Global Peak (Part 11.0 up 05/29/09).

[Darth Fanboy]

Now this is near-future fic worth reading!

I would probably be invlved in some sort of movement/organization or whatever force is involved with causing social upheaval in Southern California, either leading or a big part of bringing down the Hollywood/Malibu/Orange County Laguna Beach worthess rich. And maybe a part of me is doing it for fun just as much as for a supposed need for justice. Oh, and keep In N Out Burger intact!

EDIT:

Even if I have poor luck regarding my character, I have faith knowing it will be well written.

I also have an alternative option where I team up with Shep as some sort of fleshpeddling bootlegging smutlord but I think there's a fic that already covers that.

[Chris OFarrell]

Will you have a Nimitz class tied upto a dock as a massive floating nuclear power station? All all that internal space converted to dramatically increase its fresh water capacity, hospital for the elite e.t.c.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

I bet everyone wishes they weren't expendable.... Unfortunately, the majority of the population is expendable here.

I don't want to sound like a grovelling toady (unless that would get my character in sooner...? ), but I'd be perfectly happy being some poor sod press-ganged and thrown into a trench and massacred on the Saskatchewan Front or dying of exhaustion and exposure on some farm in the middle of nowhere.

[The_Last_Rebel]

I wouldn't mind being in this. You could depict me as what my real age would be at the time (70) or as my current age, or maybe in my middle age. I am from northeast Louisiana (Monroe area). A lot of farmers around here have switched to raising corn for ethanol production, so I wonder how this area will fair if/when the shit hits the fan
I'm aware peak oil can happen, but I'm also suspicious about it-I think it's more likely a scam to jack up the price of oil...but when you think of the many other disasters that could befall us, at least this one wouldn't happen all at once. My area also has a fair amount of industry-a couple of paper mills, a fertilizer plant or two, and a few light factories, not to mention at least 2 or three power plants. My area also sits on top of the largest natural gas fields in North America, if not the world-in fact it was once listed by the Soviets as a nuclear target (Sterlington, LA.) We also have quite a few railroads that go through here, but IMO they could use some serious upgrading. Sorry about the infodump, but I thought it would help if you had an idea what it was like around here, economics wise. In fact, I think I described much of Northern Louisiana.

Anyways, you could put me in as an MP or jailer in whatever military force Louisiana or the Free States may have at the time (closest thing to my current job I'd probably be capable of getting in this story-doubt there'd be much in the way of private security services) You could also have me pull a double-duty as a electronics tech, at least with simple problems, since I dabble with that stuff). You could write me as someone who would do whatever it takes to keep his wife and kids safe and fed, but is willing to help someone in need if he can. And in a fight, I would do whatever I could to walk away in one piece.

If you decide to write me as older than I am, my kids would be old enough to serve (if I was 48, they'd be 18 and 17 )

[J]

I don't want to sound like a grovelling toady (unless that would get my character in sooner...? ), but I'd be perfectly happy being some poor sod press-ganged and thrown into a trench and massacred on the Saskatchewan Front or dying of exhaustion and exposure on some farm in the middle of nowhere.

Depending on the severity of global warming, you may well end up wandering the sand dunes of Saskatchewan in much the same way the Fremen wandered the deserts of Arakis in Dune. Minus of course the sandworms.

[Duckie]

Depending on the severity of global warming, you may well end up wandering the sand dunes of Saskatchewan in much the same way the Fremen wandered the deserts of Arakis in Dune. Minus of course the sandworms.

You never know, if Monglian Death Worms turn out to not be cryptids in the future and hitch a ride to become an invasive foreign species, it might just be possible.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

I don't want to sound like a grovelling toady (unless that would get my character in sooner...? ), but I'd be perfectly happy being some poor sod press-ganged and thrown into a trench and massacred on the Saskatchewan Front or dying of exhaustion and exposure on some farm in the middle of nowhere.

Depending on the severity of global warming, you may well end up wandering the sand dunes of Saskatchewan in much the same way the Fremen wandered the deserts of Arakis in Dune. Minus of course the sandworms.

