Ship's Holog: June 2078, fragment #24

On our way up to Burlington, I’ll point out a couple of interesting sights, although they may well be familiar to you from New Vermont C of C propaganda.

Let’s first take a look at the western shore of the lake, which is as different from the eastern shore as night and day. The latter, as we have seen, is totally developed and densely populated; the western shore, in contrast, is a wilderness in which wild forests grow to the lake’s edge and few structures are visible. Among the few buildings you will see are the euphemistically named “toll houses” that guard the only bridges linking the two shores. There are two such bridges: the one we are now passing, which connects Ticonderoga and New Brandon, and one further up the lake, which connects Chimney Point with the Municipality of Middlebury, home to one of the finest colleges in the northeast, from where languages are taught to people all over the world via holocom. The toll houses are manned by armed New Vermont officials, supposedly there to protect the livestock of these shore communities from incursions by wild animals from the Adirondack Preserve. In reality (and you won’t have heard or seen this on your holopod) they are there to prevent “unauthorized” people from crossing onto the eastern shore.

It is a little-known and, in my opinion, shameful fact that New Vermont’s borders are effectively sealed, so that people considered to be undesirable by the authorities can be kept out. Such undesirables include those whom the authorities suspect of being drug-traffickers, thieves, free-loaders, even terrorists, even though, unlike the neighboring USNA State of New York, New Vermont has never had a recorded incident of terrorism. While some might consider such precautions to be prudent, I believe they are increasingly being misapplied in order to prevent members of the Iroquois Nation from entering the eastern shore of New Vermont.