When there was no paper, he was happy.
He had been happy before, decades ago, when there was paper, and when there were pens, and when there were cities.
But he has not been like that for a while. The transition went unmarked, definite though it was. He had tried to go back, to again put ink to sheet, but pens failed him. He tried a computer, using a hand generator so that three hours of cranking would get him an hour to write. He liked that it was self-limiting. He liked the physically of it. But he could not make himself like the writing.
A concerned friend brought him a mechanical typewriter. Archaic, atmospheric, transitional. He would bike down to the library, eventually settling in there after the calamity. The heft and the noise of it pleased him, and he sat surrounded by works from antiquity. It felt good to be so out of place. New streamed constantly across sheets of glass balanced around the room. He could ignore it if he thought of it as water, alien and ever-flowing. When he read the words, the typewriter stopped working. He stopped working. The glass panes were all broken a month before the long emergency. The man missed it. The calamity, in return, decided to miss him too.
He left the library months afterward. The antique books had become fire for his meals of roast pigeon. The typewriter, out of ink, had daily shed letters so that the man could roast the feral birds on miniature spits. He had meant to start with famous initials, but he had also destroyed all the biographies. Instead, he picked out phonemes, the sounds an elementary schooler thinks is one letter before being taught that it is two. Towards the end, it became a challenge; he had to use Welsh pairings. It felt right. Welsh never feels right. He left because of that. His home had gone from baptismal spring to lingering sepulchure. It was not a place he longed to inhabit.
The city had been evacuated to the north and the West. There were mountains there, higher ground and better rain. Wilderness waiting for a last despoilation. The man went East, backwards as he must. And he wrote, not very well and not with pleasure. But he wrote. It was what he could do. Clean paper eluded him, so he wrote on newsprint and on tuesday coupon serials. He pulled scraps from ruin, carved the letters from scraps. His was the only record left in the suburbs. It was so very twentieth century to do that, but the suburbs needed a record. The city built one for itself.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
hashtag, sausage, and grits
We should have known it was coming.
Months prior, we reveled in the bacchanalia of it, some going so far as to cover their own flesh in strips carved from the little gluttons. Years prior, it had been simmering just below the surface, a chart here or a creatively adorned garden burger there. It had gestated within us longer than an elephants' child. It waited on the tip of the tongue of our society longer than anything should be allowed to remain unexpressed.
Is it any wonder that when it broke open, it tried to take our very nation with it?
After all, baconaisse was a crime against God.
Months prior, we reveled in the bacchanalia of it, some going so far as to cover their own flesh in strips carved from the little gluttons. Years prior, it had been simmering just below the surface, a chart here or a creatively adorned garden burger there. It had gestated within us longer than an elephants' child. It waited on the tip of the tongue of our society longer than anything should be allowed to remain unexpressed.
Is it any wonder that when it broke open, it tried to take our very nation with it?
After all, baconaisse was a crime against God.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Southern Lights, part 2
Look, I didn't ask to be a founding father. That was always her idea.
So, yeah, okay, I wasn't the least political of the bunch. But my politics were different than hers, and my politics were secondary. When the catastrophe hit, my goal was survival. Tomorrow, next week, with a bit of luck I'd have something put together to get us through the month. In my mind, though, survival was always now, and a little beyond now. For her, the day it started was the Long Emergency. She was speaking of hanging gardens long before we knew this was going to last. And don't get me wrong - I'm glad we had her mind. Without it, we'd have never waited out the migration. We'd have never recovered the pumps. That was some foresight.
What she didn't see was the need to actually do something in the present. Her hands were cracking, knuckles wasting blood before becoming scabs, and she'd keep talking about what the Texans were doing, what the Canadians were doing, and how we could best take advantage of that. She probably would have dried up completely if we hadn't left for the mountain. If I hadn't seen how impossible it would be to grab every single pump. She wanted to take the entire plumbing of the city. Dig it up in chunks, and take all of that, all of it, up north. Yeah, I know - might as well dig up the city itself. I vetoed that, got us out of there. The mountain was our only choice.
Given the option, I'd have loved to stay there. I think we could have made it. The plastic sheeting held, and without any real tasks to do except collect the dew, we could have done well for ourselves. Potatoes would have grown there, and we could also have ventured down to lower altitudes for anything else. We would have been fine there. Life would have been rough, for a while at least, but we had the equipment, and we had enough, we....
