Freehold Press Junket may 25th, 2440:
They pause a respectful distance from the table.
Janelle (Teen Vogue): “Hey, sorry to bug you—local skaters, right? We’re doing a small feature on the park tonight. Can we buy your next round if we talk a bit?”
The girls exchange looks. Lucy nearly says yes, but Sophie Tran, pragmatic and hungry, leans her elbows on the table.
Sophie: “Add a big order of Missouri poutine and a platter of sliders and you’ve got yourselves a deal.”
Eli (NYT): “Missouri poutine?”
Sophie: “Steak fries, mozzarella sticks, and pork adobo sauce. The sliders are pulled pork adobo too—same sauce. You’ll live.”
Ayaka laughs, already placing the order on her tablet. Ten minutes later the table’s crowded again: bubbling boba, a mountain of deep fried goodness and thick brown sauce, steam curling into the night.
Teen Vogue Digital
May 30, 2440
“Skate, Spill, Repeat: The Marshall Girls Who Own Missouri’s Biggest Half Pipe”
By Janelle Cruz
Marshall, Missouri
The biggest half pipe in Missouri is not in Columbia, not in Chicago, and not in any corporate dome. It sits outside a town of fifteen thousand, inside an amusement park most people only know because a certain High Lord likes to blow off steam there.
On the night of May 26, the park is full of reporters and security and background noise about V’ren, diplomacy, and the future of Earth.
Six girls ignore all of it.
Their half pipe is lit up in clean white, concrete still holding the day’s heat. Boards rattle down transition lines, wheels scream, someone swears as they wipe out. By 10 p.m., the girls have been skating for hours and are finally taking a break, clustered around a metal table with boba, nachos, and the kind of fries only a place like Marshall would think to call poutine.
They are, in no particular order:
- Anna Marmaduke, 15, waitress, skater, and the quiet leader of the group.
- Lucy Marmaduke, 12, her loud, fearless younger sister.
- Maja Zhang, 14, the calm one, who rides her board more than she walks.
- Rina Valdez, 15, the mechanic, who talks about trucks and bearings like they are old friends.
- Sophie Tran, 13, the kid with a camera and a content plan.
- Camille Ortiz, 14, the injured skater turned designer with a sketchbook full of ripped denim and Kevlar.
All six are Marshall born and raised. None of them call themselves “Freehold kids.”
“I am the oldest,” Anna says when I ask her what it is like to be the responsible one. “Why do you think that makes me the responsible one?”
The others laugh, because they know exactly why. Anna is the one who keeps an eye on phone batteries, water bottles, and whether Lucy’s latest scrape needs a bandage or just more attitude. She also works at the Dine and Die Diner in town, where Matt Marmaduke himself sometimes eats lunch.
“What’s the first thing you remember learning there?” I ask.
Anna picks up a fry, thinks for half a second, and grins.
“Don’t take crap off assholes.”
This is the energy at the table: unfiltered, thoughtful, absolutely uninterested in being anyone’s symbol.
When your last name is Marmaduke, people assume things.
“Do you feel like that changes how people see you?” I ask.
“Only since Matt Marmaduke became famous,” Anna says. “Now people ask if I am one of the rich Marmadukes.”
Are you?
She shrugs.
“We are the Marshall Marmadukes,” she says. “That should answer your question.”
Lucy, perched cross legged on the bench, has ketchup on her knee and a scab she will show anyone who looks even vaguely interested.
“What trick are you trying to land this summer?” I ask her.
“Tre flip,” she says immediately. “I have almost got it.”
“How do you know when a fall is worth it?”
“When I can stand back up and nothing is broken.”
She leans back and smiles in a way that makes very clear that broken is a variable concept.
“I am not one of those country girls that shoots things,” she adds. “But I think we are all just built different. They shoot at lions, tigers and bears trying to eat them. I get my rush wondering whether I will land wheels or face first.”
None of the girls at this table are wearing helmets. When asked if she decorates hers, Lucy does not miss a beat.
