“Give me freedom or death!” Ben James said, flicking his fork in the air for emphasis. I smiled at my husband as he enjoyed the steak I’d grilled in the backyard. He was telling me about the second castle he wanted to build, this one of ours, one that would function like us, but on Mars. We had enough wealth and weapons from his father’s early Bitcoin purchases to create multiple cities if we wanted them. And Ben James wanted them.
I watched our daughter, Marla, as she made sandwiches for her brothers before they went home; she was beautiful, the sun shining behind her long hair as the breeze blew through our kitchen windows, gently caressing her summer dress in the hot summer air, her apron showing off her slim waist. We made eye contact, understanding each other deeply. My youngest, Eloise, six, sat at the table doing her reading lesson.
At Ben James Castle, every child was educated at home. Some mothers worked together to lighten the load, teaching other children for a year or two, then changing that.
“They say Mars is like the Old West,” Marla said. I turned away, knowing before either of them could say another word how the conversation was going to go. “Survival is so hard that women have to 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 his fork down, raising an eyebrow as he assessed it. “Maybe these boys haven’t figured out how to be men yet,” he said. “I won’t tolerate that behavior in my castle on Mars any more than I do here. No woman in my family will work for another man. I won’t allow prostitutes in my family or in my castle.”
A sly look appeared on Marla’s face. “So what makes men work for other men?” she joked. “Weren’t you working for-“
Ben James’ chair made a painful squeak on the floor as it bounced off his feet. My husband and teenage daughter stared at each other, and I wanted to grab her arm, pull her back, and tell her to stop being such a rebellious, impulsive child. In the castle, the king’s word was law. He could banish you, or worse, at a whim.
“You are a messy young woman,” he said quietly. “You don’t understand how the world works. You have everything you need. As a family, we are free from the tyranny of the state. And you are lucky enough to be where you belong. Women are happier at home, cooking, working with the children. I won’t hear any more of this foolishness.”
“Yes, yes, Bitcoin gives freedom,” Marla smiled. “Without freedom, death is better.” In a way only teenagers can, she smiled at him mischievously, her mouth closed, and went back to finishing her sandwiches dramatically. “I really like spreading mayonnaise on my slices of bread while my brothers go shopping for rockets to a distant planet.”
“Get out!” Ben James shouted.
“gladly.”
Marla left, proudly dropping the knife on the unfinished sandwiches.
I sighed and looked at him sympathetically and said, “You will learn.”
“Jeremy was here yesterday,” he said.
“Oh?” I asked, my heart starting to beat fast.
“He wants to marry her.”
My eyes lit up with excitement. “He’ll make her play by her rules.”
Finally! I’ve been planning this for years.
“Indeed. In a few more years, his Bitcoin holdings will be enough to build a small castle of his own. Not a city, but certainly a small town or a large farm, with dozens of other families. And he will run it very well.”
My four sons ran home at the same time; Jared, 7, Beau, 13, and the 17-year-old twins Jackson and Luca.
Ben James smiled broadly and sat back down on his steak. “Finish your sandwiches,” he said to me.
She laughed good-naturedly and walked to the table with a smile and started working on finishing their food.
Ben James’s voice was in agreement. “Boys, this is a good woman! Never ask a woman to cook you anything for dinner; you have to tell her. If she says no, walk away. If she complains about the way you asked her, find another woman. That’s the ultimate test of a woman’s quality.”
I handed my kids their meals, and asked Luke how their day was.
He smiled at me and said lovingly, “A bunch of things you won’t understand.”
I thought back to the days before the war broke out, before society collapsed and chaos reigned, when I was in school learning how to build the rockets he would most likely buy. He had no idea how to operate them.
But Ben James always said that building rockets would never satisfy me. My happiness was at home. I smiled at my four children and my husband. Gone were the days of curiosity and problem solving. My father-in-law’s wealth made me truly happy here, in this house, without the dopamine rush that comes from solving intellectual and engineering problems every day.
I thought I married Ben James for love. But he quickly explained that women have been marrying multiple husbands for survival since the dawn of time. Women were not made to love men, only to respect them. It was his duty to love me, to provide for me as I had with my children. He taught me a great deal, and his passion for self-mastery was contagious.
My eyes settled on the quote framed in the living room. “I don’t think we’ll ever have good money again until we take it out of the hands of the government. That is, we can’t take it out of the hands of the government by force. All we can do is offer something in a subtle, indirect way that they can’t stop.”
Bitcoin. The tool that leveled the power dynamics between the powerful and the ruled. The vehicle for freedom for millions of people. The great catalyst.
I smiled.
