Chapter 1: A View From the Year 2050

This is the 1st chapter of my book. It is set in the future, decades after the catastrophic economic collapse that ended life as we know it. The protagonist describes what life is like in 2050.

A View From the Year 2050

“Wake up, wake up Uncle Will! Come on, wake up!!!!!”

That’s how I was jolted awake one mild November afternoon. It was a perfectly clear, 70 degree day here in my community. I had been resting my eyes in the living room of the Collins family house, but was startled awake somewhere around 4 p.m. However, I didn’t mind getting woken up, for I recognize those voices anywhere. They were the voices of Samantha and Eric, my niece and nephew. Samantha had just turned fourteen, and was one of the brightest children in our lovely community. She would have gotten into a great college in a bygone era, and perhaps go on to a great career in the field of her choice. Nowadays, I’m not sure exactly how she may use her considerable talents. She always had her adorable, cherub-like face buried in one of the books I picked up on my trips to the library. She is quite small, only about 4’6”, and quite thin, so she doesn’t really like to partake in the games and activities that the other kids, including her brother, are always participating in. When she isn’t reading, she is usually helping out her mother and her aunt with preparing meals and doing the household chores. Her brother Eric is twelve, a bit taller, but with a more physical build that he owes to helping out the other men out in the fields, something virtually all the young boys do starting at a young age. When not in school, or at the farm, he is always outside playing. He excels at the football games the boys are always playing down the street in front of the Miller’s house. He’ll play until it gets dark, when the parents summon their children inside for dinner.

After taking a moment to wake up from my nap, I greet my sister Leann’s two children. “Hey kiddos, how was school today?”

“It was great!” Samantha exclaimed, “Mrs. Holloman talked about the Great Collapse!”

I was slightly taken aback, a lump starting to form in my throat. “She did, huh?”, I stuttered to them.

“Yeah, but she didn’t go into that much detail. She wanted everyone in the class to talk to somebody who lived through it, so we wanted to ask you!”

I can tell that Samantha was clearly enthusiastic about learning about the subject. However, for most of us older members of our community, talking about the Great Collapse was taboo, so I knew it would likely be hard for the kids to wring any information out of any of their parents or aunts or uncles or grandparents. Most of us older folks are still haunted by the Collapse, and the dark days which followed. In fact, I was one of the few community elders who wanted to ever share my experiences with others. However, I was never asked, until now. I was nervous to share my experiences, yet excited at the same time. I know that the other older members of our small village would refuse to talk about this, but I jumped at the opportunity. I also knew that I would be one of the few that would go along with Mrs. Holloman’s assignment and talk about what happened in the past. I have always felt it important to share the lessons of the past with the younger generations. It is indeed important to learn lessons from our history. Just like the old saying goes, those who do not learn from our past are doomed to repeat it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand why others have always refused to talk about what transpired in the past. I am still kept awake many nights by what I saw, what I did. I saw previously logical, reasonable people devolve into savages before my very eyes. I knew so many people who committed suicide that I lost count. I saw neighbor turn against neighbor, families turn against each other. I’ve watched angry mobs string up poor saps, and sometimes I didn’t even know why. I saw people wither away and die from hunger, helpless to do anything about it. I saw starvation, disease and armed conflict, all in mass quantities. I myself have had to do horrible things, things that my younger, pre-Collapse self would find reprehensible, and difficult to reconcile with who I was as a person. I have had to steal food or supplies to stay alive, and I have had to harm or even kill people, but only to protect myself, or my two younger sisters, Leann and Briana. I could never let any harm come to them, and I would protect them by any means necessary. I promised my mother thirty-two years ago, on her deathbed, as the madness was unfolding around us, that I would protect and provide for them to the best of my ability. From that day forward, I swore to myself that I would do whatever necessary to guide myself and those girls through the hell that the world had become.

And what was the reason for all this pain and suffering, why did our society just fall apart? Well, that’s exactly what Samantha and Eric were asking me about that beautiful, sun-baked November afternoon. What had happened was, in the year 2017, a catastrophic, worldwide economic collapse that crushed the lives of countless people began. Over time, everyone the world over would lose their livelihoods, their homes, everything they had worked for their whole lives. It all vanished in what was a horrible nightmare that just got worse, and nobody could wake up from. The whole thing unfolded like a horrific, slow-motion train wreck that people couldn’t help but take their eyes off of. To this very day, I can never forget the images and events that have since seared into my brain. Even though I would like to forget all of it, I recall every bit of the anguish that we felt, the devastation that was wrought, and now, in the twilight of my life, is the right time to tell the story, before the generation that was unfortunate enough to have lived through it leaves this world, and the story of the events that transpired is lost forever. That is the reason that I set out to tell the history of the Great Collapse.

Before I go further into the specifics, I guess I should tell you about myself, my name is William Collins, but people call me Will. I was born on November 29, 1993, so I’ll be 57 in just a couple of weeks, and am one of the oldest members of our nice little farming community in the northwest part of what used to be Ontario, California. I stand at 5’10”, and am completely bald, and rather gaunt nowadays. I was much larger before the Collapse, weighing in at nearly 300 pounds, but years of struggling to find enough to eat have whittled me down to a bit less that half what I used to be. I’m much more frail than I once was, I suffer from arthritis in much of my body, most of my teeth are gone, I am now losing my eyesight, and I have eczema on various parts of my body, like many others in the community. I move around very slowly these days, but still try to keep as active as possible, even if I have to use the cane my sister Briana fashioned out of a fallen tree branch for me. I have a pair of eyeglasses that I found one day, they aren’t quite my prescription, but they serve me well enough. I have various scars from some physical struggles that occurred over the years. A mark across my arm from fighting off an attacker who had a big knife, an attacker who simply wanted some food from our community. A slash on my stomach from some giant of a man who went after my sisters in a homeless encampment. Like I said, I didn’t care what happened to me, as long as my sisters weren’t hurt.

