Ch.1 - A View From The Year 2050

The first chapter of the story, it is set in the year 2050. Will Collins is inspired to tell the story of The Great Collapse, an economic cataclysm that rendered the world unrecognizable.

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. There was a light, pleasant breeze, and you can still see the snow from a recent storm on the large mountain range to the north. I had been resting my eyes in my favorite chair, an old, beat up, brown recliner in the living room of the Collins family house after assisting with some household chores, 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 had a wisdom well beyond her years, and a curiosity about the world that reminded me of me at that age. 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. College was once again the province of the wealthy, perhaps only 1 to 2 percent of young adults had the means to attend these days. But that didn’t faze Samantha in her quest for knowledge. She seemed to always have her adorable, dimpled, cherub-like face buried in one of the books I picked up on my trips to the library, her wispy blonde hair always getting in her face and eyes. She is quite small, only about 4’6” or so (people don’t grow as tall these days), and really 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, and built like a mini tank. He owes his physique to helping out the men out in the fields, something virtually all the young boys do starting at a young age. Especially as it gets closer to harvest time, it is all hands on deck on the farm. The young boys will be out in the fields with the adult men. Even older men such as myself will lend a helping hand if needed, as much as my back and knees hate that. When not in school, or at the farm, he is always outside playing, as kids his age are wont to do. 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 the sun is about to set, 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?” I asked as I was wiping my eyes and stretching my arms and legs.

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

I was slightly taken aback by this revelation, 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. For our homework assignment, she wanted everyone in the class to talk to somebody who lived through it, so we wanted to ask you. I know it was a really rough time for everyone!” 

I can tell that Samantha was clearly enthusiastic about learning about the subject, which didn’t surprise me one bit. 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 it. 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 had always been a student of history, going back to my childhood. I was the type who would read history books for fun. I know, I have always been a bit of a nerd. Leann always tells me that Samantha got her love of knowledge from me. Because of this love of history, I jumped at the opportunity to discuss the Great Collapse with Samantha and Eric, as well as anyone else who cared to listen. 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 didn’t begrudge those who wouldn’t speak of the Great Collapse. The horrors of that time period left many of us who lived through it with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, meaning that the mere mention of the Collapse or the Dark Days may set them off. Heck, my generation suffer from stress and anxiety, we tend to be hyper aware of our surroundings. Many sounds triggered responses from us. And worse, we seemed to have passed these traits and behaviors and patterns to younger generations. Despite the trauma of it all, 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.

Like I said, 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 have frequent nightmares about events that happened decades ago. 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 witnessed all manner of suffering and injustice over the years. I watched people lose everything in the blink of an eye. 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 saw all manner of desperation by poor folks at the end of their respective ropes. 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-three years ago, as she neared death, 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. We would stick together, no matter what life would possibly throw at us.

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. I remember long lost news segments and magazine articles, and the stories of those I encountered along the way. 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 a much larger man 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 than 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 can barely hear anymore. I have some sort of skin disorder on various parts of my body, like many others in the community (sanitation isn’t what it used to be, of course). 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. As I mentioned before, I help out on the farm during the busy periods, performing tasks that I had done for decades. I have a pair of eyeglasses that I found one day on a run to the dump, 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 homeless encampment. A slash on my stomach from some giant of a man who went after one of my sisters in a community we lived in. 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. The United States liked to use its influence to sway other nations, often in ways that made life worse for those in distant lands. The last, worst example of this helped export the Great Collapse all over the world. A couple of years after the Collapse, rebel forces, including a sizable portion of the military, rose up against the government and the President who brought about the carnage, 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, each with different visions for the country, and kept the war going, this time killing each other. The civil wars killed at least twenty-five million people (some estimates put the number as high as seventy-five million), many of whom were innocent civilians, people who just wanted peace and stability, like they had before. The wars blew through what little treasure the nation had left, destroyed many of our great cities, and claimed so many lives, while leaving those who remained with a far lower quality of life than they once had.

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 and what used to be southeastern Canada to what was Washington D.C. and west into the Ohio Valley. 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 back in 2029, they fought yet another civil war that lasted four years (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). Their citizens are brutally repressed and mostly confined to cramped slums with deplorable conditions. Only the well-off have things like electricity or running water, and the slums were crumbling (most buildings had existed before the Great Collapse, but had had no maintenance in decades), unsafe, and remarkably dirty. Many of the buildings in those cities were destroyed by the war, and were not rebuilt. The piles of rubble remained there, decades after the wars were over, and buildings and even streets were still littered with mines and other ordinance. Even in 2050, hundreds of New Yorkers were killed per year by exploding landmines. The roads were not maintained and were impassible in many parts of the country. The only roads that were usable in large cities there, and all over the world, were roads that were either used by the wealthy or used by vehicles to transport the goods being produced in the factories.  Hunger and disease ran rampant in these slums, and many were homeless. The factories gave off immense amounts of pollution, to the point where smog is once again a major problem in the region. Crime was everywhere. Theft and murder were everyday occurrences in the cities, and most people didn’t live much past thirty. In most cities, over a quarter of children didn’t live to reach adulthood. The murder rate was at least fifteen times what it had been before the Great Collapse

When it comes to rights, 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. The Collins regime has a tendency to jail or even kill dissenters, as there is an enormous camp for political prisoners in what was upstate New York, where prisoners are regularly beaten, and forced labor is common. The human rights abuses are known all over the North American continent, as prisoners were often beaten, starved, or worked to death. The best selling book of 2045 was a detailed description of this massive camp, simply called The American Correction Center. The book, titled “Escaping Papa Collins”, was written by Jordan Villa, a former sweatshop worker who escaped The American Correction Center via an elaborate escape attempt involving tunnels meticulously dug under the camp. Once Villa made it out of the country, and established residence in the city-state of Montreal, he was able to tell his harrowing story.