When Ben James sat down with Marla the next day and told her she was going to marry Jeremy, I was impressed by her silence. She didn’t flinch, she didn’t even look at me. She just stared blankly at the ground for a few seconds. After a moment, a small smile appeared on her face and she looked Ben James straight in the eyes. “Dad.” She blinked. “You’ve always taught me so much.”
He looked surprised. “What?”
She shrugged and said, “That’s it. I want you to know that despite everything, I took this seriously.”
He looked at me in confusion. Then he said to her, “You will get married in two months, once all the wedding details are arranged. You and your mother will agree on how to arrange it.”
Marla finally looked at me. There was a new seriousness in her face that I hadn’t seen before. But I understood; she was ready.
I had been preparing for this day for years, and it had gone well; I had rented the church a mile from home, bought the clothes she would wear on her honeymoon, and transferred the money her father had saved as a dowry to new institutions, ready to add the money to her husband’s. My daughter was prosperous, wealthy enough to own land of her own, and a good deal of it.
My husband saw the airline charges later in the day. “I see you got her honeymoon tickets. They’re a bit pricey.”
I smiled and said, “I wanted them to travel on a private plane.”
“It’s okay, I should have done it. I know women don’t really like money matters. It’s not your fault they overcharged you.”
I shrugged, remembering the first time he hit me; I had spent the money on a plane ticket, planning a trip to visit my friends. He had made it clear to me that women who travel alone for pleasure always lead to affairs and evil, especially when they go with their girlfriends. Later, he had made it clear to me that wanting to visit my mother was also forbidden. I knew that after marrying Jeremy, Marla would no longer come to visit me. She would stay home with her children even if Jeremy visited Ben James.
Two months later, everything was ready. I said to Ben James, “We’ll meet you at church.” My eyes fell on the framed phrase again: “By a devious roundabout way.”
The boys headed to the bachelorette party while Marla, Jared, and Eloise climbed into the car and I put Marla’s honeymoon bag in the trunk. We were scheduled to meet at the church that evening for the wedding. Marla and I smiled at each other as Ben James and my older sons drove away.
We got into the car. Two hours later we arrived at our destination. She grabbed her bag, which contained clothes for Marla, me and the two little ones. The same twelve words kept ringing in my mind and Marla’s. We hurried to the private jet that was waiting for us, and the pilot himself came forward to meet us and check our four discounted tickets before escorting us inside the plane. We were in the air in ten minutes.
_____________________
We had been living in Castle Roxon for six years. It took us two full years to find Ben James. He quickly realized that we had fled to a small, more prosperous country than he had. There was nothing he could do to get us back. I had my own bitcoins that he had never known about, enough to get away, to hire security, and he couldn’t get to us—I no longer feared for our lives.
Soon I was a participant in the prosperity of Roxon City, no longer living in a castle with only 50% of its brainpower and only able to buy old rockets, but in Roxon, a community that built new rockets and created innovation. I brought my insatiable curiosity, my joy of discovery, and my brainpower to everyone around me, contributing to society and the rocket industry. Many of my female colleagues worked with men, and our combined brainpower put us light years ahead of small, backward castles like Ben James’s. Our weapons alone were enough to wipe his city off the face of the earth before he had time to point an angry finger at the government.
My daughter married Jason. They had twins and were expecting their third child of many. Jason continued to work as an engineer in the oil industry, and Marla worked remotely from home, teaching physics to college students while staying home full time with the young children. She earned her bachelor’s degree with his support, and during college he stayed home to care for the kids. She was now taking online courses toward her graduate degree. They also had a thriving art community, painting every morning and selling pieces for exorbitant prices, a shared passion that had initially brought them together. Every evening the four of them would have dinner together, and any time I wanted to stop by with Jared and Eloise, we were welcomed with open arms.
By the time she remarried, Ben James had become nothing more than a far-fetched joke.
My husband Henry used to say, “I can’t believe he knew that Bitcoin would give men the power and freedom to vote with their feet, but he couldn’t have predicted that it would give women the same power that men have.”
“He actually thought we would all go back to traditional female-only roles, stuck at home, being told,” Marla added. for him What we like what We want“.”
I was laughing, and Henry was happily wrapping his arm around me. “Our freedom means that men have to be better so that we can choose them—that we have the means to escape, to prosper, to have the power to choose who is best for us, to have a voice at the table.” I added cheekily, “Men have to show more evidence of action.”
Henry hugged me tightly and said, “We have become better men because of motivation. It seems to me that this is a positive thing for society.”
Marla smiled happily and said, “Give me freedom or death.”
This is a guest post by Grandma Ninja. The opinions expressed here are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.