I imagine it not being secret as in AS. Instead some high-tech companies convince the EU to create an open zone, known as the abenzone (AZ), to serve as a place for startup tech companies to locate and hire people from around the world, without dealing with immigration laws. They can also raise money without rules to protect investors. Companies can choose to do filing according to EU law at their option if they need to raise capital.

AZ is located on a peninsula on the east coast of Greenland, 300 miles north of Iceland. The first building is really utilitarian and holds space 50 apartment units and space for a handful companies with a high-speed internet connection. It's mostly kids who go there to work at startups whose founders want the foreign labor, but really want to have twenty-somethings focused on coding. The only distractions are junk food and Red Bull.

These companies are really goofy ones. Only really weird people want to go to live and work in one building built on permafrost. Most are weird in the way that fail, some hang on for years making enough money to support importing junk food for their engineers, some get sold with the founders coming home with a small chunk of change, but one is really weird and stupid in the way Facebook was when I first heard of it. After the IPO they start investing in genetic engineering biotech, and build several more buildings with better amenities.

People hear about these young people with money to burn, and people bring them things they think they want: a chicken soup with dextroamphetamine for people in the coding zone for a day without eating, girlfriends and boyfriends from Eastern Europe, powerful explosive devices they set off just before the sun comes up for the first time in the spring. The EU expresses concern about this. The founders establish democratic bylaws to establish legal mechanisms to control these things. The elected AZ committee relegates these unsavory vices to one building. The vices actually become a draw for tourists who want to gamble, experiment with drugs, or engage in other bad habits. Most people come away surprised at how boring and gritty the glutinous side to humanity is and never return. Enough people try it, though, to fill several new hotel buildings.

The stories, though, bring retired people who just want to see something new. They don't go the redlight buildings. They just want to gawk at a place where you can do anything you want. It's a bizarre feeling. Kids can smoke cigarettes and set off fireworks. People are walking around with a gun on their belt if they want. Your space, your person, your things are considered sacred, so no one would dare bother you. There are third generation kids wondering around, making juvenile decisions, speaking with a that bizarre AZ accent, Indian-accented English with many Danish and Icelandic words mixed in, and everyone but their parents leaves them alone. This environment is a catalyst for all kids of economic activity.

Soon people in the EU become jealous of the opulent and wrongly-perceived licentious lifestyle of AZers. Critics call it the Monkey Zone because "aben" sounds like the word for monkey in Danish. They point out there are some people living as poor as the average poor person in the EU, while there some of the richest people live there. Some AZers practice polyamory. Children as young as six years old work in paid jobs and only go to a few hours of school. Most people own a gun, so if you add up 80,000 residence, it's a stockpile similar to a small army. And everyone remembers the media-exaggerated story of the 16-y/o Albanian girl who moved their for a computer job and ended up in prostitution.

The EU attempts to tax AZ as the rest of Europe unless it address those issues, but the institutions that have sprung up over the past 70 years under those original bylaw articles reject the taxes and reject the authority of the EU. The countries of the world consider invading, but major corporations hold shares in the companies operating in that weird arctic open zone. Their boards do not want to see an armed conflict near their investments. Moreover, AZ is now 80,000 people, most of whom own at least a shotgun. You can bomb them into the ice age, but you can't make them produce wealth for Deutschebank.

Economic sanctions would be tough. People of world want their genetically engineered seeds. They want some AI algorithm that anticipates your needs. They think they want a girlfriend and MDMA on spring break, and their wise parents know they can't be lectured into wanting things middle-aged people want at age 19. They want their robots to care for the elderly.

So sanctions are limited. The gov't of AZ signs an agreement to being an open zone within the EU, but everyone still calls it Abenzone. It expands to other nearby islands and peninsulas and even to two settlements on the ice sheet. No one's going to invade an ice sheet. People live there, cutting hair, mining minerals, designing robots, keeping the peace, making machines that make things and shipping them around the world, being born in high-tech hospitals and in hippies' living rooms, having kids competing in academic team, playing hockey, or going off alone to the glaciers to make art; dying high-tech hospitals that extend conscious life and in their homes hooked to machines that make the brain perceive nothing but bliss at the end.

Over 100 years later an AZer goes on vacation. EU is still known for high quality products and culture. Sub-Sharan Africa is known for robotics manufacturing. South America is all down-to-earth hardworking people. In Asia, you can trust people to follow good rules and not disturb lost valuables. People think of Russia as tough and hard-working.

US is known for being paranoid. It's a major hassle to get in, and they're scared to death of crime once you get in. You feel kind of safe there, like being in a jail. On the plane you look at some young man's US passport. Their passports have quotes from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, documents AZ drew from in its Bylaw Articles. But the words don't mean anything because you feel like men with guns are always watching you in the US. Just don't say anything that could be construed as dangerous, the AZ state dept advises. It's worth it, though, to hike through part of Grand Canyon, ski the Rockies, or see the monuments of a great Republic hundreds of years ago. The AZ state dept warns the gov't tracks rental cars and listens for words consistent with terrorism, which can mean almost anything the US gov't disapproves of. As long as you don't run afoul of some high-ranking official, though, you'll be fine. Just stick to the tourist areas, don't mention the name of weapons, and avoid demonstrations, esp outside of designated free-speech zones. The Danish gov't provides consular services for AZers, but can be of little help if you're accused of even helping someone with drugs, "terrorism", or weapons of any kind.

Amazingly, in just over one hour of sub orbital flight, you're away from the nasal English with its thick American R sounds and O's that sound like A's, and back in AZ, with its comfortable Hindi/Danish/Icelandic-accented English, and people whose most fundamental belief is everyone's life is sacred and they must be let alone to live it in peace.