“Give me liberty or give me death!” Ben James said, stabbing the air with his fork for emphasis. I smiled back at my husband as he enjoyed the steak he’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 thanks to his father’s early Bitcoin purchases to create several cities if we wanted to. And Ben James wanted to do it.
I looked over at our daughter, Marla, who was diligently making sandwiches for her siblings before they came home. She was beautiful, the sun shining behind her long hair as a breeze came through our kitchen windows and gently fluttered her sundress in the warm summer air, her apron accentuating her slender waist. We made eye contact, and we understood and understood each other deeply. My youngest daughter, Eloise, 6, was sitting at the table doing her reading lesson.
At Ben James’s Citadel all the children were taught at home. Some mothers helped to lighten the load by teaching other mothers’ children for a year or two and then changing schools.
“They say Mars is like the Wild West,” Marla said. I turned around, knowing before either of us said another word how this conversation would play out. “Survival is so difficult that women must be willing to act like men, to do everything men do, either because there’s too much to do or because men die.”
Ben James put down his fork and raised an eyebrow as he assessed her. “Maybe those boys haven’t figured out how to be manly yet,” he said. “That behavior wouldn’t be tolerated in my citadel on Mars, any more than it is here. No woman of mine will ever work for another man. I don’t want whores in my family or in my Citadels.”
Marla got a sly look on her face. “So what does that make men working for other men?” she teased mischievously. “Didn’t you used to work for…?”
Ben James’s chair made a painful screech on the floor as he stood up abruptly. My husband and teenage daughter stared at each other, and I wanted to grab her by the arm, pull her back, tell her to stop being a rebellious, impulsive child. In a Citadel, the Sovereign’s word was law. And he could exile you, or worse, on a whim.
“You are a young, chaotic woman,” she said quietly. “You cannot understand how the world works. You have everything you need. As a family, we are free from the tyrannies of the state. And you are lucky to be where you belong. Women are happiest at home, cooking, working with the children. I don’t want to hear any more nonsense.”
“Yeah, yeah, Bitcoin gives freedom,” Marla smiled. “No freedom, better death.” In a way only a teenager could do, she smiled mischievously, pursed her lips, and went back to finishing the sandwiches dramatically. “I love spreading mayonnaise on slices of bread while my brothers are out shopping for rockets to a distant planet.”
“GET OUT!” Ben James shouted.
“With joy.”
Marla walked away, smugly dropping her knife onto the unfinished sandwiches.
I sighed and looked at him sympathetically. “He’ll learn,” I said.
“Jeremy was here yesterday,” he said.
“Oh, yeah?” I asked as my heart began to race.
“He would like to marry her.”
My eyes sparkled with excitement. “He would put her in order.”
Finally! I had been planning this for years.
“Indeed. A few more years and his bitcoin holdings will be enough to build a small citadel of his own. Not a city, but a small town or a large ranch, which would house a dozen more families. He would manage it very well.”
My four boys all ran into the house at the same time: Jared, age 7, Bo, age 13, and twins Jackson and Luke, age 17.
Ben James smiled broadly and sat back down in front of his steak. “Finish your sandwiches,” he told me.
I laughed good-naturedly and turned with a smile to the counter and got to work finishing his meal.
Ben James’ voice was approving. “Boys, that’s a good woman! Never ask a woman to make you dinner; you must tell her. If she says no, walk away. If she complains about how you asked, find another woman. It’s a fundamental test of a woman’s quality.”
I handed my kids their meals and asked Luke how his day had gone.
He smiled at me. “There are a lot of things you wouldn’t understand,” he said fondly.
I thought back to my days before the war broke out, before society disintegrated into anarchy, when I was in school learning to build the very rockets he was probably thinking of buying. He had no idea how they worked.
But Ben James always said that building rockets would never fulfill me. My happiness lay at home. I smiled at my four children and at Eloise, my husband. Those days of curiosity and problem solving were long gone. My father-in-law’s wealth allowed me to be truly happy here in this home, without the dopamine rush of the intellectual and engineering problems I had to solve every day.
I thought I had married Ben James for love, but he soon explained to me that women have been marrying hypergamously, for survival, since the beginning of time. Women were not created to love men, only to respect them. It was their job to love me, care for me, and protect me, just as I did my children. He had taught me much, and his passion for personal sovereignty had rubbed off on me.
My eyes fell on the framed quote in the living room: “I don’t think we’ll ever have any quality money again before we take it away from the government. I mean, we can’t take it away from the government by force, all we can do is introduce, by some indirect and cunning means, something they can’t stop.”
