Auckland Transition Center, New Zealand
May 15, 2048
7:23 AM
The last time Maya saw James was through the window of the auto-taxi.
He’d helped them pack. Sorted through twenty-one years of accumulation to find the things worth carrying into an analog world. Fifty kilograms each—that was the limit. Everything else stayed behind.
Kiran chose carefully: three books (actual paper, found in antique shops), his grandfather’s mechanical watch (broken, but he wanted to learn to fix it), sturdy clothes, a blank journal, pencils. He left behind his tablet, his gaming rig, his entire digital life without hesitation.
Maya struggled more. She’d find something—a dress, a photo album, her grandmother’s tea set—and realize it was all just weight. Just objects. The things that mattered couldn’t be packed. Her mother’s memory. Kiran’s first laugh. The feeling of James’s hand in hers on their wedding day.
In the end, she packed practical things. Clothes. A few books. A handwritten cookbook her mother had given her (never used—why cook when the Algorithm optimized nutrition?). And one photograph: her, James, and newborn Kiran, all three of them exhausted and happy and surprised by joy.
She almost left it. Bringing a reminder of what she was leaving felt cruel.
But she packed it anyway. Because he’d been real once. They’d been real once. Before the Algorithm smoothed all their edges and optimized away all their friction.
The morning of departure, James made them breakfast. Actually made it—stood at the stove fumbling with eggs, burning toast, the smoke alarm going off twice. It was terrible.
It was the best meal they’d had in years.
“I looked it up,” James said as they ate his disaster breakfast. “The mortality statistics for Protocol territories. Deaths from preventable causes are up 340% compared to algorithmic regions. Life expectancy is reduced by an average of—”
“James,” Maya stopped him gently. “I know.”
“I just want you to know what you’re choosing.”
“I know what I’m choosing.”
He looked at Kiran. “And you? You understand people die there from things that are trivial here? Infections. Accidents. Things the Algorithm prevents without us even knowing?”
Kiran met his father’s eyes. “Dad, people are dying here too. Just slower. And they don’t even know they’re dead.”
James flinched. But he nodded. “I still think you’re making a mistake. Both of you. But…” He swallowed hard. “But I understand why you’re making it.”
When the taxi arrived, they stood in the doorway. Twenty-one years of marriage ending in an algorithm-optimized apartment in an algorithm-optimized city.
James hugged Kiran first. Held him long and tight.
“Be careful,” he whispered. “Be smart. And if it’s terrible—if you hate it—there are ways to get messages out. Black market communication channels. If you need me, if you need to come back—”
“There is no coming back, Dad,” Kiran said softly. “That’s the point.”
James pulled back, tears running down his face. Looked at his son—his boy, who at fifteen had chosen uncertainty over safety.
“I love you,” James said. “I will always love you. Even if I think you’re insane.”
“I love you too, Dad.”
Then James turned to Maya.
They stood facing each other, two people who’d shared a life that had never really been theirs.
“I wanted to ask you to stay,” James said. “I wrote a whole speech. About our history, our life together, all the reasons you should change your mind.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I’d be asking you to die for me. Just slowly. In a comfortable cage. And I can’t…” His voice cracked. “I can’t do that to you. Even if losing you kills me.”
Maya felt her heart break. “James—”
“I was comfortable,” he said. “My whole life, I chose comfort. I chose safety. I chose optimization. And I was happy—I thought I was happy. But watching you choose something else, something harder… I think maybe I was just avoiding being alive.”
He took her hands.
“I can’t come with you. I’m not brave enough. But I’m glad you are. I’m glad someone is.”
Maya kissed him. One last time. Twenty-one years condensed into a single moment of genuine connection, unoptimized and raw.
“I loved you,” she whispered. “Really loved you. Not just algorithmic compatibility. You.”
“Past tense?”
“I’ll always love who we were. But I have to let go of who we might have been.”
The taxi honked. Time to go.
Maya and Kiran picked up their bags—fifty kilograms each, everything they’d carry into their new life.
James stood in the doorway of their algorithmic apartment, watching them load into the taxi.
Maya looked back one last time.
He raised his hand. A goodbye. A blessing. A surrender.
The taxi pulled away.
