Summary

“The Briefing” is a fictional response to a prompt asking contributors to “meditate on the idea of a fortress that has never been attacked” (202). Roy describes “The Briefing” as an allegory told by a “phantom narrator” (203) addressing his or her troops.

The narrator wonders whether the fort is beautiful or not, and describes it as a “fragile testament to trepidation, to apprehension, to an imagination under siege” (204). The narrator explains that there is said to be gold in the fort, and the origins of the Snow Wars in the changing climate. Corporations have begun trying to make artificial snow that can survive in slightly warmer temperatures. Recently MountainWhite has been competing with Scent n’ Sparkle. He corrects Macbeth, saying that trees can unfix themselves from the earth and that they have begun to do so. The corporate Snow Wars have begun to spread...