Write What You Know

The astute reader may realize this isn't a quote,

despite it's typesetting. It's merely an explanation

For the preceding quote. Which wasn't really a quote either,

but the last thought I assumed Arthur had.

I'm not actually sure what was on Arthur's mind prior to his death, but I do know the last thing to go through his mind was the jagged end of an upturned barstool! (*Rimshot*). 

Seriously though, folks. His untimely, exceptionally close, and unnecessarily gruesome death really got to me. I don't want to be all macabre, but there's really no other way for me to cope right now than to write about it. And writing was never really my strong suit; I was always more partial to filling in columns on spreadsheets. I'm new to this whole "exposition and feelings" thing. I remember hearing something about "writing what you know". Sadly, I'm having quite a hard time remembering what I know, or don't know, or anything really. So I'm just going to write what I see. And what I see is gray matter.

I'd never seen grey matter before. Not up close, I mean. I had seen models of the brain of course, but I'd never actually been in the same room as exposed-to-the-air brainstuff. This was a great deal pinker than I expected it to be. This really infuriated me! I might just be old fashioned that way, but I figured if you're gonna call something by a color, it should at least be that color. Reminds me of those neurosadists who would go around writing the word "blue" in the color green just to make you think slower. Ah, In the GOD.

Oh, perfect! A segue! I don't actually mean that foolish early twenty-first century device that kids holorecord themselves ridding off buildings on during that stupid "plunking" craze. That's a Segway. I mean an opportunity to change the subject off the almost certainly decaying and exceptionally pungent remains of my former and only compatriot. Though before I exercise this segue (is that the right verb? Execute maybe? I guess I don't care.), two thoughts come to mind (pun definitely intended):

First, I should get a dog. Or something else that's dog-like to follow me around so I don't go crazy. Maybe I'll learn to code and write myself a little programming dog. That sounds like a fun project for the inevitable coming winter months. It'll be nice to assume I'll live that long. It's important to have life goals, my father taught me that.

Second, "And I thought they smelled bad…" I don't want to finish that sentence. I don't know why. I'm pretty sure it's a hardwired fear from the days when the Holoweb was still on, and Fox would sue literally anyone who even typed a complete sentence from the script of any movie into any word processing program at all. People just kinda hintinated at what they meant. Most communication in those days was primarily was via instant memeaging anyway. I don't know if you know what that is. You must, right?

Anyway, right. Segue. What was I talking about? Oh right, GOD. First, we've got to go back, almost 300 years, to when there were poor people. More specifically traveling vagabonds called "Hobos". One of their traditions was to carve knickers (an old physical coin, like real world Monopoly money). It was worth like five dollars, but they carved em up to look like other stuff anyway. It was a real fun way to pass the time, I guess. At least that's what some crazy hobo I met told me. He said it was making a real resurgence among… well I guess him. Which represented a fairly significant increase in the global production of hobo knickers overall.

Anyway, Crazy Joe (their name, not mine. Introduced themselves as Crazy Joe) said the best hobo nickers were from the early days, before they switched the motto back to "E Pluribus Unum", the had "In GOD we trust".  Crazy Joe says those "GOD we trust" knickers are the best, "on account of I carves em up to say 'In GOD'".

By the way, when I said much earlier that "people call them the Good Ol' Days", it's really just Crazy Joe and I calling them that, so far as I know. But two persons is a people, so I'm not technically wrong. I just wanted to clarify that.

Also, I'm not convinced that carving off extra letters demonstrates an amazing amount of skill. I'm not even convinced "IN GOD" is a grammatically correct phrase. ("In Good Ol' Days"? Shouldn't it be like "In The Good Ol' Days"?). I guess if I ever see Crazy Joe again I can ask her about it. 

Oh right, Crazy Joe was the woman. I'm not exactly sure where she is anymore, so she's missing to me. She might know where she herself is, but I wouldn't bet on it. She's also why this isn't a love story. The most common instameme for 2041-2042 was Obvious Advice Octopus "Don't stick your dick in crazy, brah" meme. The Zeitgeist would later correlate this to the worldwide increase with drug resistant Gommoreah which caused mental degradation a year into the infection.

Now I should point out that Arthur totally banged Crazy Joe. I didn't watch or anything, I actually found the bar that he died in while he was banging her. In all actuality, she might not be lost at all. I just left out of the rear entrance of the bar, and walked away from town until I found this nice not-full-of-corpses field, and started writing this chapter.

As it turns out though, writing is hard work. Well, not hard so much as long. And it's night now. And it's not like night is any _more_ dangerous now. It's actually sort of less dangerous. I'm not making any special preparations to hide for the night. I'd just like to turn off the screen light and watch the stars.

I'll finish this chapter by just stating two facts. Firstly, the fields are covered with corpses and I'm not worried about predation at night because New Polio affected all mammals equally; including, but not limited to, bears, wolves, and mountain lions.

Secondly, I would really like to go a day without eating something that's been dead for months already.

Author's Note

Still trying to just get a feel for the world the author is living in. The "diary chapter" effect thing becomes slightly more formal here in an observation towards the end. The goal here is to further set up the world, and give a sense of the utter desolation of the world so far.

This, by the way, is nothing yet. Things get like much worse from here. We'll of course see Crazy Joe again. Only I can't imagine where or why right now.