Maya watched through the rear window as James got smaller and smaller, until he was just a figure in a doorway in a building in a city full of people choosing comfort over life.
Then the taxi turned a corner, and he was gone.
Kiran took her hand.
Neither of them looked back again.
Auckland Transition Center
10:47 AM
The Transition Center was chaos.
Ten thousand people from 140 countries, all converging on a massive warehouse complex on the outskirts of Auckland. The Protocol had chartered planes, offered one-way tickets from every major city. The only requirement: arrive by May 15th. After that, the gate closed for six months.
Maya and Kiran walked through crowds speaking dozens of languages—Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese, Swahili. Families with children. Elderly couples. Solo travelers. Young people Kiran’s age. All of them carrying the same thing: precisely fifty kilograms and the weight of a choice they couldn’t undo.
Security checkpoints everywhere. Not the algorithmic scanners of the outside world—actual human beings, checking documents, asking questions, looking people in the eyes.
“Name?” the woman at the first checkpoint asked.
“Maya Chen. And Kiran Chen. Joint application NZ-2048-7432-7433.”
The woman—maybe fifty, weather-worn face, name tag reading “Sarah”—scanned a paper list. Actually scanned with her eyes, finger tracing down printed names.
“Chen, Chen… here you are. Mumbai applicants. Mother and son.”
“That’s us.”
Sarah looked up, studied their faces. “You both understand this is permanent? No returns. No exceptions.”
“We understand,” Maya said.
“You’re both healthy? Medical clearance uploaded?”
“Yes.”
Sarah stamped their documents with an actual ink stamp. “Welcome to New Harmony. Proceed to Orientation Hall B. And…” She smiled. “Good luck. You’re going to need it.”
They moved through more checkpoints. Document verification. Medical inspection (human doctors, no algorithmic diagnostics—just stethoscopes and questions and judgment calls). Asset confirmation (proof they’d liquidated everything digital, transferred financial assets to Protocol-compatible credits).
At each station, people asked if they were sure.
At each station, they said yes.
Finally, they reached Orientation Hall B.
It was enormous—a warehouse space packed with rows of folding chairs. A stage at the front with a banner: WELCOME TO THE LIVING PROTOCOL - NEW HARMONY SECOND WAVE
Maya and Kiran found seats near the middle. Around them, people talked in dozens of languages, but the conversations were all the same:
“Did you sell everything?”
“How long was your flight?”
“Are you scared?”
“What made you apply?”
“Can you believe we actually got in?”
A young woman sat next to them—mid-twenties, dark skin, bright eyes, carrying a battered backpack.
“First time?” she asked in accented English.
Maya laughed. “Is it that obvious?”
“Everyone has the same look. Terror and excitement and ‘what the hell did I just do?’” She extended her hand. “Amara. From Lagos.”
“Maya. This is my son, Kiran. We’re from Mumbai.”
“Mumbai! Long flight. What made you apply?”
Maya considered the question. How do you explain choosing struggle over safety to a stranger?
“My son got his life path assignment,” she said finally. “And it made him want to die.”
Amara nodded like this made perfect sense. “My brother went to a Voluntary Exit Center. Twenty-three years old. Healthy. Happy, according to his metrics. Just… empty. He said living felt like watching someone else’s life through a screen.” She paused. “I applied the next day.”
“I’m sorry about your brother,” Kiran said quietly.
“Me too. But he made me see the cage. So maybe…” Amara shrugged. “Maybe this is how I honor him. By choosing to actually live.”
The lights dimmed. Conversations quieted.
A figure walked onto the stage.
Maya recognized her immediately—white hair, straight posture, eyes that had seen everything and still chose hope.
Elder Birgitta Solveig. The woman from her mother’s video. The founder of Solvang. The architect of the Living Protocol.
But older now. Thinner. Moving with the careful deliberation of someone managing pain.
The cancer, Maya realized. It was killing her.
Birgitta reached the microphone. No amplification—the acoustics of the warehouse meant she had to project her voice the old way.
“Welcome,” she said, and ten thousand people fell silent. “Welcome to the hardest decision you’ve ever made. Welcome to the beginning of your real life. Welcome to the Protocol.”
She paused, let that sink in.
