The Iron Republic: Journey Through The Ice Wall

Professor Morris takes Barrington to his private office to explain how the Iron Republic is governed. Barrington can hardly believe it. There are no campaigns and no elections the way America runs them, and every citizen, brilliant or dull, has the same chance at office. Barrington pushes back hard: surely the strongest minds should rule. Morris answers that the least brilliant lawmakers are often the most trustworthy, and that the people who write the laws hold no office at all. From the citizen’s seal to the lowest office filled by lot, he lays out a system meant to make rulers “the servants and not the masters of the people.”

Professor Morris has cleared his day to show Barrington the city, and the first thing he does is lend him a suit of clothes so he won’t draw crowds. Dressed like a local, Barrington is whirled across the capital to the Capitol. It is a vast marble hall modeled on the Roman Pantheon, with seating for fifteen thousand and a ceiling lit like a night sky. Around the walls runs a painted history of the Republic, starting with a ship fighting its way through polar ice. Barrington asks whether the country has known war. The answer is more violent than he expects.

Barrington lies awake in the Professor’s house, trying to decide whether the Iron Republic is real. The ship, the ice wall, the flying train and the girl downstairs all feel too strange to be true. He is a practical man, and he has just fallen for a woman he met only hours ago. At sunrise, music from an unseen source fills the whole city. It is the Matin, a hymn improvised each morning on a giant instrument and heard for miles. Out in the garden among the grapevines, Barrington learns who composed it. The answer is a name he was hoping not to hear.

Barrington is offered an entire city's worth of entertainment on command — opera, lectures, a live orchestra piped straight into the room — and turns it all down for something simpler: he wants the professor's daughter to play for him herself. What follows is an evening of music, singing, and a flirtation Barrington can barely believe is happening, as he confesses he's pinched himself more than once since arriving, half-certain this whole world is a dream he's about to wake from. It's the most purely romantic chapter yet — and the first real spark of a connection that's going to matter.

Barrington steps off the train into a vaulted station in the heart of the Republic's capital — and straight into a city that runs on nothing he recognizes. No horses. No noise. Streets full of gaily dressed people gliding past in silent, self-propelled carriages under brilliant electric light. At Professor Morris's home, the wonders keep coming: an "electric fire" that glows without flame, and an instrument reaching to the ceiling that turns out to be something Barrington never expected. Then Morris's wife enters — and Barrington gets his first taste of Republic hospitality from the other half of the household.

Barrington sets out to deposit his fortune — $50,000 in American gold — and discovers there's nowhere to put it. In the Iron Republic, gold isn't money at all, and everything he's ever understood about wealth is about to be turned upside down. Performed entirely by Jason Hightower.

New episodes drop every Tuesday at 9pm ET.

Barrington is still reeling from a broadcast unlike anything he's heard — real-time news, delivered across the Republic as if by magic — when he's introduced to Professor Morris, an American who found this place years ago and chose to stay. Two strangers, two worlds colliding, one impossible place tying it all together. Performed entirely by Jason Hightower.

New episodes drop every Tuesday at 9pm ET.

A strange, impossibly fast vessel tears out from the hidden harbor to meet them — and its pilot has never heard of the outside world Barrington calls home. For the first time, the name "Iron Republic" is spoken aloud. Performed by Jason Hightower.

New episodes drop every Tuesday at 9pm ET.

Caught between towering walls of ice, Barrington's ship is swept forward by a current with no way to turn back. Whatever lies ahead, there's no going back now. Performed entirely by Jason Hightower.

New episodes drop every Tuesday at 9pm ET.

Barrington climbs alone to get his bearings — and sees something that shouldn't exist. Beyond the "impenetrable" ice wall: open water.

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New episodes drop every Tuesday at 9pm ET — don't miss Episode 5.