Year 6, Late-Autumn, After
Well, if that just ain’t my luck, another fruitless adventure into the city, risking my life for little more than dust and grime—oh, and this journal. I guess it’s not a total loss. I’ve been looking for a way to collect my thoughts—to unburden myself. Maybe it’ll help—might even give the nightmares somewhere else to go at night.
It’s been a while, since I had a journal; I used to keep one, when I was younger… that feels like a whole lifetime ago, another world, even. After the fall—because what else you gonna call it, what else CAN you call it—everyone’s so focused on doing this-or-that, trying to survive, that these little pre-world pleasantries kinda fell by the wayside. Say “hello,” dead, show kindness or generosity, also dead… What’s the point in keeping a journal today, anyway… remind yourself how everything sucks? Turns out folks only care to record things they feel is worth to record—something to remember. Most of what you see out here, you’d rather forget; most of what you do, too—and we’ve got things to help with that, for a while… Out here, we all know what’s at stake. Out here, we’re the living f_king dead—waiting to die… But this isn’t living, this is survival—big, terrible difference.
It’s not like keeping a diary is all that high up on anyone’s list of priorities. Kinda vain to think your thoughts are anything special. Why bother? Who’s gonna read it, the fella that picks it off your corpse—assuming they can even read. What would you even put in one of these things, anyway…
“Dear diary, I sure hope nobody kills me today… I think I’m in love. I’ve been following—stalking—this new stranger in town, trying to figure them out. Oh, you should’ve seen how their hair glistened in the setting sun, standing there over a fresh kill, wiping the blood and entrails from their hands; I just about damn near fell over, smitten. Think I’ll introduce myself tomorrow, and get started on that happily ever after!”
Yeah, right… that’s a good one. Or maybe, you can keep a tally of the days and weeks, tracking weather patterns and the passing of seasons… although that sounds kind of depressing, documenting the dreadful monotony of everyday existence like that…
I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be so negative, it’s just that I’m running low on food and it’s starting to get cold out. I’m gonna need some luck, to make it through this winter, and so far we’re off to a crappy start. This town’s been picked clean, being so close to the main roads. It used to be quite pleasant here, before the end. Was a small community, folks would talk to each other and catch up at the end of the day; look out for one another, too. Now, you better hide if you see anyone out there. Can’t be too careful, when greeting someone can get ya killed—not great for making friends; safer just to avoid everyone. Although, it’s plenty hard trying to make it on your own.
I know a group that’s not too far from the nearby city; I don’t recommend it. They’re not the kind of folks you’d want to get mixed up with but hey, maybe they’ll welcome you in, treat you as kin… probably not, though—I’ve seen what happens when they take an interest in you… I don’t mean to be coy about it, some things just don’t need to be written down. Maybe someday, I’ll forget… here’s to hoping, at least… Never mind that now, I gotta keep moving—not safe here.
How do I know about them, this group… well, I might as well just come out and say it. If I can’t be honest with you, what good is keeping this journal… I used to roll with them; I’m not proud of it. We did what we had to do, to survive. That’s what I tell myself, anyway—we were surviving. Things were pretty touch-and-go there for a while, during the end; it caught most people off guard, and if you weren’t already in a crew, you’re chances weren’t great. I may have left under… let’s just call them “not ideal,” terms—ah shoot, I screwed ’em and took off one night. I reckon they’re pretty pissed about how I left things, wouldn’t be surprised to see them looking for me—looking for vengeance—someday. I guess that makes me an outlaw’s outlaw, a man without a clan, on the run from whatever’s coming down that road—and, to be sure, it is coming.
Let’s change the subject, for a bit, and get off this gloomy train of thought for a while… You probably want to know about the end. I guess it’s pretty obvious now, in hindsight. If you look at the right details, this had been coming for quite some time—predictable, even—like watching a tsunami creeping towards the shore. Of course this was bound to happen—how could we be so stupid, to think otherwise. But to most folks, this came as a total shock. If you weren’t prepping for this, you were screwed, and even if you were, you were still stuck in it with the rest of us.
From my perspective, it only took about 3-to-5 days to bring about the complete collapse of society. You might even call it an economic disaster. I don’t know all the details, but over the years I’ve been able to string a yarn together about how it all went down. You find an old newspaper, talk to enough people coming-and-going, and you start to put the pieces together for yourself.