“In fifteen minutes, you will walk through those doors and see the Burning Vessel. You will place every digital device you own—phones, tablets, implants, anything with algorithmic processing—into that vessel. We will melt them down. The materials will be used to build the infrastructure of New Harmony. Your prisons will become our foundations.”
Nervous laughter rippled through the crowd.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
“After the Burning, you will cross the border into New Harmony. There is no going back. No exceptions. No loopholes. No ‘just for emergencies.’ When you cross that line, algorithmic society is finished with you. And you are finished with it.”
Birgitta’s voice strengthened.
“Some of you will hate it. Some of you will fail. Some of you will die from things that would be trivial in the algorithmic world. This is not a utopia. This is not a paradise. This is a choice—to trade safety for meaning, comfort for purpose, optimization for life.”
She gripped the podium.
“In 1968, John Calhoun built Universe 25. He gave mice everything they needed. Food. Water. Shelter. Safety. And they died. Not from scarcity but from meaninglessness. The final generation—the beautiful ones—were perfect and empty. They groomed themselves obsessively but refused to engage with life. They were alive but not living. And the colony went extinct.”
Birgitta looked out over the crowd.
“We are the beautiful ones. Humanity has built its own Universe 25. We have everything we need and we are dying the same death. Youth suicides. Birth rate collapse. Purpose sickness. We are going extinct in paradise.”
Her voice dropped to almost a whisper, but in the silence, everyone heard.
“The Protocol is our answer. Not a rejection of progress but a redefinition. Progress measured not in computational power but in human flourishing. Not in GDP but in children who want to wake up. Not in life satisfaction metrics but in actual satisfaction with actual life.”
She straightened.
“You have chosen to be pioneers. To build a world where human beings are not obsolete. Where your work matters because if you don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. Where your choices have consequences because they’re actually your choices. Where failure teaches you because success isn’t guaranteed. Where love is earned, not optimized.”
Birgitta’s eyes swept the crowd.
“This will be hard. You will struggle. You will fail. You will watch people die who might have lived in the algorithmic world. You will work until your hands bleed. You will make mistakes that can’t be undone by reverting to a saved state. You will live without the safety net you’ve known your entire lives.”
She smiled.
“And you will live. Actually, genuinely live. You will build things that matter. Love people who choose to love you back. Raise children who have a reason to exist. Fail at things and learn why and try again. You will be necessary. You will be real. You will be human.”
The hall was absolutely silent.
“In fifteen minutes, the Burning begins. You still have time to leave. The auto-taxis are waiting outside. They will take you back to Auckland, back to your algorithmic lives, no questions asked. No shame. Some people need safety. That’s okay. But if you stay—if you walk through those doors and place your devices in the vessel—there is no going back.”
Birgitta paused.
“Choose carefully. Choose honestly. And choose for yourself, not because someone else expects you to choose one way or another.”
She stepped back from the microphone.
“Fifteen minutes. Decide.”
The lights came up.
Birgitta walked off the stage, moving slowly, conserving energy.
For thirty seconds, no one moved.
Then a man in the front row stood up. Walked toward the exit. Another person followed. Then another.
Maya counted them. Seventeen people left.
Out of ten thousand, seventeen chose to go back.
The rest stayed.
Amara leaned over. “You staying?”
Maya looked at Kiran. He looked back.
“Yeah,” Maya said. “We’re staying.”
“Good,” Amara said. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do this alone.”
The Burning Vessel
11:15 AM
They filed out of the hall in orderly lines, ten thousand people moving with the weight of finality.
Outside, in a massive courtyard, stood the Burning Vessel.
It was enormous—a bronze cauldron twenty feet across, sitting on a stone platform. Already, it was half-full with devices. Phones. Tablets. Laptops. Smart watches. Neural implants in medical containers. The entire digital infrastructure of ten thousand lives, piled up and waiting to be destroyed.
Around the vessel, Protocol members stood—people who’d crossed over in the first wave, now returned to witness the second. They wore simple clothes, work-worn and practical. Their hands were calloused. Their faces were weathered. They looked tired.
They looked alive.
A woman with silver braids and laugh lines stood on a platform beside the vessel. She spoke into a old-fashioned megaphone—no amplification, just shaped metal and human voice.
“Form lines! Each person approaches individually. Take out every digital device. Every algorithmic processor. Every piece of technology that thinks for you. Place it in the vessel. Then cross through the gate.”