This is the part where I say that she drove us onward, her desire for remaking the world what brought us down the mountain. That's how history will record this. That's also bullshit. We were dying up there, all of us, but here more than most. Merely surviving only kept us busy for about four hours a day, and given the limited resources, we couldn't do all that much. We sat around, built a few structures. Played cards till the ink wore off. But mostly, we gathered, all in our merry little band, on the crest. And we watched, nightly, as less and less of the city stared back at us.
Early on, it was only a few parts - Rio Rancho went dim, which was more or less expected. And the airport had been quiet since before we got there - if anyone had been kept at the labs, they were kept there covertly. Then the neighborhoods started going out. One night, Altura would be there. The next, it'd be a pocket of void where once a city had been. She couldn't stand it, night by night watching her city die. It was like taking a puzzle apart one piece at a time. We knew what it once was, and we could see a resemblance, but here, at our distant vantage point, it was falling apart. And she was dying with it, piece by piece. Much as I could have lived a simple survivalists' life, she needed civilization. And she needed to build something.
It was the fires that did it. She grew sadder with every passing night, and the increasing darkness, but it took the fire to make up my mind. She had family in the south valley, cousins she jokingly referred to as the poultry. I assumed they had left the city, but she kept a vigil from a far over their home. We were on the mountain for two weeks before their neighborhood went dark. The next night, she returned her gaze to the south, and was surprised to find it bright again. The weird thing was, it was the only part that was bright. That lasted about an hour. By nights' end, the fire had spread all along the river. The Bosque was gone.
I don't remember much of our journey. I know I was injured, and I had fever dreams. Waking up, it took a while to get my bearings. When I was finally coherent again, we were on a lake, living in hastily erected structures, and our nights consisted of patrols to shoot water thieves. Survival had turned pretty intense, but I figured it was how things were now. And in those early days, we did alright. We drove people off, maintained our little claim, and every now and then, we'd have someone show up with a skill we could use. Farmers and plumbers are the real heroes of that kingdom of hers.
But look - I didn't leave to make a statement. In this world, what she has going on up there is as good as any of us got. And yeah, she could do things better. When hasn't that been the case? Before the emergency, I was a Marxist. Now, I'm still wary of kings, but we've got another century to go before Marxism is even valid again.
I left because I had other plans for the world, and being her appointed duke of whatever didn't suit me. And look - I don't know what expansionist plans she has in her head, but I know damn well that she's eventually going to try to rebuild her city. I can't say if she'll be successful. But I can tell you I'm staying here, on the northern rim. I'll light a beacon if I see lights in the south.
*
I thanked Devin for his time and set down the mountain. The man had negotiated his way to the top on crutches, and it took me three nights and a guide to do it safely. The roads themselves had all been torn up, presumably for new construction materials. Black asphalt cairns were well hidden by the ravine, but the recent snows helped give them away. They were arranged in rows, with names put together from broken up historical markers. About half the last names were french.
So, yeah, okay, I wasn't the least political of the bunch. But my politics were different than hers, and my politics were secondary. When the catastrophe hit, my goal was survival. Tomorrow, next week, with a bit of luck I'd have something put together to get us through the month. In my mind, though, survival was always now, and a little beyond now. For her, the day it started was the Long Emergency. She was speaking of hanging gardens long before we knew this was going to last. And don't get me wrong - I'm glad we had her mind. Without it, we'd have never waited out the migration. We'd have never recovered the pumps. That was some foresight.
What she didn't see was the need to actually do something in the present. Her hands were cracking, knuckles wasting blood before becoming scabs, and she'd keep talking about what the Texans were doing, what the Canadians were doing, and how we could best take advantage of that. She probably would have dried up completely if we hadn't left for the mountain. If I hadn't seen how impossible it would be to grab every single pump. She wanted to take the entire plumbing of the city. Dig it up in chunks, and take all of that, all of it, up north. Yeah, I know - might as well dig up the city itself. I vetoed that, got us out of there. The mountain was our only choice.
Given the option, I'd have loved to stay there. I think we could have made it. The plastic sheeting held, and without any real tasks to do except collect the dew, we could have done well for ourselves. Potatoes would have grown there, and we could also have ventured down to lower altitudes for anything else. We would have been fine there. Life would have been rough, for a while at least, but we had the equipment, and we had enough, we....
This is the part where I say that she drove us onward, her desire for remaking the world what brought us down the mountain. That's how history will record this. That's also bullshit. We were dying up there, all of us, but here more than most. Merely surviving only kept us busy for about four hours a day, and given the limited resources, we couldn't do all that much. We sat around, built a few structures. Played cards till the ink wore off. But mostly, we gathered, all in our merry little band, on the crest. And we watched, nightly, as less and less of the city stared back at us.
