Larry E. Huddleston

NEW BEGINNING

The room was dim, dank, and had a smokey, musty smell to it. Modern conveniences were long in the past. Occasional conversation was low and sporadic. Everyone was mostly too paranoid to talk much, or loud.No one knew who they could, or could not trust. It had been this way since the darkness came long ago. Tierra Reed had grown used to the smells of Culverton. She had been born and raised here. She was the daughter of a program writer for the ancient Department of Justice, or DOJ, as it had been known back then. He was dead now, or so everyone suspected. It had been him who had written the program that was supposed to defeat all enemies both, 'foreign and domestic'. Ultimately, when uploaded into the world wide web, everything had stopped. Within seconds the entire electronic systems the world had come to take for granted were gone.