The economy of the new United States of America centers around textiles made in horrible sweatshops (where workers work extremely long hours in brutal conditions for little, or sometimes even no pay) in places like New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston, 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.

Those who studied history saw the parallels between 2050 and a distant time. One prominent social commentator remarked: “The cities of Eastern North America have truly come full circle. Most residents in the cities work in horrific conditions in the sweatshops, toiling long hours for almost nothing, made to work at a frenetic pace, and beaten if they don’t make their quotas or, God forbid, make mistakes in their work. Many a worker had their pay confiscated at the end of the day if they made too many errors during their shift. Then, at the end of that shift, they went home to a crowded tenement, in an area where crime was rife. The pace of rebuilding the cities was far too slow, as there were many piles of rubble scattered about, and electricity and water service were not restored. A large apartment building may only have a few toilets that everyone shares. The cities were full of vermin, and the old subway tunnels were full of homeless. In these crowded conditions, sickness spread rapidly. The whole country has been overrun by tuberculosis, it is worst in the biggest cities. Hospitals in all the cities have large tuberculosis wards. New York has had it so bad for years now, and the leaders do nothing about it. Only those with money can get the treatments available, which most can’t access….. All of this harkens back to the 1800’s and early 1900’s. Quality of life has fallen back to those levels.” 

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, millions of acres reverted back to becoming forest land), 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 95% 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 were beaten or starved if their overseers felt their work was insufficient. 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, as the nobles would take their required portion regardless. Millions of Confederate serfs have perished in a terrible famine since the onset of a bad drought starting in 2048, just like they did in the famine of 2041…..and the famine of 2033.

The nobles don’t care though, that’s just fewer people for them to feed and clothe, and they can just work the remaining peasants harder to make up the difference. The peasants are just expendable objects to most nobles, a means to obtain their wealth and their comfortable lifestyles. 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. Whippings were public spectacles, so as to make an example of anyone who spoke out. And uprisings were treated more harshly. The Tuscaloosa Uprising in 2044-45 was crushed to the tune of three-hundred thousand peasants losing their lives, as the uprising spread throughout the nation, affecting hundreds of cities and plantations. I guess I don’t blame them, I myself would rather die than be a slave. These men and women had nothing to lose but their chains.

Although much of the population consists of serfs, there is still a stratified social order, based along racial lines. Though the mass of the peasantry is made up of all races, whites are treated better than non-whites. Only whites could own land, which was also necessary in order to vote in any election (yet another old timey custom that made its return in this post-Collapse world). Only whites had any sort of freedom of movement, everyone else had to prove they had permission from their noble in order to leave their plantation. Non-whites received harsher punishments for a wide array of criminal offenses, and were considered lower priority when there were shortages of food, meaning that they made up a disproportionate percentage of those who died in the region’s periodic famines. They were also forbidden to learn to read or write, and any sort of relations with whites were banned, whether it be a romantic relationship or just a friendship. Many plantation owners gave their non-white tenants higher quotas than the white tenants had to fill, while giving fewer food rations, and would mete out harsher punishments, even going as far as trading the offender to another noble, separating them from their community and their family in the process. 

The economy of the Confederate States of America, 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 cotton and tobacco for export to other nations. Tobacco has been a major crop in that area for close to half a millennium, when the English first colonized the area and expelled the original inhabitants. And Confederate cotton is used for textiles all over North America, as well as in parts of Europe. 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. Some of the major cities will produce motor vehicles and farm equipment and tools, whatever is needed on the farms and to move those agricultural goods from place to place. The interior of the nation, such as parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia has some forestry operations. 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 is 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. Formal education is only for noble families, as are the colleges. “Education ain’t needed to work my fields, peasants just need to learn how to work the tools and be obedient.” Remarked one Alabama noble. Nonetheless, many plantations still had informal (and often secret) schools for the peasant children. Children are often working in the fields or serving the nobles by the age of five or six, and the hours are long no matter a peasant’s age. If one collapses in the brutal southern heat, they are often just pulled to the side and left for dead. It is truly a horrific existence.

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, costing them their land and resorting to working on an estate among a large portion of the rest of the population. The larger landholders will often try to force the smaller farmers into submission, resorting to underhanded tactics such as price manipulation, spreading malicious lies about the quality of a farmer’s crop, and even going so far as to steal cattle or even burning down the farms of their competitors in order to destroy them financially. Different parts of the country grow different crops, depending on the area’s climate. This allows for a more diverse diet than you see in other places. Well, at least if you belong to a favored group. We also see some oil drilling in scattered pockets of the nation, for energy and to trade with other nations. The city of Chicago has perhaps the largest concentration of industry on the North American continent today, producing cars, steel, boats, and farming equipment. The Ohio Valley is the main manufacturer of weapons, producing whatever is needed for the nation’s myriad war efforts. 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. For most, the only way to get out of a life working a noble’s land is to join the armed forces. Formal education was only available to the nobles, and it was tough to get into the trades (you needed a high skill level, and to be accepted as an apprentice by an active tradesman), so for most, it was either the life of a peasant or the life of a soldier. The Dominion has a massive military, probably the largest in the world, and they spread out every which way, picking fights with each of its neighbors. Since its inception in the mid-2020’s, the Dominion has spread west into the desert Southwest, all the way to the Colorado River. They have gone south, south of what was once the U.S.-Mexico border. They have taken much of what was the interior provinces of Canada. And to the east, they constantly fight with the new United States of America in the Ohio Valley.