Early on, it was only a few parts - Rio Rancho went dim, which was more or less expected. And the airport had been quiet since before we got there - if anyone had been kept at the labs, they were kept there covertly. Then the neighborhoods started going out. One night, Altura would be there. The next, it'd be a pocket of void where once a city had been. She couldn't stand it, night by night watching her city die. It was like taking a puzzle apart one piece at a time. We knew what it once was, and we could see a resemblance, but here, at our distant vantage point, it was falling apart. And she was dying with it, piece by piece. Much as I could have lived a simple survivalists' life, she needed civilization. And she needed to build something.
It was the fires that did it. She grew sadder with every passing night, and the increasing darkness, but it took the fire to make up my mind. She had family in the south valley, cousins she jokingly referred to as the poultry. I assumed they had left the city, but she kept a vigil from a far over their home. We were on the mountain for two weeks before their neighborhood went dark. The next night, she returned her gaze to the south, and was surprised to find it bright again. The weird thing was, it was the only part that was bright. That lasted about an hour. By nights' end, the fire had spread all along the river. The Bosque was gone.
I don't remember much of our journey. I know I was injured, and I had fever dreams. Waking up, it took a while to get my bearings. When I was finally coherent again, we were on a lake, living in hastily erected structures, and our nights consisted of patrols to shoot water thieves. Survival had turned pretty intense, but I figured it was how things were now. And in those early days, we did alright. We drove people off, maintained our little claim, and every now and then, we'd have someone show up with a skill we could use. Farmers and plumbers are the real heroes of that kingdom of hers.
But look - I didn't leave to make a statement. In this world, what she has going on up there is as good as any of us got. And yeah, she could do things better. When hasn't that been the case? Before the emergency, I was a Marxist. Now, I'm still wary of kings, but we've got another century to go before Marxism is even valid again.
I left because I had other plans for the world, and being her appointed duke of whatever didn't suit me. And look - I don't know what expansionist plans she has in her head, but I know damn well that she's eventually going to try to rebuild her city. I can't say if she'll be successful. But I can tell you I'm staying here, on the northern rim. I'll light a beacon if I see lights in the south.
*
I thanked Devin for his time and set down the mountain. The man had negotiated his way to the top on crutches, and it took me three nights and a guide to do it safely. The roads themselves had all been torn up, presumably for new construction materials. Black asphalt cairns were well hidden by the ravine, but the recent snows helped give them away. They were arranged in rows, with names put together from broken up historical markers. About half the last names were french.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Southern Lights, part 1
It was total quack science, but we'd fallen for it. Go north, where the snows are longer, where the only thing to contend with are the few remaining Canadians. Go north, where you can boil and drink the earth.
We'd left months after the major caravans, trusting our mountains and hoping against hope for an October snowfall. We lived on the precipice for that month, plastic sheeting hung between Aspens, alarms set to early morning so we could properly catch the dew. In retrospect, I'm fond of those days - we were at least creative then, our life a Rube Goldberg with life-or-death stakes. And it worked out, for us. The snows came. We packed away enough water for two weeks; a little less, if we felt like trading.
Getting down the mountain was, no matter what Devin says, the easiest part of our journey. Down is easy. Once we were down, and once we'd patched up Devin and recovered the gallon from the ravine, then we realized how hard it was. We were at the very edge of the great plains, and we'd have to go in the well-beaten path of about half of Texas. To be fair, it was the better part of Texas to follow - the diehards had staked out kingdoms in Houston's skyscrapers, improvising desalination rigs and mustering a flotilla that resembled nothing so much as Rambo-does-Venice. Except, you know, way, way more poor. So we were following the ones who fled that craziness.
Which meant our path had already been scavenged by fifteen million inadept survivalists.
I don't know quite how we made it to Montana. The okies we found outside of Devil's Tower were helpful, in a way. They'd been planning something like this for about a decade, so when the long emergency hit, it just made sense to go with the plan. Four hundred or so people, all followers of Rev. Whitacker, climbed to the top of the tower, and waited for the flood. We left with the best of their stuff, all excess supplies deemed moot by this point. For a group so devout, it was handy to have their medicine. Devin's leg had flared up something fierce, and we'd long since run out of painkillers. Perhaps the fever dream had something to do with his hatred for the descent? I don't know - it was just fortunate that in his pseudo-comatose state we could conserve water until Moosejaw.
