The Doomday Aftermath

[Maharg67]

ONE: The Coming of DOOM

 

The island was ancient and it was mostly barren until the Great Project began. The grand genius of Tezzlar, Ezenstein, Frankfane and others along with the work of the United Nations World Capital Construction Program led to the transformation of most of the island except for a national park taking up one fifth where the flora and fauna was left in peace. The great island was renamed Unity Island and upon it was placed the great new capital city of the United Nations World Government, a great big new hope of the world.

 

The city was named Unity City and it was great and powerful. Yet it had many aspects to it from the grand Central Political Centre to the various residential districts to the manufacturing sectors and the great Cultural Centre. It had both raised monorail lines and a subway system of monorail trains. It had sunken freeways and highways. It had three fusion globe power stations, each which alone could easily power the city. It had great gardens. It had these and much much more.

 

The Super Geniuses and the great supercomputers that they used promised some wonderful new technologies beyond these and the world was very impressed for the island would not just assist itself in its greatness but the whole world with its goods and services. It would be a focus of world culture, education, research, diplomacy and much else besides.

 

These new technologies became known as the wonder technologies and these were considered to be seperate from the normal but advanced technologies of the island. The wonder technologies would only be switched on at the ceremony after everything else was active and when the energy dome arose above the island, and the space-needle glowed, then the celebrations would begin.

 

When the island was complete, when most of the population had moved in, when the network-systems were fully functioning, when the space-needle rose high into low orbit from the centre of the mighty city, a great ceremony was held. All the Grand Geniuses were there along with many world leaders including the new United Nations World President and a whole lot of other VIPs. There were famous scientists, politicians, religious figures, actors, singers and many others. There were millions of visitors. There were ceremonial bands from all over the world. It was a big important place and a big important moment.

 

Tezzlar stepped forward, tall and impressive, and bowed but it was President Tasha, a truly beautiful and tastefully sexy appearance of a woman, who stepped up to the podium as the crowds cheered and the drum rolls began.

 

Then he pressed the lever that would bring the new wonder technologies on line, that would create the force dome over the island to allow for utopian conditions, that would power the space needle and do much more.

 

It was to be a great moment.

 

But as she pressed the lever the world trembled horribly, the very air shimmered, the lightly cloudy sky suddenly crackled with webworks of lightening, people screamed and DOOM came to the world.

 

 

Edited September 30, 2009 by AlienSlof

[Maharg67]

Millions wept tears of blood

As the world screamed in pain

As the winds howled furnace hot

As walls of ocean smashed upon the shores

As volcanoes spewed their larva onto the land

As forests burned

As iceburgs melted

As snows froze the jungles

As life struggled and too often died

Or too often suffered worse than death

As monsters fought mutants

As angels and demons came to the Earth

And humanity fled below ground

Or became as hard as stone

Edited September 29, 2009 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

TWO: The Mysterious Stranger Arrives (Again)

 

The man came seemingly out of nowhere and he strode along the paved highway past a broken advertsing sign-board advertising NukaCola with the famous bikini clad Nukagirl smiling all buxom and blonde on a beach blanket next to a oversized bottle of NukaCola. The man wore a trench coat and matching hat but the rest was light power armour and large polarised goggles covered much of his face. The man walked with an odd casualness that seemed to eat up the kilometres (miles) with surprising ease. The sun was hot, the air was hot and dry, the road was baking. Behind him came a Mr Porty robot, a big floating globe designed to carry luggage in rougher conditions. It hummed a little musical ditty to itself as it drifted along on jets and pushed by other jets.

 

He was approaching the edge of the DC Wastelands as he noted a ruined town in the distance. The landscape was covered with dull green trees, bushes, grass and exotic mossgrass. Jagged outcrops of rock thrust up into the air, some of them right through the ruins of buildings. High in the sky drifted a few white clouds but also clumps of green mist and trails of brown smoke. Birds circled high be they birds of prey or scavengers but carefully avoided the clumps of softly glowing fog.

 

A pair of molerats scampered over the ground, paused, sniffed at him and then trotted over to him. They were a pair of young adults and the female was limping a little. This was not good for the female was less able to escape from danger and the male would stop to protect her, putting both in danger. The Mysterious Stanger knelt and the female molerat squatted and raised her injured paw for him to inspect. He tisked tisked and then kissed it. He rubbed and scratched both molerats, fussing over them, and then he tended to the injury. A stimpack was used along with some regen-serum plus some more fussing.

