qqofficial

at google's electronmail website.

I think.

Dunno

I'll add other people as authors. What is bojangle's email?

Hooray!

But why can I post?

I don't understand.

F1R$T PØ$T

First post in a while. It's possible I might be reviving this blog in a month or two, when I may or may not be continueing/revamping this story, and making it into a NaNoWrimo entry. Either that, or I will make a different story, and rename this blog. Either way, this will be its home.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

You can't keep this blog dead forever! Brushing off the dust and starting anew. WOOHOO

The Story Of Globalization

Once there was a peaceful town in the middle of Algeranzania.  It was in a lush valley and most of the villagers were farmers who had never gone more a few miles outside the town.  Everyone knew each other and everyone was friends.  They had feasts celebrating harvests and birthdays and the start of spring and everything.  A few people died of disease, but they were mostly old and had lived good, full lives.

There was a boy named Fred.  He was friends with many of the other children and they played in the forests and fields around the town.  His best friend was Mark, who's grandparents always had interesting stories to tell because they had came from another town that was 50 miles away.  Fred and Mark had spent some days listening to the stories they had to tell and asking questions.  Fred was interested in farming and often helped his parents with the work.

Then some people came in on a truck with a picture of shell on it.  They said they were from Shell Oil and were going to pay the townspeople to drill oil.  Some other companies said they wanted to build factories there.  Fred thought it all sounded very interesting and exciting.  The people in the town decided to throw a feast.

A few days later, Shell started drilling.  It was not like anything they had ever expected.  Shell was drilling in farms and tearing things up to put in large tunnels made of metal.  Fred nearly fainted when he saw his parent's farm ripped up, and tried to get them to stop, but the workers just shooed him off.

It seemed Fred wasn't the only one.  The villagers organized protests against the Shell.  The oil company used brute force and harsh crowd control tactics against them and got the government to execute the leaders of the protests.  Fred hadn't heard about this "government," and most of the other villagers also hadn't, but what right did they have to go around killing people?  Many of them had children that were friends of Fred!

Other companies started building factories to support the oil company's drilling.  Fred's parents, lacking any other source of income, decided to work there.  From what they told Fred, it was horrible work in awful conditions, and the amount they were paid per day, 20 Algeranzanain cents, didn't seem like much.  Large businesses began shipping in food in packages, nothing like the fresh food they had grown.  But these businesses could make it cheap since they also used cheap labor.  The price of a day's food seemed to be around 20 cents, though, so there was really no choice except to keep working.

When Fred turned 14, his parents gave him a tough choice: he could either work at the factory with them, because they could no longer feed him, or he would have to leave and deal with problems on his own.  Fred thought it was an exciting change to go off on his own, so he did.  Since the drilling began, the companies had been saying things like, "Now you have more money!  You were in poverty before," and "The life expectancy has gone up, as well as education!  The quality of life must be going up!"

But Fred begged to differ.  His life hadn't improved.  Nonetheless, this had rubbed of on several people, who thought this "capitalism" was a good idea and they joined the Republican Party of Algeranzania.  Fred, against this, joined the Popular Socialist Party of Algeranzania.

TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter 2: 2nd Re-write

   I tried jumped off a cliff, but fortunately for me, I missed the cliff and crashed into a tree.  The tree, being highly unstable, exploded.  The explosion blasted out a giant crater and launched me, along with most of the other debris, into Earth orbit.  After a few weeks it formed into a ring.  As interesting as it was, there was not much air so I jumped onto a antimatter rocket and flew off into the unknown.

   Within a few days I was beyond the orbit of Pluto.  I looked around an noticed everything around moving very quickly.  I then realized I was going near the speed of light and time was slowing down for me.  Even so, supplies would not last long enough to get to the nearest star so I gravity-slingshot off the nearest large body of matter and flew toward Jupiter.  I figured I could gravity-slingshot off that to reach the Earth.  However, I ran out of anti-matter and the energy of the spacecraft shut off, leaving the cold of space to cool the ship down quickly.

    I realized the danger I was in, so I crash landed on the Jovian moon Europa.  The native Europans found me on top of the ice sheet that covered the entire planet.  These explorers were much like the ones on Earth exploring the North Pole, and they acted as if they had made a great discovery of a species living above the ice.  They took me back on the long journey through the ice tunnels into the sheets.

   They seemed like a friendly race and tried to feed me what they had.  It was not the best of food, but they didn't seem to like it much either so I figured it was just rotten and not the normal diet of the Europans.  They tried communicating with me but failed epically and gave up.  Even so, they did make attempts to teach me their language, but the structures of their mouths are so different I found myself incapable of speaking it. 

   Several weeks later, we reached the ocean.  They seemed rather annoyed that I could not breathe in the water, but they found some air for me to breathe anyway.  We began a journey through the rather bright oceans, lit up by massive volcanoes beneath us.  There were huge columns of lava shooting up through the water before cooling and sinking back down.  We boarded a large craft that seemed rather like a sailboat except it used the warm currents of the ocean to sail along.

