Epilogue

And in the end we survived. We were found in the ruins of my house buried under the rubble, soaked in blood and rain, protected from the worst of the damage by the mattress and pillows of my bed. Beta and I were repaired, along with the Suburbs, and now live together in married bliss in the Suburban avenues where I was always destined to spend the rest of my life. Beta is now a normal Suburban housewife, indistinguishable from all the others, and I commute each day to work to provide for my home and family.

The Suburbs were restored to their former state. Houses were rebuilt, the streets were cleaned, the electricity and telephone lines were reconnected, and the television aerials replaced on the roofs. Beyond the Suburbs, the country gradually repaired itself from the chaos, but not without some political cost.

The Red Government was ousted by a coalition of the White, Blue, Black and Illicit Parties which rewrote the constitution to justify its seizure of power. This fragile stability didn’t last for very long. In a succession of suspicious elections and power-broking, first the White and then the Black Parties were ousted from the coalition, their departures not being long followed by them being banned, like the Red and Green Parties before them. Within a year, the Blue Party was also ousted and became similarly illegal, and the country became a nominally independent Illiberal Socialist Republic - an independence which was not to last for very long.

The Truth remained lost. All mention of it was purged from Illiberal Socialist doctrine and no record remains that it had ever been the subject of a quest. The official history of the Illiberal Socialist Revolution does not even have a footnote dedicated to the great pursuit, and indeed it is as if it had never happened. The quest for the Truth continues as before. Nobody would ever believe us that it has in fact already been discovered and has now been destroyed. It is now, as it had always been, a timeless and possibly insoluble enigma.