For That Which Was Our Trouble Comes Again Out of the West

Brigham Young (June 1, 1801 - March 22, 1850) was the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, serving from 1847 until his death in 1850. His tenure was dominated by the Utah War, fought by the LDS Church against the California Shogunate when Young attempted to establish an independent Mormon state in contested territory between the Shogunate, the United States, and Mexico. In February of 1850, Young was captured by the samurai general Omura Sorin. After allowing Young a series of audiences to defend his beliefs, Omura sent a letter to Shinkyo recommending that the LDS Church be outlawed, and had Young boiled alive. Though Omura went on to eliminate Mormonism from the Shogunate entirely, Young is remembered as a martyr by the few surviving LDS communities in the United States and Canada.

–New Cornell Encyclopedia, Cornell University Press. Ithaca, 2026.

You would’ve thought the Shogunate would be more suspicious of a Mormon in their Salt Lake City US Consulate, Joseph Cooper reflected, not for the first time in his CIA career. They’ve probably fooled themselves into thinking they got all of us. Or they’ve forgotten we ever existed.

Well, as he had discovered lately, the young, college-educated counterculturalists were starting to remember the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, if their families had ever truly forgotten. He had stood with his mouth hanging open, the first time he saw a tattoo in the Deseret script– it was something even he only learned about through an academic interest in his religion’s history. Around the University of Utah campus, this and other Mormon symbols had been adopted as the fashion of youthful rebellion, hung up in dorms and waved about on cardboard during protests. As far as Cooper could tell, this was purely a statement against the Shogunate, a symbol of its historical sins generally, not in favor of the LDS Church specifically. Many commoners from this part of the Shogunate were descended from Mormons who abandoned the Church rather than fight the Shogunate to the death or risk renewed persecution on returning to the United States, but he had yet to meet a Mormon revert. A few– not even a majority of this youth movement– had abandoned Catholic or Buddhist upbringings for some flavor of evangelical Protestantism or libertine agnosticism, and that was as close as they seemed to get. Well, to be fair, their only decent sources of Mormon teachings were a few specific corners of the internet, and though it was unlikely anybody had been charged in over a century, Cooper’s sect was still on the Shogunate’s books as an outlawed institution.

Most members of this cultural movement– Smithian Cosplayers, as their detractors called them, which they themselves shortened to Smithians– took no more action against their government than peaceful protests demanding legal equality for minority religions and a more democratic legislative process. Those, he kept tabs on, but the more radical ones were invaluable to his intelligence work. Their movement wasn’t yet regarded by their government as a serious threat– they were certainly less feared as a destabilizing force than the hippies had been by his own government– but he had moved quickly to build ties between the more extreme Smithians and the CIA, before the Shogunate Gendarmerie wisened up. For the moment, he had young officers in their armed forces, bureaucrats in their han governments, and engineers in their defense industry feeding him information with their superiors none the wiser.

One of his favorite spots to meet up with the radical cell leaders was a cafe near the embassy, not the least reason for which was that he could see the entrance from his office window, and keep tabs on who else the cell leaders spoke to after he left. Early on, he had witnessed no more than a few shouting matches and scuffles with their opposite extremist youth movement, the fiercely Catholic, pro-aristocratic Ultras. Lately, however, Cooper had seen a familiar face going in and out, sharing a table with the ringleaders. A Colombian, a resident of Salt Lake City whom CIA had flagged as a possible MSI agent, in the Shogunate without a diplomatic cover. Though most of Cooper’s contacts lined up far more closely with the United States than with the Marxists in their ideology, at least a few of them had wished aloud to start an interdenominational Christian Socialist succession movement in Utah, opposed to the Shogunate but willing to trade friendship and support with both the US and Colombia. A pipe dream, but one CIA could leverage for intelligence assets.

MSI, too, it seemed.

Yes, Francisco Alejandrez de la Torre, or simply Frankie to his sources, was milking three particular radicals for information by appealing to that very fantasy. Observed at a distance by Joe Cooper, he walked into Main Street Coffee & Tea, and sat down with a doctoral student by the name of George Jensen. Jensen had been among the first adopters of Smithian fashion, with the letters “CTR” tattooed on his chin, and now served as a liaison between several old friends of his from his undergraduate program and the intelligence agencies who paid for their information. Some of these friends were on the left side of the movement, and only wanted their reports sold to MSI, while others– his friend from before he switched out of the Industrial Engineering program, Jen Higuchi, most notably– demanded assurance he only had dealings with CIA. He double-dipped, of course. How else was he supposed to buy enough FAM-95s and high explosives to take out the Daimyo of Utah?

“Any news from Aldonza?”

“Oh, Jen? Nah, she’s been holding out lately. She wants my CIA contact to check for leaks… apparently, her pilot friend thinks some of the information she sent me got to MSI.”

“Goodness, George, I can’t imagine how that would’ve happened.” A bemused smile crossed Frankie’s lips. “We could take her in for questioning. My English is good enough to pass for American, isn’t it?”

“Poblano, maybe. I don’t think that’ll be necessary. I think I can calm her down, get her talking again, but you’ll need to promise me you’ll be more careful about how you use her information in the future.” Jensen frowned. “She’s trying to get close to the pilot, get info besides schematics and specs that way. If you play it smart, this source might win you Mexico City, without ever realizing she was doing more than helping the Americans design a Duelist to carve a buffer state out of Utah. Just… please don’t get her killed, Frankie.”

“Letting a source get caught is bad for business, George. If nothing else, we’ll get her out, make sure she’s set for life.” Alejandrez stood. “Get her talking again soon. We have thirty days until the next match, and we’ll need as much time as we can get to design and strategize around any changes they make.”

Driving back to his apartment, Alejandrez checked his rearview mirror at intervals, to make sure he wasn’t being tailed, but ignored a van that pulled out of the American consulate after he left the cafe. It was the Californians he needed to worry about, not the Americans.