“Do you see any of us with a helmet?” she asks, eyebrows up. The answer is obvious.
If Anna is the leader and Lucy is the chaos, Maja is the center of gravity. She has that kind of quiet you only see in people who know exactly where their body ends and the board begins.
“What goes through your mind right before you start a run?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says. “That is the moment for going zen.”
She skates to school, skates at school, skates to work at her grandfather’s market, and tries to skate home. Motion is not a hobby for her, it is the baseline.
“What does belonging mean to you?” I ask.
“That no one questions the why of anything I do,” she says. “Just accepting that I do it.”
If you want to understand Marshall, ask what it smells like.
“What smell says ‘Marshall’ to you?” I ask.
“Shishupreet Pizza,” Maja says. “They have got the best butter chicken pizza around.”
Later, Ayaka from Viví will ask them what people in Tokyo should know about this town, and Maja will tell her, “Just how Japanese it is. I don’t think anyone our age can’t speak some Japanese. Loli culture is big there, though it is not my thing. That you would be welcome here.”
Tonight, she is not thinking about audience or diplomacy. She is watching a V’ren boy, a little awkward in his borrowed shoes, trying to find his balance on a board the girls have loaned him.
“Your generation is the first to grow up alongside the V’ren,” I say. “What does that feel like day to day?”
“They have been here like a week,” she says. “The boy we showed how to start skating was the first I think any of us have met. It certainly was for me. He was sort of cute, so I might try meet back up with him later.”
There is a whole thesis about integration and trust in that last sentence, and she does not seem interested in writing it.
On the far side of the table, Rina is turning a boba straw in her fingers the way she turns a T tool when there is a board in front of her.
“When did you first realize you liked machines more than people?” I ask.
“I do not,” she says. “I simply understand the moving parts better.”
“What is the hardest part of building your own board?”
“Defending my choices to others who do not see my vision clearly.”
The park is “too flat” for what she wants, she tells me. She once saw a vid of people skating an old luge course. “If we had that here it would be perfect.”
“Do you ever name your boards?” I ask.
“Too much sentimentality in that,” she says. “Boards bust, trucks break, bearings unbearing.”
What is the most beautiful part of skating?
“When you can close your eyes and feel your next move a moment before you need to make it,” she says. “Zen, baby.”
Sophie, the de facto negotiator who secured the Missouri poutine and slider deal, is the one who turned this random table into a three outlet round table. Her dad works as a videographer for Marmaduke Media, and she grew up with cameras in the house.
“What made you start filming everything?” I ask.
“Watching my dad,” she says. “He worked from home when I was little. He gave me a camera and told me to go do interviews with my little sisters. Sadly, I mean sad for them, we keep finding content I can not post online without blurring them completely. They still walk around our bedroom without much on, which really makes livestreaming hard.”
“What do you want people to see when they watch your clips?”
“Something they have not seen before,” she says, “and hopefully that something will not be my half naked sisters photobombing me.”
She edits everything herself. For music, she created a small algorithm to sort through licensed catalog tracks based on AI interpreted video data. This is the sort of thing that would make a whole panel at a media conference. She mentions it between bites of slider.
Last at the table is Camille, who answers a lot of questions by referring to what she has broken.
“When did you start sketching clothes for skaters?” I ask.
“The first time a broken bone sidelined me,” she says. “I got really good at it the second time, nine days after the cast came off. Mom was pissed. Dad was a skater so he understood. He was a little less understanding about how a girl needs to wipe and that a hand cast means we need a bit of help. Woke up the next day installing a bidet seat.”
What makes good gear, comfort or attitude?
“Comfort all the way,” she says. “There are two kinds of skaters. Those that skate and those that look pretty holding a board.”
Who would she want to wear her first real design?
“Him,” she says, nodding toward the V’ren boy they have been teaching all evening. “He got it. The movement, the flow. He would also, I think, make me famous even if all he does is stand around with a board looking pretty.”
