NOTE: This is the conclusion of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.

There was no choice.

Jenni wasn’t about to dump her job on short notice and fly halfway around the world to who knows what. It was foolish of me to ask, but I can’t imagine doing this without her. Robin wanted to at least finish out the year at Grady High, and John, I think he was just scared of such a radical change happening so quickly.

Besides, it made sense for Jenni to sign the American Oath. She had little record of disloyalty, and could blame any past gifts to liberal groups on me, then get passports for the kids while I took the chance Cuban offered. I wouldn’t have to face the Hobson’s Choice of the Oath until I got back.

If I came back.

But I was also too afraid to stay. The last few days had been very frightening. The President’s speech may have played well in China, and it certainly played well in the markets, with the dollar moving to near its previous level against most major currencies. But you don’t declare the political opposition illegal after a 51-48 election and expect Americans to take it lying down. Don’t expect me to take it without comment, at any rate. I’m afraid some of my diatribes scared Jenni. She told me several times to keep my voice down, saying the neighbors might hear. We’d never worried about that before. (She also forbade me to blog any more on politics until I was safely away.)

Far more frightening was the fact that you don’t tell half the people (and most of the gun owners) that their neighbors might be traitors without consequence. Just surfing the Web, reading RSS feeds and Googling words like “Americanism” was enough to chill the blood. A host of new sites and organizations were appearing, with names like “Faith Defenders” and “Bush Soldiers,” filled with hatred toward any liberal inclination, anywhere, their rhetoric telling Blue America to get out, drop dead, and preferably both.

The leader of the opposition should have been Senator Kerry, but his private plane crashed soon after take-off from Nantucket. The Massachusetts Governor immediately replaced him with a loyal Republican and no liberal Democrat, not even Barney Frank (who was never afraid of anything) was willing to take him on in a special election. Would Frank survive the coming plague? I wondered.

In some places the situation was becoming comical. Tennessee, which had been talking about allowing the teaching of “intelligent design,” now re-enacted its pre-Scopes law prohibiting the teaching of evolution. University of Tennessee professor Glenn Reynolds, a loyal Republican if there ever was one, was on faculty charges for daring criticize the new law.

The headquarters of the Southern Poverty Law Center, to which we’d been contributing for years, was firebombed, destroyed, its records gone and its Web site defaced. A half-dozen states had passed resolutions declaring the American Civil Liberties Union a terrorist front.

When friends at Greater Democracy complained about this, I referred them to the past, to the House Un-American Activities Committee, and to Pat McCarran, the rabid anti-communist after whom Las Vegas named its airport. We survived them, I wrote in my e-mails. We’ll survive this. Americans will wake up.

But not on my watch, I added to myself. I closed my Schwab IRA and sent instructions to send it to Virgin Maverick. I took a few thousand dollars out of the bank for expenses. And I packed a small bag.

It’s amazing how unimportant stuff becomes when you decide something else is more important. The books could stay, the furniture, my kitchen and everything in it. I suggested that Jenni sell the van, and took with me just a few changes of clothes, some toiletries, and some well-chosen photos of my wife and the kids at various ages, My hard drive was to be mirrored on South African servers, and would await my arrival. My old cell phone I would leave – a new camera phone would be waiting for me.

The only piece of technology left was my wife’s Zire – she had already transferred her personal stuff to her company laptop – and a wireless keyboard that worked with it.

Cuban, or someone working for him, had e-mailed confirmed reservations on South African flight 210, business class, leaving at 10:30 AM. It had a layover in some place called Santa Maria, which turned out to be in the Azores, and a second quick change at CapeTown, before a two-hour flight to Joburg, as the natives called it. Taking out the seven hours for the time difference, it was still nearly 24 hours in the air, assuming the connections worked.

I added a sleep mask and inflatable travel pillow to my kit, and was ready to go. A gym bag went on the plane, and another went with me. Inside were the photos, a few silly novels to help me avoid thinking, and the toiletries. (Jenni insisted – you’re going to have to brush your teeth at least once on a 24-hour flight, she said. She always looks out for me.)

So that’s where I am, as I write this. I’ve got the Zire propped up on the seat tray, and while this is taking several memo entries I’ll be able to combine them and blog the result quickly once I get in. The wireless keyboard is a pain in the ass, I should tell you, but I’ve got nothing but time here.

Business class sounded like luxury before I left, but now, as the Sun comes up over the South Atlantic and we angle slightly east toward CapeTown, it feels like steerage. My back hurts from lying flat on it, my eyes hurt from sleeping, and my muscles have turned to jelly. I feel every one of my 50 years. When I get to Joburg I think I’ll shave off my beard.

But at least I have an answer to the first question I had asked Cuban when he called, why me? There were several good candidates, he said, but I wrote faster than most of the others, I covered technology as my first beat, I understood blogging, I had shown expertise in some other beats, I was a known liberal, accused of education, and given that I was still anonymous (some of the others considered apparently weren’t) I figured to be easy to get.

So here I am, off on what I hope will be my last great life adventure. I’ve been nervous before, I tell myself. I was nervous when I started college, when I began my first (failed) job, and in the first weeks after losing my last job, at the Atlanta Business Chronicle, nearly 22 years ago. But I’ve never been this nervous.

I’ve never put this much on the line -- my life, my fortune, my sacred honor. And with what for collateral – a phone call from a billionaire I’d never heard of before?

Well, you only live once. My old world is dead. A new one awaits. I am part of the American Diaspora.

End of The Chinese Century.

Stay tuned to this channel for the sequel: American Diaspora.