Remember all those movies they made about Scotland in the early twenty first century? No? Yeah, I'm not sure what it was about, but like half of them were filmed in Moosejaw. Climate was perfect, and the terrain - all gentle hills and narrow lakes. It was surreal, in a way, like it'd been tailor-made for Norsemen. Or Scots. Anyway, it was the thing to do, especially when the Glasgow riots peaked. And so we'd be driven this far, and we'd see a castle looming over the hilltop. Perhaps Devin came to then, but coming out of a fever dream to a land of castles doesn't really make a convincing case for one's sanity.
That's not the important story. Yeah, we found a spot. Built ourselves a few shacks around Buffalo Pound Lake, and did our damn best to hold it together. The lake dried up, not from evaporation, but because too many people were able to sneak in where our watch wasn't, and drive away with some of the lake. Keep in mind, this is a lake by more or less any standard - sure, it wasn't a Great Lake, but we were burquenos, New Mexicans, and we'd only seen lakes that were man-made. And this was bigger. We tried to hold it - it was our luck again that it'd been abandoned recently. Probably the Great Migration had camped out by it, and then a fight had broken out, and the only people crazy enough to hold on and stick around had been killed. That's probably what happened, and I don't know of any other version of the truth. And yeah, we stuck to our spot after the rains stopped, after people stopped trying to sneak by us for our lake and instead came for our 72%. We were smart. Built right on that lake a mess of a little town, full of buildings that'd fall apart if you so much as touched them. Always good for catching coyotes. Or rogues. Either way, one less problem for us. And we dug a well.
That was what kept us so long near the city. We knew we weren't going to beat the Great Migration, and we knew damn well that we couldn't actually survive back home. So what did we do? Hold on long enough for everyone to call it quits, and then we took apart the the last organs of the city herself. Albuquerque was littered with wells, and we pillaged about a third of them. Enough working parts for our own kingdom, I joked. Everyone knew me well enough to realize I wasn't joking, but it was a smart plan. We set up on this lake, did what we could till it ran out, and then it became fully operational. Aquifer like that, last a hundred years, if you do it right. Keep enough people away. When it came to be October again, and people started trickling back down from the arctic floes, we had established ourselves. Two wells, plenty of indebted rogues, and the components to build at at least three more lakes. The migrants came down, bodies unnaturally light, and we let them in. Some of them. Saskatchewan exists today because of what we did. Vancouver docks are filled with ice hunters, and the city itself is a chaotic hellhole. But Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan is stable. And Saskatchewan is strong. We have wells, and we have the expertise to make sure no one else can get them. And yeah, we have our gendarmes. That hardly matters. They tell you an army marches on its stomach. That's true, and that's why everyone is focused on food. They never tell you that without water, you'll never face another army.
Of course, Devin left before all that. We'd just started building the wall when he called it quits. He saw the state we were crafting, knew how much good we could do, and left. Said something about icepicks and Mexico. He packed up his vehicle, his two weeks of water, and we parted as friends. Very, very bitter, strained friends.
I didn't act on it. I was busy - my kingdom had to be made, and it was too much to deal with the fatigue rates. The sick were given a week - a bed, care, and water. If they didn't get better, we put them outside the city for a night or two. The cold did wonders, sometimes. And if that didn't work, water was reclaimed.
If you want to know how a bunch of desert rats built this place, you have no sense of context. The northerners never knew how to live without water. The Texans had turned their desert into an unnatural perversion of what a desert should be, sprawling green lawns. Don't get me started on what the Californians did. But us New Mexicans, poor desert rats that we are, we knew damn well about scarcity. Not as much as we should have, and we look like grasshoppers next to the Bedouin, but we knew about water. We didn't have stillsuits, but we did everything else we could. Water - water was reclaimed.
And you know what? We prospered. We control about a third of the pre-Emergency territory. No one claims anything like our sovereignty this side of the Mississippi Gully. And we're expanding - the pumps from Moosejaw and Saskatoon have been recovered. We're heading South. Albuquerque may have been on a trajectory to run out of water, but that was back when the world was pushing 7 billion. Today, it's wealth alone can justify the expedition, and that's ignoring everything we'll get out of Colorado.
With any luck, we'll have civilization back through the Glorietta Pass in two years.
*
I was going to leave with just the audio of the interview, and to write it all down later, but I need to mention her desk. Austere, of course, but very much in the style of the late 1990s - a computer, some pens, and a few photos. One of her husband, one of the lake, and one of what looks like city at night. There was a post-it attached to the back, but I was ushered out before I could ask.