The way I see it, it was an unfortunate—albeit avoidable—consequence of early 21st-century profit-driven madness. Everyone was doing it—incorporating AI into their business in some way or other—and by the time anyone recognized what was coming it was already too late. Corporate greed gave us the very tools to our own destruction; in the end, it wasn’t a bomb. They were too busy chasing record profits, quarter-over-quarter, to notice the working-class were being pushed to their limits—or maybe they just didn’t care, thinking they could cleverly insulate themselves from the inevitable, somehow. I think rampant consumerism had a role to play in all this, for sure, but ultimately it was good old-fashioned capitalism that done the deed. I wonder how much profit they made, selling the world… was it worth it?
Some at the time called this progress, that we were entering a golden-age, but anyone paying attention could have told you how this was going to end. Tech leaders around the world had us convinced that AI would be a great tool to increase productivity, and humanity would flourish. The story they sold us was that we’d all be living in a beautiful utopia, enjoying a shared world of abundance; reclaiming so many lost hours to working. We’d all be able to retire, pick up a hobby, and commit ourselves to enriching pursuits that made our souls sing. You’d finally have enough time to dedicate yourself to pursuing passion, instead of a paycheck. The sky was the limit, and AI would liberate us from the burdensome toil of everyday life. The future of humanity was bright and hopeful—a new era had come… What they didn’t tell us was that you, and about 2/3rds of the working adult population, were now out of a job, and there was nothing to ease the abrupt transition.
The damn thing didn’t work; AI wasn’t ready to replace people, but once those CEO’s started calculating how much money they could make—or how big of a bonus they stood to gain—everyone started replacing their workforce with it. The best part, you still had to earn a living—still had to buy your groceries and pay your bills. The ensuing chaos was awful, many people lost everything; anarchy became the norm, as governments launched pathetic attempts to preserve society. Riots broke out, whole cities burned to the ground, and what did the elite do while all this was happening… nothing.
Well, that’s not entirely true… they did do something, although not anything to prevent the looming catastrophe. To their credit, some of them rich folks seen what was coming and got all paranoid about it. They had these vast bunkers made—just for the occasion—and when the time came they hid themselves away in their veritable fortresses while the rest of us were left out here to rot; we could all screw, for all they cared. I’ve seen prisons that were less secure. These rich folks would hire there own private security, too—mercenaries, really. They’d have their own private staff, and got their own private robots to work their own private fields. Some of the better strongholds were able to tap nearby aquifers, or lakes, for their water, but most were capable of a basic level of self-sustainability.
Occasionally, some of the regular folks would get organized and make an attempt to assault one of these strongholds—and some were successful, too—but they would almost always be beaten back. Once the machine gunners got locked on ’em, they’d crumble beneath a volley of raining bullets—those that made it passed the dogs, minefields, razor wire, and electric fence. It was quite a sight, the dead and dying rotting out there in the field like that… And the “scavengers” would eat well, for a time. I always wondered why they kept throwing themselves at us—at certain death—watching those around them get all blown up, ripped apart, shredded into oblivion. I guess they figured they were only putting off the inevitable, out there, and would rather fail here, trying to get inside—a quick death being more preferable to the slow agony of survival. No, I reckon most of them knew they were already dead, they just wanted to speed up the process.
After a while, maybe a year or so into it, the rich folks got what was coming to them. In the end, it was their arrogance that did them in. You see, despite all their careful planning they had unwittingly—or reluctantly—become dependent on people like us, their private security, to keep them safe. Aside from making money, which was now pretty much useless in a post-economic world, these people had no practical skills. Many of these jokers had no idea how their little forts actually worked. Whenever something broke, or didn’t work quite right, as expected, they’d be all the time yelling and screaming until it was fixed. You’d hear a snarky, “Well, this is unacceptable,” or a, “I’m not paying you to sit around all day,” and after a while you just come to resent the bastards—what are they even doing for you, anyway, we were the one’s with the guns.
I remember this one angry little fella, yapping about how he was gonna “exile” us if we couldn’t get the water back up. I think we all must of had the same idea, because the next thing you know we’re marching him and his family straight out the front door. We took ’em somewhere out back and put a bullet in their brains—real quick, nothing barbaric. Now that I think about it, they got off lucky—I’ve certainly seen worse ways to go. We dumped them in an unmarked grave, and went back to the fort as the new lords of the kingdom.
After that, things were pretty good for a while… it was kinda nice… But all good things come to an end, eventually, and I’ve gotta find a way to make it through this winter on my own. Well, maybe not completely alone… At least, I’ve got you, little buddy. At least, I’m not alone, in all this.
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The Ragged Journal 
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