Only one group of people sits above the nobles and warriors in the hierarchy of the Dominion: the clergy. Most notably, the high priests of the Dominion who oversee ‘

the nation’s operations. These individuals have the final say as to what goes in their domain, as the Dominion of North America 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, involvement with pornography, or even blasphemy are punishable by death. Women had essentially no rights, as they couldn’t obtain an education, own land, speak over a man, have any authority over a man, vote, operate any kind of vehicle, or even appear in public without a man’s permission. Any violation of these laws, referred to as The Womanly Codes, would lead to harsh punishment, from whippings to public humiliation to lengthy sentences of hard labor to even death. Those condemned to death are often executed in the public squares of towns, in front of throngs of onlookers, in order to make an example of anyone who tries to defy “God’s law”, in their words. In larger towns and cities, the crowds for executions may number in the thousands. Many folks would make a day of it, taking their whole families along for the show, some even bringing blankets and food for a picnic.

Accounts of those who escaped painted a picture of the horrors that many endured at the hands of the Dominion. The number of stories was too numerous to count, and each was seemingly more horrifying than the last. One man who fled the country gave a bone-chilling interview in his new home in 2048. The man, who remained anonymous out of fear of reprisal, gave an interview to local radio stations, which was broadcast all over their new home nation:

“Every Sunday, the day of rest, where nobody worked anywhere in the Dominion of North America, people would gather in the town square in the city center after mandatory church services. Every week, at least in Lord’s City, there were several individuals who were to be executed, to the joy of the masses. Most weeks, several thousand would gather to see people be murdered in the name of God. These crowds were full of bloodthirsty men, women, and children, who would cheer at the suffering of their fellow human beings. Sometimes it was criminals like murderers or robbers, but most of the time it was people who ‘angered the Lord.’ Sometimes it was children who perpetually disobeyed their parents, as they gave the parents the option of carrying out the killing themselves…..Sometimes it was someone who worshipped in a different way from the rest, sometimes it was someone who was atheist. Sometimes it was a woman who ‘wished to rule over her husband,’ or a woman who wanted to read or get an education which was strictly forbidden in the Dominion. There they say that women learning went ‘against the natural order of things.’ Other times, they executed any woman who had sexual relations with anyone who was not her husband. However, they never seemed to punish the men who did the same…..They would round up these so-called ‘heathens’ and execute them. Sometimes by hanging, sometimes by stoning, sometimes by beheading or even crucifixion. They would lead the offenders into the town square, and would read to the crowd which Bible verse the condemned violated. And right before they released the trap door, they chanted ‘may God have mercy on your soul!’…..Then, they saved their worst treatment for the homosexuals. The high priests of the Dominion seemed to hate homosexuals more than anyone else. Those individuals got the worst treatment of all. In prisons, they got the worst treatment and subjected to the most torture, all because of who they loved. A cousin of mine who worked in one of the prisons said that homosexuals, both lesbians and gay men, were starved to death regularly. And for the gay men, they would strip them naked and stick hot pokers up the men’s rectums, laughing at them and taunting them as they screamed in agony. Some guards would yell at the men ‘you don’t like things going up there now, do you!.’ while laughing hysterically…..I was sickened by all of this terrible treatment of these people, and I had to escape. Escaping meant I was now at risk of ending up on those gallows in the Lord’s City town square, as escape attempts were also punishable by death. Something about “keeping souls in God’s kingdom” they liked to say, but I suspect it is really to keep word about their atrocities from getting out…..I fled for my life a year ago, leaving my family behind, all because the authorities were questioning why I had not yet wed at the age of twenty-seven. Everyone was expected to be married by the age of twenty-one or so, either to one we loved, or someone who was appointed by the authorities, oftentimes a young girl of about fourteen to sixteen, sometimes even younger than that (Of course, they gave the nobles and soldiers and priests the first pick). They were all about making as many Christian soldiers as possible, as young as possible. When the local priests questioned me, and started talking about declaring me a potential homosexual and jailing me, I left in the middle of the night, under the cover of darkness. I packed a few of my possessions, like some food, and my clothing, and fled west, where I settled here in Los Angeles.

 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, mostly religious minorities such as Jews, Muslims, and members of non-approved Christian sects, have fled to neighboring nations, which has strained their already-limited resources. Every one of the Dominion’s neighbors has a network of refugee camps, where many of those who managed to escape the evil clutches of the Dominion live in horrific conditions. The camps, some of which house hundreds of thousands of individuals, are full of tents, huts, and other makeshift buildings, made out of whatever was on hand. These camps are not overseen by their host nations, but many of them have created their own governments. These camps have their own gardens, where the residents grow food to feed themselves. They typically have their own makeshift hospitals and schools and shops and security forces to help the people. Nonetheless, the camps are full of hunger and disease. Illness spreads rapidly throughout the dirty, cramped conditions, especially as most have little to no sanitation. Typically, people die within just a few years of their arrival at the camp, but some hardier folks have lived in the camps for decades, while others go on to leave and try their hand at life in the cities. The life in a refugee camp is harsh, people fear being overrun by the Dominion (or whichever place they fled), while no help will come from their host nation.