We'd left months after the major caravans, trusting our mountains and hoping against hope for an October snowfall. We lived on the precipice for that month, plastic sheeting hung between Aspens, alarms set to early morning so we could properly catch the dew. In retrospect, I'm fond of those days - we were at least creative then, our life a Rube Goldberg with life-or-death stakes. And it worked out, for us. The snows came. We packed away enough water for two weeks; a little less, if we felt like trading.
Getting down the mountain was, no matter what Devin says, the easiest part of our journey. Down is easy. Once we were down, and once we'd patched up Devin and recovered the gallon from the ravine, then we realized how hard it was. We were at the very edge of the great plains, and we'd have to go in the well-beaten path of about half of Texas. To be fair, it was the better part of Texas to follow - the diehards had staked out kingdoms in Houston's skyscrapers, improvising desalination rigs and mustering a flotilla that resembled nothing so much as Rambo-does-Venice. Except, you know, way, way more poor. So we were following the ones who fled that craziness.
Which meant our path had already been scavenged by fifteen million inadept survivalists.
I don't know quite how we made it to Montana. The okies we found outside of Devil's Tower were helpful, in a way. They'd been planning something like this for about a decade, so when the long emergency hit, it just made sense to go with the plan. Four hundred or so people, all followers of Rev. Whitacker, climbed to the top of the tower, and waited for the flood. We left with the best of their stuff, all excess supplies deemed moot by this point. For a group so devout, it was handy to have their medicine. Devin's leg had flared up something fierce, and we'd long since run out of painkillers. Perhaps the fever dream had something to do with his hatred for the descent? I don't know - it was just fortunate that in his pseudo-comatose state we could conserve water until Moosejaw.
Remember all those movies they made about Scotland in the early twenty first century? No? Yeah, I'm not sure what it was about, but like half of them were filmed in Moosejaw. Climate was perfect, and the terrain - all gentle hills and narrow lakes. It was surreal, in a way, like it'd been tailor-made for Norsemen. Or Scots. Anyway, it was the thing to do, especially when the Glasgow riots peaked. And so we'd be driven this far, and we'd see a castle looming over the hilltop. Perhaps Devin came to then, but coming out of a fever dream to a land of castles doesn't really make a convincing case for one's sanity.
That's not the important story. Yeah, we found a spot. Built ourselves a few shacks around Buffalo Pound Lake, and did our damn best to hold it together. The lake dried up, not from evaporation, but because too many people were able to sneak in where our watch wasn't, and drive away with some of the lake. Keep in mind, this is a lake by more or less any standard - sure, it wasn't a Great Lake, but we were burquenos, New Mexicans, and we'd only seen lakes that were man-made. And this was bigger. We tried to hold it - it was our luck again that it'd been abandoned recently. Probably the Great Migration had camped out by it, and then a fight had broken out, and the only people crazy enough to hold on and stick around had been killed. That's probably what happened, and I don't know of any other version of the truth. And yeah, we stuck to our spot after the rains stopped, after people stopped trying to sneak by us for our lake and instead came for our 72%. We were smart. Built right on that lake a mess of a little town, full of buildings that'd fall apart if you so much as touched them. Always good for catching coyotes. Or rogues. Either way, one less problem for us. And we dug a well.
That was what kept us so long near the city. We knew we weren't going to beat the Great Migration, and we knew damn well that we couldn't actually survive back home. So what did we do? Hold on long enough for everyone to call it quits, and then we took apart the the last organs of the city herself. Albuquerque was littered with wells, and we pillaged about a third of them. Enough working parts for our own kingdom, I joked. Everyone knew me well enough to realize I wasn't joking, but it was a smart plan. We set up on this lake, did what we could till it ran out, and then it became fully operational. Aquifer like that, last a hundred years, if you do it right. Keep enough people away. When it came to be October again, and people started trickling back down from the arctic floes, we had established ourselves. Two wells, plenty of indebted rogues, and the components to build at at least three more lakes. The migrants came down, bodies unnaturally light, and we let them in. Some of them. Saskatchewan exists today because of what we did. Vancouver docks are filled with ice hunters, and the city itself is a chaotic hellhole. But Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan is stable. And Saskatchewan is strong. We have wells, and we have the expertise to make sure no one else can get them. And yeah, we have our gendarmes. That hardly matters. They tell you an army marches on its stomach. That's true, and that's why everyone is focused on food. They never tell you that without water, you'll never face another army.