But can I invoke Amtal?

[PeZook]

Whoa, I can't believe I missed this story!

If there's still room in the nearest updates, you can shove me in with the miserable rest. A graduate of economics, specialization in marketing, working a very well-paid though post-PO useless job in the years before the fall. Knowing of the dangers of Peak Oil and doing his best to prepare for it. Living in Gdansk, Poland, with his wife.

Paul Zuk's the name. I don't think you had that kind of a character proposed yet

[Zed Snardbody]

Ooooo I can I be a FedGov toady like I am in real life?

I work for DHS.

Names Matthew. Please Pretty please!?

[Battlehymn Republic]

Wait, how is it that gold is still worth anything? Or are the Russians still holding out better than the U.S.?

I'd like a cameo, if possible. I'm probably worse than doomed- by that time, (former) computer security specialist in (the ruins of) Silicon Valley. Or possibly CS professor in Sacramento. Codename- Robert Li.

Give my character a good death.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Wait, how is it that gold is still worth anything? Or are the Russians still holding out better than the U.S.?

I'd like a cameo, if possible. I'm probably worse than doomed- by that time, (former) computer security specialist in (the ruins of) Silicon Valley. Or possibly CS professor in Sacramento. Codename- Robert Li.

Give my character a good death.

Gold will ALWAYS be worth something. It has industrial applications in addition to an intrinsic recognized value which has been part of the human psyche for nearly ten thousand years. The combination means that even if the average person will never see the tiniest fleck of it, it will still be an acceptable currency, especially for large interstate transactions.

[PeZook]

Gold will ALWAYS be worth something. It has industrial applications in addition to an intrinsic recognized value which has been part of the human psyche for nearly ten thousand years. The combination means that even if the average person will never see the tiniest fleck of it, it will still be an acceptable currency, especially for large interstate transactions.

Especially since with the death of (relatively) easy mechanized mining and transportation, gold's value due to scarcity has been multiplied in a heartbeat.

[Jadeite]

Great stuff. So are Indiana and Kentucky a third faction, or are they part of the Free States? If you're still accepting character requests, my location is the Indianapolis area and my last name is Murphy.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Still accepting aps. I should start writing again now that I'm settled in once more for a while--I've been moving a fair bit and will continue to remain mobile for a while but I'm at a placid point.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Could we suggest fictional characters?

[Adrian Laguna]

There is something called the Caribbean Bolivarian Republic which exists.

There are three countries that could have that title: Panama, Colombia, and Venezuela. I'm not buying the first two calling themselves "Caribbean" anything, nor am I buying the third calling itself "Bolivarian" anything.

The only other alternative is the remnants of Chavez's inanely named "Bolivarian Revolution" moving to some island in the Caribbean.

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

If you're interested Duchess, could you write about me/my alter ego in Finland? Living around the city of Tampere, 32 years old (moved my birthday forward by 30 years there). Bit of a gun nut, former military and definitely doesnt like the Government all that much. Anyhow, if you're interested punch me a message for more details if you need/want them.

Excellent beginnings of a fic just to add an actual comment btw

[The Duchess of Zeon]

12 October, 2047.
Northern West Virginia.


The valleys and hills of this folded land, filled with natural resources well worth fighting over, were tense with feuds and always had been. The collapse had brought about plenty of suffering for all of them, and some had responded naturally with more than a bit of violence. When the civil war came, it was natural that some, labour people mostly and those with long memories, would side with the FedGov, and those who hated them or had their own romantic reasons would side with the Free States.

The result was a constantly shifted border in which everyone was a soldier and partisan and there were no noncombatants, no civilians to be respected at all. Both halves of West Virginia were under military government, more or less, and it was hard to move through it. People stayed in their homes, and fought to defend their land from forays of their opponents and those they simply feuded with, and tried to live.