In fact, even our village has felt the effects of this mass exodus from the Dominion. 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 to seek asylum, 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 a few miles west of the capital of the Dominion, Lord’s City (formerly Oklahoma City). Some members of the group, including Carlos’ wife, were captured that night 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 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, near the dirt and gravel road that was once San Antonio Avenue, horrified me and the other members of the community with what they experienced at the hands of the Dominion. The words of Carlos are etched in my mind forever, to where I have nightmares about things I never experienced. Many members of our village would gather around a big fire and listen to their harrowing tales, which only further confirmed what we would hear on the radio from other survivors. Carlos told us about being chased by the authorities, about the hound dogs constantly on their tail, about seeing the lanterns off in the distance and the yells of their pursuers. The band of escapees could never stop for long, not even to sleep, lest they be caught by Dominion soldiers. Carlos told us of the tears of joy he and his band wept when they crossed the Colorado River, when they were officially out of the Dominion. 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, a trip that was over one-thousand miles. 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 by over 50%, to where our community was growing some excess crops that we can use to trade with our neighboring communities, for commodities that our residents did not possess or create, such as electricity and household goods. 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. The southern boundary lies just south of San Diego, near where the old U.S.-Mexico border was, and the northern boundary lies just north of the city of Seattle, near where the old U.S.-Canada border was. We are the only one of the four nations I’ve described that has what can even somewhat be described as a democracy. Instead of a dictator or a king or an emperor or a high priest, 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. Pacifica also is ahead of the other three nations of the former U.S. in a wide array of factors. We have the highest literacy rate in North America (and probably the world), the lowest crime and homelessness rates (though our cities still have lots of those), the highest average income, and the most access to clean drinking water. Though our standard of living is far below what it was pre-Collapse, it is the best around these days. 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 (located about thirty miles to the west of my home). 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. Every once in a while, outside of harvest season, some Pacifica forces would comb the farming villages, looking for young men to help boost our army’s numbers. Those recruits would typically be returned in time for the next harvest, if they returned at all.

Pacifica’s economy has a little bit of industry in the cities, 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 at that moment. 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. Otherwise, one could try their hand at running a shop or an inn. The area in and around 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. The major cities have construction jobs, creating new buildings and clearing out the many buildings that were destroyed in the wars (Los Angeles was the site of one of the war’s biggest, bloodiest battles, and the city is scattered with piles of rubble, even decades later). We also have some energy production up and down California, such as oil drilling off the coast, as well as a recent renewal of interest in solar energy, which had become increasingly popular in the years immediately proceeding the Collapse. In the last couple of years, some solar panels for energy generation have been set up, mostly in the vast deserts to the east and north of my home village. The Pacifican coast also boasts some good fishing grounds, as a number of ports up and down the coast are seeing ferocious competition among different fishing operations. Actually, 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. Or primary industries, as economists in pre-Collapse times would call it.

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 in short order, destroying the lives of everyone, in rich and poor countries alike. What had been the coasts of Canada is now made up of small bands of villages near the former U.S.-Canada border. Most of these towns are their own city-states, living in relative harmony, making their living by fishing the waters, or by fur trading. However, much of the interior has been taken over by the armies of the Dominion of North America in recent years. 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 or to the coast, out of the grasp of the Dominion, living off of hunting, fur trading, logging, and fishing in the frozen tundra. The areas that are controlled by the Dominion have started up mining and fossil fuel production, as Canada has vast natural gas and oil reserves. Canada also has vast mineral deposits that are once again being mined, such as platinum, gold, nickel, iron, among others, which Dominion firms use to trade with whoever will trade with them. Due to Dominion incursions, many of the great cities of Canada, such as Winnipeg, Calgary, and Toronto are reduced to shells of their former selves, now operating as trading posts, filled with the few who stuck it out through the fighting and didn’t flee, as well as the interlopers from the Dominion, who have imposed their brutal rule over the land. Many of the buildings were destroyed and were never rebuilt, and their populations are a tiny fraction of what they used to be. This region is also not helped by the cold conditions, making the land less hospitable than it was pre-Collapse, when humanity had a better ability to adapt to harsh weather. A series of crop failures and freezing winters throughout the 2030’s and 2040’s caused further population reduction in the Great White North, as countless individuals died in what was called the Freezing Time, either from the elements, or from famine. Starvation has claimed millions, and caused others to leave their homes. Canada was no longer able to sustain a population level comparable to what it did pre-Collapse.

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 ever since the Great Collapse. These groups slaughter each other indiscriminately, and burn down each other’s crops, so as to starve the population of their enemy. Furthermore, those who are captured in battle are often enslaved, made to serve the empire who defeated them. As a result of this incessant fighting, 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. Overall, Mexico has a similar social order as the Dominion of North America, with its mass of peasants and large warrior class, just not as fanatically religious. Outside of the large landholders and some tradesmen and business owners, the vast majority of the population is desperately poor (like the rest of the world). Income levels vary wildly based on what part of the region one is in, and most wealth belongs to a very small cadre of individuals. Things like education, clean water, and healthcare are luxuries, only enjoyed by those with means. Life expectancies are short here, as most men go off to war, and many women lose their lives in childbirth.

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. In this region of the world, virtually all men become either farmers or soldiers, and all young men in the Aztec empire are conscripted into the Army to serve for a period of time. Boys begin training for battle from a very young age, as much of their free time is spent learning weapons and techniques and strategies. Their intense focus on military conquest has made them a formidable force. 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 dramatically 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.

Much of Central America is comprised of small tribes, who have an alliance against the Aztecs. One aftereffect of the misery of the Collapse is that, in much of the region, the myriad of indigenous tribes have reclaimed their ancestral lands once they were emptied out. Dozens of tribes carved out states out of the lands they had held for centuries before European colonization. They got to revert to their own ways and social structures and leadership and language. And they lived in relative harmony and cooperation, setting up trade networks, and of course, the alliance against their northern neighbors, the Aztecs.

