Jessica Morgan strolled through her beloved gardens. She paused at each carefully placed plant, each statue, each fountain, burning them into her memory.

She hadn’t expected to come here again and she definitely was not going to squander the opportunity.

She sought out a simple wooden bench in a less tended corner, her favorite spot in the entire galaxy.

It was quiet. It was serene. It was absolutely beautiful.

It was also the only place in the entire estate that wasn’t monitored. No camera watched. No sensor swept… or sniffed.

It was her spot.

She sat there looking at the flowers and the trees. She looked around carefully. Satisfied that she was truly alone, she took a deep breath…

Then, she buried her face in her hands…

and wept.

***

It was a few hours later when her phone quietly rang.

“Yes,” a perfectly composed Jessica Morgan replied.

“Ma’am,” Terrence replied. “Everything is prepared and your guests have arrived.”

“Thank you, Terrence,” she said seemingly without a care in the world. “Go ahead and serve the appetizers. I shall be there directly.”

She calmly walked through the gardens, through the mansion, and into the great hall.

Inside there was a long table. Sitting at it were her three children, her nine remaining grandchildren, and seventeen of her great-grandchildren, all of the ones over sixteen.

They all rose to meet her.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” she said as she walked to the head of the table with a smile.

“It’s not like we had a choice,” her eldest son laughed.

“No, you most certainly did not,” Jessica chuckled as she took her seat.

Everyone sat in unison.

Terrence walked in with a holo-camera followed by one servant for each guest. In unison the servants placed a single champagne flute in front of each member of her family.

Shortly thereafter servants stepped forward with the finest champagne and filled each glass in turn.

One of her grandchildren, a blonde in her late thirties, reached for the champagne.

“Not yet, Selene,” Jessica chided. “We are about to have a toast.”

“Sorry, grandmother,” Selene replied slightly embarrassed.

Jessica rose and lifted her glass. Everyone else rose and did the same.

“My beloved family,” she said with a wistful smile, “Many years ago the Yellowstone Supervolcano unleashed fire and death and laid waste to an entire civilization. Everything that once was our entire universe ended that day. Out of all of that fire, and death, and devastation something happened. Out in the cold dark a people arose, as cold and unforgiving as the vacuum that surrounded them. A people strong enough to survive, a people hard enough to endure...”

She paused looking at each of them.

“Out of those people leaders arose and built tribes, communities, all dedicated to that most sacred, most pure, most… human… of all things… Survival.”

She smiled.

“Hard choices, difficult decisions… sacrifices… had to be made. They were painful, sometimes abhorrent, sometimes absolutely inhuman… But all of this… ugliness… was done for the purest of reasons, to live another day, just one more day, to hold back the night just a little longer...”

She held her glass to the light, admiring the play of light as it danced through the amber liquid and flawless crystal.

“Also out there was… myself and my men. We had the same goal but we also had something else. A shared vision of a future beyond the horror… beyond the death… And so we started to gather the tribes together, feeding them, arming them, training them… taking the finest of humanity, forged by the fires of hell itself and making them something even better, something even stronger… the beginnings of a nation, a nation of survivors, a nation that would endure.”

She, with a strange light in her eyes looked at her family.

“That loose tumble of tribes became forged into a true confederacy of the strongest, of the toughest, of the most unyielding… a confederacy of true leaders… all sharing a dream of a new day, a new Sol...”

She sighed softly.

“Sadly, that dream remained just that, a dream. It wasn’ t to be. Sometimes no matter how badly you want something to happen, or want something not to happen, the cold hard realities of the situation dictate otherwise.”

“While that dream faded… and that confederacy had to adapt… change… evolve… It still remained. Those leaders still led their people and together they forged a new future and a new life for their clans. It was here, in the Federation where we carved out our place and it was here that we built our future. It was here that our vision, perhaps different than it once was, was finally realized.”

She paused and closed her eyes and clenched her jaw. A moment later she relaxed, opening her eyes again.

“And now, we face a new threat. Not born of fire, but of something even more dangerous, the hatred of our fellow man. A plague, a biological weapon unleashed by an old foe, ravages our people, threatening our very lives, our very survival. Our Federation, which we have unflinchingly supported, has turned upon us choosing to not only stand idly by while we die but actively seek to hasten our demise.”