   The sailing-submarine went along at a high speed and we saw others zooming by.  Every once in a while we had to dodge a large burst of lava, but these were infrequent and not a large danger.  The only real danger that came to us was leaving a current, something that happened a few times and required us to row back into one; this was hard to do because the currents were invisible.

    Soon we reached a large underwater city built around a volcano.  The lava glowed very bright and lit up the streets of the city.  Many of the Europans were in the streets.  Our ship came to the city and was tied up at a port.  We were heartily greeted by many and soon a crowd surrounded us, amazed by me and the return of people from a place that was not even known to exist.  What was above the ice was not known, and few thought it existed.  The existence of me proved them wrong.

    I would have said the view from the port was great except that it wasn't.  Though the volcano I stood on rose very high up, the light of the volcano did not shine far enough to see what was below.  A few streams of lava I could see, but not much else.  

   A Europan grabbed me and indicated that I should swim toward the palace near the port.  I began swimming with a few Europans, not knowing what would happen next.

To Be Continued...  Or not. 

You know what they say!

AWL TOASHTAS, TOWST TOWST!

Why can I post on this?

Weird... I thought this was only Matthias' blog...

Chapter 1: 2nd re-write

What world is this? How could this happen? My God, nothing is the same. Nothing will ever, ever be the same...

My parents!
"Your alive!" It all came back to me, the time before the asteroid. No, just a dream. Twelve years had past. Has it really been that long? It flashed before my eyes. I woke, stiff and tired. My head flooded with pain. I lay on the ground, writhing for a few moments. With great effort, and without ceremony, I managed to sit myself up. I touched the back of my head and cringed. A large bump had been left by the blow from the brute's rifle. So uncivilized. Nothing's been civilized since it happened.

I began to realize where I was. I had been dragged to the outskirts of town, and my possessions were stripped from me. I was surprised they bothered to leave me my clothes. Maybe they let me live so they can rob me again another day. Who knows. As my head began to clear, the memory of the previous day started to return. I had entered the old abandoned town of Maplewood, just looking for a new blade to add to my knife and axe. Good steel was hard to find these days. I had entered the old Home Depot - or what was left - hoping to find something without any rust on it. I was only lightly armed and carried just my day supplies. I had only planned for it to take an hour at the most; just a routine scavenging excursion, followed by an hour's work forging back at camp. I've always been nervous walking into abandoned towns. Robbers love to hide, waiting to jump you. This time I was just careless. It was plainly stupid really. What idiot nowadays marches blithely down the middle of a road, not checking for any booby-traps, snipers or other survivors? I'm getting too old for this.

I shook my head. No use dwelling on what has happened, all there was left to do was keep pushing forward. I managed to get standing, dropped back to one knee, then laboriously rose again. I assessed myself. No cuts. That's good. Wouldn't want to get infected out here would I? I seen enough of gangrene to know to avoid it. Everything of great value I had was missing, excepting my boots. Thank goodness. Anyone without boots those days would have died within a week. Cold leads to frostbite, leads to sloughing off, leads to not walking, leads to death. If you can't walk, you die.

Real life concerns

The statement at the top of the blog is false. The chance of Appophis hitting us is now 1 in 10,000 (according to government sources, which I'm sure would tell us if there was impending danger) and there have been predictions made by civilian scientists as high as 1 in 1000! I will be spending 2036 in a cave with military rations.

Ressurection!

This blog has gone under cardiovascular ressucetation, and within a few weeks may very well be up on it's feet, continuing to write. Enjoy! spread the news.

Chapter one.

As I lay in the dusty snow, I contemplated the last few hours. How could I have been so careless? I know better than that.

It had all started when I had tried to enter a deserted town. There was a small blizzard, or maybe a small dust-storm, and it was pretty harsh, so I had taken refuge in a large hardware store. The place looked devoid of anything useful, having been picked clean by the mobs and rioters in the first days after Apophis. I had nothing better to do, so I meticulously combed around for anything they could have missed. I thought I had reached the high point of my search when I found a large magnet, but discovered something better. A small locking pocketknife, which was very helpful to me. I had taught myself how to blacksmith, so this knife was not just a knife, but it meant an extension of the lives of all my blades. After nine years, my knife, hatchet and axe were all battered badly, and I didn't want to fuse on poorer quality metal to the blades. Now that I had found my first unused and unmolested pocketknife in years, I now had some good strong blade-grade steel.

I was excited by the find, which explained what happened next. I turned to leave, when I failed to notice two shapes hovering on the shelves above me. They waited till I was under them, and then jumped me. I was caught completely off guard, and dropped everything I was carrying. I tried to fight them for a good time, but shortly after wounding one pretty good, I heard a sound I didn't like. "Alright, come on. Hold still, and we won't hurt you. We just want to see what you have in that fancy backpack there." The third man had a shotgun, so I felt obliged to let him have his way. I had lost my .44 automag in the scuffle, and my hunting rifle was still stashed at my camp at the edge of town. They took everything, except my backpack, my hundred feet or so of rope, and a canteen and flimsy tent. As they left me there, they threw my backpack at me contemptuously, and stalked off.

