When We Went to War Chapter One

Chapter One

In the Middle of Nowhere

Where to start? The world political climate changed after the election of the 45^th President of the United States and subsequently his V.P. becoming the 45^th four years later; the Democratic Party was no longer there and America turned into some form of theocracy in which Eugenics and racial purity were advocated by the White Nationalist Party, it was almost as the timeline of Marvel’s comic book Line Old Man Logan.

“What was that?” She asked.

“It’s just the siren, we need to take shelter as soon as possible” He replied.

“The Tu-95’s are coming”

“We are in the middle of nowhere in Red Lodge, Minnesota! How did they reach here?!”

“They are everywhere; we have no choice”

They started to run down the basement with the hopes of not dying in the explosions. They could hear the loud detonations coming from the surface, as they laid in the bottom, they were scared that the next wave could be the last as not many places on Minnesota were infiltrated by the Red Wave of Mother Russia.

“It is over?” He said.

“For now; I can’t hear anything”

“Me neither, let’s go up again”

Both went to the surface again; they saw smoke coming from the town, they thought about going to help as soon as they could but they wanted to see if their herd was OK, as well their edifications in the ranch. Nothing seemed to be wrong, the only thing they didn’t had was connection to the emergency telephone line which they assumed the bombarding destroyed the central that was in the town.

They checked that their truck still had some gas and they rushed to town to help, they were concerned that some relatives could be dead, but they wanted to know if their neighbors were doing OK after the attack of the Russians. Nobody near them seemed to be affected, their suspicions turned right after they noticed the town was mostly destroyed; they were trying to understand why their town became a target? It wasn’t as big as NYC or whatever else was in Washington D.C.

“Oil and water” He said.

“What?” She replied.

“The Russians are behind the mineral resources that we have.”

“What do you say that? Their territory has more than any on Earth, they do not anything”

“They are trying to finally decimate us; contaminate the natural resources and destroy any possible location of oil it will destroy the country last foundations to rise up from the ashes; especially any deposit of drinking water”

“That is quite creepy, the possibility that it happens will kill everyone”

“What can we do?”

“To keep fighting. We have no choice but to keep fighting; we can’t escape to Canada and Mexico anymore, we need to fight” Teresa and Bobby kept driving to the ruins of the small town to help any survivors.

When We Were Forgotten

When We Were Forgotten

(Short Story)

By: Gustavo Simmons

It wasn’t impossible to forget, they rose to the power through hate and fear. They divided the friends and families through their rhetoric that “invisible enemies within us” were going to destroy the fabric of the nation. Who were they? Nobody knew, the only information was that they came from the different regions of the country and used cyberspace as a channel to spread their message and conquer adepts.

The future that wasn’t, many people theorized that the timeline split and we became Earth 295. As if Lord Apocalypse rose to the power and created a new system of power. Could be it as easy as a comic book explanation? No; the idea of a new world was far more complex than any point in fiction, far more tragic in which a demagogue and his team found a way to exploit the inner fears and emotions of a population that was on the verge of a civil war.

The first week came with the goal to bring a glory that was already there but people couldn’t see it; people were blinded by the idea that the country was in the need to be great again, all because they saw people who were running from a way that was happening far away as the “real enemies of the nation” as the “real enemies of their own religion” as “barbarians who didn’t deserved a dose of compassion”

The second week came with an invisible wall, no one could go in or out of the country, airports and seaports were ultimately closed. Citizens were asked to refrain from flying as there was an imminent fear of a nuclear strike coming from China. Refugees who arrived fearing from their lives were sent back to the places they were running from; the ultimate action, it costed the lives of 3,250,000 million people in only a 12-month period, as the newly elected President and his cabinet saw isolationism as the ultimate truth to “save the country” from the enemies that weren’t there.

The fourth week became the last in which the country was standing still, it became the point where the government cut funds to health and education; it severed ties in which let each State to do whatever they pleased. Human rights were violated everywhere, basic principles of the constitution were just ignored and it gave a form of fundamentalist Baptism that started to rule over the public institutions.

We became a theocracy within a 14-month period; science and human rights became for a while a philosophical aspect from the past, the Federal State turner into simple and mere anarchy, where even transmitting news that weren’t approved by the White House was punishable by law. In two years, we were living under the shadow of the phantom government, where the dear leader was a mere puppet of the 12 masters that controlled different aspects of the population.

12 masters, 12 corporations that organized education, infrastructure and regional politics per their own means. They start spreading lies which eventually became truth, police became an LLC that responded to the interest of a private creditor. There was no more free press and the idea of net neutrality was from the past; people running blogs became the source of information outside the State propaganda.

We, the free press, we became forgotten, we became a secret; the population became forgotten of who we were; we weren’t as organized as we were. We just turned into shadows that became enemies of the “fallen empire”. Walkers as if we were zombies of the Walking Dead mythos; nobody wanted to be near us but we became the people who opened the dialogue to throw the dear leader outside the power sphere and make the shadows to crumble into ashes. Yet, our lives when they ended became erased from existence, nobody could have remembered us, who we were, who we are, what we did; our blogs and collective stayed online, some of them ended up in the underground nets called Cobra and Thor in case the powers that be decided to shut them completely.

Two years later society as it was, it was a mirage of the empire. There were more theme parks, no more entertainment, nobody could travel far away as gas became a luxury, people started to die as the public health system collapsed and anyone who dared to do public protest was in risk of being executed on the public sight.

How terrible society turned to be? It wasn’t the land of the free anymore, it became just another dictatorship. What the braves who fought the wars? They were left to die on the streets as they represented a negative profit on the earning margins of the government… what had we become? A land of nobody, a land of the blue, a land where desolation is everywhere yet no one has a voice...