 

He picked up impressions from their minds of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. The area was fairly quiet. There were cave tunnels leading down to the vast maze of tunnels and chambers that could now be found around the world. There was green stuff to eat and fruit from bushes. There were juicy things to dig up like meatworms and the roots of certain plants. The molerats were moving to join another loose pack of molerats, to dig their own burrow close to the burrows of other molerats and to have a littler of molerat pups.

 

The three of them sat against an abandoned electric sedan car. There were atomic cars, bigger and more powerful, but their atomics had become destabilized with neglect and they were too dangerous to be too close to. In the car were the skeletal remains of adults and children. He gave some snacks to the molerats and some purified water. The man relaxed and mediated while the molerats settled down either side of him, pressed lightly against him, and slept.

 

When they awoke he looked into the eyes of each in turn and a decision was made. Then he touched both of them and they vanished with a soft sparkling decision. They were more than safe where they had gone.

 

The Mysterious Stranger set out again. It was far from obvious but it was starting to get dimmer and cooler. As he moved he saw more ruins, more broken vehicles until he was moving through a thick convoy of cars, trucks and buses. They had probably been a refugee convoy trying to escape to safety. They had not made it. The police officers in their two squadcars had perished along with the others.

 

Then he stopped as he saw in the distance some fast approaching vehicles on the highway. Ganger battlebuggies with light armour, roll cages and barely stabilized atomic motors roared along the road towards him. There were about twenty of them and they bore the Ganger colours of the Road Rats. There were men in women in black studded quasileather armour that looked like leather but was bullet resistant. The women were fairly scantily armoured, either showing one breast or both under metal mesh but the men showed a fair amount of skin as well. They were all armed but mostly with such as crossbows, basic built guns or even spikebats, baseball bats with added spikes. Yet there were some semiautomatic huntguns, autorifles, semiautomatic pistols, submachineguns and shotguns. A couple of the vehicles even had machineguns, bigger weapons with more stopping power to them.

 

But they did not see him though he apparently was standing on the side of the road in broad daylight.

 

They swept past on their way to cause death and destruction, if they could, and to gain loot. Their minds were deranged and their bodies were altered so they were natural berserkers always aggressive and sometimes crazily so. They were faster, stronger and more enduring than humans had once been but so were all surviving humans up there on the surface.

 

Then they came, a group of people in Predoom clothes and other gear looking all sleepy peaceful as they trekked in a big group across the land. With them came animals and all were healthy and also sleepy looking. But they were translucent, threw no shadows and walked about half a metre above the ground. They appeared quite briefly, these Lost Souls, and then vanished as quickly as they had come.

 

The robot spoke then in an artificial voice. "May I say sir that those Lost Souls quite give my circuits a chill."

 

The man smiled beneath his mask at the robot's words and then spoke in a smooth neutral voice in the same language of English. "When it happened there were over ten and a half billion people living on this world. Over half of them are now Lost Souls along with at least half of the other life."

 

The robot visibly shuddered. "Perhaps I should focus on carrying the suitcases, sir, and leave you to worry about the Lost Souls."

 

Mr MS, another name he used, nodded as they set out again with the floating robot following him.

 

Edited September 30, 2009 by Maharg67

[dezdimona]

very good.I've missed you and your writings!

[Herculine]

More fine work, M! Who needs books when we have so many talented writers here?

[species5478]

Honestly, I'm not sure what to think. I read the first two pieces, and decided to wait before starting the third. In One, I understood the thought, and emotion behind the story. I needed more though. I need some kind of disclaimer to give me a sense of why Doom arrived. If the piece was meant to be thoughtfully vague, then it accomplished it's goal by stimulating my imagination, and making me wonder, "why?". But if the author intended to deliver a reason, or message for the ending, then it has eluded me...

[Maharg67]

Thank you Hurculine and Dezdimona for your feedback.

 

Species5478, the first post was an introduction meant to give some idea about what had happened to bring DOOM but to leave mystery as well. I have learned from writing experience that in trying to put too much background at the start the result is often to grind down people's interest in a sea of complexity. I want to project mystery and to start a path of discovery that goes right through the story.

 

This is experimental writing and mixing poetry and prose is part of that experimentation. The poetry was meant to add to what happened. How it happened I want to remain a mystery for now.

 

I wish you had read the third because it was the start of the actual adventures.

 

I have taken account of your words and I do thank you for your feedback. Thanks for being honest about how you felt.

