled in his chair to look out the window, deep in thought.

#​

History was never simple and clean, especially for those living through it. False starts, false hopes, false theories. The past three centuries hadn't been a simple matter of "the Krolp came, and they had bigger guns better science and so they kicked our asses", even if the Krolp and their damn finishing schools wanted you to think that.

The first ever battle between Krolp and humankind was a total slaughter- for the Krolp. The initial landing party probably operated on bad intel, considering they let themselves get surrounded by the Indian Army in Delhi and lost half their men running back to the outer dark of space as a result. Sure, Krolpish casualties were a fifth of human ones, but it still gave hope that any other landings could be beaten off.

Maybe it wouldn't have been a false hope, were it not for the Grey Death festering harmlessly in one of the Krolp corpses, like if Montezuma's Aztecs were brought down by Cortez's gut flora instead of smallpox. Made the pandemic ten years prior to the First Landing seem like morning sniffles. It was only because of the foresight of the great Harris Moffat I, earned from experience that left him with bad lungs, that the US only lost ten million to the blight.

Then the Krolp came again, in greater numbers, but instead of starting a firefight they started talks. Promised aid, and at the same time insinuated the Grey Death was an Indian bioweapon, or a Chinese one, or whatever their hosts wanted to hear. Rationality was out the window by that point, after all. Then it was a simple matter of handing out guns and troops like candy, then pointing those countries at the ones who'd rejected Krolpish help.

With that unholy trifecta, most of the world didn't even last three years. Krolp on their own were beatable (even if it took worrying ratios to have a chance) but as "specialists" in human armies they were unstoppable. Even the United States, the richest and most powerful nation on Earth, was forced into the mountains.

But they held, there. The US maintained its freedom in the Rockies, while most other countries fell under the control of human puppets before the Krolp dissolved them (in some cases quite literally) ten years later. The US stayed American in the Rockies, while the Krolp deported hundreds of millions to different parts of the world to try and quell uprisings.

That had been the status quo for nearly three hundred years. America still grew wheat and potatoes while the fields beyond the temporary borders grew snarfar, and its forests stayed pristine in national parks while the Krolp cut down entire forests and shipped the wood offworld to be made into luxury products (you could find gold anywhere in the universe, but mahogany could only be found here on planet Earth). And most importantly, Americans still spoke English, while the people beyond the borders started talking more and more like their four-legged overlords.

The thing about a status quo, though, was that no matter how inviolable it seemed, no matter how long it'd been going on for, it never lasted forever.

#​

"They're here, Mr. President," Secretary of State Jackson said.

"Send them in," Moffat IV confirmed, rising to his feet.

The door opened, and a trio of wildly different characters stepped in. He'd dealt with "Earth dignitaries" for a good fifteen years now, usually just whatever ex-lackey of the Krolp they had laying around to squabble over the changes in borders and supplies, but he already could tell this time was different.

First was a Krolp, wearing a uniform that screamed "bodyguard". Then came what looked like the unholy union of a man-sized pillbug and a chimp, that Moffat realized was a Trialahaya. He'd never met one before- the Krolp had brought in a lot as slave labor for a while, but they usually kept to the equator.

The the final figure stepped in, a tall woman with the blend of features that was now so common in the formerly Krolp-held lands. She wore a suit of sorts, a mishmash of various human and Krolpish styles that -to Moffat- seemed garish, to say the least. A sun floated above her shoulder- an honest-to-god sun like the Krolp had used, not the LED that he was wearing.

"I see you, Mr. President," she said, in surprisingly clear English.

"I see you, Ambassador Omu," he returned, his smile hiding any disgust over her Krolp name.

Then the Ambassador tapped her throat, and she began to speak in Krolpish, the muted words overlaid with English. "I imagine you already know the reason for our meeting here, President Moffat."

"I prefer to avoid assumptions," he answered. "As our wise elders once said, when you assume you make an ass out of you and me."

The frown told him that didn't parse. Good, keep her off-balance. He knew exactly why they were here- he wanted her to say it, for posterity's sake.

It only seemed to slow Omu's stride for the moment. "The time has come, President Moffat, for the United States to rejoin with the rest of her countryfolk."

"Wonderful!" Moffat said with mock cheerfulness. "When can my Cabinet pack up for Washington? We're going to have to get started soon if we want to get a proper tax season for all 50 states."

"That is not what is meant by her countryfolk, Mr. President," Omu said, like she was speaking delicately to a child.

"Then please do elaborate," he requested. "It seems we have wildly different definitions."

