Martin McDonald was found wandering about the island after a horrific hurricane battered Montego Bay. He was found by an elderly English teacher, who had lived in Jamaica her adult life. Constance Louise Mc Donald had taught at the Christian Seminary in Jamaica for thirty years. She had come from London via Glasgow in 1990, a young girl, abandoned by her only love, a pilot who had suddenly run off with an American girl studying in England. Constance McDonald came to Jamaica to work for the London based Christian
Foundation. She was the Director when she found Martin wandering around the twisted, devastated resort town.
This middle aged, white woman took him in and since he was too young to communicate his name, she called him Martin after Martin Luther. Martin Luther was her hero, she felt he represented all that was wonderful and possible by man. Over the years she diligently attempted to locate Martin’s parents. She eventually learned that his mother, an African woman, had died in the storm. She had been a local teacher and her father had been a militant leader of his Zulu tribe in Africa. The story was that even after immigrating to Jamaica, he had been a marked man by a code of tribal revenge that still hadn’t died. According to locals, he remained a marked man, even in open and free Jamaica. Apparently one day Martin’s grandfather was found floating with his throat cut under a Kingston fishing pier.
As far as his father was concerned, rumor in the community was that Martin was born out of wedlock. His father was a British journalist named Thomas who worked for a newspaper in Kingston and locals believed his last name was Sutherland.
As it turned out, the religious Miss Mc Donald was a literal godsend for this handsome boy. Martin was bright, evident as soon as he entered school. No matter what grade he was in, he was the highest in his class. When he was old enough to understand his background, Miss McDonald shared with him what she had learned about his parents and grandfather.
In his young adulthood, Martin began to realize the inequities of his people. As he grew older, his own experiences began to haunt him. Deep inside he began to resent the treatment by the whites to the
underprivileged of his country. To be black or mulatto, which he was, was still, near the middle of the 21st Century, to be at the lower end of the social spectrum. He learned early to play the “nice guy” role with the Anglos and the Christian fanatics that he grew up with due to the environment created by Miss McDonald. She was truly a good person and he vowed she’d never be harmed by anyone because of all that she had done and sacrificed for him. Nevertheless, the more educated he became he realized that she represented all that he resented.
Because of Miss McDonald his life had been a good one. He received an excellent education from the best private schools in Jamaica. Martin was valedictorian from King George Academy and slated for Oxford. He played soccer and rugby. Not a large boy, he was compact, wiry, ran fast, and had excellent coordination. His peripheral vision would astound his teammates and drive his opponents crazy. He could come down the field with the ball and somehow fake to a forward while passing cross field to a streaking left forward without even looking. He was headed for Oxford, but several events occurred that totally changed his life.
Graduation from King George was a highlight for Martin. His speech was received with great acclaim by his fellow students. On graduation day he partied all day and night. Late in the graduation celebration he had finally scored with Patricia Cavendish, a classically beautiful white girl from Kingston, who also attended the co-ed King George. They’d dallied around for two years, friends and study group companions. It was all fun and nothing else until late that celebratory night. In the early morning hours on the North Beach, Martin and Patricia made love. It was his first real sexual experience.
Martin prepared himself as much as possible. Disease was the number one fear of the youth in Jamaica. Babies received shots for AIDS and other known venereal disease. The government had Sexual Establishments which offered clean sex, but what was one to do about the natural, impulsive sexual urges of youth? Martin had thought about Patricia’s white body for sometime. When he touched her for the first time, precautions were lost in the passion of the moment like they had throughout the history of man.
Martin’s conquest of her was a memorable moment. He and Patricia made love until the sun came up along the beach. In the early morning he dropped her off a block from her house and drove home. He collapsed into his small, quiet room in the home he and Miss Mc Donald had lived in all the years. In a few minutes he was sound asleep.
As he thought back on that experience with Patricia, he now realized that it had little or no value to his life plan.
It was a conquest, an initiation. Now he analyzed it as a power issue. He appreciated her womanliness, but he loved the control he had over her. A black man controlling a white woman was a victory. In his mind he had won. She was desperately in love with him. In one day, however, she was gone. Her father shipped her away as soon as he found out about the relationship. This reaction by her father reinforced his growing awareness of the racial superiority and arrogance of the white race.
When he graduated from King George Academy he had a clear path for himself. His Jamaican government
offered him a scholarship to Oxford, which he accepted. After Oxford, his final objective was to be accepted in the World Graduate Program in Paris, which allowed him to take his exam to study for his Doctorate. That was his plan.