Of course, Devin left before all that. We'd just started building the wall when he called it quits. He saw the state we were crafting, knew how much good we could do, and left. Said something about icepicks and Mexico. He packed up his vehicle, his two weeks of water, and we parted as friends. Very, very bitter, strained friends.
I didn't act on it. I was busy - my kingdom had to be made, and it was too much to deal with the fatigue rates. The sick were given a week - a bed, care, and water. If they didn't get better, we put them outside the city for a night or two. The cold did wonders, sometimes. And if that didn't work, water was reclaimed.
If you want to know how a bunch of desert rats built this place, you have no sense of context. The northerners never knew how to live without water. The Texans had turned their desert into an unnatural perversion of what a desert should be, sprawling green lawns. Don't get me started on what the Californians did. But us New Mexicans, poor desert rats that we are, we knew damn well about scarcity. Not as much as we should have, and we look like grasshoppers next to the Bedouin, but we knew about water. We didn't have stillsuits, but we did everything else we could. Water - water was reclaimed.
And you know what? We prospered. We control about a third of the pre-Emergency territory. No one claims anything like our sovereignty this side of the Mississippi Gully. And we're expanding - the pumps from Moosejaw and Saskatoon have been recovered. We're heading South. Albuquerque may have been on a trajectory to run out of water, but that was back when the world was pushing 7 billion. Today, it's wealth alone can justify the expedition, and that's ignoring everything we'll get out of Colorado.
With any luck, we'll have civilization back through the Glorietta Pass in two years.
*
I was going to leave with just the audio of the interview, and to write it all down later, but I need to mention her desk. Austere, of course, but very much in the style of the late 1990s - a computer, some pens, and a few photos. One of her husband, one of the lake, and one of what looks like city at night. There was a post-it attached to the back, but I was ushered out before I could ask.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Should've Gone to Carlsbad
She was staring at the building, sharp corners jutting out of pale sand. Several cylinders protrude from the dune in front of the building, and by moonlight, the faded paint can be seen.
I set my pack down, weary from the months of exodus out of the Valle. She stares at the cylinders, at the pale sands, and at the seemingly untouched monument before us. Her eyes light up, and her voice drops to a reverent whisper.
"We were meant to be starfarers."
I set my pack down, weary from the months of exodus out of the Valle. She stares at the cylinders, at the pale sands, and at the seemingly untouched monument before us. Her eyes light up, and her voice drops to a reverent whisper.
"We were meant to be starfarers."
Friday, January 2, 2009
Story Time
"You ever seen Grave of the Fireflies?" the old man said, to the crowd of youth gathered around him. Before they could reply, he continued. "No, no, course you haven't. It'd have taken the most depressing soul to drag that here with them. Anyways. Grave of the Fireflies is one of the most beautiful films ever made. But you wouldn't know that from watching it. No, after you watched it, you'd cry for about a day, and then you'd go outside, find your best friend, and do some damn foolish stuff. You'd just run or jump or do any of those things you could get away with while alive that you can't when dead. Hell, I spent three hours playing catch with my dog after the first time I saw it."
The old man paused for a moment, causing the youngsters to degenerate into talking amongst themselves.
"Hey! I was telling you a story." said the old man.
"Then tell us the story," said one of the more sarcastic youths, "but don't let us interrupt your descent into dogs and daises."
"Dammit, that is the story. Well, okay, it's part of the story - but you kids have to listen to that part to get the whole of the story."
The old man paused. Not a dramatic pause. Just a pause. Old people are wise as shit, and as a consequence they get to pause whenever they want. The youth waited to listen - they'd be foolish not to - but the old man was being kind of a jerk about it.
"The thing is, Grave of the Fireflies was beautiful because it made you as sad as you could be, and then it got you running around young and energetic and foolish. And it did that with a sweet little tale in a horrific little world. Any of you know about World War Two?"
A few youth nodded in acknowledgment. Most shrugged.
"Well let me tell you. This war was ancient when I was young, so don't make any quips about me being there - I wasn't, so I don't know, man. My parents weren't there. My grandparents showed up for the tail end. This war was a long time ago. But let me tell ya - in this war, people did weird things. Grew their own food. Played along beaches. Hell, in Japan they even kept living in paper houses. And this is that world Grave of the Fireflies showed you. It was a beautiful background with tragedy far and away. Life was rough, hell life was more or less god-awful, but at least it looked pretty."
The old man paused, content with the moral of his story, happy with his delivery. The youths stared at the man, wondering if he was daft or senile.