Before I speak of what happened in the past, I want to give some background on what life is like now. The world of 2050 is quite a different place from the world in which I grew up. For starters, though I don’t live far from where I grew up, I do live in an entirely different country. I grew up in the United States of America, which before the Collapse was the most powerful nation the world had ever known. We had the largest economy and the most powerful military. Though the United States always had its own problems, people still flocked from other lands to our country all throughout our history, hoping to take full advantage of opportunities that weren’t available in their homelands. As a result of our power and influence, the decisions and policies made by American leaders had an outsized impact on the world as a whole, and it was the decisions of our leaders that brought on the collapse of the world economy, and would eventually tear the United States asunder. A couple of years after the Collapse, rebel forces, including a sizeable portion of the military, rose up against the government, bringing on a horrific, bloody civil war between the rebels and government forces that dragged on for several years. Once the administration, the very people who destroyed the United States, were deposed, and the president assassinated, the victorious rebels then fought amongst themselves over who ran what. They formed rival factions, and kept the war going, this time killing each other. The civil wars killed several million people, many of whom were innocent civilians, people who just wanted peace and stability, like they had before.

What once comprised the continental United States of America is now four different nations, formed by the various rival factions in the aftermath of the American Wars. The new iteration of the United States of America, which stretches throughout the northeastern part of the old U.S., goes from New England to what was Washington D.C. and most of Pennsylvania. Their nation had the most recovery to do, as much of the fighting of the civil war that took down the old United States took place within their territory. In fact, many of the great cities, such as New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, sustained catastrophic damage during the fighting. After its formation, they had a fledgling democracy for about a decade, but that went all to heck, they fought yet another civil war (I don’t know why they’re called civil wars, they aren’t very civil), and now they have a ruthless dictator, a tall, grey-bearded, lanky former rebel leader named Stanley Collins (no relation). Though their economy is now beginning to grow and slowly becoming more diverse, their citizens are brutally repressed and mostly confined to slums with deplorable conditions. Things like freedom of speech, the right to a fair trial, and freedom from cruel and excessive punishment are long gone, and only pro-Collins media sources are allowed to exist. Their economy centers around textiles made in horrible sweatshops (where workers work extremely long hours in brutal conditions for little, or sometimes even no pay) in New York City, farming throughout the countryside, fishing along the coast, and trade with other nations, due to their large number of seaports. They do trade much of the clothing their factories produce to Europe, or to other North American nations. Much of the population that doesn’t toil in the factories consists of small subsistence farmers, struggling to grow enough food to feed their families and bring in enough income to keep their farms. Their capital is New York City, or at least what’s left of it after the wars that have been fought over the last few decades.

The second country on the American tour is the Confederate States of America. Anybody who studied American history before the Great Collapse knows that that is what the southern states of the United States had named themselves when they tried to form their own country back in the 19th century. I guess the southerners really continued to like that name, because they chose it again. They even picked Richmond, Virginia as their capital, just like the original Confederacy, and used the old Confederacy’s flags as their own. As anyone who studied U.S. history would expect, the C.S.A. is comprised of the southeastern portion of the former United States, stretching from Virginia all the way to Texas. The Confederate States of America is also the most economically conservative of the four nations, they employ an economic system reminiscent of Europe in the Middle Ages. They have a small percentage of their families holding much of the land holdings (at least the land that wasn’t reclaimed by nature during the Collapse), with the vast majority of the population under their iron-fisted rule, exactly like the last time western civilization underwent a dark age. A whole 99% of Confederates live the meager, brutal existence of slavery, subject to the whims of the ruling noble families. The nobles, while not as wealthy as their medieval counterparts, were sure as mean. The peasants live in cramped, unsanitary conditions, prone to outbreaks of disease. They also eat whatever is left over of what they produce, after the nobles take their portion for their use and for trade with outside communities and nations. If there is a crop failure and there isn’t enough to eat, then they starve. A drought in the western part of the C.S.A. a few years ago led to several million losing their lives, which has been happening the last couple of years. Millions of Confederate serfs have perished in a terrible famine since the onset of a bad drought starting in 2048. The nobles don’t care though, that’s just less people for them to feed and clothe. The peasants are just expendable objects to most nobles. Any sort of uprising or speaking out against their condition is met with brutal reprisal, so as to maintain the social order the elites have so carefully constructed. Peasants were subject to beatings or even execution if they so much as expressed a desire to improve the lives of their brethren. One uprising in 2044 was crushed to the tune of three-hundred thousand peasants losing their lives. I guess I don’t blame them, I myself would rather die than be a slave. Their economy, as expected, comes from farming the land holdings on the noble’s estates. They grow some food crops to feed their population, as well as tobacco for export to other nations, as tobacco has been a major crop in that area for close to half a millennium, when the English first colonized the area. There is little industry to speak of, but there exists some mining operations in the Appalachian mountains, where coal is mined for energy generation, as well as smatterings of oil drilling in Texas and Arkansas. FIshing is also starting to make a comeback in the coastal areas in places like Louisiana and Florida. Due to the harsh conditions in which they live, as well as a comeback of diseases such as malaria and yellow fever, which had been conquered in that region for many years before the Collapse, the lifespan of a typical Confederate was a very short one, only about 30-35 years for the average serf. Furthermore, fewer children survive to adulthood here than everywhere else, due to disease, starvation, violence, or simply being worked to death.

The third nation, the largest of the four, which takes up the midwestern states, as well as the mountain west and desert southwest states of the former U.S., is the Dominion of North America. As awful as the Confederate States of America sound, the Dominion of North America may be even more terrifying. This nation also has a farming-based economy, as cities in surrounding nations get a decent portion of their food supply from here, getting some crops that can’t really be grown on their own farms (Our community makes sure to avoid obtaining any food from them, as we do not wish to associate with them in any way, shape or form). The Dominion has a similar social order to the Confederate States, but there are small, independent farmers scattered among the larger landholders. Unfortunately, for many of the self-sufficient farming families, one crop failure or other financial misfortune will easily slip them into serfdom, working on an estate among a large portion of the rest of the population. We also see some oil drilling in scattered pockets of the nation, for energy and to trade with other nations. The Dominion of North America is also, by far, the most militaristic of the North American nations, always fighting with the others and trying to capture more and more territory.