It was a hot Indian Summer, thankfully, for the girl who staggered her way northwards. Her name was Amy Young and she'd been born twenty-eight years prior in Tallahasee Florida; she'd be living in Pensacola and working as a welder for a shipyard there while living with her girlfriend, Margaret Souvalaskis, a dyke-job if there'd ever been one, when the Florida government, fence-sitting in the early days of the civil war, had been overthrown by Hispanic activists who had declared it part of the Caribbean Bolivarian Republic, a disjointed pirate-state of quasi-Marxists ruling over sundry territories of the Caribbean. Those nutcases had apparently taken the propaganda seriously.. And then they'd been counter-invaded by the Free States' Union.

They'd overrun Pensacola in two days. A malevolent and misogynistic coworker had showed up with some Tennessean troops the next day--and Tennessee was one of the states ruled by theocrats in the loose alliance that was the Free States. The memories of the days and days of gang-rape the two lovers had suffered at the hands of the troops were utterly unbearable; she turned them away, sobbing again as they came to mind, and pushing herself forward through the forest, emaciated. They'd branded them and put them to work in a labour camp, and worked Margaret to death after a few years of it. They'd been forced to give themselves to the guards simply to get enough food to survive.

But not everyone in the Free States' was utterly apathetic, and that, though she didn't understand it nor care, was the reason she was alive. After negotiations had broken down, the exasperated governor of Virginia had ordered a commando raid on the labour camp in late September, located near the border to the northeast of Knoxville, to free some Virginian citizens held there from where Tennesseean troops had detained them out of Tennessee where they had no real authority to, save the urgings of the pastors.

The Virginian troops were mostly conservative themselves, and didn't give a damn about the "fuckin' pedophile homos," as the fresh words echoed vividly. But they possessed basic human decency. They didn't have the room to take the camp prisoners with them. They did distribute food and point them toward Virginia. "Go, go, you poor bastards, while yeh still can!" the white-gloved officer had shouted, before shooting one of the camp guards personally .Some had found shelter there. Amy, branded to indicate she was a homosexual, chose to forge on northwards, toward the mythical border with the FedGov.

She'd almost made it when the men, an older man and his son, came out of the woods ahead of her, aiming rifles at her. "Who are yeh to get 'round heah?"

"I'm just a civilian.." She coughed heavily, and went to lean against a tree, but the older man released his safety.

"Don't move 'till I say."

"Ah-alright."

"You're likely as much a hooker as not, tossed roadside by some soldjits when they was done with ya, poor bitch," the man muttered and approached. It was then that he caught sight of the forehead brand and lashed out, knocking her to the ground with a single blow and then backpeddling like she was cursed. "Dear Jesus it's one of them faggots, one of them dykes, escaped from down south where they be dealin' with 'em."

"Oh god, oh god.." She wept pitifully on the ground. "Can't you just let me go north? Please! I prayed for forgiveness, Jesus' made me better..." the lies were a hideous disservice to Margaret's memory but she was overwhelmed with the desire to survive at that point, somehow, the desire that had kept her alive all along.

"Gotta clean t'earth of sin," the man answered, motioning his son forward, who looked unsteady in the eyes of the casual brutality, and could be little more than fifteen. "That's the reason God took the oil away, y'know. Caused the civil war. 'cause we didn't kill the faggots like you. And one by one we're fixin' that so we'll be prosperous like we was in my daddy's time." He aimed the rifle down toward her. His son started forward as if to protest, and that just made her shoot the girl. Twice.

He straightened, and looked coldly at his eldest son. “James, boy, these faggots ain't human. They ain't never been. They're a curse ah satan's and you got to remember that no matter what else you do.”

“She was just a girl....”

“IT was just a SODOMITE,” his pappy answered after a moment, and then shrugged. “Well, the game is gettin' thinner and thinner on the ground and we need it bad or your brothers and sisters won't eat,” for James' mother had died in childbirth the winter before, “so we split up to look for it now that we've scared it off with those shots. You go north.”

“Alright, Dad,” the boy said with quiet determination, for he had noticed something the old man hadn't—his prescription for his glasses was long out of date—and waited accordingly, believing that, whatever his father said, shooting the girl, faggot or not, had been immoral. He started north, as his father went south, and then doubled back.

