humanity
For better or for worse, relationships reveal the core of the human condition.
A New Columbia
The towering, old birch trees still line route 29 - the once main route in and out of Columbia, Maryland, one of America’s first planned cities. The route now ends eerily, yet neatly into flames of rose bushes that line the holographic solar shield that keeps all in and everything else out. Now called New Columbia, a namesake for the “once-heralded Christopher Columbus” is the only standing city after the final race war that obliterated the vast urban, environmental, rural and ethnographic landscape of a formerly powerful United States. This is the final Columbia of the former American “democratic” experiment. Like early Jamestown, it is a singular enclave, an unforeseen futuristic descendant. Unlike Jamestown, it is a place where access is due not to racial purity, but rather mixedness.
By Nichelle Calhoun5 years ago in Humans
Love Not Lost
Fire rained down overhead. Explosions were heard beyond the horizon. Uriah Thyman stumbled over another corpse as the last explosion sounded closer. It seemed the battle was nearing him or he was nearing it. Uriah continued on entrenched in sweat and ash. Clothes ragged and his boots wore out, he knew in his heart he could not stop. A driving force was pushing him, leading him, guiding him. He had felt the rush of excitement just two days before. This was journey he was waiting all his life for. And it was not for the ongoing war. He had no side or use in it. A revolution had brewed over the Global Partnership’s over reach of civil and basic human rights for decades. It had started out as a mere pact between nations. One by one it gobbled up every country and its people. The United States had been infiltrated during World War I but was the last to withstand the GP’s grasp. Finally after the Last War, the Global Partnership announced its triumph declaring peace and fairness. The only fairness is no one had anything. It first beheaded any resistor then chipped away at its citizens rights and property. Now everyone lived in factory villages. Major corporations became one under the Partnership policy an by a select few globalist. With climate change and prying of land from commoners, the entire world was owned. You could hide but starvation would soon follow. The elitists at the top enjoyed climate controlled islands and real fruits and delicate meats while factory villages deteriorated underneath the dimmed sun in a smog. Nothing grew, the lush wildlife that once roamed almost gone. If you wanted to survive you had to go to work to ensure the elitist’s lifestyle. The world was caught between survival and desperation. Many wailed for mercy and forgiveness as they believed the Partnership’s lies. Commoners blamed themselves. Generations were now born into this slavery. The only education provided was how to work a machine in insane conditions and that the Partnership was here for peace that the people could not be trusted with freedom for the generations from before had doomed us with cars and a thing called the internet to say the least. Anyone who spoke out was killed and hanged in front of their village for indefinite to be made of an example. All daughters were taken at age 9 and only some were returned once they were deemed clear by the GP years later. Then they were allowed to breed. Any child with a deformity or serious disease was terminated upon birth. Suffering had became the new normal for everyone. But a small group of resistors now dubbed the Mutineers had began a revolution, first meeting in off grid places. They had a leader Slyvestor Grandor they called him. Uriah had never met him or even laid eyes on him. Some said it was myth to draw out unloyal commoners to test the people. Mr. Grandor had apparently found a book, a book that told of all the lies the GP told the commoners. Literacy was not a common skill among villagers.
By Jackson Scott5 years ago in Humans
What there once was
It was the year 3658 and the world was not what it once was. The ground was hard and bare, except for all the buildings. The place where I love is pretty much deserted and was once known as Miami. It used to be full of life here or so I was told. It was before my time that this place was thriving and beautiful. I'm Ady and this is how the world came to be.
By Christian Wilson5 years ago in Humans
The Man in the Vault
“The Man in The Vault” In 2051, humanity put the world into a nuclear holocaust and for the next 300 years we spent our lives in government made fallout shelters all across the United States. It has been ten years since the release of humanity back into the world from these shelters, and I was among the first. In these ten years I have explored the wasteland of North America, seeing all of the relics of the old world I had only read about, hoping at least some of them are still existent. Many of these North American landmarks have changed since the hibernation of man. The Grand Canyon is an even grander canyon now. The Smoky Mountains are less smoky and more ashy. My personal favorite is Disneyland, which without previously reading about it, an uninformed onlooker may think it was a kingdom dedicated to a tyrannical mouse, whose reign ended in fire.
By Matthew Duncombe5 years ago in Humans
Of Stars and Turtles
It starts with the sea turtles. Born into a swirling ever demanding unfair chaos that overtakes them from the beginning of their existence. Born to die. That is the head of the writer. Thousands of ideas, tens of thousands perhaps, crawling through the gritty dooming existence of birth (hatching), with only one – ten if you are lucky – find their way to be something else, something greater. All the turtles only trying to make sense of their world before being swooped up by a gull or crushed by a stray dog. Of course it is all gibberish. Complete nonsense to anyone but the author who is trying to find their own path to water. Their own path to sanity or rational thought. Perhaps it is only an attempt to clear the mind from those ten thousand stories cracking themselves out of their hard shell only to find they were buried in the sand. Predator swamping. That is what it is called. The biological phenomenon where if thousands of prey swarm the scene, the comparing few predators cannot hope to eliminate them all. It should be called prey swamping. All in all, it sounds pretty terrible for the turtles. Great day for the gulls. No wonder Hemingway was an alcoholic suicidal. Does this make sense? Millions of words that never reach the paper flooding the mind, twisting and turning, a bowl of egg yellows and whites beaten and whipped until frothy yet never reaching the pan. The quill may touch the ink – does it not always? It rests there most of the time moving only with a breeze or draft. Rarely the touch of a hand compels it to move, much less the mind. And so the turtles crawl on. One painstaking grain of sand at a time toward a goal that beats them back, that at first refuses to take them. For the reader is quick to judge and even faster to hate. This is good – apologies – this is well.
By Nickolas Causey5 years ago in Humans