On another note, the Dominion is an evangelical Christian theocracy. The Dominion adheres to a strict, but cherry-picked, version of biblical law, meaning that one can be imprisoned for things such as swearing and questioning authority figures, and things such as adultery, homosexuality, or involvement with pornography are punishable by death. Those condemned to death are often executed in the public squares of towns, in front of onlookers, in order to make an example of anyone who tries to defy “God’s law”, in their words. On top of all that, no other religions are tolerated, and adhering to another faith is punishable by imprisonment, enslavement, or even death if the individual refuses to convert to the “right” religion. Over the years, millions of residents of the Dominion of North America have fled to neighboring nations, which has strained their already-limited resources.  In fact, even our village has felt the effects of this mass exodus. A couple of years ago, a band of Catholics, numbering around two hundred individuals, happened to make their way to our community. These Catholics, led by a man named Carlos Lopez, came to us members of the community and told us tales of the horrors they saw before fleeing. They were caught by Dominion authorities having a secret, Catholic-style mass in a barn outside of the capital of the Dominion, Lord’s City (formerly Oklahoma City). Some members of the group, including Carlos’ wife, were captured and then subjected to horrible fates. Some were hanged, some were drowned, while most of the women who were captured, including Carlos’ dear wife Carmen, were burned at a stake while Carlos and the survivors watched in abject horror from afar. Carlos, a middle-aged, grey-haired, short but physically imposing man of Mexican descent, led his band of sixty or so survivors, who were mostly Latino farm workers but also had some white folks mixed in, here to seek refuge from the religious persecution they suffered back home. Carlos, who has since become a close friend of mine and settled in on a farm less than a half a mile away, horrified me and the other members of the community with what they experienced at the hands of the Dominion. Many members of our village would gather around a big fire and listen to their harrowing tales. Carlos told us about being chased by the authorities, about the hound dogs constantly on their tail. He broke down in tears as he recounted the horrible fate suffered by Carmen, who he described as a sweet, caring, angelic woman who took care of all the sick individuals in their Catholic community. After successfully fleeing into the Rocky Mountains, Carlos’ group of survivors had to endure the blistering temperatures of the desert Southwest. More than half of the original group died due to the brutal July heat, as well as the fact that they ran out of food around what was once Phoenix, Arizona. They only survived after stealing food and water from a nearby village, and then making their way further west along the ruins of what was Interstate 10, until they stumbled upon our village. After introducing themselves to several other communities, we were the first community they found that welcomed them with open arms, as others were either too exclusive or didn’t have the resources to take in any refugees. We have all been through too much hell of our own to subject others to it, so the community elders, including myself, voted to let them stay. Many of the individuals in that group had extensive farming experience from their days working in what was once known as America’s Breadbasket, so they proved to be quite valuable to our community, allowing us to better feed our people. They used their expertise to teach us better farming and irrigation methods, which have increased our yields and even gave us some excess crops that we can use to trade with our neighboring commodities. Even though he has a good new home here in our village, surrounded by those who welcome and care for him, Carlos still weeps for the countless individuals who have been jailed or slaughtered by the Dominion. He feels their pain and sorrow from afar, as he knows many people are still suffering under the Dominion’s iron-fisted, theocratic rule. I see the agony in his big brown eyes as he mourns his fellow human beings, people who suffered and died just for exercising their faith. I can’t imagine what Carlos felt, watching his wife get burned alive using binoculars while standing on a hilltop, using every ounce of strength to hold himself back from charging the officials of the Dominion. He was a helpless bystander, and he had to be, trying to rescue Carmen would have meant certain death for himself, as well as the other survivors of the group.

Now, it is on to the final stop of the 2050 tour of Americana, my home nation of Pacifica. Pacifica is made up of what were the states of the Pacific coast, stretching from southern California up to Washington state. We are the only one of the four nations I’ve described that has a democracy. Instead of a dictator or a king or an emperor, we have a democratically-elected president, named Joel Anderson. He is a tall, grey-haired grandfather figure who was once the general of a warring faction during those first few years after everything fell apart. In his younger days, he led what would eventually become Pacifica to victory in some of its frequent skirmishes with the Dominion of North America (which is constantly trying to expand its Christian empire, and still picks fights with each of its neighbors, including Pacifica). After he retired from military life, he was elected Pacifica’s first President, our version of George Washington, back in 2026. Though his critics have accused him of being a corrupt dictator, due to his occasional flouting of our Constitution (like serving six terms as President), President Anderson has overseen a period of relative peace and growth for Pacifica, and Pacificans can take solace in the fact that they aren’t brutally repressed like their former fellow Americans. Many Pacificans worry about what will happen once it is time for Anderson to retire, as he did turn sixty years old last year. Once his steady hand is gone, will our nation fall into chaos once again, like seemingly the rest of the world? Can we survive yet another time of turmoil? We are just emerging from the Dark Days that had enveloped the last third of a century, and it would quite a shame if we slipped back into that time of war, of disease, of famine.

Here in Pacifica, many individual cities and villages, including my own village, have quite a bit of autonomy. We mostly govern ourselves, with little interference from the central government, based in the capital city of Los Angeles. The only thing the government asks of us is to provide some troops for the Pacifican Army occasionally, to protect against wannabe dictator warlords, and for the occasional border war with the Dominion. Pacifica’s economy has a little bit of industry, such as textiles, with a lot of farming mixed in, both large and small scale. The various villages and towns, such as my own, like to trade with each other, exchanging crops and other goods amongst ourselves. We like to trade with the surrounding communities for threads and clothing and whatever else we do not produce ourselves, exchanging some of our excess crop for whatever we need. The larger cities, like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, have small communities of craftsmen, trying to hone their skills in order to eke out a living. The area in San Francisco is starting production in some more basic electrical appliances such as television sets and refrigerators, and further north, in the Oregon and Washington provinces, we see some logging operations in the forests that take up much of that area. The wood products are used for paper and housing, as most new houses built nowadays are built using wood. We also have some energy production up and down California, such as oil drilling off the coast. The Pacifican coast also boasts some good fishing grounds, and some of our young men do leave the farming communities to pursue careers as fishermen. As you can see, the range of industry is much more limited than it was pre-Collapse. Nations nowadays just make sure to provide what is needed for their population to survive, such as food, shelter and clothing, for the most part.