He'd missed her, mostly, one shot grazing her stomach to the right without hitting anything vital and the other one a deep clean shot above the hip bone and down straight into the buttocks. These he cleaned, while the girl was unconscious, and then splashed a bit of his flask of rotgut—safer than the water, these days—over her face to wake her up. “Here, drink some, my pappy's gone now...”

She coughed some of it down, desperately pale and wondering. “What.. Why..?” It was followed by a weak cry.

“Ain't right. God can do his own judging, I reckon... You're going to hell, prolly, but I'm not gonna be the one to send you there. Now, come on.” He helped her up, and forward.

“What's your name?”

“A.. Amy,” She managed after a tired shudder, the bandages slowly going red. “Your's?”

“Jus' call me James. No need to tell the people up ahead that you were saved by one of my family. They don't like us at all, so they support the Feds. I heard their grandpappy was from Britiain or somethin' and they's socialists, maybe worked the mines. Got a good setup, the one time the men from our village tried to raid their farm they had mines and automatics waitin' for us.”

“Thanks.” Amy answered. She couldn't muster anymore words, and he, knowing her injuries, didn't expect any of her. They forged on over the next eight miles through the woods together, Amy growing progressively weaker and weaker.

Finally James reached the perimeter of the farms that he had referenced, and settled her down. Then he fired the magazine of his rifle into the air by her, and gave a tight grin. “You'll be lucky, I figure, if you never see me again,” he said, before vanishing hastily into the woods while reloading.

Within ten minutes a few riders came up on horses, and holstered their pistols when they saw the girl there.

“Hell,” the leader said to the other. “Shooting down a girl as she ran just for being gay. I suppose it's a mercy, though, saved her from our mines more likely than not, though fuck-all of what my grandfather would say to know such savage excuses for humans exist. Is she alive, Bryan?”

“Yeah, bro', she is,” the younger man answered, after checking her pulse—for she was unconscious and unable to correct the error and explain that she had, in fact, had a benefactor from the south. “Come on, we'll bring her to the fort. Maybe she'll live. Tough girl to last this long, if she's from one of those camps that are tearing the Free States' apart, damn near,” he said in reference to the massive political explosion over the Virginian raid in the Free States, which had their alliance at the brink of collapse even as the Minneapolis Offensive was overrunning Iowa and driving hard north for the city by which it was named, threatening the FedGov in turn.

Bryan, as he was named, was helped by his brother Alex in tying Amy to one of the horses and leading it back to the 'fort', their fortified home where the extended clan lived. They brought her inside, and she did, in fact, live for six days until the Circuit-Doctor was able to get there and treat her wounds properly. She might not make it through the winter, but at least, for now, she had a chance.

[Duckie]

why you do this to me marina i thought we were friends and not you gangrape me brand my forehead with NO DONGS and have rednecks shoot me?

Seriously, what does my Jewish Star Brand look like? Is it a picture of a Penis with a red circle+slash mark?

[Xess]

Excellent addition. Can't wait to see how you might screw up my alter ego.

[Ford Prefect]

Don't fret MRDOD - you may live yet. Clearly the Duchess is in a merciful mood.

[Zor]

I request a charicter, preferably a guy working on an FedGov aircraft (assuming that they still have them, if not artilleryman works fine) bombing the hell out of Freestate Rednecks.

Zor

[The Duchess of Zeon]

18 October, 2047
North of Bakersfield, California.


The fellow named Surlethe hadn't been easily accepted at first. Half of the population of California was Spanish, and they were quiet and hard-working and didn't much like the intrusions inflicted on them. They kept to the industrial slums where they worked to feed recovery and war at the same time, and to the farms that they overwhelmingly dominated. The fellow, with his pseudonym, had been a refugee from the collapsed suburbs, and they had usually faired the worse. Many had simply curled up and died rather than cope with the magnitude of what had been required of them.