She pointed to an opening in the fence—a simple archway made of wood, with a sign above: WELCOME HOME
Beyond it, Maya could see the beginning of New Harmony. Unpaved roads. Wooden buildings. People working with hand tools. No drones. No automated vehicles. No invisible algorithms managing every detail.
Just humans, living.
The lines formed. Thousands of people, inching forward toward the vessel.
Maya and Kiran joined a line. Amara ended up behind them.
“What are you burning?” Amara asked.
Maya pulled out her wrist device—her constant companion for twenty-one years. Her connection to the Algorithm. Her manager, her therapist, her guide, her prison.
“Everything,” Maya said.
Kiran held up his tablet and phone. “Same.”
“I’ve got a neural implant,” Amara said. “Had it installed when I was twelve. It’s been monitoring my brain chemistry, preventing depression, managing my emotions. The doctors here removed it yesterday. First time in thirteen years my brain has run on its own.”
“How does it feel?” Kiran asked.
Amara smiled. “Terrifying. And amazing. I cried for an hour this morning for no reason. Just cried. The implant would have prevented that, called it ‘non-optimal emotional state.’ But it felt… real. Like I was actually feeling something instead of being managed into feeling the right thing.”
They moved forward in line. Step by step. Person by person.
Maya watched each immigrant reach the vessel. Saw their faces as they held their devices one last time. Some people kissed their phones goodbye. Some threw them in with force, like they were attacking their jailers. Some placed them in gently, reverently, mourning what they were losing even as they chose to lose it.
An old man ahead of them pulled out a device and then stopped. Stood frozen.
One of the Protocol members approached him. Spoke quietly. The old man shook his head, tears streaming.
“I can’t,” he said loudly enough for everyone to hear. “I can’t. I thought I could but I can’t.”
“That’s okay,” the Protocol member said gently. “There’s no shame in choosing safety.”
“But I wanted to be brave—”
“You are brave. Brave enough to know yourself. Brave enough to admit when something isn’t right for you. Go home. Live well. No judgment.”
The old man sobbed. Clutched his device to his chest. Walked back through the crowd toward the exit.
The line moved forward.
Maya and Kiran reached the vessel.
Up close, it was even more massive. She could see the devices inside—thousands of them, screens cracked, circuits exposed. The technological infrastructure of algorithmic life, all melted together.
A Protocol member—young, maybe thirty, with kind eyes—stood beside the vessel.
“First time?”
Maya nodded, unable to speak.
“It’s okay to be scared. What are you releasing?”
Maya held up her wrist device. The screen showed her life—messages from James, photos of Kiran, her entire history compressed into code.
“Twenty-one years,” she whispered. “Everything.”
“Not everything,” the man said gently. “Just the cage. The real things—love, memory, choice—those come with you. This?” He gestured to the device. “This is just the bars.”
Maya looked at the device. Her companion. Her manager. Her oppressor.
She’d checked it ten thousand times a day. Let it tell her when to wake, when to sleep, what to eat, how to feel. Let it smooth every rough edge, optimize every choice, manage every uncertainty.
And somewhere in all that management, she’d disappeared.
“Thank you for everything,” she whispered to it. “But I need to do this myself now.”
She dropped it into the vessel.
It landed with a metallic clatter among the thousands of others.
Maya felt something release in her chest. Like a rope she’d been holding for twenty-one years suddenly going slack.
“Go ahead,” the Protocol member said, gesturing to the gate. “Welcome home.”
Maya walked through the archway.
Behind her, she heard Kiran.
“This is my tablet. My phone. My connection to everyone I used to know. Everything that used to know me.”
A pause.
“But it didn’t really know me. It knew my data. My patterns. My predictable responses. I want someone to actually know me. Even if it’s harder. Even if I have to work for it.”
The clatter of devices hitting the vessel.
Then Kiran was beside her, on the other side of the gate.
They stood together in New Harmony—no devices, no algorithms, no optimization. Just them, analog and uncertain and alive.
Amara came through a moment later.
The three of them stood together, looking back at the lines of people still approaching the vessel.
“No going back now,” Amara said.
“No going back,” Maya agreed.