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. Since the Panama Canal is no longer in operation, ships have to go all the way around South America once again. Patagonia was uniquely positioned to capitalize on this fact, making them perhaps the largest power in the Southern Hemisphere. 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. On top of seafood, other exports include fruits and nuts that are desired in other parts of 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. A number of these nation-states are comprised of lands reclaimed by indigenous peoples, similar to Central America. Most people in South America have returned to a pastoral lifestyle, of farming and raising cattle for food, living in their small villages. There may be a few craftsmen who have a specialty they use to serve their community, and many men will serve in the military for a time, but most folks will farm and raise children. These South American 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. 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. Whether they call themselves king or emperor or president, their actions and motives and beliefs are largely the same: That they were chosen to rule. Many of these leaders used the concept of the divine right to justify their rule. They convince their subjects that God chose them to lead, and their subjects give their undying devotion. Raids of cities and towns and farms are frequent, and the people typically live in fear of the next attack, whether it is conducted by bandits or raiders or armies of their rivals. 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, trading food that they don't grow themselves and textiles with the North American nations and with Patagonia. Those countries established shipyards in which to build ships for trade, as well as for military use (there isn’t a whole lot of air travel these days, only the wealthiest have the means to fly), 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, and fishing in coastal areas, but most people are small subsistence farmers or serfs, stuck working on large estates of noble families. You know, when they aren’t getting rounded up by their leaders to kill each other indiscriminately. The continent is rife with disease, and famines are frequent. One of the causes of all the wars is access to food and resources, as many fights are over farmland or forests or access to rivers. Another common cause of conflict is religion. Many (but not all) of these European states have a formal state religion, and in many places, only that religion is tolerated. This has led to much persecution of anyone caught worshipping in a different way. The last few decades have seen a mass shuffling of peoples, as many folks have moved to nations where their faith is the “correct” one. Europe has a yawning gap between the poorest and the rich nobles, a gap reminiscent of the Medieval period. “We do all the work, in the fields, day after day after day, while the few who live in the house get all the money. We give up much of what we grow, and if there isn’t enough for us, then we just die. And we can’t speak up, or we end up in jail. And we can’t rise up, because the army will, without fail, side with the master. The masters are the ones who recruit and feed and arm them, and the soldiers know that. The soldiers are picked from our ranks, and they don’t want to end back up in our ranks, starving and at the whim of those above us.” Remarked one German peasant woman. 

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, their lands now spread beyond their pre-Collapse boundaries. To the north, they have moved up into Mongolia and Korea, and the Central Asian Republics. They have also taken much of Southeast Asia, their boundary now in what was Cambodia and Vietnam. And after many centuries, the Chinese finally conquered Japan, the first time that island nation has been conquered. The Chinese are ruthless towards their subjugated peoples, enforcing a policy of assimilation for all their subjects (in which people are stripped of their culture, from their language to their clothes to their social customs to even their hairstyles). 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. Outside of the cities in the east and south of the country, much of China has reverted to an agrarian lifestyle, not much different than they had before they rapidly industrialized and modernized in the few decades immediately preceding the Collapse. Most of the Chinese people are peasant farmers or miners, working under the iron-fisted rule of a tiny elite. Most grow just enough food to feed themselves and their families, with maybe some excess they can sell to bring in income for the house. A typical Chinese farmer has to trek to get basic necessities, such as water for drinking and watering their crops, and to get to the markets to sell their excess crop and buy goods. China is by far the number one producer of rice in the world, rice is their top export, as that is one of the main staples of the diet of 2050. Their rice crop is exported far and wide.

And a new Islamic Empire has taken over most of the western half, as well as much of northern Africa. The Islamic Empire, which rose from an Islamic extremist group who conquered and consolidated their empire in the wake of the Great Collapse, is pretty much a Muslim version of the Dominion of North America. Any sort of dissent or difference in religious belief is brutally 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 terrible things happen to nations when religious extremists are in charge. We saw this throughout history, but, as you can see in the world today, history has this way of repeating itself. 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 and banking, as they are the intermediaries of the overland trade between Europe and China, reminiscent of the old Silk Road that had previously brought riches to this region. 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 and oil fields, 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. We trade textiles and oil to China, in exchange for steel and iron, produced in their factories, as they repurposed some of the factories that they used to pump out huge amounts of consumer goods before the Collapse. China is also firing up some basic technologies again, primarily for export around the world. 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 and vegetables. India also has some mining operations, according to what I’ve read. But mostly, the country is farmland. The remainder of the continent consists of small farming nations, though there is now virtually nobody living north of China and Mongolia, except for a few isolated tribes in Siberia. Much of Central Asia continues to live a pastoral lifestyle, the nomadic tribes living off their livestock, packing and moving as conditions dictate. Much of the region is sparsely populated, save a few small urban areas that serve as trading posts.

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 the broiling hot Outback being sparsely populated, 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, primarily China and Patagonia. The interior of the nation has a fair bit of mining, which often encroaches upon the indigenous peoples who have lived on the land for millenia. There is frequent conflict throughout the Outback, as mining companies often use force upon the indigenous residents. In 2049, however, the indigenous tribes decided to band together and fight back. In May of that year, the Australian War began with the Raid of Darwin Mines, in which thousands struck in the middle of the night, seizing several of the mines in the northeast of the country, driving out the miners. Within a day, the mine companies brought in their private military force, one they had just used on striking miners months earlier. Despite inflicting heavy casualties, the company forces were unable to dislodge the Aboriginal force from their positions. This remarkable victory inspired more of these battles, which drove out more white settlers and miners from the nation’s interior. This war continues today. More towards the coasts, where much of the white population lives, they also have some agriculture and fishing, since they have to feed their population somehow. Australia’s farming is largely done by small family farms, with some larger farms that have been turned into large estates who employ serfs.