This one had been different. He settled in with a reluctant effort, and for that the girl named Maria Hernandez had watched him carefully, just because she thought he was different than all the other gringos who'd come to the big farm, where thousands of peasant labourers just like them toiled on countless hectares to keep the cities alive, and the machines were limited to the absolutely most important tasks. There was talk of electric tractors coming soon, high-torque vehicles that would run for day and recharge over the night, but nobody really expected them. At least they did not starve like down in Mexico.

Harvest was a continual exertion, though, and the women as much as the men were toughened by it, even ounce of fat burned off their bodies. The food was simple and hardy and there was rarely any meat. Once a week there was usually enough rabbit for stew, and they had chicken enchiladas or tacos perhaps once a week as well. A third day might see some pork, lean beasts compared to the ones of the days of plenty, fed entirely off of trash that couldn't otherwise be used. A fourth day, some goat, brought down from the high mountains of the Tehachapi to the south, and then one day where they had something else: One time sheep, another beef, another the salted meat of work-horses which had died from exhaustion and old age and was very tough; another time fish (which was carefully being harvested to avoid their total extermination in seas overworked by desperation, and though common in coastal cities, rarely seen out of it) or shellfish. Five meals out of twenty-one with meat, and never any more than that, but sometimes less.

During the harvest, though, things were better. More goats were driven down from the mountains to be slaughtered to give them at least one meal of meat a day to help them with the great effort of harvest. The scythes worked from 6 AM to about one in the afternoon, when they would stop, and eat, and take their siestas for a few hours, and then rise again to continue working until sundown. It was utterly mandatory. The food was needed for the cities and for the army, and for themselves, wheat and corn to be turned into bread and tortillas and the other basic staples that kept them alive. In the evening, they drank a fermented corn mash which was strong enough to give a faint buzz after plenty of it, and served as a fourth meal for their calorie-starved bodies, and was as ancient as the Aztecs, nutritious and filling as well as alcoholic.

There was no stopping during harvest nor planting. Before that the hours were decent, not badly compared to those of the factories. But during the harvest the work was unceasing. Lean bodies grew leaner, despite the larger meals, and every muscle glistened in the sweat and the dirt of the day. Bars of lard soap and a dive into the river were the only method of getting clean, and those with sensibilities to the constant dirt were long gone from this place. There were no razors available, and the men all had thick beards, or boyish stubble from the younger men.

More than a few of the women like Maria, some of whom worked right alongside the men in the fields, but more often led the teams which carried away the wheat and brought in supplies, or carried water out to the desperately thirsty workers, or the other matters which kept the vast farm, once a great corporate farming concern, and now a huge collective by necessity, running. She had been young when the collapse came; she was only seventeen now, and she'd never really known the plenty nor promise of the earlier world. They were just all glad that they had enough food enough to eat.

And as girls do, they talked of love, dreamily enough. Some idly speculated on the gringo, who stayed apart from the other men, mostly, save when he played a harmonica at the dances they'd had before the rush of the harvest, where she'd always longed to dance with him but never quite gotten up the courage, even in her finest dress; and they all perhaps cast aspiring glances toward the thick fineness of his uniquely blonde beard.

But Maria, she desired him the most. For she knew something else. He had a guitar, and sometimes he sang songs on it, in the English of which she knew little, but learned (and he, of course, had grown better with his Spanish over time). He would go away from the bunkhouses, segregated between the rooms for the single men and the communal areas which were shared by large extended families, and there along the bank of the river, in the evening, he would play his guitar.

He didn't during the harvest. Nobody had the time to. But the harvest was finally coming to a close. It was the first night that they were able to finish before the sun had completely slipped below the horizon, and before they were utterly exhausted. And so, darting like a sparrow across the fields, she went to the low line of scrub and trees which marked the river, her progress matched by the distant horns of the continuous stream of railroad trains passing by, coming up from Los Angeles via the Tehachapi, or heading down toward it, clogging the lines and not stopping even into the hour of the wolf late at night, packed to the bursting with guns and grain, shells and salted meat for the soldiers.