"Well, so what?" said the sarcastic youth.
"What do you mean, So What?" the old man replied.
"Well, I get that there was this war. And it was sad. And you saw a sad story from it. But that it was pretty. That's nice and all, but it has no point, gramps."
"I'll tell you the point, ingrate. I'll tell you - it was - how soon you kids got before your first run to the surface?"
The youths murmured amongst themselves. A small mousy one in the back spoke up, "We go tomorrow, elder."
"I thought as much. Well, kiddos, when you go up in that great big surface world, it'll be different than anything you've experienced here. The calamity was rough, and your parents were among the lucky few to survive down here, but they were only children when we had to go underground. Did they ever tell you stories about the surface?"
"Yes, and they were beautiful," said the mousy one again, "My mom said it was full of blues and greens, with little splotches of yellow."
"Well, your mom didn't lie, but it's nothing like that now. Won't be for centuries, probably. That saddest movie I saw? The sweet tale in a world of paper houses and raining fire? Well let me tell you - that world was terrible, but it wasn't covered by three feet of ash. There was room for beauty in that world."
Post inspired in part by a post on io9 about the Yellowstone earthquakes, and in part by the Fallout series of games.
The old man paused for a moment, causing the youngsters to degenerate into talking amongst themselves.
"Hey! I was telling you a story." said the old man.
"Then tell us the story," said one of the more sarcastic youths, "but don't let us interrupt your descent into dogs and daises."
"Dammit, that is the story. Well, okay, it's part of the story - but you kids have to listen to that part to get the whole of the story."
The old man paused. Not a dramatic pause. Just a pause. Old people are wise as shit, and as a consequence they get to pause whenever they want. The youth waited to listen - they'd be foolish not to - but the old man was being kind of a jerk about it.
"The thing is, Grave of the Fireflies was beautiful because it made you as sad as you could be, and then it got you running around young and energetic and foolish. And it did that with a sweet little tale in a horrific little world. Any of you know about World War Two?"
A few youth nodded in acknowledgment. Most shrugged.
"Well let me tell you. This war was ancient when I was young, so don't make any quips about me being there - I wasn't, so I don't know, man. My parents weren't there. My grandparents showed up for the tail end. This war was a long time ago. But let me tell ya - in this war, people did weird things. Grew their own food. Played along beaches. Hell, in Japan they even kept living in paper houses. And this is that world Grave of the Fireflies showed you. It was a beautiful background with tragedy far and away. Life was rough, hell life was more or less god-awful, but at least it looked pretty."
The old man paused, content with the moral of his story, happy with his delivery. The youths stared at the man, wondering if he was daft or senile.
"Well, so what?" said the sarcastic youth.
"What do you mean, So What?" the old man replied.
"Well, I get that there was this war. And it was sad. And you saw a sad story from it. But that it was pretty. That's nice and all, but it has no point, gramps."
"I'll tell you the point, ingrate. I'll tell you - it was - how soon you kids got before your first run to the surface?"
The youths murmured amongst themselves. A small mousy one in the back spoke up, "We go tomorrow, elder."
"I thought as much. Well, kiddos, when you go up in that great big surface world, it'll be different than anything you've experienced here. The calamity was rough, and your parents were among the lucky few to survive down here, but they were only children when we had to go underground. Did they ever tell you stories about the surface?"
"Yes, and they were beautiful," said the mousy one again, "My mom said it was full of blues and greens, with little splotches of yellow."
"Well, your mom didn't lie, but it's nothing like that now. Won't be for centuries, probably. That saddest movie I saw? The sweet tale in a world of paper houses and raining fire? Well let me tell you - that world was terrible, but it wasn't covered by three feet of ash. There was room for beauty in that world."
Post inspired in part by a post on io9 about the Yellowstone earthquakes, and in part by the Fallout series of games.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Blood from a Stone
"Huh" you say, shouldering your shotgun.
"What's that?" I ask, as I wipe what feels like a pint of sweat from my brow.
"Look at this" you say, as you unearth a flimsy piece of yellowed paper from the mound I'm resting against.
"Is that newsprint?"
"Yeah. Old, too."
"How can you tell?"
"Name three newspapers."
"The Times, the Wall Street Journal, and..." I reply, struggling to remember a third. "It isn't one of those, is it?"
"No - it's not on e-ink."
"But those were on paper once, you can't be that sure"
"It also isn't one of those papers."
"What? But that means it's...okay, you're right, it's old. But how old?"