"It is time for the United States of America to join with the rest of the world, with Earth," the ambassador continued, her voice drenched with the borrowed rhetoric of the late Great Tonumpril. "The age of nations is over, and it was not over soon enough. Our divisions had been our downfall, the cracks the Krolp widened to break us apart. Now, we must bring the pieces together, and ensure there will never be another crack."

Oh, the age of nations is certainly over, Moffat thought. Now it's just one big Nation that doesn't like competition.

Instead, he said, "I am afraid that I must reject any offer to 'rejoin' with Earth. I act in the interests of the American people, and it is in the interests of the American people to retain our independence."

"If you truly serve your people's interests, you would accept this offer and enrich their livelihood. It is the dream of Great Tonumpril that all humans live together, divisions removed."

Moffat had actually spoken to Great Tonumpril the Liberator a fair few times, before a shuttle accident took her. He'd given her weapons and specialists under the table, not expecting her wild successes. She'd been many things- a helluva orator, a brilliant strategist, a rapacious maneater whose bodyguards were all coincidentally rather handsome; but an aggressive assimilationist? No more than the sky was green.

"American independence is our livelihood," he replied. "That has been the truth since we gained our own freedom, from our own cruel Empire. I once again affirm that we do not accept your offer."

The frown on Omu's face turned to a sneer, and the President felt vindication in his expectation that "Earth" had inherited the same tolerance for rejection from their masters.

"American freedom?" she repeated. "You are a nation founded on genocide and built by slavery, no different from the same tyrants we have overthrown. You claim them to be free when you've been President for twenty years, after inheriting the title from your father-"

"I am serving an emergency term, which entails choosing the next President, as detailed in the Emergency Congress of 2035," Moffat interrupted. "Considering I'm not back in Washington, the emergency still isn't over."

"The only emergency is one of your own making," Omu continued. "The same emergency that you have used as pretense to gradually cripple your people's already limited freedom. Soft enforcement of your mongrel Christian faith over others, the banning of Krolpish and native languages in schools, the appalling manners of warfare you have inflicted upon rebels..."

"Is this a diplomatic meeting, or a trial?" Moffat asked.

"Trial implies you have a defense," Omu said. "In light of your human rights abuses, it is clear that a reunification with the world would be an improvement for all humans."

That did it. Moffat couldn't help himself, a short laugh escaping him at the audacity. The alleged ambassador's face was one as if he'd just taken a steaming shit on the floor.

"Humans?" he asked. "Humans? I don't see any humans over there. Listen to what you're speaking. I speak the English of Great Washington, and here you are slurring Krolpish, wearing Krolp clothes, using Krolp names. Anything human left in the lot of you is just window dressing, now."

Omu folded her arms. "It is clear that you are an unreasonable party. However, in the spirit of Earth fraternity, we shall offer a grace period of twenty-four hours for you to reconsider the offer, before any foolish aggression on your part forces our hand."

You mean before you make up an incident as an excuse to come rolling in, Moffat thought.

"The United States is not a hostile power, but we are more than capable of defending ourselves," he said. "We have defended ourselves from the Krolp for three centuries."

Omu's look was a familiar one, a look you'd give a country bumpkin with too many identical chromosomes. "We beat the Krolp, Moffat."

And I'm sure the destruction of half their armada by that Psilin empire at the same time didn't play a role in it, no siree.

The ambassador and her envoy left the room. Moffat waited a few moments, then glanced over at Jackson.

"You sure we weren't just talking with the Krolp again?"

#​

"As your Secretary of Defense, it is my professional opinion that we are FUBAR," Munoz said, sitting on a cushion with his legs tucked in.

Moffat paced the Oval Office, hands in his pockets. "How can it be this bad? We've managed to beat off Krolp attacks."

"The Krolp were also stretched thin by the occupation, and they were pragmatic. They knew they'd lose more than they'd gain from actually dedicating to a full-on war. These folk? They're serving a cause."

"Ideologues can still have limits," the Secretary of State interjected. "Even if we can't win outright, we might be able to force a conditional surrender. Maintain autonomy more or less, and just swap out the flags."

"Let's push that out of the picture for the time being," Moffat said. "Let's focus on actually trying to win. We can't be too militarily far behind these guys. We've advanced since the First Landing."

"The Krolp advanced, too," retorted Munoz. "It's how the balance stayed that way for so long. We have the theories and the know-how, but we just don't have the industry anymore. Remember the Constitution?"

Moffat knew the Constitution, alright. Moffat VI, his own father, sunk a third of their GDP into a three year project to make their own fleet of warships, an answer to the Krolp's fleet. The result was a single ship that was not just a hangar queen, but a hangar empress. He still kicked himself thinking about how many more tanks and nukes could've been built.