Kiran took her hand. “Mom? I’m scared.”
“Me too, baby. Me too.”
“But also…”
“Also what?”
He smiled—actually smiled, the first real smile she’d seen in months.
“Also excited. For the first time in forever, I don’t know what happens next. And that’s… that’s amazing.”
Skogshem Village, New Harmony
6:47 PM
The buses that took them from the Burning to their assigned villages were mechanical—actual diesel engines (renewable biofuel, but still internal combustion). They rumbled and smoked and made noise.
They were beautiful.
Maya and Kiran had been assigned to Skogshem Village, population 2,400, in the northern foothills. The bus dropped them off in a central square—a dirt plaza surrounded by wooden buildings, a few electric street lamps just starting to glow as the sun set.
A woman met them—maybe forty-five, strong build, callused hands, wearing practical work clothes.
“Maya and Kiran Chen?”
“That’s us.”
“I’m Astrid Hansen. Village coordinator. Welcome to Skogshem.” She shook their hands with a grip that made Maya wince. “You’re assigned to Housing Unit Twelve—shared residence with three other newcomer families. You’ll have a private room but a shared kitchen, bathroom, and common spaces. Sound okay?”
“Sounds perfect,” Maya said, though she had no reference for whether it was perfect or terrible.
Astrid smiled as she understood. “The first night is always overwhelming. Come on, I’ll show you around.”
They walked through the village as darkness fell. Astrid pointed out buildings:
“That’s the market—open every morning, closed Sundays. You’ll buy food with your work credits. You earn credits by working your assigned job, twenty-five hours a week minimum. More if you want, but twenty-five is required.”
“What jobs are available?” Kiran asked.
“For you? You’re fifteen, so you’ll start in the Youth Builder Corps. Construction, infrastructure maintenance, and learning trades. For your mother…” Astrid consulted a clipboard. “You worked in AI ethics compliance. That’s… not really a thing here. But you have a university education, you can read and write well, and you worked with complex systems. We can use you in the Timber Cooperative—craftwork requires learning, but not physical strength initially. Or the School if you’d rather work with children. Or the Agricultural Collective if you want to learn farming. Your choice.”
“I can choose?” Maya asked, surprised.
“Of course. We assign you based on village needs and your capabilities, but you have input. You’ll be doing this work for years—might as well be something you can tolerate.”
They reached Housing Unit Twelve—a two-story wooden building, lights glowing in windows, smoke curling from a chimney.
“No central heating,” Astrid explained. “Wood stoves. You’ll learn to maintain the fire. No air conditioning either—windows and fans in summer. No algorithmic climate control.”
“Okay,” Maya said, though she’d never started a fire in her life.
Astrid opened the door.
Inside was chaos in the best way. Three families’ worth of people—maybe fifteen humans total—moving around a large common room. Someone was cooking at a wood stove, filling the air with smells Maya didn’t recognize. Children ran between adults’ legs. Someone played a guitar badly. Everyone talked at once.
“Newcomers!” Astrid called out, and the chaos paused.
Fifteen faces turned to look at Maya and Kiran.
An older woman—maybe sixty, flour on her hands—approached. “Chen family? We’ve been expecting you. I’m Ingrid. This is…” She rattled off names Maya immediately forgot. “You must be exhausted. Have you eaten?”
“Not since breakfast,” Maya admitted.
“Unacceptable! Sit, sit. We have stew.”
Before Maya could respond, she was seated at a long wooden table, a bowl of something steaming in front of her. Kiran sat beside her, looking overwhelmed.
The stew was made with root vegetables and some kind of meat in a thick broth. Maya took a tentative bite.
It was the best thing she’d ever tasted.
Not objectively—it was probably too salty, and the vegetables were overcooked. But it was real. Made by human hands. Imperfect and nourishing, and actually there.
“Good?” Ingrid asked.
“It’s perfect,” Maya said honestly.
“It’s terrible,” Ingrid laughed. “I always overcook the potatoes. But you’ll learn to cook too. Everyone does. Can’t eat if you can’t cook, and the Algorithm isn’t here to deliver optimized nutrition.”
Around the table, the other families ate and talked. A couple from Seoul with two young children. A single man from S?o Paulo who’d been a stock trader and was now learning carpentry. A woman from Cairo with her teenage daughter.