Holding up the hem of her skirt she nimbly leaped over the drainage channels, and came toward the rise, the simple earthen levee that protected the fields from any quick flood. And she slowed, there, and with doe-like eyes searched out, for she had already heard the sounds of the guitar. And she listened to the words he sang, the words of the song, rueful and hopeful, a lament and a plea for the future, all at once:

From the high Canadian Rockies to the land of Mexico,
City and the country, wherever you may go,
Through the wild and windy weather, the sun and sleet and rain,
Comes a-whistlin' through the country this Farmer-Labor train.

Listen to the jingle and the rumble and the roar,
She's rollin' through New England to the West Pacific shore.
It's a long time we've been waitin', now she's been whistlin' 'round the bend,
Roll on into Congress on that Farmer-Labor train.

There's lumberjacks and teamsters and sailors from the sea,
There's farmin' boys from Texas and the hills of Tennessee,
There's miners from Kentucky, there's fishermen from Maine;
Every worker in the country rides that Farmer-Labor train.

There's warehouse boys and truckers and guys that skin the cats,
Men that run the steel mills, the furnace and the blast,
Through the smoky factory cities, o'er the hot and dusty plains,
And the cushions they are crowded, on this Farmer-Labor train.

Listen to the jingle and the rumble and the roar,
She's rollin' through New England to the West Pacific shore.
It's a long time we've been waitin', now she's been whistlin' 'round the bend,
Ride on on into Congress on that Farmer-Labor train.

There's folks of every color and they're ridin' side by side
Through the swamps of Louisiana and across the Great Divide,
From the wheat fields and the orchards and the lowing cattle range,
And they're rolling onto victory on this Farmer-Labor train.

This train pulled into Washington a bright and happy day,
When she steamed into the station you could hear the people say:
"There's that Farmer-Labor Special, she's full of union men
Headin' onto White House on the Farmer-Labor train."


She steeled her nerve, whispered a little prayer, and stepped forward and out of her cover. "Will you tell me the name of the song?" She asked, if a bit haltingly, in English.

"Oh, just the Farmer-Labor Train," the man named Surlethe answered. "It's an old worker's song by a fellow named Woody Guthrie. I take some heart from those songs, since they're about building something better in disadvantaged times, too, I suppose. And fighting fascism, which is what we do, even here."

"But we're far from the war, Mister Surlethe," she laughed softly, and made to sit on a fallen log close by him, smiling. "Not something we'll ever have to worry about, save for my brothers off at the front, and God will protect them."

"Careful about thinking like that."

Her face grew sad, a bit put-off at the comment, but she knew it was true enough of words from the blond man. "You're right of course, Senor, we may yet receive that dreaded visit. But until then we can just work, and hope."

"Aye, we can," he agreed. "Would you like to hear a few other of Woody Gutherie's songs, ah, Maria?"

She flushed, that he had seen her before, surely, and remembered her name, and drew in a bit closer happily. "Surely, but first, I would ask you something."

"Yes?"

"Will you be my partner at the harvest dance, Senor?"

And how could a man say no to those perfect doe's eyes, the long wavy black hair, the pleasant russet of that rounded face and a body that was still in ways voluptuous despite the limited diets and hard work for them all? He took a long look, remembered past pains.. And then banished them away. "Of course, Maria. I'd be honoured."

She blushed again, and dared another question, at the limit of what she'd risk. "Then will you tell me your true name? For how can I dance with a man whose name I don't know?"

He laughed deeply at that, and nodded his head. "Fair enough." Conspiratorily, he leaned in, and whispered to her, and she giggled and laughed with delight, and kept it a secret. And then, lightly and chastely, but with the promise of more, they kissed.

[Ford Prefect]

Would you look at that. It's a happy story. Admittedly, it can't be all bad - there must be hope for the future, even amidst the utter shit that's managed to swell up in response to the lack of oil.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Wow, that was really touching. Hard to imagine such a visceral and metaphysically real life in a country such as this. Maybe there are lessons and experiences to gain - stuff we lost - in such future hardship. More to ponder.