"Well, the balance still meant a free USA," he finally said. "The Krolp never went all in, sure, but neither did we in any war since the First Landing. These bastards are going to find out what happens when you back us into a corner. Munoz, mobilize the troops and send word to our spies to get their improvised weapons going."

"Yes, Mr. President," Munoz snapped a salute and clambered off the cushion.

When he was gone, Moffat turned to look at Jackson. The Secretary of State had been rather quiet, as if deep in thought. Then, without prompting, he looked up.

"I wonder if this is how the Mapuche felt."

"Mapuche?" Moffat asked.

"They were a people in South America, where Argentina and Chile used to be. Tough motherfuckers. Did you know the Spanish never actually conquered them entirely?"

"No," Moffat replied. To be honest, sometimes he forgot the Spanish had even existed.

"The Spanish tried, for sure, but the Mapuche made them bleed even worse than the Aztecs and Incas combined. They even went on the offensive, took back some of the land the Spaniards took and actually kept it. The Spaniards pretended they had the territory under their control, but the Mapuche really ruled their region."

"So then what happened to them?"

"They held off the Spanish for hundreds of years, but it wasn't the conquistadors that did them in. It was Chile and Argentina, after they fought for their independence. The people were swept up with nationalism, and the Mapuche didn't fit the image they'd made in their heads of what Chileans and Argentinians should be like. So they conquered their last strongholds in Patagonia."

Moffat could see where Jackson was getting at. "Well... hopefully we can learn from their story and try to change the ending to this one."

"Maybe," was all the Secretary said.

#​

Or maybe not, Harris Moffat VII ruminated as he walked down the street, cane clicking on the sidewalk.

The last time the United States had been invaded in force, the war had lasted for three years. This one, truly the last time, had been all but over in three months.

There'd been false hope at the start. Earth had made its bullshit excuse about some attack and promptly started rolling into the flatlands. Moffat had let them, figuring it wasn't worth massive troop expenditures to fight over relatively unpopulated ground. The insurgents could do their job in bleeding them dry and fucking over their supply lines.

The first attacks along the frontlines were repelled, nuclear mines taking out some of the heavier craft (the fact it was good that some were taken out should've been an ill sign), and things only got worse when his spies started their assassinations and bombings in occupied America. His air force was swatted out of the sky by day three, but he knew he could only ever contest Earth's air control.

He guessed repelling the first attack made Earth figure that they couldn't let the bumfuck savages get too uppity- it was the only explanation for the sudden breaking out of the strategic weapons. Grand Junction and six other cities ceased to exist one evening in week two of the war. Then the second wave came in from both sides, backed up by their main warships.

After that, the war was decided. No hope for a conditional surrender, only the bitter urge to make the invaders bleed. But even that urge could only last so long for so many people. When he was captured making for the northern strongholds in Canada, most of the remaining forces laid down their arms. Not that there were a lot of them remaining.

Still, the prospects of bloody occupation seemed to finally get through to the invaders. Instead of execution, he was sentenced to exile, along with his wife Emily. Moffat VIII was made into the regional subgovernor, with explicit orders to never speak to his father again.

He paused to look around at the city. His captors had given him the choice of where to live out his exile. Without even thinking, the word "Washington" fell out of his mouth. The city was still the de jure capital, though there was no longer a country to be the de jure capital of.

Moffat had never actually been to Washington before. The last president to ever see the city with his own eyes was Moffat II, a child watching from the window of Air Force One as Krolp-led armies approached. Every President since then only had pictures in history books to look at- he himself had spent an inordinate amount of time dreaming about the marble monuments and buildings whose very design signified that they were the new God of its people.

There was very little of that old city left to look at, now made into tourist attractions the same way Mesa Verde had been. Moffat went on a guided tour of the city his second day there to look at the crumbled ruins of the White House (crushed by a landing Krolp dropship), the Lincoln Memorial (now with a photo setup where you could sit in Lincoln's lap for a small fee), and the hole in the ground that used to hold the Washington Monument before the Krolp shipped it to their homeworld and stuck it in a museum.

He wondered if the Mapuche's lands had been done in the same way. He still didn't know much about that timespan. Did Chileans and Argentinians take photos in front of ruined settlements and gush about the beauty of native art at the same time they banned the language?

Not that he had much of a high horse to stand on, there. He'd continued supporting his predecessors' policies on non-English languages. "National unity in the face of invasion" he had called it. He sometimes thought back to the conversation with Omu, about how the people beyond the borders were no longer human. Spanish and Chinese and Russian were all but extinct, now. The Krolp had done most of the legwork, but hadn't he made his contribution as well?