As for Africa, there are numerous small nations (over one hundred) dotting that continent, like much of the rest of the world. Each nation is ruled by a series of competing kings and warlords. The northern third of the continent is ruled by the Islamic Empire, which maintains outposts throughout the Sahara Desert. They drill for oil throughout North Africa (they are the world’s main oil producer), and they often pick fights with the smaller kingdoms to the south, conducting raids of towns and villages to take food, as well as people. They commonly enslave those that they capture, setting them to work in the oil fields, as sex slaves who fill the pleasure houses throughout the Empire and parts of Europe, or as servants for the wealthy. Estimates have the Islamic Empire having taken ten to twenty-five million Africans as slaves since 2020. As one Nigerian farmer put it:

“We always must sleep with one eye open…..they might strike at any time, we never know when they will. They will swoop in in the middle of the night, and light everything on fire, shooting us as we flee our homes. They take all of our food, and many of the people who survive. They take the men to work up north in the desert, and the women to places I cannot bear to think about. As for the rest of us, we have to go further south, to either starve to death, or find another community to live in. Most of us end up in the cities to work in a factory, or go to work in the mines…..when that happens, we are just a shell of ourselves until we die…..my brother writes me from Lagos sometimes, he says that the factories are somehow more miserable than our old farm. Everyone there has lost loved ones, most of us refer to them as the Broken Ones. They work the machines, making the things that the cities and farms need, until they die from overwork or disease. My brother tells me that diseases go through the factories very rapidly. Malaria, Dengue fever, tuberculosis, pneumonia, influenza, cholera, dysentery, sleeping sickness, even the Ebola virus go through here, they always kill many workers. And the factory owners don’t care, they will just recruit fresh new people, by pitching their lies and making big promises…..my brother tells me that the side of the factory is a huge graveyard, where the factory management buries those who perish. There are no days off in the factory, the workers work about 16 hours a day, every day. Until they die.”

Most Africans have returned to the pastoral lifestyle of their ancestors, living in small farming villages wherever there is arable land, and fishing villages that dot the coastline. A lot of the interior has mining operations as well. The major cities that remain have bits of manufacturing, sweatshops that lure in workers, promising them a better life than possible on the farm or in the mines. 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. Wealthy folks the world over prize the gems that come from the Congo, the deplorable conditions they are mined in be damned. They have also conquered some neighboring nation-states in recent years, expanding their influence in the region. The Empire of the Congo stretches from the southern tip of Africa, all the way up into what were the nations of Cameroon and Kenya. Experts believe that, before long, the Islamic Empire and Congo will squeeze out the smaller nations in between, like a vice grip. 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. Each time, tens of millions died, spread throughout every country on the continent. 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.

Much of the southernmost regions of the African continent have seen an inversion of the 20th century social order. For a century, a white minority (which originated in colonial times around the turn of the 20th century) dominated society in nations like South Africa, constructing a harsh social order in which they controlled the land and wealth and power, and the black majority was reduced to second-class status, confined to horrible slums, a system known as apartheid. Some years after the Collapse, the tables were turned. As things stabilized, and the far south of Africa came under the control of the Empire of the Congo in the early 2030’s, the ruling class decided to reinstitute that arrangement…..in the opposite direction! Any whites who owned land were driven from it, and whites (the ones who weren’t killed during the Collapse and Dark Times) have few rights, and are now confined to dirty, disease-ridden shantytowns and limited to menial jobs. Most work as peasants on farms, but they also make up much of the slave labor that mines the Congo’s prized diamonds. This development has caused European nations to refuse diplomatic ties and refuse to trade with the Empire of the Congo (though European nobles use black markets to get those diamonds anyways). On the other hand, some around the world applaud the oppression and enslavement of the whites of southern Africa, they see it as a form of comeuppance, that it serves the white population right. (I, for one, am actually in this camp myself). 

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. Trade networks and anything beyond rudimentary markets have only been reestablished in the last ten to fifteen years. Technology is nowhere near it had been pre-Collapse, and most technologies, such as phones, computers, even home appliances, are largely only accessible to the rich (unless one is lucky enough to pull working items out of a house or an old factory or a landfill. Education levels are also nowhere near what they used to be, as few nations have reestablished school systems, and only the wealthy can afford to send their children to school. 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. In the words of 17th century writer Thomas Hobbes, life is, for most, nasty, brutish, and short. Material hardship is widespread all over the world, whether in rural areas filled with struggling subsistence farmers and desperately poor serfs, the roads that were full of bandits and highwaymen and brutal gangs who would not hesitate to assault you in any way they desired, rob you, and leave you for dead, 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. Both the cities and the countryside are ridden with crime, and it would be ill-advised to go out unless you have a weapon in most communities. Even in the relatively safer time of 2050, it is estimated that the homicide rate is twenty to thirty times higher than it was pre-Collapse (it was far higher in the Dark Times).

Though there is some industry, and some more enterprising individuals the world over have taken up various crafts and services 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. The vast majority of humanity lives in desperate poverty, on the cusp of starvation. Despite the far smaller population, as well as the fact that a large portion of humanity lives on farms, the food supply is nowhere near enough to feed everyone. Because of this, starvation and malnutrition are very common throughout the world, with peasants and city dwellers especially at risk. 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. Most trained doctors and nurses are located in the cities, and generally, only the wealthy can afford medical care. For instance, if a member of our community falls ill or suffers a serious injury, they must make the trek to Los Angeles for medical attention, and they must hope they can find one of the charity doctors, who will provide for people for free or a reduced cost but are few and far in between, not to mention booked solid.

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, polio, 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. For instance, the streets of Los Angeles are littered with trash and clutter. The city has cleaning crews who clean up as much as they can, whether it be refuse from households or abandoned furniture or waste from city factories or shops or animal waste from the huge stray animal population or even human waste left behind by the homeless, but there is just far too much. This led to a horrific typhus epidemic in 2045-46, as the rat population exploded. And in 2048, much of Pacifica ended up in the throes of a terrible outbreak of diphtheria, in which several thousand perished, mostly children. Sorry if it seems like I am picking on the City of Angels, but that is the only modern major city I have experience with.