I hurredly looked around for my automag, and found it under a pile of wood. I grabbed it and charged after the assailants. The saw me coming and gave a look of surprise. They darted behind the wrecks of old cars, and waited. I didn't want to waste bullets, as they were becoming rarer by the day, but I thought I'd be willing to use at least one to get my point across. I told them to stand and drop any weapons. Instead, they jumped and started firing their guns at me. I returned fire, and got one of them, and had the other pinned down. But I had lost track of the third one. He had the shotgun, and I had no clue where he was. No one was shooting now, but I knew that could change quickly. I was looking around madly, and still couldn't find him. I started to move for better cover, when I bumped something. The third guy turned fast and jammed the butt of his shotgun into the back of my neck. I crumpled to the ground and lost conciousness.

While unconcious, I rembered in a dream why I hadn't brought my rifle. I could have fought them off better if I'd had it, but then recalled what I had thought this morning. I had felt that if there were any locals still here, they wouldn't take kindly to someone with a powerful rifle, and would take pot shots at me. I'd seen it happen before, four years ago in a suburb of Seattle. I was just about to go into town, when I saw somebody walking around with a .50 caliber rifle that he must have gotten from a military base. He looked rather nochalant, and strolled around arrogantly. As I saw him standing there in the middle of a street, I sensed something was wrong. I ducked behind a bush, to avoid being spotted, and I heard one shot ring out. I peaked through the leaves, and saw that the man with the .50 had been rather expertly shot in the head. Then three teenage boys ran out, retrieving the rifle and all the supplies he was carrying. I should have risked it, my rifle didn't look all that menacing, but I was paranoid ever since the experience.

As I woke, I found myself deposited in the dusty snow just outside town, and decided not to get up for a bit when I almost passed out from the pain in my neck and the back of my head. I made an inventory of what I still had, and found that I now had no automag, my canteen had been stolen, and my tent was still there but missing its poles. Beyond this I had only my sheath knife. Everything else, including my ammunition and the lint in my pockets was gone. I groaned, and turned over on my side, and fell asleep reflecting on my misfortune.

I am revising. Everything from earlier

except the prolouge is no longer part of the book, until further notice.

ending of chapter 1.

I was right be in a hurry. I had only ridden perhaps ten miles inland when I heard something. I came to the top of a rise facing back towards the coast. Down in the city, the forty-foot wall of water was crashing through the streets, making an ominous roaring and hissing sound. I was starting to tire of riding uphill with a heavy pack, so I rode slowly up a valley, and switch backed up one side. I sat there and camped for the night, unable to sleep. What could I do?

Chapter 1: The day the entire world shook.

My name is Matthias. I was a fairly ordinary 20 year-old Alaskan, until the asteroid hit. I'd better not get ahead of myself. The day was a fairly normal one for me.

I went to my fourth year course classes for the first time at Alaska Pacific University. I had started college when I was sixteen, as I'd always been bored with high school. I came back to my home in rural Anchorage. I had been living on my own since I started going to college, because I'd always loved Alaska, but my parents did not. They preferred to stay in their home in Eastern Washington, so we'd visit each other every few months.

I went out for my daily hike in the woods surrounding my small house, and came back inside at six thirty. I wanted to watch the news, because NASA scientists were going to have live video coverage of the Apophis asteroid as it flew past Earth. As I sat in my house, watching, fascinated, I noticed something was wrong. The satellites that were monitoring Apophis were supposed to have it moving across their field of view, not towards them. I jumped when I saw a government interruption pop up on the screen.
"WARNING - This is the emergency broadcast system. All american citizens on the west coast must evacuate due to tsunami threat, all citizens further inland must take shelter! The aseroid Apophis --" the screen went dead. The asteroid must have hit the satelites that were brodcasting television. It really sunk in when moments later I heard one of the old alarms going off in Anchorage. Someone had dusted off the old claxon system meant for warning in case of nuclear strike, and now it was blaring across the Anchorage area.

I hurried and threw together a pack with my hunting rifle, a few pounds of ammunition, a few pots and pans, some flints, a knife and hatchet, my warmest sleeping bag, a tent, and a few changes of warm and cold weather clothing. I jumped on my mountain bike and rode up into the mountains east of Anchorage. Suddenly I heard a loud crashing sound, and I fell of my bike, holding my ears shut. a second later, I felt a ripple, like a small earth quake running northwest underground. I got up, dusted myself of, and rode harder than I ever had before, trying to outrun the emminent tsunami.

Prolouge

The year is 2036, and NASA was dead wrong. The asteroid Apophis, meant to have no greater than a 1 in 45000 chance of striking earth, did. They had kept the true size of the asteroid hidden, so as to not cause panic and worldwide pandemonium. They claimed it wouldn't even cause a worldwide winter, and losses of life would be under 10 million. That was wrong too.

Apophis did hit the Earth, with a force, not equivlant to 800 mega-tons of tnt, but 1800.

And it killed not 10 million, but 5 billion.

First post.

Not a part of the story.