There is a bigger conversation to have about small towns and representation, so I ask Anna what she would say to someone who thinks places like Marshall are boring.
“Go look at the shit storm Claudia Chakrobarty or MJ Reyes stir up online,” she says, nonchalant. “And Marshall is not small by comparison of most towns in the CCA, which average about eleven hundred people.”
When I ask what home means, with the rest of the world talking about the Freehold, she does not hesitate.
“Thank god I do not live there.”
These girls live at the edge of something powerful, and they know it, but they do not feel owned by it. They are not trying to be icons or models or spokespeople. They just want one more run, one more trick landed, one more night where the concrete is theirs.
“What would you change in Marshall if you could decide policy for one day?” I ask Anna.
“Skaters get the right of way,” she says. “Pedestrians and cars can ruin a good run.”
When I ask Lucy what she hopes will not change when she is older, she grins.
“I still hope I am yelling skate or die at one hundred.”
The reporters will go home and file their pieces. Adults will argue about the Freehold, and the V’ren, and the future of the CCA. These girls will come back to the half pipe, wipe out, get up, and keep moving.
They are the kind of future you do not need policy to see. You just need to stand at the edge of the lights, listen to the wheels on concrete, and watch six Marshall kids choose motion, again and again.
Viví Online Exclusive
May 31, 2440
“Skaters, Sisters, and a New High Lord”
Additional reporting by Ayaka Mori, Marshall, Missouri
Editor’s Note:
Four days after Matthew Marmaduke’s formal recognition by the V’ren on May 27, Viví caught back up with four of the Marshall girls from our “Little Shinjuku on the Plains” feature. They were still at their usual booth at the Dine and Die Diner—same table, same fries, same humid Missouri night. We asked what they’d heard, what they’d seen, and what they thought.
Anna Marmaduke (15)
“They’ve been talking about it since the 27th,” she said, rolling her straw between her fingers. “Every table asked if I was one of those Marmadukes. It used to just be a last name. Now it’s a headline. People think that changes something, but it doesn’t. We still work. We still get grease burns. Nobody in this diner eats for free.”
She pauses and laughs softly. “Except maybe him. Matt’s got a running tab here, same as always. Coffee, pie, and a tip that makes the whole shift smile. A hundred for whoever waits on him, and another hundred for the rest of us to split. It’s overkill for caffeine and sugar, but we’re not complaining.”
When I asked if her name feels any different now than when we spoke before, she shook her head. “Nope. It still means I need to look at a family tree before I start thinking about even kissing a guy. I’m related to somewhere between a third and half the people in the county, somewhere along the line.”
She smiled without irony. “So yeah, the name still means what it always did. A lot of cousins, a lot of stories, and a lot of pie.”
Maja Zhang (14)
“They keep calling it a coronation,” she said. “We’re not really the kind of place that does kings. I get it—maybe that’s how the V’ren do things—but around here, you earn your title by what you build, not what you wear.”
She pauses, then adds with a shrug, “We’ve met a few of them now, the V’ren. Nothing formal. A few came into the deli where I work—ordered sandwiches and sides like pros, pointed at what they wanted, said thank you. They’re polite, quiet. Aliens as customers—that’s new.”
Asked how she knew one of them was from the Freehold, she grinned. “Simple. I looked at his arms and chest. Not many city guys built like country boys.”
She glances toward the counter where Anna’s refilling coffee. “If he keeps doing good, that’s enough. I just don’t want people thinking we all got crowns with breakfast.”
Rina Valdez (15)
“As long as he keeps the ramps smooth, I don’t care what they call him,” she said, half joking, half serious. “He’s family to the state, maybe. Not my cousin. My cousin’s the guy who still owes me for truck bearings.”
Later, when the others laughed, she added, “Every machine has moving parts. You just hope the one at the top remembers what the rest are doing.”