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. As for other kinds of infrastructure, there is little of that to speak of. A few nations, such as Pacifica, are setting up indoor plumbing and water once again, if one has the money to pay for it. Estimates say that less than 5 percent of the world’s population has running water, and roughly 10 percent has electricity. Most of the electric grid is unreliable, even here in Pacifica. There is typically at least one power outage per day in Los Angeles. Much of the world never rebuilt their roads and highways and bridges that were destroyed during and after the Collapse. And much of the infrastructure that survived has fallen into disrepair. In wealthier areas, some new roads and homes and bridges have been built, but for most of us, we get cracked roads, or dirt or gravel roads. Here in our community, we simply tore up the roads that existed pre-Collapse, and we just have dirt roads, reminiscent of a 19th century Old West town.

There is little political stability in much of the world, as nations are constantly bickering and fighting for land and resources. Within nations, bandits and warlords are always jockeying for power, terrorizing anyone unfortunate enough to be in their path. Some nations change governments rather frequently, and democracy is rather rare these days, very few have any sort of say in how their country is run (though at the local level, many places are run more democratically). And of course, the lack of political stability also means a lack in economic stability. A war or a crop failure or an accident can reduce anyone to complete, utter ruin. Furthermore, corruption is rampant in most places, as those in charge seek to gain any extra advantage they could get. Most who have attained some wealth have done so by some form of cronyism, by currying favor with the local government or Sheriff or Duke or President or king. And for most, political and/or religious freedom are a thing of the past. Simply speaking your mind or worshiping the way you believe in will get you jailed and tortured or killed in many places. These days, slavery is more common that it had been in any other point in the history of the world, and many more are stuck in some sort of serfdom.

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. Finally opening in November of 2048 after thirteen years of construction, this grand building lies in contrast to the crumbling, and sometimes bombed-out look of the other buildings in the surrounding area. 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. Once can also see some of the vestiges of yesteryear along the road, like the shells of old movie theaters and museums and shops, though those mostly are just used as shelter for the homeless these days.

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. This is what 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. At the end of my few days at the library (which is so hospitable to me, they even let me sleep there during my stays), the librarians even let me keep some of the materials that I pore through while there. I get to load all that up with my clothing and food before I make my trek back to the farm.

After the conclusion of my reading binges, which typically last a few days to a week, I would feel reinvigorated upon my return to my village, located roughly fifty 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. Even my sisters typically would brush off what I would prattle on about. 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. I was the guy who would keep my college history textbooks after the class would end, and reread them from time to time. 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, and wanting to avoid the mistakes of the past, 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 during mealtimes at the vast power plant up north (the employees and their families live at the plant, they virtually never leave while working there). 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, an 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 the middle apartment of that complex (called 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. My mother would have loved to see that, as she loved that little house. 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. And we found ourselves amongst good company.

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 with no hesitation. Especially Jose, as he was an incredibly caring man. During the harvest season, he would help Kian and I with our harvest, even while handling his own harvest. And 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, if one were brave enough to face the bears and coyotes that made the foothills their home once again as the human population cleared out. Jose would put anybody else before himself, whether it be a family member, a friend, or even a stranger. And his loss was a devastating blow to our community.

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 or play some card games 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, held in the early afternoon hours, 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.

There are other folks who serve different purposes in 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 become 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, killing hundreds along the way, 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 (harvest time is an especially dangerous time). 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 the 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, but also how people persevered and helped each other pull through and survive. 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. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?

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, sitting cross-legged on the grass, 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, they don’t have the mind-altering traumas of enduring everything. 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 around 8 PM, 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. They both appreciated that I got the kids out of their hair for a few hours so they can get everything finished up. 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. Though I knew damn well what he was about to inquisition me 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! Cindy Morton’s dad came to me and told me his daughter was bringing up painful things. You know damn well what traumas come along with this talk! Who knows who else is gonna come complain to me. We might even have to hold a community meeting. You know how much I hate those!” 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. The generations before mine had many of the same complaints about my generation, even though it was those generations who wrecked everything in the first place.

“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. And there is any more blowback from the parents, I am redirecting it at you, and you better hope that your little explanation is good enough for them.” Andy replied to me.

With that, Andy walked off, shaking his head and muttering to himself 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. I couldn’t stop thinking about my lesson today, and thought more and more about my new grand project. 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

Is the description of this future world detailed and/or interesting? Do the first-hand accounts distract from the storyline? I can add trigger warnings if they are requested, as the material can be quite heavy.

Reviews

[JayG]

You asked for feedback, and since you are, as you say, an aspiring writer, there are some things you need to know. But for reasons I’ll get to, presently, while critically necessary, and hopefully, useful, this will hurt, given the work, and emotional commitment having written this required.

For that reason, a disclaimer: Nothing I’m about to say relates to your talent, or, how well you write. In fact, I was impressed with your writing skill. Still, what follows relates to a problem that must be addressed.

First, though, two important side points: You can’t add excitement to your words with punctuation. And duplicating punctuation in an attempt to amplify the emotion, doesn't. You get one and only one character of punctuation to end a line. If the great writers throughout history, and in the marketplace today, can place excitement into their words without adding a line of bangs to the end of a sentence so can you. The excitement belongs in your words, not the punctuation.

Next: Beginning with dialog is chancey, because the reader has no idea how who’s speaking and why. In all the world, only you know the emotion to place into that opening dialog.

Okay...so much for the easy stuff. 😊

The first problem: You cannot transcribe yourself telling a story on the page. It doesn’t, and can’t work. Why? Because verbal storytelling is a PERFORMANCE art, where how you tell the story matters as much, or more, than what you say.