As for the rest of the world, other nations have seen just as much suffering and upheaval as the former United States. The effects of the Great Collapse reached all across the globe, destroying the lives of everyone, in rich and poor countries alike. Most of Canada is now made up of small bands of villages near the former U.S.-Canada border, though a good chunk of it has been taken over by the armies of the Dominion of North America in recent years. The Dominion does look for any opportunity to expand their Christian empire, to find more subjects to convert, and more “heathens” to mercilessly slaughter. There are villages who continue to fight and resist Dominion rule, with skirmishes popping up all over what was once known as Canada, but others are tired of the fighting, moving further to the north, out of the grasp of the Dominion, living off of hunting, fur trading, and fishing in the frozen tundra. Moving on to our south, Mexico and Central America are currently ablaze with conflict between several competing wannabe empires, as their wars seem to be never-ending. These groups slaughter each other indiscriminately, and burn down each other’s crops, so as to starve the population. The population of this area has dropped the most of anywhere else in the world, though population estimates are fuzzy in this age of limited information. Due to all of the fighting, the area hasn’t developed their economy in any way, all you see is subsistence farming, much like most other places. Plenty of small farms dot the landscape, farmed by families who just want to feed themselves and perhaps sell what is left over, though many unlucky farmers have had crops seized by various armies to feed their warriors. The largest, most powerful group fighting for territory are the Aztecs, a name they chose to hearken back to a large and powerful empire that ruled Mexico over half a millennium ago, before it was conquered by Spain in 1521. The Aztecs have gained enormous amounts of territory, including nearly the entirety of what was once the nations of Mexico and Guatemala, due to their ruthlessness and their skilled warriors. For a period several years ago, there was worry here in Pacifica that the Aztecs would invade, as there were occasional border skirmishes in the San Diego area. However, that died down after President Anderson increased the military presence along our border, much to the relief of those who live in southern California, such as myself and the rest of my village. I was truly scared of the Aztecs, as I have read a lot about the atrocities that they have been committing against their rivals, the small tribes that banded against them to head off their advance. These acts include ceremonial beheadings and instances where they rip out the hearts of captured prisoners of war, while the prisoner is still alive. They are also known for going into rival villages and burning them down, slaughtering innocent civilians as they tried to escape the village. Many villages were left with no survivors. Men, women and children alike would stand no chance against the ruthlessness of the Aztecs. The opponents of the Aztecs are also quite prone to committing their own atrocities, raiding villages on the periphery of the Aztec Empire, killing and raping and plundering. I would find all of this even more appalling if it weren’t for the awful stuff I saw after the Collapse. The Collapse, as well as the Dark Days that followed, did have a way of desensitizing people to atrocities.

There isn’t much known about what happened to South America, going by what I have read on my learning trips, except for one powerful nation that is comprised of much of the southern half of the continent, mainly in what used to be Chile and Argentina. That nation is called Patagonia, and they have become a major trading center nowadays, being the gateway between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and all. They also have some mining for metals and minerals, and farming is prevalent in the middle of the country. Their well-known Port of Patagonia, located on the southern tip of the continent, is quite possibly the largest trading center in the world nowadays. Patagonia is best known for specializing in fishing, selling some of their catch around the world. A decent portion of the small, but growing fish catch that is sold in the markets of Los Angeles and other Pacifican port cities comes from Patagonian waters. When someone leaves the village to head to LA, like myself or one of the other elders, a few other residents ask them to get some Chilean sea bass from the fish markets on the Pacifican Pier (formerly the Santa Monica Pier). I guess the fish breaks the monotony of the typical diet in the community, though I never personally cared for seafood. As for the rest of the continent, from the little I’ve read about it, it seems the rest of the continent has been broken up into numerous small nation-states, over 200 in fact. These nations, which mostly consist of several towns and the surrounding countryside, are very tribalistic in nature, run by rival warlords. They like to frequently skirmish over territory and resources, much like they did all over the world long, long ago. I guess that the world has come full circle in that respect.

A lot of what I’ve read about the world today has been about Europe. Still even to this day, Europe has a tendency of getting more coverage than other parts of the world. Most of Europe, just like most of South America, is made up of hundreds of small nation-states, which is not too different from what that continent was like hundreds of years ago. There hasn’t been much peace on the European continent in the last 30 years or so. They are fighting like it’s 1600 all over again, this country is invading that country, and that other country over there. Their leaders are pretty much a couple of hundred wannabe Napoleons fighting for land and resources, in hopes of vanquishing their rivals and becoming that next great European empire, destined to rule the continent for generations. There have been sporadic breaks in the fighting over the years, where the warring nations sign a peace treaty and play nice with each other, but all it takes is one stupid little land spat, and it will start it all up again. There are a couple of larger nations still, such as England, Spain and New France (the old France fractured into over a dozen little pieces after the Collapse, but they reunited over time under an emperor, who fittingly gave himself the name Napoleon). The larger, more powerful European nations have resumed in engaging in some trade with the Western Hemisphere, but most of Europe’s economy has reverted to agriculture once again. The life of a typical European, like anywhere else in this world, is a harsh, dreary existence. There are a few craftsmen in the towns, but most people are small subsistence farmers or serfs. You know, when they aren’t getting rounded up by their leaders to kill each other indiscriminately.