Camille Ortiz (14)
“He used to come to the kabuki shows in Little Shinjuku before he was famous,” she said. “If he still shows up wearing a crown, maybe I’ll believe it means something.”
Asked what she’d do if he dropped by the diner, she grinned. “Charge him double for fries. Kings pay full price.”
New York Times Lifestyle
June 1, 2440
“‘We Are From Marshall’: Teen Skaters Push Back on the Freehold Myth”
By Eli Rosen
Marshall, Missouri
Four days after the V’ren ship set down on Missouri soil, hundreds of journalists from around the world followed it. They came for first contact and for the man who granted sanctuary, the High Lord whose name now anchors headlines and academic conferences alike.
They did not come for the skatepark.
That may have been a mistake.
On the night of May 26, the amusement complex outside Marshall was full of cameras, security, and the faint electric tension that comes whenever history is supposed to be happening. Past the pavilion lights, beyond the food stalls and drone pads, the concrete curves of the state’s largest half pipe glowed under floodlights.
There, a group of six girls did exactly what they would have done without a single reporter in sight. They rode, they fell, they shouted, they traded boards and advice and bad jokes. At about ten in the evening, they stopped long enough to make a deal with three tired culture writers: more boba, more food, and they would talk.
The food in question was something they call Missouri poutine, steak fries, mozzarella sticks, and thick pork adobo sauce poured over the top. The sliders that came with it were pulled pork, cooked with the same sauce. It is easy to write about this dish as a metaphor for the interior, layered, heavy, a fusion of influences. It is also easy to eat, which is what we all did first.
The oldest at the table was Anna Marmaduke, 15, who works at the Dine and Die Diner in Marshall. The name Marmaduke carries weight in this part of the world, attached to land, logistics, and now a field of alien refugees. Anna wears it like a work shirt.
“Do you ever feel like your last name changes how people see you?” I asked.
“Only since Matt Marmaduke became famous,” she said. “Now people ask if I am one of the rich Marmadukes.”
She did not confirm or deny. She simply added, later, “We are the Marshall Marmadukes. That should answer your question.”
The girls at the table insist on this distinction. The Freehold is something else, something adjacent, something large and powerful and, to them, almost abstract.
“What does home mean to you when the rest of the world talks about the Freehold?” I asked Anna.
“Thank god I do not live there,” she said, without flinching.
Here in Marshall, the Freehold is less a daily reality and more a presence at the edge of the map. The roads, the park, the clinic where their mother works the night shift, all exist in its orbit. So does the skatepark. The girls are grateful for the ramps, not the rhetoric.
Her younger sister Lucy, 12, is trying to land a tre flip this summer.
“How do you know when a fall is worth it?” I asked her.
“When I can stand back up and nothing is broken,” she said.
She does not hunt, does not see herself in the old stories of frontier girls on horseback. Her thrill is vertical.
“I am not one of those country girls that shoots things,” she told us. “But I think we are all just built different. They shoot at lions, tigers and bears trying to eat them. I get my rush wondering whether I will land wheels or face first.”
When asked what she likes most about nights like this, she said, “Just hanging with other skaters. Hell, even helping some of the younger kids, or us showing a V’ren boy how to get started. He is over there still doing his thing. Kind of basic yet, but that is fine. Everyone starts somewhere.”
On the far side of the table, Maja Zhang, 14, nodded. She is the one who speaks most carefully, not out of fear, but out of a habit of thinking before launching.
“What goes through your mind right before you start a run?” I asked her.
“Nothing,” she said. “That is the moment for going zen.”
She skates everywhere, to school, at school, to work at her grandfather’s shop, back home when she can. Motion is how she balances responsibilities.
“How do you balance school, work, and still find time to skate?” I asked.
“I skate to school, I skate at school, I skate home, I skate to work and I try skate home,” she said.
“What does belonging mean to you?”
“No one questions the why of anything I do,” she said. “Just accepting that I do it.”
Her generation is the first to grow up with the V’ren as more than rumor.
