Seventeen months later, in January of 2070, Gene and Samantha were working on the reconstruction of Zora. Gene was as busy as he’d ever been in his life. He’d been acquitted in December 2068, a few months after the cease-fire, then reinstated as head of the ARDR the same month. He’d been restless since the war—since before that, honestly—and he doubted he’d stop feeling restless until long after the reunification process was complete. He was happiest spending his weekends helping rebuild his community.
Political progress was slow. Politicians in both countries made speeches and promises and dire predictions, working slowly toward January 1st, 2072, the day of the reunification, if the plan didn’t fall apart. 2072 was an election year in the U.S., or whatever the country would be called at that point—there were arguments for everything from keeping the current name to calling it Cascadia to combining the names to trying something new. The reunification would be a shock, but the election afterward might be the larger shock, as the new-old nation had its first test of what it could be in its new form. The current administration, the Progressive president elected at the end of 2068, struggled to make changes, embattled with a Constitutionalist-dominated legislature. Real transformation would have to wait.
In front of Gene, the construction printer had the next wall ready. Once it was slotted into place and glued in, Gene was responsible for setting the interior finishing robot to work while the roof was assembled. They’d only just started printing the new houses that day, and already they had three in various stages of assembly. The gardens and many of the trees, on the other hand, had been a complete loss. Regrowing would take much longer than rebuilding.
“Dad? The wall?” Samantha said. Gene realized he’d been woolgathering: the wall was right behind him, ready to be dropped in as soon as he got out of the way. Will, who was working on the house across the courtyard with Kiara and Vi, looked meaningfully at Samantha and shook his head in mock dismay.
Lawrence—“Lan”—was out of Samantha’s life—and out of the Louvre, for that matter. It wasn’t only that he’d made a mistake that night at the restaurant: it was that he was so ungraceful about rebuilding trust afterward. Samantha had kept Gene up to date on the Louvre’s doings for several months after that night, and he let her, even though he didn’t want to know. In the end, though, she picked up on his discomfort and stopped. More recently, around Thanksgiving 2069, she’d decided to take a break from the group. She was going to go back to finish her degree and see what kind of work she could get as an AI wrangler. Jobs continued to get scarcer, and the newer AIs needed less and less guidance, so it wasn’t clear that she’d continue to have work into the future. On the other hand, who could guarantee anything about the future?
Gene still missed Edison. He would never stop missing Edison, and he was becoming increasingly convinced that he was one of those people who loved once, without reservation, and afterward was not meant to love again. It wasn’t a bitter thought. He had more love in his life than he knew what to do with, between Samantha and Mark, who was now in Italy trying to become a sculptor, and Kiara and Vi and Will, and all of Zora, and even occasionally fond messages from Marley, who was continuing to make a stir with their streaming interviews. There was something to be said for doing a thing right the first time and then not trying again. He’d had the right husband; he still had the right kids, the right family, the right home, the right work . If he wasn’t helping things get better in the world, it wasn’t for lack of trying. In the end, that was as close to a proper life as he could imagine.