On to the largest and still most populous continent, Asia. Like the rest of the world, there has been plenty of upheaval and suffering to go around these last few decades. The Chinese have taken over much of the eastern half of the continent, and a new Islamic Empire has taken over most of the western half, as well as much of northern Africa. China is a brutal dictatorship which allows little to no freedom for their population, which has, like the rest of the world, reverted to a harsh existence of poverty, disease and general suffering. Most of the Chinese people are peasant farmers or miners, working under the iron-fisted rule of a tiny elite. On the other end of the continent, the Islamic Empire is pretty much a Muslim version of the Dominion of North America. Any sort of dissent or difference in religion is harshly repressed, with any deviation from religious dogma dealt with harshly. Many offenses are punishable by death by hanging or stoning, often in front of cheering onlookers, just like the Dominion. Several of the former countries that the Islamic Empire now rules over already had a similar theocratic system of Islamic Law, so there isn’t much change there. The rise of the Islamic Empire in the east and the Dominion of North America in the west just shows what happens to nations when religious extremists are in charge. Since much of the Islamic Empire is desert, there is not much farming, so they have to import much of their food, getting a lot of it from Europe. Much of their income comes from trade, as they are the intermediaries of trade between Europe and China. Their control of the trade routes gives them much income and power, allowing them to continue and expand. The Islamic Empire also generates income from energy production, as they possess large amounts of oil reserves, which they then trade, mostly to Europe. The two Asian powers have had occasional clashes in recent years, over trade routes and ports, which culminated in a full-scale war from 2035 to 2047. The Islamic-Chinese War saw tens of millions of poor souls die (most of them civilians), many cities and villages destroyed, and the Islamic Empire expanding their religious caliphate after finally defeating the Chinese. We do have some dealings with that part of the world. Pacifica’s main overseas trading partner is China, as there is a small, but growing trans-Pacific trade nowadays, after years of no such activity. India has also been making some gains to the south of the 2 competing empires, and Pacifica does some trade with them as well, as India trades items such as spices. India also has some mining operations, according to what I’ve read. The remainder of the continent consists of small nations, though there is now virtually nobody living north of China and Mongolia, except for a few isolated tribes in Siberia. As for Australia to the south, there isn’t that much to say about them, as I’ve read little about them, it sounds like they have a few tiny nation-states on the coast, with almost nobody in the Outback, so that hasn’t changed much since before the Collapse. They also get by using their natural resources, such as copper and various minerals, which they trade with other parts of the world. They also have some agriculture and fishing on the coasts, since they have to feed their population somehow.

As for Africa, there are numerous small nations dotting that continent, like much of the rest of the world. Once the economy broke down, most of the nations that made up the world previously also broke down, descending into lawlessness and utter chaos. It was not a good time for anyone, as war, starvation and disease spread amongst the people. It is still known by those who lived through it as the Dark Times. No wonder so many people my age hesitate to talk about it. People mostly returned to smaller groups and tribal behavior all over the world. Something about being a part of a small community seemed comforting to many people. Perhaps it was the fact that they can better look out for each other, and also for protection. Not too different from my community, actually. However, there is one large empire in the southern part of the continent of Africa, called the empire of the Congo. I have heard little about it, but from what I’ve read, It is beginning to thrive due to its vast natural resources, as well as its status as a trading center with both Asia and the Americas, Patagonia in particular. They have also conquered some neighboring nation-states in recent years, expanding their influence. Like I mentioned before, The Islamic Empire does control the far north of the African continent, the barren landscapes of the Sahara Desert that mostly was Muslim even before the Collapse. As for their lifestyle, they were already the poorest continent in the world before the Collapse, so they did go through the least change, which isn’t to say they didn’t suffer immensely like everyone else. For example, Africa did suffer from horrific famines from the start of the Collapse to the early 2020’s and again in the late 2030’s to mid 2040’s. Africans have, for the most part, returned to a pastoral, nomadic lifestyle. They do some farming to feed their families, but many individuals pack up and move on as the seasons dictate, going wherever they can best survive until the next season. Some parts of the continent have some mining operations, mining things such as minerals and diamonds, which their merchants then trade to other nations.

Sorry about the world geography lesson, but I did want to lay some background of where the world is now, a whole thirty-three years after the Great Collapse began. As you can see, the world is a very different place than it was in 2017. Despite all the strife I described before, the world economy is finally beginning to slowly grow once again. The world economy is still a similar size to what it was hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, and it is widely predicted by experts that it will not reach pre-Collapse levels ever again. Education levels are also nowhere near what they used to be, as few nations have reestablished school systems. However, some individual communities do take pride in the fact that they provide education to their youth on their own. The human existence, as expected, is much harsher than before. Material hardship is widespread all over the world, whether in rural areas filled with struggling subsistence farmers and desperately poor serfs, or the vast urban slums full of poor folks living in cramped tenement housing, crumbling homes that existed before the Collapse, tents or nowhere at all. Though there is some industry, and some more enterprising individuals the world over have taken up various crafts to bring in income, most people participate in backbreaking labor in the fields, since agriculture is the main profession of the human race once again. Most men work the fields, with women and children working in the home, preparing meals, making clothes, and other general household upkeep. In the aftermath of the Collapse, the human lifespan is much shorter, since there is far less access to medical services than before, life is much harder, and hygiene is now an afterthought for most people. Doctors are few and far in between, and many communities have a doctor that is really poorly trained, or not trained at all. Nutrition is far poorer, a result of which is that many folks aren’t very healthy the years they do live. Life expectancies run as low as 25-30 years in some places, and can go up to 40-45 years in other places, particularly nations that were wealthier pre-Collapse and had higher life expectancies to start with. Diseases such as tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, dysentery, malaria, among many, many others ravage communities the world over from time to time, due to the extreme poverty of most of the populations and the lack of sanitation in most places. The world’s population, due to starvation, disease and war, among other things, is far smaller than what it was in 2017, at the start of the Collapse. In 2017, the world’s population stood at roughly 7.5 billion, and was rapidly growing. In 2050, experts estimate it to be between 1.5 and 2 billion, which is around the level it was in the early 20th century. Of course, since information doesn’t get around nearly as well as it used to (the world’s technological advance stopped with the onset of the Collapse), any estimates can be rather fuzzy. Some estimates are higher than that, while others are lower. Nobody can definitively say, due to the fact that we aren’t as interconnected as before. Before the Collapse, much of the world was connected through digital devices and the Internet (a global communication network). In 2050, many parts of the world still have telephones or telegraphs, but there is no globe-spanning network connecting us instantaneously. The most sophisticated communication technology we have is a landline telephone, but some nations, such as Pacifica, are in the planning stages of putting up satellites that will enable the usage of mobile phones once again. This will likely take a while, since no nation on Earth currently has a space program, and there are still more pressing matters to deal with. Estimates say that a communications network even remotely resembling what we had pre-Collapse is still at least 10 to 20 years away, and it will only be accessible to the wealthiest among us. Probably once we get the whole not dying thing down once again, then we can start working on more advanced things again.