“Your generation is the first to grow up alongside the V’ren, what does that feel like day to day?” I asked.
“They have been here like a week,” she said. “The boy we showed how to start skating was the first I think any of us have met. It certainly was for me. He was sort of cute, so I might try meet back up with him later.”
When she talks about the future, she does so with the casual authority of someone who already understands how borders work now.
“Do you think you will stay here or travel once you are old enough?” I asked.
“What makes you think I am not old enough?” she said. “I have a passport that would let me walk right through immigrations in a hundred different countries and no one asks where are my parents. That is what it means to grow up in the CCA, at least for Marshall and many of those I know from elsewhere.”
Beside her, Rina Valdez, 15, fiddles with a T tool as she talks. She learned to take things apart and put them back together at the kitchen table, she says, and she seems mildly amused by every question that assumes she has opinions about the Freehold.
“How would you explain the Freehold to an engineer who has never been here?” I asked.
“Do you people get it, we are not from the Freehold,” she said. “I do not know how to explain it or what it is like to live anywhere other than Marshall. Might as well ask a New Yorker like yourself about Boston or Charlotte.”
When asked if there is any invention she wishes she had made first, she grinned.
“The orgasmatron,” she said. “I would either be rich or never bored when it is too snowy to skate.”
It is easy to imagine that line being stripped from any formal transcript. It is also exactly the sort of answer that tells you who she is, and how little she feels the need to perform for any imagined adult reader.
Sophie Tran, 13, cares more than the others about audiences, but only because she has one. Her father works as a videographer for one of the Marmaduke media arms, and she grew up with lights and lenses in the living room.
“What made you start filming everything?” I asked.
“Watching my dad,” she said. “He worked from home when I was little. He gave me a camera and told me to go do interviews with my little sisters. Sadly, I mean sad for them, we keep finding content I can not post online without blurring them completely. They still walk around our bedroom without much on which really makes livestreaming hard.”
She edits her own videos and writes her own code.
“How do you pick your video music?” Ayaka from Viví asked her at one point.
“I created an algorithm to help me sort through the catalog based on AI interpreted video data,” she replied.
When I asked why she thinks stories like hers matter, she said, simply, “They tell something real.”
Last year, Matt Marmaduke referenced one of her videos during a talk about young innovators in Missouri.
“I got a lot of great comments from people who would never have seen my videos, much less subscribed to my channel,” she said. She did not sound starstruck, just practical.
The final member of the group, Camille Ortiz, 14, broke enough bones to move from pure skating into design.
“What does creativity look like in a place built on engineering?” I asked her.
“You will find it in the details, machined into pieces,” she said.
“Do you think art can describe Missouri better than politics can?”
“Politics seems to do a shitty job,” she said. “So, art can not be any worse.”
“How does designing for movement change the way you see people?”
“I do not see people as standing still,” she said. “I see them in motion, where they are going next and maybe where they are headed long term.”
If there is a single line that sums up what these six Marshall girls have in common, it might be that one. They do not see themselves as fixed in place under someone else’s narrative. They do not see the Freehold as the center of their story. They see themselves in motion, toward tricks, toward adulthood, toward whatever comes after this summer.
When asked what message she would send from Marshall to the rest of Earth, Maja did not talk about peace, or policy, or hospitality.
“We are not freeholders,” she said. “We are from Marshall.”
Later, I asked Sophie what she thinks future historians will misunderstand about her generation.
“That everyone in Missouri is part of the Freehold,” she said, “no matter how many times we tell them in our own words otherwise.”
It is likely that when the history of this year is written, the half pipe will not merit a chapter. Treaties and first contacts will fill the pages instead. Somewhere in the footnotes, maybe, there will be a mention of the night six girls took a break for boba and adobo covered fries, then got back on their boards and dropped into the concrete curve again.
If you want to understand the interior, you could do worse than to start here, at a table surrounded by shoes, with Missouri poutine cooling in the night air, and six teenagers who are very clear about where they come from, and who they are not.