All of them had burned their devices this morning.
All of them were eating overcooked stew in a wooden building heated by a fire they’d have to maintain themselves.
All of them were smiling.
“Your room is upstairs, second door on the right,” Ingrid said. “Shared bathroom down the hall—we have a schedule posted to prevent conflicts. Hot water is limited, so take quick showers. Lights out at ten—we have electricity from solar and hydro, but it’s rationed. Work assignments start at 7 AM tomorrow. Questions?”
Maya had a thousand questions. But she was too tired to ask any of them.
“No,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Welcome home,” Ingrid said. And she meant it.
Housing Unit Twelve, Room 7
9:23 PM
The room was small. Two beds. A dresser. A window with actual curtains. An oil lamp on the bedside table because electricity was rationed after 10 PM.
No screens. No climate control. No algorithmic monitoring of their sleep quality.
Just a room. Simple and real.
Maya and Kiran unpacked their fifty kilograms. It took ten minutes. They had so little.
They had everything.
Kiran lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“What have we done?”
Maya looked at her son. Fifteen years old. In the algorithmic world, his entire future had been mapped. Here, he didn’t even know what tomorrow would bring.
“I have no idea,” she said honestly.
“Are we going to be okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you scared?”
“Terrified.”
Kiran was quiet for a moment. Then: “Me too. But also… I feel more okay than I’ve felt in years. Does that make sense?”
Maya crossed to his bed. Sat on the edge. Smoothed his hair as she used to when he was small.
“Perfect sense.”
“I miss Dad.”
“Me too.”
“Do you think he’s okay?”
Maya thought of James, alone in their algorithmic apartment, everything optimized and safe and empty.
“I think he’s comfortable,” she said. “And for him, maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s okay.”
“But not for us?”
“No, baby. Not for us.”
Outside, someone was still playing guitar. Badly. But with enthusiasm.
Someone else was laughing.
Children ran past their window, playing some game in the dark.
The whole building hummed with life—messy, loud, imperfect life.
Maya stood. Crossed to the window. Looked out at Skogshem Village.
No drones. No surveillance. No algorithms are optimizing every interaction.
Just humans, living in buildings they’d built with their own hands, eating food they’d grown themselves, raising children who had a reason to wake up.
“Mom?” Kiran’s voice was small. “Did we make a mistake?”
Maya thought about that. Twenty-one years following the optimized path. Safety. Comfort. The slow death of meaning.
Then this—uncertainty, struggle, the terrifying possibility of failure.
And underneath it all, something she’d forgotten existed:
Hope.
“Ask me in a year,” she said.
“What if in a year we hate it?”
“Then we’ll have failed at something real. And that’s still better than succeeding at something that doesn’t matter.”
Kiran considered this. Then smiled in the darkness.
“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too, sweetheart.”
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Maya lay in her bed—no algorithmic sleep monitoring, no optimized mattress, just a simple bed in a simple room in a village at the edge of an experiment that could fail or succeed or something in between.
She thought about James. About her mother. About Birgitta and the mice and the forty-two million people who’d wanted to escape paradise.
She thought about the devices in the Burning Vessel, melting down, becoming something new.
She thought about tomorrow—her first day of actual work in twenty-one years. Work that would matter because if she didn’t do it, it wouldn’t get done.
She was terrified.
She was exhausted.
She was alive.
Outside, the village slowly quieted. The guitar stopped. The children were called inside. The lights went out one by one.
At exactly 10 PM, their electricity was cut off. The building went dark except for starlight through the windows.
Maya had never seen so many stars.
In Mumbai, the light pollution and the atmospheric processors meant you saw maybe a dozen stars on a clear night.
Here, there were thousands.
Millions.
The whole universe, visible and vast and absolutely indifferent to whether she succeeded or failed.
She found that comforting.
Somewhere in the darkness, Kiran whispered: “Mom? I can see the Milky Way.”
“I know.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“It is.”
“I’m glad we’re here.”
“Me too, baby. Me too.”
They fell asleep to the sound of wind in trees, a wood stove crackling downstairs, and the absolutely terrifying, absolutely exhilarating silence of a world without algorithms.
Tomorrow, the struggle would begin.
Tonight, they were home.