How did I learn all of this info about the world? Well, being my usual inquisitive self, I took some trips to the library. There do happen to be some of those left, even now. For my learning expeditions, I would travel by a heavily-armed bus (armed in order to fend off potential attacks by bandits or other rabble-rousers) along the cracked, sometimes nearly unpassable roads of what was once southern California, to the Pacifica National Library in Los Angeles, Pacifica’s capital city. In the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, in the shadow of the nice new Capitol Building located on Sunset Boulevard, lies the library, a huge, beautiful stone building with giant windows that give a glimpse of the books that lie inside. This grand building lies in contrast to the crumbling, and sometimes bombed-out look of the other buildings in the surrounding area, as Los Angeles, like pretty much every other major city in the former U.S., did see heavy fighting in the American Wars. Walking along the streets of Hollywood, one can also see the decaying vestiges of what was once the entertainment capital of the world. You can still see some of the stars given to various film, television and radio stars of yesteryear along what was known as the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but most of those have worn away with time. Just a short walk from that, the National Library has much of the knowledge compiled by Pacifica’s small but thriving academic community, a large collection of books the academics have written in recent years, as well as books, newspapers and magazines from before and during the Collapse, which I use to fill in the gaps of my extensive knowledge of the Collapse. Now that we aren’t fighting just to survive, we can settle down and start to do some learning once again. It feels good to think about something other than where my family will take shelter, where our next meal will come from, or whether that guy that’s looking at us will try to rob or kill us. During my occasional trips to the library (I try to go at least once or twice a year, but the trips are getting harder with my advancing age), I would grab a hold of seemingly entire rows of books and newspapers, new and old, to acquire as much knowledge as possible, like a sponge. Books on history, newspapers from the area, world atlases, books on life in other nations, I would soak up as much information as my brain can hold.

After the conclusion of my reading binges, which typically last a few days, I would feel reinvigorated upon my return to my village, located roughly 50 miles to the east of the capitol. I didn’t say much about my journeys, as not many people back home really care to hear what I read. The folks in the community always seemed more interested in tending to their households and to the farms. Andy Miller, the head of the community (our mayor, if you will), seemed to find it strange that I desired to be so informed. He would always tell me that my focus needed to be on building our community, that there is no need to know what goes on outside the boundaries of the village. None of that talk would daunt me though, I have always had a thirst for knowledge, going all the way back to my childhood, when I could often be seen with my head buried in a world atlas, or perhaps a history book. That stuff is quite a bit harder to obtain nowadays, but I have my ways of finding it. It is through these trips to the library that I have acquired the knowledge of today’s world that I have.

Now that I have described the outside world, I suppose it is time to turn my focus inward, and tell you what life is like at home, in my community. The village I now call home, like I said before, lies in a part of what was once known as Ontario, California. I live in this community with just under two thousand other people, located in an area of about two square miles of what was once tightly-packed houses and apartments, but what is now a few homes and farmland. More than half of the homes in the area were torn down in order to clear the lots for the farms. So of course, we are a community of farmers. We are a pretty tight-knit community, which makes sure to always take care of each other. Our community always makes sure that nobody goes unfed, unclothed, and uneducated. The needs of the community as a whole are more important than those of any individual. Many of us older folks in the community believe that one reason society fell was that we stopped caring about each other, and also our communities at large. Recalling the power that money had over people before the economy collapsed, we eschew the concept of money all together. Our village is rather unique in that regard, as virtually all of the rest of the country has established a new currency, called the Pacifican dollar. Though we don’t have money, we do trade our excess crop to other surrounding towns and villages, in exchange for goods that we need, such as clothes and electricity. Yes, we actually have electricity again. Our homes got their electricity back just a few years ago, when we made a deal with Pacifica Electric to trade some of our crop for power. The company then uses the crop to feed their employees at lunchtime. It is a good program that benefits both the company and our village. As for the structure of the home, the men wake up at sunrise to go work in the fields and tend to the farm animals, and the women usually stay in the home to cook, sew clothes that have become tattered, and get water from the nearest water pump. The children go to the community school during the morning and early afternoon hours, and then they come home to help their parents with whatever else is needed around the house, with the young boys doing some work in the fields, and the girls helping their mothers with the household chores. After all of that back-breaking labor, if there is still free time, they will play amongst each other in the streets and dirt fields of the community. Football and soccer are popular pursuits, as well as the occasional card game or singing contest.

I live in a 3-unit complex, a olive green building with a cracked and worn checkerboard floor pattern, which once had the address of 1023 West H Street, which sits on the corner of what was H Street and Palmetto Street. How do I know the exact address of the home? Because my family once lived in Apartment B for five years before the Collapse. I spent much of my teenage years at that address, as myself, my parents and my two sisters lived here from 2007 to 2012. By some incredible stroke of luck, we ended up getting to claim this house for our family once again when we entered the community. Around thirty years ago, when things were still really bad, we had stumbled upon the newly-formed community here, a group of individuals who simply wanted to band together for survival, to get away from the violence wracking everywhere else, and to become self-sustaining, growing our own food and protecting ourselves. There were a few empty homes available when myself, Leann and Briana were accepted into the community after several years of wandering and seeking sources of food and shelter. Of course, due to the connection we had with this house, we picked it and moved right in, settling in for a life as farmers, not what we had planned for life before the collapse, but it would keep us alive.

