Another field correspondent, Mohammed O’Donnel, provided a report from the Blackrock Unity Region. This region—which some had once referred to as Appalachia before being zapped out of the habit—was a largely rural area, and geographically one of the largest of the regions. It was still plagued by pockets of people resisting Unity. When the Unity Regions had been established, some religious fanatics (mostly unrepentant Pallids, along with a handful of their Melaninite accomplices), had retreated out of the cities into mountainous areas that were almost impassible except on foot, taking with them only what they could carry. They had established walled homestead communities they called Freedom Forts. (Daenerys scoffed at the thought of “freedom.” Why would you want “freedom” if it meant living in a shed built from sticks, eating food you pulled out of the ground, completely cut off from electronic communications and entertainment?) Video footage obtained by drones indicated that the anti-Unity extremists had displayed remarkable resourcefulness and ingenuity, surviving fairly well so far using only indigenous resources to build shelter and grow or capture food. The fort residents had built small but sturdy homes, primitive water collection and purification systems, and pulley systems to shuttle various items quickly up and down the mountainside to their forts. Some had even fashioned art work, instruments and recreational equipment out of natural resources, all examples of feeble attempts to break up the monotony of their bleak existence.

Obviously, the Freedom Forts could and would be stamped out, but dealing with the obstinate Unity Resistors had proven much more difficult than expected—a fact Resistors absurdly attributed to their Bronze Age Sky King of myth. In reality, it was because vicious infighting among the Unity Region Team Leads and bloody conflicts among various Ally Groups in the cities had thus far been of more pressing concern than isolated groups of Resistors. Because they had not yet become the central focus of the Team Leads, the Resistors had been left alone for a time to fester in their pitiful little forts. Daenerys had heard chat-room rumors that Resistors had been smuggling resources out of the Unity urban areas, and the UNN had reported that some of the deluded extremists meant to defeat the Unity Region Central Authority using guerilla tactics to sabotage infrastructure. It was comical, really—the idea that the state-of-the-art, fully unified financial and communications systems designed by the most diverse teams in history could possibly be compromised. And how could anyone think that these primitive, ignorant people could get in and out of the sophisticated city centers without detection, much less cause any kind of noticeable harm?

[continues]