When telling a story you’re replacing the performance of the actors with your own. Because you’re the only one on stage, you must. You can’t realistically play the one being shot, and, the one doing the shooting without looking silly. So, of necessity, you talk about what’s happening in the story, as an external observer, and add the excitement via the tricks of that amazing instrument we call the human voice. You'll change cadence and intensity. You'll whisper and shout, pause meaningfully for breath, and insert the necessary emotion into your voice. Can the reader duplicate that, having only the words you would speak, with no performance notes and rehearsal time? No.

And how about your visual performance? There are changes in facial expression, there's making and breaking eye contact, plus visual punctuation via gesture and body language that bring the story to life. It works in person, but how much of that makes it to the page? None.

Unfortunately, take away the emotion the performance provides, and what we have left is a report, presented by a dispassionate external observer, intent on providing detail and information. Too often what's called an info-dump. In other words, you’re using the writing skills you honed over more than a decade, in school, via writing assignments that were primarily to create reports and essays.

Did your teachers, for example, mention the three issues we must address quickly on entering any scene, so as to provide context? No. So, you didn’t. Not your fault, but still…

Did they explain the difference between telling and showing, as a fiction writer views that? Again no. How about the difference between point of view, as defined by personal pronouns, and viewpoint, which is what writers mean by POV.

How about why a scene ends in disaster, or even what the elements of a scene on the page are—and why they’re so different from one on the screen, or on stage? Nope.

Why? Because it’s not their job. Their task is to ready you for the needs of employers, who expect us to write reports, papers, and letters. The thing we pretty much all forget is that professions, like Accounting, Engineering, and Fiction-Writing, are acquired in addition to the set of general skills we’re given in school.

Surprise!

And here’s the killer: The goal of nonfiction is to inform. So the techniques, like those you use here, are fact-based and author-centric. One voice reports and explains, in a voice that cannot be heard, and so, lacks emotion. Great for reports, but lousy for fiction.

The goal of fiction? E. L. Doctorow put it well, when he said, “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” And no way in hell can we do that with the “Let me tell you about…” approach.

The problem is, when you read the work it will always work, because you ARE the storyteller. The voice you hear when you read is your voice, filled with exactly the emotion appropriate to the words. But you know the emotion to use before you read a given line. The reader not only doesn’t, they see the punctuation that would tell them how to read it AFTER they read the line. More than that, you start out reading knowing the character and the situation fully. And anything you leave out that the reader requires is there...for you.

Think of yourself reading fiction. Is your focus on learning all the details of a fictional person’s life? Or is it to be made to live that life in real-time, moment-by-moment? To be informed, or to be made to feel and care?

Look at the opening, not as the storyteller, but as the reader:

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

So, are we the one waking, or the one being shouted at? No way to know. And since there is no second first-impression...

Where are we as it opens? Who are we? What’s going on? Unless we know that we have no context, only words in a row.

• That’s how I was jolted awake one mild November afternoon.

So someone we know nothing about—not, age, situation, disposition, or anything meaningful—who lives in an unknown place, woke up.

Why does the reader care how they woke, when they do nothing related to how it was done? He doesn't even respond to the kids. In short, it’s irrelevant detail that doesn't move the plot, set the scene, or, develop character. And as a side note, opening a story with the character waking will usually bring a rejection.

• It was a perfectly clear, 70 degree day here in my community.

In whose community? Do we have a clue of what their society is like? Do we even know what planet we're on? No. And, given that this person is indoors, and not paying attention to what’s going on outside—or even reacting to the wake-up, who cares what the weather that the characters are ignoring is like? You? No, because you’re not in the story.

Your opening paragraph is 482 words. That’s nearly three standard manuscript pages. And in it what happens? Nothing. No story takes place. Instead, the author, pretending to have once lived the events, wearing stage makeup and a wig, is talking TO the reader, reporting, informing, and gossiping.

But story happens, it’s not talked about. The reader is made to live it, not learn about it. The joy of reading lies in being made to worry about our protagonist—to speculate on what that character will and should do next. And to do that takes a writing methodology that’s emotion-based and character-centric—an approach to writing that was never mentioned as existing in your school years.

So, as I’ve already said, it’s not your fault. And the problem is fixable, which is the important point.

As we read fiction we don’t see or even recognize that the various tools are being used, because we see only the result of using them. We can’t know where the author made a decision to do A instead of B, for reasons related to story construction. But we do expect to see the result of those tools in what we read. More to the point, your reader expects it in your work—which is the single best argument I know of for picking up the tricks the pros take for granted.

And the best place to begin, for someone other than a student, is with a few books on the techniques. You work when you have time. You proceed at your own pace. There's no pressure, and, no tests. What’s not to love? Personally? I’d suggest starting with Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer, which recently came out of copyright protection. It's the best I've found, to date, at imparting and clarifying the "nuts-and-bolts" issues of creating a scene that will sing to the reader. The address of an archive site where you can read or download it free is just below. Copy/paste the address into the URL window of any Internet page and hit Return to get there.

https://archive.org/details/TechniquesOfTheSellingWriterCUsersvenkatmGoogleDrive4FilmMakingBsc_ChennaiFilmSchoolPractice_Others

So…after all the work you’ve done this is not good news. But on the other hand, we’ll not address the problem we don’t see as being one, which is why I thought you’d want to know.

And the good news? You write very well, now, though in a journalistic style. So given the tools of the pro to work with, you'll be amazed at the difference it makes. Because the techniques of fiction force us to see the scene as the protagonist does, in all respects, we've made the protagonist, in effect, our co-writer. There will be times when you’ll try to assign an action to him/her, and find them, hands on hips, saying, “Me to that, in THIS situation? With the personality and resources you’ve given me? Are you out of your mind? I would…” And till that happens, your characters aren’t real, to you, or, your reader.

For what it may be worth, the articles in my WordPress writer’s blog are meant as an overview of the most significant issues.

And there you are, a perfectly good evening ruined. Or maybe, filled with discovery. In any case, hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/