"Dunno", you say, "dates missing. But it looks like a local daily, so you can guess."
"Oh, wow, that's positively a relic."
"Yeah."
"So, what's it say? Any good places to buy a bike? Perhaps a decent crossword?"
"No. It's got content. Here." You hand me the scrap, and then wipe my over-soggy brow. For a moment I'm flattered by your concern, but that evaporates as soon as you wring the brow-mop into your canteen.
In my youth I read Dune, remembered the harsh desert people, living beyond civilization through the virtue of magical water-recycling stillsuits. At the time, I'd been grateful to not have that life. A month ago I'd been able to reread the book, on a discarded Kindle that still had some charge. In my second reading, all I could think was 'those lucky bastards'.
"So, what do you think?"
The article. Right. "Just a sec."
It wasn't much - a short column. It read
"We're not alone," you whisper, and all thoughts of newsprint vanish. My hand reaches to my belt, to the machete whose black iron has done nothing but burn my skin out here.
"Our plan?," I say.
"We run."
"Run? We're a few hours from a well!" It's no use. You're right, I'm just upset. I can hear the noise. My ears were never as good as yours, but by now I can pick up the sound. Jangling. Always that faint jangling. "Goddammit."
"Yup. Water merchants. Exploration party, my guess. They'll be armed. And they'll drain us."
We run. We run as fast as we can, the desert sun not even bothering to give us specific spite - it knows we're gone for, and it has bigger fish to fry. Our feet grab loose footing amongst the red rocks, the pale sands, and the dessicated remains of cacti sucked dry. The jangling persists in the background, never closer but never farther.
"It's funny," I say, wasting precious moisture.
"What?"
"I just kind of always figured it'd be zombies."
Hat tip to NoraReed for style, and to jfleck for actual newspaper-y content
"What's that?" I ask, as I wipe what feels like a pint of sweat from my brow.
"Look at this" you say, as you unearth a flimsy piece of yellowed paper from the mound I'm resting against.
"Is that newsprint?"
"Yeah. Old, too."
"How can you tell?"
"Name three newspapers."
"The Times, the Wall Street Journal, and..." I reply, struggling to remember a third. "It isn't one of those, is it?"
"No - it's not on e-ink."
"But those were on paper once, you can't be that sure"
"It also isn't one of those papers."
"What? But that means it's...okay, you're right, it's old. But how old?"
"Dunno", you say, "dates missing. But it looks like a local daily, so you can guess."
"Oh, wow, that's positively a relic."
"Yeah."
"So, what's it say? Any good places to buy a bike? Perhaps a decent crossword?"
"No. It's got content. Here." You hand me the scrap, and then wipe my over-soggy brow. For a moment I'm flattered by your concern, but that evaporates as soon as you wring the brow-mop into your canteen.
In my youth I read Dune, remembered the harsh desert people, living beyond civilization through the virtue of magical water-recycling stillsuits. At the time, I'd been grateful to not have that life. A month ago I'd been able to reread the book, on a discarded Kindle that still had some charge. In my second reading, all I could think was 'those lucky bastards'.
"So, what do you think?"
The article. Right. "Just a sec."
It wasn't much - a short column. It read
to meet all the claims on it, and you will get a laugh. The short answer that usually follows involves two things — litigation and uncertainty."Well that's odd. But, you know, kind of int-" I was about to go on, but your hand found my mouth, covering it.
Eight centuries ago, the residents of Chaco Canyon had no one to sue. Their only choice was to abandon the glorious cities they had built on the premise of water
"We're not alone," you whisper, and all thoughts of newsprint vanish. My hand reaches to my belt, to the machete whose black iron has done nothing but burn my skin out here.
"Our plan?," I say.
"We run."
"Run? We're a few hours from a well!" It's no use. You're right, I'm just upset. I can hear the noise. My ears were never as good as yours, but by now I can pick up the sound. Jangling. Always that faint jangling. "Goddammit."
"Yup. Water merchants. Exploration party, my guess. They'll be armed. And they'll drain us."
We run. We run as fast as we can, the desert sun not even bothering to give us specific spite - it knows we're gone for, and it has bigger fish to fry. Our feet grab loose footing amongst the red rocks, the pale sands, and the dessicated remains of cacti sucked dry. The jangling persists in the background, never closer but never farther.
"It's funny," I say, wasting precious moisture.
"What?"
"I just kind of always figured it'd be zombies."
Hat tip to NoraReed for style, and to jfleck for actual newspaper-y content
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