Signal strength spikes. MonctonIX surges. Starlink alone wasn’t enough—but now, the sky is layered.
Washington calls it infiltration.
Canada calls it insurance.
“You can’t embargo the sky,” says a telecom engineer in Sherbrooke. “You can only make people choose whose sky they want to use.”
Backlash comes fast.
Washington freezes assets. Cancels Social Security transfers. Declares any former federal employee cooperating with the transition guilty of treason. Some walk off the job. Most don’t.
A trucker in Bangor shrugs:
“I don’t care whose flag it is. If the roads stay open and my family’s safe, I’ll take it.”
But not everyone adjusts.
A Vietnam vet in Nashua buries his medals and won’t speak to his kids—organizers of the town’s food co-op. A civics teacher in Connecticut breaks down mid-lesson on the Electoral College. Armed groups torch Canadian flags in northern New Hampshire. Border towns flare with tension.
In rural Maine, militia groups mount sporadic roadblocks—never lasting more than a few hours.
Not raided. Cleared.
No mass arrests. No flashbangs. Just neighbors saying: enough.
Fenway hosts a unity game. The anthem’s sung in both languages.
In Washington, they try to spin it. “A liberal tantrum with snow,” one anchor sneers. But in classified briefings, the mood is different. Boston’s port is now foreign. Raytheon prepares to move to Florida, dragging 18,000 jobs with it. MIT’s data centers now fall under Ottawa’s cyber laws.
The Defense Department calls Fort Devens “operationally significant.” The CIA says nothing. But cables are being rerouted.
“We just lost our oldest colony,” one strategist mutters. “And nobody fired a shot.”
By December, the map is redrawn. Customs booths rise along the Hudson Valley. Pennsylvania imposes tariffs. Upstate tourism plummets. Federal buildings in Providence are quietly emptied, signs removed by dawn.
In Montreal, a Canadian immigration officer grins while handing a New England family their first passports:
“You’re not really immigrants,” she says. “More like repatriated neighbors.”