He continued his morning stroll, ignoring the sideways glances from passerby. He still wore his Sunday best, a crisp three-piece suit like Moffat I had worn, even if now Emily had to help him put it on instead of his professional tailor. Did the defeated Mapuche leaders do the same, wearing their traditional clothes while walking around in Santiago?

"Excuse me, sir!" a voice called in Krolpish.

Moffat paused his ruminations and looked over. A gaggle of young teens stared at him, all wearing the garish bright clothing that was part of the new "Earth" trends. A young Krolp was there, too, heads and shoulders above his friends.

"How can I help you?" he said in Krolpish.

"You're that president guy on the news, right?" the seeming leader asked, girl with a ponytail done the same way the Krolp did their actual tail fur. "Moffat, yeah?"

"Yes I am," he replied, tiredly.

"How-dee," a boy said in slow English. "That's a traditional greeting, Mr. Moffat?"

He didn't feel like arguing. "Yes. You said it pretty well."

The boy laughed with his friends excitedly, getting a few pats on the back. The ringleader girl waved at him. "What's that thing you always said to your people again?"

Moffat stood straight, trying to avoid leaning on his cane. In English, he said, "My fellow Americans."

The kids broke out into giggles at once, and gave him the sloppiest salutes he'd ever seen.

"My fellow Americans!" they all said, running away. "My fellow Americans!"

The young Krolp lingered for a few moments, giving him a quiet, reserved look. Moffat looked him in the eyes and half-smiled wryly.

"Looks like you guys got us after all," he said in English.

"Pardon?"

"Never mind," he said in Krolpish. "Have a good day."

Well, at least they didn't ask him what burger place he liked best. He continued on his way, which was nowhere in particular. Not like he had much to do, nowadays. He was about an hour in when he saw an antique shop and decided to check it out, and see what American flags or badges he might find as "native artifacts".

There was a Trialahaya fixing the floor cleaner when he walked through the door. The pillbug-alien avoided eye contact, focusing harder on his machine. Moffat certainly saw nothing strange in how, despite now being freed from Krolp slavery, they still did the shit jobs. No siree.

He looked around for a few minutes in silence. Most of the antiques were actually Krolpish, older devices and the like. He wondered how many men Moffat I would've sacrificed to get his hands on the things here, when now his great-great-great-great-great-grandson could buy them for a few thousand credits.

One thing caught his eye, however. A worn flag with black and white borders hung from a battered pole, with a golden circle in the middle of three bands of blue, green, and red. A closer look revealed the golden circle had strange symbols drawn in red.

He waved over the shop owner, an older gentleman. "What is this a flag of, do you know?"

"I can look it up for you." The owner paused, eyes glazed. Moffat realized he must've been accessing an implant. "This flag was recovered from a rebel thirty years ago, in a mountainous region of what had been the Viceroyalty of Prilukan. You might know that by the native name of Argentina."

"Argentina," Moffat murmured. He looked at the flag. "Was it the flag of the rebel group?"

"No," the shopkeeper replied. "It was... the flag of some pre-Landing ethnic group living in the mountains. Mapuche."

The name hit him like a sledgehammer to the gut. Then, uncontrollably, he began to grin like an idiot.

"Everything alright?" the shopkeeper asked.

"Not exactly, but... I think in a way... it will be," Moffat replied. "How much for the flag?"

A/N: This fic was borne out of my frustration with how many stories allegorize the conquest of the Americas by various European powers, especially the Spanish. Vilcabamba is one of those stories- while it does a good job of depicting the gradual erosion of language, customs, and art that came with the conquistadors, it still perpetuates common myths via allegory.

Therefore, I felt compelled to write this story, a recontextualization of the original short story that (hopefully) brings more accuracy to the allegory. while also retaining some applicability beyond the core analogy. I felt that in some ways it could be even more depressing for Moffat's American rump state to be conquered by a now-free Earth, to demonstrate the heartbreaking loss of language and customs that happened to the Americas in real life, where even free peoples who share much blood with the "natives" still retain the cruel imperial dreams of their former subjugators.

Whether or not I succeeded, of course, is up to you.

 

[SeekerOfDarkness]

Very interesting, from what I can tell, the Krolp weren't quite as invincible as they were in the source material?

 

[Thuktun F]

Very interesting, from what I can tell, the Krolp weren't quite as invincible as they were in the source material?

Click to shrink...

Just like how the Spanish weren't invincible, nor was their tech-gap as wide as you might think.