“The Federation wants us dead. They laugh at our brothers and our sisters starting to wither and rot while they still breathe. They simply lock them, and anyone else they seem to see fit, away to (heh) ‘let this whole thing run it’s course’ knowing full well that it will likely claim most of our lives.”

“In fact, they seem to relish the idea. They say they are better off without us.”

She smiled a grim smile.

“Unfortunately they forgot, or perhaps never really knew, that the confederacy that was forged all those years ago still exists. Many of those leaders still walk. Those who have fallen have passed the reins to their children, many of whom were born in those days of fire, ice, vacuum, starvation, and death. While our ambitions and our wealth grew and our goals evolved, what they were built upon remained steadfast. That foundation? Well, it’s the single purest, most perfect, of all human values...”

“Survival.”

“The Confederacy of Sol has survived. The Confederacy of Sol will survive, no matter what we must do, no matter what we must sacrifice…”

“We will survive.”

She raised her glass.

“My dear family, who I truly love, please raise your glasses.”

“To the Confederacy of Sol!”

“To the Confederacy,” her family said in unison and drank.

“You know,” Jessica said after a moment. “Leadership can be hard. It can be the toughest thing you ever do. The decisions that you must make can sometimes be… God… It can be really hard. For example, I just held a conference with those very leaders to which we raised a glass. We discussed many things… One of them was a common problem we all shared. As we discussed a very serious dilemma the solution became clear. It was crystal clear what must happen. It wasn’t a pleasant realization. It was to be perfectly honest about it was perhaps one of the most difficult calls I’ve ever had to make. But… it is a decision that was clear… Is clear... and a command that had to be made…”

She looked at everyone and smiled sadly.

“So I made that decision, that command. And once again I must lead and to lead effectively you must lead by example,” she said as Terrence calmly filmed the group.

Her smile turned grim and her eyes turned cold.

“Our family faces a challenge, a challenge that we must rise to meet,” she said calmly. “A challenge that more than one of you has already failed. Some of you have abused the trust that the organization has placed in you and embezzled millions of credits,” she said looking at her eldest who shifted uncomfortably. “Others,” she said looking at Selene, “betrayed the organization by giving damaging testimony in order to try to gain immunity from what was in all honesty a minor criminal charge that would have resulted in, what, a few years of confinement in conditions that many of your fellow man would sell their soul to enjoy? If you cannot hold firm against that how can you hold firm in the days ahead?”

Selene flinched and looked away.

“Others have committed similar transgressions thinking that they went unnoticed,” Jessica said with ice in her voice. “and have already failed.”

Her eldest son swayed and gripped the table for support. He looked up, his eyes starting to glaze over. Selene stumbled, falling to her knees as others started to behave similarly.

“Yet more of you have, time and time again, have shirked even the slightest shred of responsibility not only for your actions but for your very existence and have absolutely nothing to show for a life filled with advantages that others can only dream of besides corruption and vice. I believe the correct term for your debased state is ‘affluenza’. You have absolutely nothing to offer… and you never will.”

She paused as the room filled with the sound of bodies falling to the floor and the shouts of confusion and alarm from the untouched.

As a horrified silence settled over the room she turned to the survivors.

“This is my fault...” Jessica said as silence fell. “our faults… I and the other leaders of the organization and of the various members of the Confederacy allowed ourselves to succumb to the dream that this day would never come. We allowed weakness and corruption into our houses. Today, we must correct that terrible mistake. The fate of our organizations, our confederacy, and thus the fate of all humanity in the Federation demands it.”

“We face a hard, grim future and we must do so free from weakness,” she said calmly, “Thieves, traitors, the stupid… the weak… have no place in that future. There is no room for the dishonest or disloyal on our ships. There is no oxygen to spare for the useless. The is no food to waste on those who cannot contribute. You are not immune to this new reality. In fact, you are now held to a higher standard. We must lead by example. We cannot be the weak link or we doom all who rely upon us. That I cannot allow. For every pleasure, for every privilege there is a price. Today, the bill has come due and the price is duty, duty to this organization, a duty to this confederacy, and most importantly, a duty to the very survival of our people.”

She glanced at her fallen son.

“Some were unable to meet their obligations and are no longer with us.”

She then looked up at the people still standing. Some of them pale with shock and horror, others like her daughter actually smiling back at her, eyes gleaming.

“To those of you who remain...” she said with a cold even voice.

“Welcome to the future.”