Nowadays, I live by myself in what was once Apartment A. My sister Leann, her husband Kian and of course, Samantha and Eric live in the middle unit that was once Apartment B, and finally, my sister Briana lives in what was once Apartment C. Despite living in separate units, we were rarely apart, except to sleep. We eat dinner together, at the same table, using the food that Kian grows on the farm, with assistance from myself, Eric and Samantha. Our farm grows fruits like oranges, strawberries and grapes, vegetables like lettuce, tomatoes and asparagus, and we raise cattle and chickens for meat. The furniture and bedding consists of a couple of things that were left behind by whoever lived in the home before the collapse, a couple items that Kian made himself, and a few things that Sal Montes, a furniture maker who lives four doors down, fashioned for us in exchange for a nice haul from our harvest. Our farm lies behind the house in a lot which once contained several other houses that were bulldozed in order to use the land for farming. We eat fairly well, especially if the crop is good that particular season, and whenever we possibly can, we give some of our food to our next door neighbors, the Garcias. They have fallen on hard times due to the death of the family patriarch Jose, who unfortunately passed away from what we believe to be cancer five months ago. We will never truly know what killed Jose, since we don’t have the medical technology to diagnose him, and he was too ill to make the trip to the nearest cancer doctor, located in Los Angeles. All we could do here is try to manage his pain and make him as comfortable as possible, until he passed one blazing hot June day. After his untimely death, we help his wife Gloria, and their young daughters Cynthia and Claudia, because that is what we do for each other here. We know that, if we had an illness in our family, they would have helped us out. Especially Jose, as he was an incredibly caring man. During the colder winter months, he would give us some of the firewood he would chop during his forays to the hills several miles north of the community, which was a popular spot to obtain firewood for cooking and heat. Jose would put anybody else before himself, whether it be a family member, a friend, or even a stranger. It is that mindset that brings all of us together here in the village.

As for life in the community. We work together in almost everything we do. On top of the farming, most of us come together for our social activities, which was something that wasn’t very common before the Collapse. In the evenings, after dinner is completed, and the many household chores are finished, the families come together to have drinks and chat around a fire a couple of times a week. Bob Wilson, a tall, stocky man who lives a block away from us, grows the grains and hops needed to brew beer on his farm, on top of the usual fruits and vegetables. He had liked to do some craft brewing as a young man before the Collapse (he is around my age, I think about a year older), and apparently had remembered, all these years later, how to brew his own beer. He likes to brew enough beer for anyone who wants any, which after a hard day of work on the farm, is most of us. As we drink and talk and laugh, some of the ladies like to sing songs to entertain us. Others like to join in, but I usually don’t, as I never could sing worth a damn. Of course, the lack of singing skills doesn’t stop Leann and Briana from belting out some tunes, which are mostly songs that they improvise, but sometimes are something someone else came up with. They both have always had a thing for music, dating all the way back to their childhood. I remember when I was growing up, when I could hardly go anywhere in the house without hearing one, or both of them blaring their music so loud I couldn’t hear anything else, often some pop song that would end up getting stuck in my head. So it comes naturally that they would still have that love. Of course, that love was passed down to the next generation, as I often hear Samantha humming some song while burying her head in her book. She often comes next door to my house just to have me listen to some new melody she came up with. Sometimes I just don’t feel like hearing her new song, but I’ll humor her anyways, as I don’t want to stifle her creativity in any way.

Of course, we do more than farm, get wasted and sing. We also make sure our children are educated. In recent years, a sweet lady named Clarissa Holloman has taken it upon herself to run the village school. Mrs. Holloman, a blonde-haired, tiny, but stern and intimidating woman in her mid 40’s, wanted to be a teacher growing up before the Collapse, and finally got her chance when her and her husband Joel joined our community six years ago. Our village has a two-level school system, and Mrs. Holloman teaches both of them. The first level is for the younger kids, and revolves around learning to read, write and do basic math, and takes place in the morning. The second level is for the older children, and builds on the math skills, while also teaching science and logical skills. Mrs. Holloman has proven herself a capable molder of young minds, who has given many of our community’s youth a thirst for knowledge, and a desire to make our world better. I see that desire in Samantha, who perhaps will be a community teacher someday, or may be able to go to Pacifica University, located in the hills just north of Los Angeles, to study. That is, if they take crops as payment. Though there aren’t the opportunities that once existed before the Collapse, I still feel that education is an important pillar of our community. We also have a doctor, Martin Moreno, who is a help to our community, but he can only deal with basic illness due to lack of training. Martin, a short portly fellow who lives on the far other end of the community just past what was once San Antonio Avenue, is the son of a former doctor, so he wanted to keep on the family legacy of healing others. I have brought him medical books from the library in order to expand his medical knowledge, but villagers still have to go to Los Angeles if they get very ill. We also have Brad Stimson, who solves disputes between members of the village, a judge of sorts. He was in law school at the time the Collapse started, so he is a natural choice for this position. Brad, who is really tall and rail thin, with a receding hairline and a scruffy beard, has maintained his sharp legal mind even all these years later, and he deftly solves any problems between members of our community in a fair and impartial manner, all from the comfort of the living room of his house a few doors down from Dr. Moreno.

