On June 25, 2195, approximately two centuries after Gilead's hostile takeover, the Gileadean Studies' Twelfth Symposium meets at the University of Denay, Nunavit. The Chair, Professor Maryann Crescent Moon, indicates in her welcome to delegates that the creation of the Gileadean theocracy caused a remapping of the world. The keynote speaker, Professor Pieixoto, casts doubt on a manuscript pieced together from transcriptions of thirty unnumbered tapes, dubbed by Professor Wade The Handmaid's Tale, which were unearthed in an army surplus footlocker at a way station of the Underground Femaleroad in Bangor, Maine.
To answer questions of how, when, and by whom the tapes were made and stored, Pieixoto searched fruitlessly for information about the safe house in Bangor, then resorted to an examination of the few remaining printouts from Gilead, which were smuggled to England by Save the Women societies. He deduces that Offred was "among the first wave of women recruited for reproductive purposes" during a period when birthrates for whites were plummeting from use of birth control as well as from infertility, a virulent strain of syphilis, AIDS, stillbirths, miscarriages, and genetic deformities brought on by nuclear waste, chemical and biological weapons, toxic dumping, pesticides, and other deadly pollutants.
The speaker surmises that Offred, who never reveals her real name, may have concealed other characters' identities with pseudonyms. Data from the diary of Wilfred Limpkin identifies two Freds in early Gilead — Frederick R. Waterford and B. Frederick Judd, both Commanders and directors of the Eyes. The former, the husband of Thelma Waterford, was killed in a purge for liberal leanings and for harboring a turncoat. He seems a possible candidate for Offred's gray-haired Commander. Pieixoto surmises that Offred may have escaped to Canada or England, but chose not to go public with her story out of fear of retaliation against her family. Another possibility is that Offred's emotional sufferings forced her into seclusion.