Unexpectedly he received an offer from the new country of Atlantica which he perceived as an exceptional opportunity. They would provide him a scholarship to the University System in Pittsburgh, a government job and all expenses for three years. He could become a big fish in a seething cauldron of revolution.
Over the years he grew to resent the British sense of superiority, but what was odd, at the same time he’d gained a respect for them because they rallied and saved their way of life. They understood that the movement of populations in the late 20th Century and early in this century, would spell doom for their way of life. They acted strongly and decisively, expelling millions and closing their borders, while the opposite happened in the United States. Another irony of these movements was that over the past twenty years, Great Britain benefited from the masses of professionals leaving the United States when it was clear that, as a country, it was on the decline. The United States lost their vision and their identity while Great Britain rediscovered theirs. Martin became fascinated of all that was happening in this new world and he vowed to be in the middle of it all.
Something else occurred late summer that profoundly impacted the young man. He had come upon an article from the Atlantica Network in Nuevo York about the death of a world renown political writer, Thomas
Sutherland. Based on the stories told by Miss McDonald about his father and the fact that Kingston, Jamaica was referenced in his obituary, he became convinced that this Thomas Sutherland was his missing father. He immediately began to do further research and started with the Kingston newspapers where he found references to a reporter, Thomas Sutherland. He was a writer who had traveled the world over covering revolutions and was a particular favorite of the new regime in Atlantica. This was extremely unusual for a white writer to be so respected. Martin was overwhelmed and surprisingly felt a sense of pride for the father he never knew. The man had never married. This information reinforced Martin’s belief in himself and his revolutionary social beliefs.
The irony of what he learned from the obituary was that Thomas Sutherland had spent his last years in Pittsburgh covering the development of Alleghenia. Martin had a sense that the offer from Atlantica and his Sutherland’s involvement was an omen. He felt his future must begin in Alleghenia – so he accepted their offer to begin college and work for the government in Pittsburgh. He turned down Oxford.
His first week was to be spent, along with other scholarship students, in Nuevo York as a form of
indoctrination. What Martin saw was unbelievable for a man of his background. Most of the people he met were either Latino or Africano. The enormous city was operated successfully by this coalition, who at times were historic enemies of the old USA. The mayor, borough council and police were controlled by these diverse groups.
New York had become a total catastrophe beginning after 2030. Massive immigrations from Latino countries, coupled with a gradual then accelerated emigration by the Anglo populace to other states and countries especially to Europe. Advertisements and enticements from European countries seeking skilled workers, entrepreneurs, and business personnel filled the US media. Now in the summer of 2047 Martin walked the streets of this Nuevo York in utter disbelief. Gone were the excessively rich. The restaurants served basic, inexpensive foods. There were cafeterias everywhere along with hundreds of restaurants and open picnic areas.
These restaurants were where people brought different foods and shared what was brought or cooked over grills that flourished in sections of the parks. In the winter they were held inside. It was a social event where people got to meet one another. Since alcohol was prohibited in public establishments, everything was centered around families and worker-groups. Martin knew then he was on the right path with his life. He recognized that sometime after his Master’s degree in Paris was obtained he would return to Nuevo York, the capital of Atlantica. Although not as prominent as Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, or even Rio, Nuevo York, was the center of the new revolutionary universe in North America.
Once he began his schooling, Martin became very much at home in Pittsburgh - it wasn’t as exciting as Nuevo York, but it was the capital of Alleghenia. Martin felt he was in the best place at this time in his life. It was a place that he’d never heard of until the offer from Atlantica and the reference in the obituary of Thomas Sutherland. It all seemed predestined. Thomas Sutherland became quite an inspiration to Martin who he thought of many times.
The knowledge gained about Sutherland stoked the fire of genetic interest and Martin began a search for information on maternal grandfather. According to Miss McDonald, this man was a Zulu warrior and chief. He was amazed at his genetic mix and was proud of them all. The great irony was that this volatile young man of the revolutionary 21st Century had been raised in a Christian moral and ethical environment. According to Miss McDonald his mother was an extraordinarily beautiful black woman who had been raised a Catholic and if his findings about Thomas Sutherland were correct, he was probably Martin’s father. Martin began to sense that his fierce drive and determination came from a combination of a black Zulu chief, tempered by the genes of a white man of progressive intellect and energy. He would soon finish his college in Pittsburgh, pursue his Masters in Paris and return to Nuevo York, the center of the Northern Hemisphere with a new position.