Bitcoin. The tool that has balanced the power dynamics between the powerful and the governed. The means of freedom for millions of people. The great driver.
I smiled.
When Ben James sat Marla down the next day and told her she was marrying Jeremy, I was struck by his calmness. He didn’t flinch, he didn’t even look at me. He just stared blankly at the floor for several seconds. After a moment, he cracked a small smile and looked Ben James straight in the eyes. “Father.” He blinked. “You’ve always taught me so much.”
He looked puzzled. “And?”
She shrugged. “That’s all. I want you to know that, despite everything, I’ve taken this very seriously.”
He looked at me puzzled, but then said, “You will be married in two months, once all the wedding details are settled. You and your mother will arrange it.”
Marla finally looked at me. There was a new seriousness in her face that I had never seen before. But I understood: she was ready.
I had been preparing for this wedding day for years and the pieces fell into place easily: I rented the chapel a mile from my house, bought and packed clothes for her honeymoon, transferred the money her father had saved as a dowry into new UTXOs, was ready to pool funds with her husband. My daughter was prosperous, wealthy enough to own her own land, a large portion of it.
My husband saw the charge to the airline later that day. “I see you bought her honeymoon tickets. A little pricey.”
I grimaced. “I wanted them to fly on private jets.”
“Okay, I should have. I know women don’t like finances. It’s not your fault you were overcharged.”
I shrugged, remembering the first time she’d hit me; she’d spent money on a plane ticket, planning a trip to visit my friends. She’d made it clear to me that women traveling alone for fun always ended up in adventures and evil, especially when they went with their friends. She’d later explained that wanting to visit my mother was equally taboo. I knew that after I married Jeremy, Marla wouldn’t come to visit me anymore. She’d stay home with her kids even if Jeremy visited Ben James.
Two months later, everything was ready. “We’ll meet at church,” I told Ben James. My eyes fell once more on the framed quote. “Some clever detour.”
The boys headed off to the bachelor party while Marla, Jared, and Eloise piled into the car as I packed Marla’s honeymoon suitcase into the trunk. We were to meet at the chapel that night for the wedding. Marla and I smiled at each other as Ben James and my older kids drove away.
We climbed into the car. Two hours later we arrived at our destination. I grabbed her suitcase, which contained clothes for me, Marla, and the two small children. The same twelve words echoed through my head and Marla’s as well. We hurried to the waiting private plane, and the pilot stepped forward to greet us and verify our four discounted tickets, before escorting us inside. We were in the air ten minutes later.
__________________________
We had been living in Rockson Citadel for six years. It took Ben James two full years to find us. He quickly realized that we had fled to a small nation that was far more prosperous than he was. There was nothing he could do to get us back. I had my own Bitcoin that he had never known about, enough to flee, hire protection, and he couldn’t get to us; I no longer feared for our lives.
I soon shared in the prosperity of Rockson, no longer a Citadel with the brainpower of only 50% of its population, able only to buy faulty rockets, but Rockson, a society that built new ones and created innovation. I added my insatiable curiosity and joy of discovery, my brainpower, to that of everyone else, contributing to society and the rocket industry. My many female colleagues worked with the men, and our combined brainpower put us light years ahead of small, backward Citadels like Ben James’s. Our weapons alone could wipe his city off the planet before he had time to point his angry finger of judgment.
My daughter married Jason. They had twins and were expecting the third of their many children. He continued to work as an engineer in the oil industry and Marla had a remote job at home, tutoring college students in physics while staying home full-time with the young children. She had earned her bachelor’s degree with his support, and during his college studies he had stayed home to care for the kids. He was now taking online courses to earn his graduate degree. They also had a thriving community of artists, painting every morning and selling the pieces for a high price, the shared passion that had brought them together in the beginning. Every night the four of them had dinner together, and whenever I wanted to stop by with Jared and Eloise, they welcomed us with open arms.
By the time I remarried, Ben James was already the butt of ridicule.
My husband, Henry, said, “I can’t believe he knew Bitcoin would empower and free men to vote with their feet, but couldn’t foresee it would give women the same power as men.”
Marla would add: “He actually thought we would all go back to traditional women’s roles, stuck at home, with the words of him that us like what We want.”
I laughed, as Henry’s arm went happily around me. “Our freedom means that men have to be better for us to choose them; we have the means to run away, to prosper, to have the power to choose who is best for us, to have a voice at the table.” I added cheekily, “Men must try harder.”
Henry hugged me tighter. “We are better men because of motivation. I think it is a net benefit to society.”
Marla smiled happily: “Give me freedom or give me death.”
This is a guest post by Ninja Grandma. The views expressed are solely her own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
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