Diane

I was glad that Hannah had chosen to return to the outside world. The truth about Prospera, of which she had only scratched the surface, was a lifelong burden the bearer of which struggled with every day. I didn’t want that for Hannah. Even if it meant never seeing her again I wanted her to leave, I wanted her to return to the outside world where she could be with Kevin and do whatever it was she wanted to do with her life. I didn’t want her to spend her life telling women that their babies were going to be aborted or that their children were too poorly behaved to remain a part of the village and were going to be taken away.

In the outside world she had experienced real freedom which had brought about an irreversible transformation of her opinion of Prospera. In the two brief conversations that I’d had with her during her imprisonment I’d been stunned by the change that she’d undergone in the short time that she’d been away. She was stronger and more confident, more mature, and had developed a true sense of right and wrong that wasn’t compatible with the moral relativism of Prospera. The reality was that she couldn’t return to Prospera; she had changed too much, she had learned too much.

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The moment when I said good-bye to her and watched her leave was the closest I’d ever felt to her. I was able to let her go confident in the knowledge that she had grown into a capable young woman who had no problem taking care of herself and who was in the company of friends who would always be there for her. As a mother I couldn’t have been more proud than I was to see my daughter choose to follow her own path. Better she go her own way than return to Prospera and learn that there was a second fragmentium mine elsewhere in Guardian Mountain where the US base that she had seen had been moved to, or that Kevin being struck on the back of his head by an oar and thrown overboard was no accident, that I had ordered his elimination because I was concerned that he was becoming too infectious.

The image that my daughter had of me as a compassionate mother who was willing to risk everything for the sake of her daughter was how I wanted her to remember me, not as someone who believed wholeheartedly in Prospera and was fully committed to doing whatever it took to preserve its existence and safety.