Very nice. I like that all of the musing is anchored around a moment in the OC that we can picture, and we keep coming back to that anchoring moment. It's easy to lose a sense of "here and now" in a fic that has a lot of back story, but you don't do that.

Also, I notice that you mentioned the different colonies' treatments of same sex marriage. Any chance this was inspired by the recent victory for gay marriage in Massachusetts?