blogwithvalor

Three days ago (September 26th), my wife and I did the 5 topic writing exercise again. It was pretty fun. We spent about an hour writing, handing the laptop back and forth and wrote over 1000 words. Pretty good on both of us. Since I spent today putting together a top sci-fi book list for a friend’s podcast, it seemed like a good opportunity to show this off right away.

I’ll post the list another day I don’t have time to finish my short 😛

Enjoy.

…

“Where do you wanna go for your birthday kid? Round Table or Chuck E Cheese?” That’s the question my dad asked me back in the year 2002, but nowadays people wouldn’t trust a computerized animatronic mouse with AI that it can take over anything with a hard drive. Today’s my birthday and, yeah, I miss those crappy old pizza parties they used to throw kids. I also miss having electricity, Google, and porn hub. What’s a guy to do in this eternal Autumn?

It wasn’t nuclear war that caused it, or even man-made climate change. It was way stranger. A couple years ago aliens visited the planet. Hundreds of ships landed all over the planet. A lot of them over water. They didn’t talk to us, just floated there while little grey dudes came out with tools and took samples of everything around. A few people were reported missing, but it was so few most news outlets doubted the authenticity. Governments around the world tried talking to them. Hell, smaller governments went full out and tried attacking. But nothing worked. They had these crazy invisible force fields that stopped anything from getting too close. Russia did try one nuke, it killed a small town, but the ship was still there.

A full year later, to the day, they left. And when they left, they set off an EMP blast that took out every electronic on the planet. That wasn’t the crazy part though. Somehow, the seasons never came back. Somehow, they added a spin to the planet that kept our tilt the same around the sun all year long. It’s been years and my small town in North Dakota has lost all the seasonal trees. Evergreens are alright, but those trees that change with the seasons couldn’t handle this new weather. Nobody knows why the aliens did it and they haven’t come back to tell us.

There is some electricity coming back. Major world governments started building new power grids in major cities. But AI is the major new thing everywhere. It runs the power grid and anywhere electricity has returned has gone fully automated with AI as the head honcho. Honestly, a lot of us are thinking the aliens replaced the government officials.

My fiancé Britney and I managed to sequester ourselves in a commune in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park along with a rag tag group of survivors. There wasn’t a lot of AI threat, but you could never trust those smart cars. Even though the aliens came to earth, changed its axis and given AI weaponized intelligence I’ve always liked camping and having Britney around keeps me sane. Wish my dad was still alive though.

Even though it’s the end of the world Britney and I are never getting ‘married’. First off, there’s no real government to sanction it and we don’t have religious reasons to do. Secondly, I proposed to her before the planetary take-over and now I’m too worried about either of us surviving to care. I think she is too.

We are still pretty in love. I mean, we annoy the shit out of our friends with our constantly doing everything together. It’s just nice to have someone that likes things I like, and we complement each other really well. We go hunting and she’s the best shot in the commune, and I’ve learned to skin everything from rabbits and squirrels to deer and once a moose. I can skin a rabbit under a minute, easy. We do that with everything else we do. Cooking is split into prep and cook. Dishes are wash and dry. It’s nice. I like it.

There’s a problem brewing though. The electric rollout has been gaining speed over the last few months. Our commune has discussed picking up and moving north, into Canada. They think we might be able to get past the still human border patrol and into the wilds of the Great White North. Britney is ready for it. She’s full out gung ho for the move, but I’m not sure. The government isn’t slowing down. This AI rollout won’t stop just because we are further away. I think we need to fight back or just accept it.

What I really want is to travel down to Florida where it’s nice and hot and I won’t have to worry about hurricanes anymore because the aliens stopped the seasons from changing. I’m starting to get a little bit older and traversing mountains every day is starting to kill my knees. But they have electricity down there and the humans walk about like rats in an automated cage. We’ve heard that people inhabiting these electric hot spots are happy, but AI has control of everything. The cars, the temperature in your house, the time your alarm clock goes off, everything. Even the food. AI has taken over the grocery stores, the factories that pack and produce food and the farmlands. People don’t even drive their own cars anymore. Public transport is huge and people that do have personal cars don’t drive them. Everything drives itself.

Healthcare is automated too, but at least it’s free. People don’t have to work really. There’s got to be a million more artists, writers, and actors than ever before. So is it all that bad? If you don’t look at it too hard then no. Can I do that? I don’t know, but I know Britney can’t and if she wasn’t with me then that sounds shittier than watching an automated Mouse sing me happy birthday.

So I’m trying to prepare our group to fight. We can move north, into Canada, but eventually this big government rollout is going to come for us. I’m not sure we could handle it then, but there are other communes I’ve been speaking to that feel the way I do. If we work together and news spreads, then maybe we can expose the strings controlling the government puppets as the aliens I’m sure they are. We’d have to start soon though. No moving north. No running away. We turn around and fight.