Unfortunately, another highly important pillar of our community is protection. Though we are the safest we have been in many years, many of our younger men, the ones who aren’t needed for farm work, are in charge of protecting the village. There are still many gangs of roving bandits who like to ravage any towns and villages that let their guard down even in the slightest. The most notorious of these groups, a nasty bunch called the Pacifican Warriors, completely destroyed a village near San Diego about six months back, they burned many homes down, stole the crops and took some young women from the village to be their very unwilling brides. They have made similar raids on villages all over southern Pacifica, and the Pacifican army is always on the hunt for them. They are the reason that the buses to and from Los Angeles have armed guards on them, since they liked attacking buses and trucks used for transportation of goods between communities. Many folks tremble at the mere thought of encountering the Pacifican Warriors, with their ferocious looks and their equally ferocious swords and guns. Our community places a high priority on preventing that same fate from befalling us. The young men who don’t tend to farms stand guard at night, and whenever we hear the danger is high. Usually our guardsmen will patrol our perimeter, while also helping patrol the interior, to stop any crimes the community members might commit. Sometimes, despite the patrols, smaller groups of bandits manage to get to some of our farms, mainly on the perimeter of the village, taking some crops and even a pig or some chickens to feed their numbers. In the past, the village had to deal with more existential threats, like warlords who wanted the territory and the farms to go with it, but that more violent time has passed for the most part. We are in a relatively tranquil time, at least more tranquil than anytime in the last 33 years. We all feel that our protection plans play a big part in that. All villages must have some sort of protection, lest they get raided, or even destroyed.

Now that I have the free time to actually reflect on what happened in the past, I have decided to write about the whole harrowing affair. I had been thinking of telling a history of the Great Collapse for quite some time, but wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. Ideas on what to include and how to organize it kicked in my head for several years, but what provided the spark for me to actually start writing was that question I received from Samantha. She seemed genuinely interested as she stared at me with those glowing blue eyes. She said that herself, as well as many other kids in the village, knew that there was some massive, society-altering event called the Great Collapse that had happened some time back, but they wanted to know exactly what that was all about. As a result, I made it my new mission in life to educate as many people as possible. I would spend whatever remaining years I have in this world fulfilling this mission. Not only will I tell whoever wanted to learn about it, I will write about it as well, for future generations to read and learn about. I will not only tell my personal tale and the tales of those around me, but I will also paint the big picture as to what happened in the world around me. I wanted to tell of the horrible suffering of the event. Heck, maybe the book I write about it will be added to the collection of writings at the Pacifican National Library, for interested individuals to read. Maybe my history will be included in the great literary works of our time.

That wonderful November afternoon, not long after Samantha and Eric inquired to me about what they had heard about in class that day, I sat down with them in the front yard of our home. It was a perfect day for us to sit outside, it was nice and mild, with the Sun’s glorious rays shining upon us. I began to describe what had happened, why it happened, and who made it happen. I could see Samantha’s expressions alternate between pure excitement and abject horror. She gasped loudly as I described how the old society, the society I was born and raised in, crumbled in horrific fashion. She was in awe as I told her the stories of what myself, and her mother and aunt, had gone through. As for Eric, he was excited, but not as much. His mind did kind of wander much like my mind liked to do, but I shrugged it off, as I know that he doesn’t have the best attention span. He was most definitely distracted when two of the neighborhood boys, Leo Martinez and Liam Miller, who is the son of Andy, the village leader, approached. Instead of pulling Eric away for their normal game of football, they too took a spot on the front lawn, wanting to listen to my recollections of the past. The kids seemed much more interested in hearing about this stuff than the adults ever were, perhaps because the kids didn’t have to actually live through it. Before long, Leo’s brother Luis, as well as our next-door neighbors Cynthia and Claudia Garcia, joined in the circle that had formed in front of me. By sunset a couple of hours later, about twenty of the community’s children had come to hear me talk. My stories were only interrupted by the familiar calls of the kid’s parents, summoning their children home for dinner.

Seeing that my work was done for the day, I retired into the kitchen in Leann’s apartment for a delicious dinner of pork chops and corn, lovingly prepared by Leann and Briana. After having my fill of the delightful dinner and water from our nearby water pump (though we have electricity, running water hasn’t come back to us just yet. The water company insists on money for payment, instead of crops), I sat back outside to take in the lovely night sky. The lack of functioning street lights and other light pollution allows people to see a beautiful, starry sky nowadays, something that was once impossible to see unless you were in an unpopulated area like the mountains or desert. Not long after I took my seat in front of the house to check out the night sky and take in the constellations, I see a slender figure emerge from the shadows. It was Andy Miller. He was in his late 40’s, about my height, with a small build. He has receding black hair, and loves to wear shorts and sandals for some reason. He approached me with a angry look on his face:

“What the hell is going on, Will?” Andy hollered at me.

“What are you talking about, Andy?” I questioned him, completely confused at the sudden inquisition. What could he possibly be mad about?

“Liam tells me that you were talking about the Collapse today. Why are you scaring them with all that? They don’t need to know about all the messed up stuff that us and their parents had to go through. That is too much for their minds to process!” He sternly lectured me.

“I think the younger generation deserves to know all about what happened in the past. Shouldn’t it make you happy that the future leaders of our community have such a thirst for knowledge? Personally, it warmed my heart that the kids were so interested in hearing about it. By the way, their minds are perfectly capable of processing it.” I shot back at him. Those kids are smarter than Andy give them credit for. He always was worried about whether the younger generation can keep the community thriving once us older folks passed on. One thing that didn’t seem to change about society was the lack of trust that the older generation had in the younger generation.

“Whatever. Personally, I think it is unimportant. Our kids should live in the here and now. Knowing about the past won’t help them be better farmers or craftsmen, or to lead our community in the future. I think I’m going to have to talk to Clarissa about her lessons.” Andy replied to me.

With that, Andy walked off, shaking his head as he headed the block and a half back to his house. I found it odd that he ended the argument so quickly, as Andy is always up for a good discussion or argument, perhaps he was just too frazzled that night. After that little talk ended, my thoughts of writing a history, as well as the warm reception I got today from the kids, were dancing in my head. That settles it, I am going to do it. Between recalling so much of what happened during the Great Collapse, and filling in the rest with my trips to the National Library, I am equipped to write a comprehensive history of the Collapse. I’m not sure if it has been done before, but I will set out to do it. Just know, that what took place isn’t for the faint of heart.

Author's Note

This is not a final draft. So I would like to know what the story needs, if anything.

Reviews

[wordman]

well i think it is pretty good,interesting and on point

[DGordon]

Thank you. I've posted chapter 4 now.