The group discovers that Colletta is arming post-Aztec and post-Mayan Indians to build a couple of battalions of soldiers (something very illegal under Commonwealth law) in an attempt to capture the Gate, holding the Commonwealth hostage. Colletta duly strikes, giving the other families the grounds to oppose him militarily. The revolt is put down, but at a price: the radio device and the Gateway are destroyed, and with it, the connection to our world. What little talent the Commonwealth has in physics works feverishly to re-establish the Gate. They are successful, but when they look through the new gate, they do not see FirstSide (New Virginia slang for Rolfe's home Earth) Oakland, but instead a snarling saber-toothed cat and a dead giant sloth. While trying to fix his radio in his basement, Rolfe accidentally created a gate to an alternate California in which Europeans had yet to discover the Americas. After looking at the new world on the other side of the Gate by himself, Rolfe brought a dozen trusted members of his wartime platoon to see for themselves. Later, while camping in an alternate California after hunting and panning for gold, the group agreed to keep the "Gate" a secret. They believed (correctly) that they could exploit the wealth it offered them, and they recognized Rolfe as the leader of this endeavor. Using one of his men's ties to the Mafia to cover up where they were getting the gold, Rolfe and his allies gained the starting capital necessary to start their own country. To protect the secret of the Gate, they bought up the residential area in Oakland around the Gate, converting it into an industrial complex. Immigration to "New Virginia", as they called it, began with close family members and friends of the men involved, but it later included settlers drawn from various ethnic groups looking for places to hide: fugitive Nazis, "pieds-noirs", Afrikaners, Rhodesians, and former Russian communists. By the present day in the novel, the Commonwealth of New Virginia had expanded across the new California, with outposts as far as Alaska and Colorado and colonies in Hawaii and Australia. The original founders of the country structured the government so that their families would remain in power long after those originals were dead, and they also adapted laws to causes and hobbies to which they were partial. One example was Rolfe's love of hunting, which encouraged him to partner with the San Diego Zoo to import large African animals, which he then moved through the Gate and released into the wilds of his new North America.