Edited September 29, 2009 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

THREE: Jasmine in Clave-101

 

Clave-101 was quickly but efficiently built but dull smart-materials modular dullness and cramped spaces. Clavefolk on work duties were active in the largely automated robotic underground city. When not working they were meeting needs in the Citizen Centres or where in their body-capsules where they slept or were in virtual reality realms. The virturealms were for work, training-education, entertainment and communal interaction.

 

Jasmine walked quickly along a wide high main hallway but not too quickly, not so quickly that the security-eyes would pick her up and Security Division would start to wonder what she was up to. The young woman was in a standard Clave-101 jumpsuit for a woman. It was dull dark pink and far too tightly revealing against her body for her liking. She was also wearing badly named slipboots, a utility-belt and her pipgirl. Pipboys for boys and men; pipgirls for girls and women.

 

Jasmine was a rebel courier, or at least she was acting as one, was carrying a coded message microcapsule to deliver to another rebel cell. The rebel movement was growing in response to the growing autocratic nature of the Overlord-101's rule. The Overlord would not condone the idea of people doing anything outside of the computer created life programs that directed every person's life from birth to death. Anything that even seemed like questioning of the system was crushed be it poetry or open questioning of decisions made by TriCouncil members or 'wild dancing' or even daring to make craft goods outside of Citizen Centre guidelines.

 

A robot drifted past her, a globe shaped multibot of smart metal, a multifunctional device found in the hundreds of thousands in the Clavedom and not just Clave-101. The multibot had folded up double jointed manipulators but also a fairly powerful pulsegun. Pulseguns could stun or kill or blast or even knock out robots depending on their setting. She ignored the multibot for in truth it was no real threat. The Security Division had power armoured Securitors and nasty secbots that were far worse.

 

The multibot halted, turned, opened a terminal box and began to make some kind of repairs.

 

Arid, confining, boring, oppressive, these and other such terms kept going through her mind as she considered her life in Clave-101. She wondered when her next allocated tickets to any of the special places were coming up. The big garden domechambers, the zoo domechambers, the amusement domechambers and other places existed where one could stretch, where one could be in exciting and colourful environments but they were rationed for they were too few to have all people visit them at once.

 

An eyebot floated past with its all seeing 3Dcams, sensors and microphones. It also had one pulsegun. These eyebots were also common in the Clavedom.

 

She turned down a secondary hallway as a carbot hummed past, a type of robotic car with seats for six people or some other configuration. This one had seats for two, both taken, and the rest was a storage tray packed with storage canisters. The man and woman wore Caretaker jumpsuits. With out seeming to Jasmine watched them go past. She was not the only one to notice that despite the Clave being a clever self maintaining habitat that there were now many Caretakers being contracted by the Clave TriCouncil. What were all the Caretakers needed for?

 

She came to the blind spot. There were security blind spots dotting the Clavedom and the rebels had learned about many of them as had criminals, social renegades and a few others. Unregistered sex, illegal drugs, gambling, stimsims, collection of Prewar goodies and other such activities often took place in these blind spots. But Jasmine was suspect of them, was of the opinion that more than one so called blind spot was a government set up and she was far from the only one to think so.

 

She walked right up to the other attractive woman and kissed her passionately on the lips. They then slipped into a small work alcove and made love even as Jasmine slipped the other woman the microcapsule. It was better to be punished in a Citizen Centre for having illegal sex than to go to a Reconditioning Centre for rebel activities. Captive rebels became little more than zombies drifting almost mindlessly through life as they did basic work in their special punishment jumpsuits.

Edited September 30, 2009 by Maharg67

[Herculine]

I'm loving this story! And the social commentary too!

[species5478]

A great editor once told me, that all stories should start where the adventure begins...

 

(I'm not trying to sound cynical, or even snide)

 

In truth, I made an error in my previous statement, by suggesting that I'd read One and Two. I'd actually only read the first two threads. Now that I have more time to continue reading, I realized TWO, and THREE, are chapter headings; ONE was the beginning to a greater tale.

:whistling:

I now understand the point of your second thread, which is the descriptor I was hungering for. (you even colored it red) I read TWO, and THREE with a renewed sense of awareness. I've traditionally only read books in hardcover or paperback forms, so artistic use of "threading" a story together is still new to me. When consumed as a whole, I can now form a true opinion and feel...intrigued by your storyline. :thumbsup: