Always derivative, but asymptotically approaching infinity

I'm the kind of person who has big, detailed, ambitious ideas . . . for other people's work.

For my own work I'm lucky to get a premise and a paragraph.

When people talked about being let down by the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who I came up with an idea for a rebooted franchise with a hundred year plan that wove together various divergent narratives, made the 50th an event rather than an episode (which the four previous decade-events crescendoed up to), had built in mechanisms to deal the possibility of unplanned actor departures (be they due to getting a better deal, creative differences, or less healthy reasons) took every plot-hole as a jumping off point to do something interesting, and . . .

Could not possibly have the serial numbers filed off.*  I did that without even really trying.  It just happened.

When I try to come up with an idea of my own I usually stall out before I write a single word.

If I can create a plot then I can't create any actual scenes.  All outline and no substance.  If I can create some actual substance, a scene or two that might be written, there's no story for it to fit into.  If I have characters I probably can't conceive of a setting.  If I have setting, I probably can't conceive of characters.  If I try to mash two ideas together so I have both . . . they don't fit, don't mesh.

Yet if I'm trying to tell the story of Bella Swan, Tsukasa, and JC Denton facing the zombie apocalypse (while I hide behind Bella, in a sort of cowering way) . . . well that has a timeline, it's got a general overview, it has a couple scenes, it's got . . . ok, honestly not that much.  But way more than The Princess Story, and way less than Edith and Ben, which is kind of the point.

The more original something is, the less I can actually pull it off.

I'm writing this when I've been on an extended dry spell with respect to everything, so it might not seem to have much punch given that I'm not writing anything be it derivative or original, but this too shall pass and when it eventually does I think it's a fair bet that I'll be having a much easier time writing something set in a world Ana Mardoll or Fred Clark is deconstructing than something entirely of my own.

But, the thing is, even though my works are derivative, it's not like they're copies.  Writing copies of Left Behind or Twilight would hardly be rewarding, more like mind-flaying.  Tons of original thought and world building and characterization goes into that stuff.  World building and characterization that wasn't present in the original.  So if I'm doing all of this stuff, why can't I do it without some execrable work as my jumping off point?

I think part of it is seeing things from a Watsonian perspective and asking, "Ok, why the Hell did that happen?" instead of taking the external Doyalist perspective which lends itself to, "What the fuck were you thinking author?  There's no way in fuck that should have happened!"

Bad writing, or even merely inconsistent writing, leads to a complex world because you need to be able to reconcile things that are nigh impossible to reconcile.  If you take it as a given that X, Y, and Z happened and ask, in-universe, why and how, you start developing strange and interesting theories that may take you to places you never expected to go.  (Or epileptic trees.)  That doesn't happen if you take a more reasonable approach and recognize that the author(s) simply fucked up and/or didn't care.

But, at the same time, you become tied to the original by the very problems that create such fertile grounds.  If your setting depends on X, Y, and Z because your world building was literally started by, and laid upon the foundation of, the question, "How can X, Y, and Z all happen in the same universe?" then these things become too important to throw away.  Take them away and your foundation is gone, the building crumbles, things fall apart, the center cannot hold, mass and moment are released, other poetry as well.

So maybe it's absolutely fundamental that you have a sparklepire who saves a depressed girl from an out of control van spinning counterclockwise across an ambiguously full parking lot on a day when school really should have been cancelled because WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK FICTIONAL FORKS, WASHINGTON!?  (Not to be confused with actual Forks, Washington which I'm sure is a nice place that cares about the lives of their teenagers.)

And at that point you're really not going to get away with, "No, really, it's not Twilight, it just happens to have a gaggle of --two adult and five teenage-- sparklepires who have been living in Forks since the depressed main character stopped coming to there to visit her police chief dad during the summers."

Or maybe it really matters that your protagonists are a star reporter, an airline pilot, an college student who is daughter of the pilot, and a pastor to the previous two, who all have the unwanted attention of the Antichrist because he's already got the flight attendant linking three out of four of them and (with the un-linked pastor for the free space) if he can catch them all he'll have bingo.  (Nicolae Lanakila, he's got to be the very best, like no one ever was.)

Or perhaps there's a really strong reason why it matters that these people came through a picture, onto a ship, were briefly enslaved, discovered a burnt out island, had one turn into a dragon, another meet a fallen star who did body-horror to his slaves, and . . . the estate of C.S. Lewis would like a word with you.

Those are over the top examples, and I don't really know where I'm going with this.

Other people's works are like puzzles to be solved.

We ignore, for a moment, that the author was a horrible racist and the character traits are an expression of that racism, and instead ask, "What could reasonably lead to someone in this situation having these traits, thinking these thoughts, and doing these things?"  If we do it right, then we'll end up with a much more interesting character, one who isn't from stock racist caricatures (I can never fucking spell that word right; thank you spell checker) and subverts the racist tropes the original enforced.

We ignore, for the moment, that the author had the plot go A, B, C because they had an outside agenda they were going to follow whether it made sense or not, and ask how could B follow from A when at first, second, and third glance that seems not just implausible but impossible.  Then we ask how this could lead to the right conditions for C when B would seem to negate any such conditions.

When the puzzle is worked out we've done more world building and more characterization and more solid fiction than the author ever did.

But, for whatever reason, I can't seem to do it on my own.  I've worked out how to re-work The Last of Us into a story with three main campaigns** in which Riley never dies but everything canonically shown happens, the world is significantly more fleshed out, and so forth.

Seriously, look at the size of that fucking footnote.  That's just a general overview.

For my own zombie stuff . . . I got nothing.

Ok, not nothing.  One scene where a trans character is accepted.  Pretty close to nothing when you compare it to what goes on in my head re:The Last of Us.

I can fill a world with stories and details and so forth, provided it's not my world.

I don't know why I felt like writing about that, but at least there's a post here.

* * *

* I could maybe get away with the idea for a series that follows what the Tardis does with itself after the Doctor is finally well and truly dead.  Just don't call it a "Tardis", don't have it look like a blue box on the outside, find another name for the low frequency torsion inducers (things that use sound to induce a twisting motion and can thus be used to embed or extract the helical threaded fasteners --usually metal-- so common in the universe) cut all ties to the rest of the franchise, change the background mythology, and . . .

Oh, and it's also the part of the concept where I have the least idea of what would happen.

Pattern continues.  The more original something is, the less I'm able to follow it down the winding paths that eventually lead to, you know, actual produced fiction.

-

** The first campaign is Joel, it's like the main game but the Ellie parts are cut out.  When Joel is unconscious the story skips over that.

The second campaign is Ellie it starts with the flashback Left Behind content, follows from there to the next . . . three weeks, was it?  Her getting back into quarantine, her ducking the military, her meeting Marlene, fast forwards through the parts where Joel is doing all the work, shows follows her perspective on getting the handgun and saving Joel, continues to skip to the parts where she's separated and independent, all the way through to saving Joel at the university, at which point we get the non-flashback Left Behind content, the Ellie parts of winter, and then what little of the ending she's there for.

It ends on her talking about Riley and asking about the fireflies (no flashbacks to what Joel knows, this is Ellie perspective.)

The third campaign is Riley.  It starts with her slipping out of a firefly safehouse and crossing occupied Boston to reach Ellie.  The Left Behind content is mostly done in excerpted cut-scenes, ones that take into account decisions the player made in the Ellie campaign, but don't spend too much time making you rehash the same stuff.

Then there's the two of them getting infected.  While Left Behind strongly implies that they were bitten by different zombies, her hand (the one that got bitten) came dangerously close to the mouth of the zombie that bit Ellie so it's not too hard to say they were infected by the same zombie, at the same time, in the same place.  Add in saliva mixing if you want.

After the cut-scenes of excerpts from the date with Ellie in Left Behind Riley wakes up.  Turns out she didn't turn.  Like the last survivor of the helicopter crash, entirely non-zombie illness caused her to become dangerously violent.  She attacked Ellie, Ellie thought Riley turned, Ellie thought she killed Riley.

An injured Riley makes her way through occupied Boston looking for Ellie.  She's hiding from fireflies and government alike because she's AWOL from one and a terrorist to the other.

The Boston section is made of short bursts and large gaps.  She's healing from a near-fatal wound, she can't trust any doctors.  As a result she's always several steps behind until the very end of the Boston section.  She finds out where Ellie is going to be taken just before the Boston events of the Joel campaign.

She makes it to the original meet point before Ellie, Joel, and Tess.  The fireflies are still alive and, when they learn Riley is immune too, decide one immune girl is as good as another.  They capture Riley*** and split up.  Half of them take Riley to the university, half of them stay to wait for Ellie.  (Obviously the second half die, but that's not what this story is about.)

Riley wakes up at the university when it's still a firefly base.  She learns that they're looking for a vaccine, not a cure, she learns that extracting what they want will kill her, she realizes that the same thing will be done to Ellie if they get the chance.  Riley fights her way out (the damage she does is part of why the fireflies abandon the university.)

Riley sticks around, out of sight, as the fireflies abandon the university.  She was waiting for Ellie, but instead of Ellie showing up, she learns where the fireflies are relocating to.  She knows that that's where Ellie will be taken if Ellie is still alive.  She's on foot, so her trip to Utah takes a different route and a different amount of time than Joel and Ellie's.

She finally catches up with Joel and Ellie at St. Mary's.  In an extended version of the cutscene where Joel gets his weapons back we learn that Joel wasn't guarded by one easy to distract and disarm solider (because that would be profoundly stupid, make no sense, and be a plot hole one could pilot a fully loaded 747 through.)  Riley kills the second soldier --the one Joel didn't know about-- who would have killed Joel before his rescue attempt even started.

After a quick introduction, she and he split up to thin out the guards and make it more likely one will reach Ellie in time.  (The idea is that worst case they split the guards in half, best case most of the guards are after one intruder and the other has minimal resistance.  Gameplay-wise it'll turn out to be worst case with neither one having it easier.)

Riley fights her way to Ellie via a different route and arrives just after Joel saves her.  She stays behind so that Joel can escape with Ellie in spite of carrying her making him significantly slower than the various armed fireflies out to stop them.

Before they separate, though, they make a plan to meet up again. Riley nixes the standard 'just outside of town' idea, and tells Joel to keep going until he reaches a safe place, Joel tells Riley about the dam.  Riley says not to tell Ellie about her being there, either she'll tell Ellie herself, or (if she doesn't live to do that) it's better that Ellie not have to deal with Riley dying twice.

That's done fairly quickly, so perhaps not the best thought out plan, and probably not communicated in full sentences.

The final combat section of Riley's campaign sees her between Joel/Ellie and the heavily armed fireflies all converging on them.  She doesn't have to beat the fireflies, just slow them down enough that they never reach Joel/Ellie.

Once that's done she comes to the garage, walks over Marlene's corpse, slits the tires (or pops hoods and yanks wires) on all but one vehicle, and drives that one away.

In her ending she arrives just in time to hear:

Ellie: . . . that everything you said about the fireflies is true.
Joel: I swear.
Ellie: Okay.

Which is when she announces her presence:

Something like:

Riley: I don't know what he said, but the fireflies are gone.  They gave up on a cure, their last base got shot up, and Marlene is dead.  All that's left are angry people with guns.

No, that's too long winded.  Just something about the fireflies being past tense.  Riley knows that they stopped looking for a cure even before they abandoned the university because they were going to vivisect her for a mere vaccine (same as Ellie.)

Anyway, fade out on an long overdue Ellie-Riley kiss.  Joel can be in the background visibly not-disapproving.  Maybe even a smile.

Put all three together and you get canon The Last of Us (including Left Behind) but with final-level plot-holes . . . not quite filled in, but at least smaller, our interracial same sex couple not doomed to being half zombified the moment they decide to be a couple, a happier ending, and so forth.

Joel is learning to be fully human again, Ellie is searching for meaning after she seems to have lost everything (and finds it in her companion, not her quest individual people, not the abstract idea of saving humanity), Riley is fighting for love.

For Joel the climax is saving Ellie, for Ellie the climax is saving Joel in "Winter" (which would include escaping the horrible Reaver settlement) and maybe a bit of bonding with him over giraffes, with the actual journey's end being denouement, for Riley the climax waits until the very end when she and Ellie are together with no one trying to eat or vivisect them.

-

*** Riley would have gone willingly but the fireflies in question believe that they shouldn't put all their eggs, all two of them, in one basket.  They refuse to let her wait for Ellie because they figure that if the two girls are sent in different expeditions there's a better chance that at least one will make it through.

Thus they take her against her will.

Imported Comment: Weapon Durrability mechanics, and inability to pick up weaponizable things, in Zombie games

[Originally posted as a comment at Ana Mardolls.]

Random pet peeve:

It makes a certain amount of sense that fighting zombies with a stick would eventually break the stick. The number of hits you get out of a cast iron pipe, on the other hand, is positively absurd. Unless the zombies are made of stronger stuff and you're hitting with more force than a human being can muster.

The absurdity is raised to ludicrousness when a metal ax breaks in like five hits. We're talking about something that is designed to be smashed into solid wood enough times to cut down many trees, often for years on end, before a wood handle would break, and this one has a stronger handle than that. Yet five hits to something significantly softer than wood and it's kaput.

[Added] I meant to mention the machette too. I stab people with it, meaning it's under minimal stress as it's encountering only soft tissue that it easily moves through. Four stabs and it breaks for no apparent reason. [/added]

I understand that weapon degradation is gameplay mechanic, just like slapping an alcohol disinfected bandage wouldn't really cure you from being repeatedly shot, but the thing is that instant-absurd-heal medkits are there to make the game possible. Otherwise you'd be dead before you reached the plot. We let it fly because they help us, as players, actually play the game.

The sturdy looking ax that's apparently made out of aluminum foil is not a necessary break from realism. The game would be just as possible if the only weapons that broke are ones that realistically would, and, in fact, we know that the game takes place in a world where weapons can be more durable than reality given the magical jam-proof guns that would, realistically, break down way faster than a cast iron pipe.

But I haven't even reached the height of pet-peeve yet. If I'm playing a game where I have to replace my melee weapons every two seconds because they're composed of paper mache, don't fucking send me to a place with pool cues that I can't pick up. Those things aren't very durable at all*, but they'd do better work than my cast iron pipe that was somehow imported from a Wile E Coyote cartoon where it had been manufactured by Acme and even if they didn't, they'd at least be multiple "breathe on it and it disintegrates" weapons that I could use on the clickers.

And this isn't even getting into the fact that while I can throw bottles and bricks, two things whose shape demonstrates they were never intended to be thrown, but I can't pick up the pool balls which are shaped exactly how we design things that are meant to be thrown.

First zombie game I make, the main character's primary ranged weapon is going to be a sling that's sized for pool balls.

When the conquistadors came the natives had them matched in firepower partially because the guns at the time sucked, but equally because their sling stones (actually made of clay) were manufactured to all be the same weight and shape allowing for much more control than using found objects. That's why the deciding factor was swords. (Wooden swords with obsidian blades are absolutely devastating to a person they're used on, but they can't survive a hit from a metal sword.)

Long range, the character will have to use a gun, but mid range the pool ball sling should be highly effective, no have a limited ammo problem because of ball retrieval, and have refills to replace lost balls pretty much anywhere in America that someone didn't have the same idea.

But this is beside the point, which is this:

If I'm fighting with found sticks, don't show me piles of found sticks that I can't pick up for fighting purposes.

-

[Added:]

* The typical pool cue is made of hardrock maple.  Way stronger than the sticks the game does let you fight with, but not nearly so strong as a cast iron pipe.

Communal cues are usually one piece affairs making them slightly longer than a Japanese  jō, I'm told the Chinese weapon that's mostly equivalent is called a bang, but I can only find one source so I'm not entirely convinced.  I have difficulty believing that there isn't a western weapon made out of about that length of wood, but I can't find one.

Two part cues would be even more durable.  Simply put, the longer something is, the easier it is to break.  Separating the cue would also lend itself to an interesting fighting style.  The butt end of a cue would essentially become a club, while the striking end would be able to be used as a lighter faster weapon.

What am I? [summary of past events, then bare bones dialog only exchange] (Zombie Apocalypse)

Notes and context up front:

So I have this forming idea for a complex zombie apocalypse setting with many protagonists whose paths cross at various times and places and . . . stuff.  This is a world that isn't the same as my pre-existing zombie fics, it probably will include someone on crutches as one of the protagonists.

As I mentioned at one point elsewhere, I totally get the desire to have a cute redhead with freckles in her early teens in your zombie apocalypse fiction, and the older character here, currently just called "Older", is my shot at that.

The younger character, currently just called "Younger", I don't have demographics worked out for at all.  She's a trans girl.  When she was orphaned in the earlier days of the zombie apocalypse she realized that no one was there to force her to pretend to be a boy.  She met her first companion at a pharmacy where the pharmacist was doing the difficult task of staying open until there were no drugs left to give out to those that needed them.

The pharmacist, not an actual doctor, worked out her treatment plan.

The companion met was an college age cis male who showed up to get as many depression meds as possible so that the inevitable return to deep depression could be put off.

Younger was on hormones by the time companion switch happened.  What happened is that Younger and original companion could see that bad people were flanking Older, and would kill her, but only Younger could make the climb necessary to reach Older first and warn her.  Original companion was able to lead some of the bad people away allowing Younger and Older to escape together, but as they fled in a different direction from original companion, they never met back up with original companion.

At this time Younger passed as cis, and never mentioned being trans.  Older knew that younger needs to loot pharmacies to keep medicate, and knew that whatever younger gets there isn't something most looters take, but was unaware that Younger was trans until traumatic event that comes right before the exchange below.

I haven't figured out what it is, though.  I definitely don't want it to be a rape attempt, but whatever it is leaves younger exposed at least from the waist down.  Actually, thinking about it, maybe the people who captured Younger just routinely confiscate prisoners clothes as part of prisoner processing, the better to make sure that there are no hidden weapons or tools.

Anyway, Older comes to the rescue, and the two together fight off the people responsible for traumatic event, Younger gets re-clothed, and the two leave.  Older is left concerned, and the conversation starts when Older is absolutely sure they're in a safe place.

* * *

Older: "Are you alright?"

Younger: "I'm not injured."

Older: "That's not what I meant."

Younger: "Oh."

Older: "You didn't defend yourself at all, you only started fighting when I was in danger."

Younger: "Uh huh."

Older: "What's wrong?"

Younger: "I just--" *turns away*  "It's . . ." *leans on wall* "They're right." *slides down wall*

Older: "About what?  They tried to kill us."

*Younger hugs knees into chest*

Younger: "I'm a freak."

*Older crouches down to look Younger in the eyes*

Older: "You're not a freak."

Younger: "Then what am I!?"

Older: "You're my sister."

*Younger awkwardly lunges forward and hugs Older*

Facing the zombie apocalypse on crutches, a game proposal

So, last post, it was a couple minutes at most before I found some packages that had been set aside when I was in too much pain to mail and discovered that The Last Guardian and The Last of Us have been given to me by nice people.  Thank you nice people.

That had me going back and striking out a bit of text because I think four settings should be enough that shifting through them will meet my story variety needs, thus things had changed.  (Still could really use delivery food money, advice too --if anyone knows the greater Portland area-- since the Chinese place I know is out of business now.)

Anyway, I started the first The Last game yesterday, and The Last of Us today.

In the opening a girl hurts her foot and can't walk.  Everyone knows what you do in that case: you carry her.  And that's what happened.

I saw myself in her.  A sprained ankle I can force myself to walk on once the initial pain dies down a bit (hurts like all hell, but I can do it), this broken ankle, though, it's different.  The reason I broke my porch was that my left foot grazed it, just barely a touch.  No weight, no force to speak of, and the pain alone dropped me.  I was standing, perfectly well balanced, and then I wasn't.  Sheer force of pain.

So I was thinking that If that happened I'd be utterly useless in the zombie apocalypse.  But then I kept on thinking.  If the zombie apocalypse happened now I'd already have crutches and the pain would be significantly less.  That would make all the difference.  Especially if I weren't as out of shape as I am now.  If I were in peak condition I'd be able to go long distances at speed with a lot of weight on my back.  A backpack is good for inventory, but if you think about it, I could be hop-vaulting away from the infected hordes with a child on my back.

(The child would have to do all the work since I couldn't hold onto them and crutches at the same time, but said work is possible.)

So provided the "I can't stand" injury happened before they stopped handing out crutches, I totally could have been the one carrying the can't-walk girl from the open instead of needing to be carried myself.

And this is how my mind works.  I find myself envisioning a game in which one of the main characters, who is on crutches, is giving the other main character a piggyback ride through the zombie apocalypse.

I wonder if the danger of things that can slide (a piece of paper on a smooth surface could spell your death if your crutch lands on it and you try to put weight on that crutch) would be a gameplay mechanic.

I think about how you'd have to stop to shoot because freeing an arm for the weapon requires not having it on a crutch.  I think about whacking zombies with one crutch while standing on the good leg and the other crutch.

I wonder if the person being carried would handle weapons.

I picture the Boston T (the subway parts) being fortified against zombie incursion and becoming where people live while Boston above ground becomes a massive open world to be crutched through as it decays in that verdant way New England places are consumed by forest if there's no one to mow the lawn.

Of course one must assume that if the player character is using crutches that shouldn't be the only way to get around.  I'm not specifically thinking of the luxury of a wheelchair because I imagine that post-zombie the elevators used for wheelchair access will not be powered.  Not until civilization really starts to rebuild.

I refer, instead, to butt sliding.  Also crawling, depending on the injury.

But sliding is the safest way to go up stairs when you're on crutches, and it's faster than using the crutches to do it unless there's but one step.

But mostly I have this idea of the zombie apocalypse on crutches, because zombie apocalypses seldom wait for a good time.  You usually don't get to go, "Hey, could you wait like six weeks so that I can walk?" and have the zombie apocalypse say, "Yeah, sure, How about earth day?"

Also, can I just say, they go through a museum and don't come out of it with so much as one sword?  Come on people.  At the very least you could have gotten a decent knife and not had to resort to shivs so weak the break after one use.  How do you even get them that weak?  Are they made out of a pane of window-glass?  Cause that's not one of the ingredients used to craft them, but it does seem to describe their durability.

When the apocalypse comes I'm totally looting the cool weapons from the museums.  My muse would be disappointed if I didn't.

-

A very easy way to make a plot would be if the crutch person were pre-surgery and so they needed to track down a surgeon, an anesthesiologists, other such people, drugs, equipment, so forth, and a sterile location where the surgery could be preformed without becoming zombie nomage.

The Survivors - Don't know why

[The setting for The Survivors is probably best described here.]

"What are you writin'" the kid asked even though the kid's accent said the terminal g should be there.

Karen looked at the notebook she'd looted from the department store they'd hit.  What was she writing?

After a bit of thought, she said, "Confusion."

"What?" the kid asked.

"Since we're almost certainly going to die," Karen said, "I wanted to leave something behind."

"You think we're gonna die?" the kid asked in a way that was curious rather than concerned.

"Don't you?" Karen asked.

"You protect me," the kid said, "and you have a big gun.  How could anythin' kill me?"

"Your faith in me is impressive," Karen said, "and misplaced."  She sighed.  "Anyway, I've never kept a journal before, but I thought I'd give it a try."

Karen closed her eyes.  Thought a moment, and said, "But I couldn't figure out to write."

"But you were writin' somethin'" the kid said.

"Yeah," Karen said, "something."  Nothing worth writing, much less reading.  Still, the kid looked interested.  She finally asked, "Wanna see?"

The kid nodded.

* * *

Jack took the notebook and looked at Karen's scribbled writing:

I don't know what I'm doing anymore.  In a way, things have been so simple and straightforward since the trial.  Everyone believed I was guilty, even if I'd found a way out there was no one waiting for me, and nothing to return to.  So when Unisol gave me a new life in exchange for working for them, they owned me.

I lived how they wanted, did what they wanted, and just mindlessly obeyed.  I'm not even convinced it can truely be called living, but I was so afraid of prison that I was willing to persist as a mindless drone.

Then this.

Zombies, mutants, the streets running red with blood, and we're supposed to go in guns blazing and save the day.  I don't think anyone on my squad really believed that.  Saviors don't need to blackmail their minions into submission.

But the orders were straightforward enough.  Seek out civilians, get them to designated evacuation sites, and engage any hostiles.  It almost felt like we were doing something good.

Then we stumbled on something above our pay-grade.  It's difficult to say exactly what the special unit was doing or why they felt it necessary to kill those people.  I'd like to be able to say that I sprang into action.  I didn't.  I froze.

The third body hit the ground before I reacted.  I wasn't even the first.  It was Michael.  The one I never trusted because he was actually guilty of the crimes Unisol erased from his past.  He was the one who acted.  He was also the first of us to die.

We didn't save anyone.

True, we were outnumbered eight to five.  True, they had better weapons, better body armor, and better everything than us.  It was still a poor showing.  We finally tried to do the right thing and all it did was get three of us killed, separate Jacob and me --he's probably died of his wounds by now-- and draw the attention of outsiders.

And this is why I don't know what I'm doing.  Three people heard the shooting and thought they'd discovered rescue.  Police, national guard, Gun Nuts Anonymous, whatever.
I was able to save the kid only because everyone's gotten so in the habit of aiming at head level for an average adult that the initial shots passed right over him. the kid.

I changed my whole escape strategy, grabbed the kid and led dragged out of harm's way.  By the time the special unit adjusted their aim I had the kid around a corner.

It was almost like instinct, but that was one moment.  I keep on asking myself why I'm still with sticking with why I didn't

I don't know why I haven't ditched the kid.  I stand a better chance of surviving on my own.  I'm not a little girl anymore.  I don't believe in redemption.  When Unisol came to me with the offer to get me out of jail, get me a new life, I knew I was selling my soul.  If they believed I'd done the things I was accused of then they were monsters for even associating with me.  If they knew I was innocent then they certainly showed a distinct lack of interest in who was actually guilty.

For three years I've done everything they ever asked of me without a single question as to why.  It's entirely possible that one or more of the jobs I did played some role in the downfall of this city.

I'm not getting my soul back just for saving one child.

At first I thought I had it figured; when I got passed the delusional absurd idea that I had some shot at redemption here, the answer seemed obvious.  The kid reminded me of my brother.  The brother I loved.  The brother I haven't seen in years because my parents disowned me and wouldn't even let me see him while I was awaiting trial.

There was a lot of feeling there, and it made sense that I'd do a lot of stupid things to help a boy who reminded me of my brother.

That all went down in flames when we hit the department store.  I wish we'd found a place with showers, but you'd be surprised how much blood and guts the amount of cleaning what can be done with a sink, a towel, and a lot of determination.  Being mildly clean and changing into clean, freshly looted, clothes was like a dream.

And then I saw what the kid had changed into.  So much for being like my brother.  She was wearing had picked out looked pretty normal for a girl her age.

My brother does not look like a girl his age.  At all.

She still says to call her "Jack", not sure if I'll be able to ever really accept that "Jack" is a girl's name--

"My name is 'Jack'.  I'm a girl," Jack said.  "So 'Jack' is definitely a girl's name.  'Jack' is this girl's name"

"Whatever you say, kid," Karen said.

Jack returned to reading.

She still says to call her "Jack", not sure if I'll be able to ever really accept that "Jack" is a girl's name, but I'm definitely not disputing that she's a girl.

Any resemblance to my brother disappeared when she came out dressed up showed her true self.

This isn't some last minute conversion to good.  Good and I parted ways when I willingly became Unisol's slave rather than face prison.  There's no redemption.  There's no get out of Hell free card.

This isn't about the kid reminding me of someone I care about.

This isn't about This isn't anything that This is something I can't explain.  The kid's a stranger.  Someone I've known for all of twelve hours.  Why the FUCK am I risking everything to protect this kid?  I should be sprinting to an extraction point as fast as I can, instead I'm slowed down and forced to take indirect routes because the kid wouldn't make it the way I'd go on my own.

I'm going to die because of this and I don't know why.

Maybe it's How long has the kid been looking at me like that?  I'll come back to this later.

That was where the scribbles ended.

"Maybe you're helpin' me because it's the right thin' to do," Jack said.

"Yeah, because I have a history of doing the right thing," Karen said.

"I trust you," Jack said.

"That may be the stupidest thing you could do," Karen said.

Jack handed the notebook back to Karen.

"Well," Jack said, "I could be lettin' my feelin's get in the way.  You are really cute."

"You're about ten years too young," Karen said, "and way too feminine for my tastes."

"I wasn't gettin' my hopes up," Jack said.

"Why don't you pronounce your Gs?' Karen asked.  "Your accent is local, and locals pronounce eng."

"What's an 'eng'?"

"It's the NG in ING."

"Oh, I just like the sound better when it's thinkin', feelin', sayin', and stuff," Jack said.

"I'm going to die because of a weirdo," Karen said.

"I don't mind bein' a weirdo," Jack said.  "But I'd like it if you'd start callin' me by my name again instead of 'kid'."

Karen sighed.  "Ok, Jack."

"Thanks," Jack said.

"Now you sleep," Karen said, "I watch.  And you better sleep because I need you awake when it's my turn to sleep."

Jack pulled a blanket and a pillow out of her bag and curled up on the floor.  The blanket, pillow, and bag were all things they'd looted from the department store.

"Night, Karen," Jack said.

"Night, Jack," Karen said.

-

[Original Work Index]

If your city were collapsing due to zombies...

So, we are positing a single city, not the whole world.

City is collapsing under the weight of a zombie outbreak, there's a military quarantine to keep people from escaping.  Obviously a lot of people are going to try to escape because it's not safe to stay in zombie city, but for the people stuck inside, what exactly would their priorities be.

Hospitals would probably be overrun because initially infected people would have been taken to them.  That means setting up field hospitals.

Wold people try to rob a bank?  The rest of the country would still be using the same money so...

1. Rob a bank in a zombie infected city because, honestly, what are the odds any surviving police would even give a shit?
2. Escape zombie infected city.
3. Be rich in the wonderful non-zombie infected world.

Not even a step of ??? before you get to "profit".  Great for the opportunist.

Returning to less self serving things:

You'd need to keep at least one pharmacy going, and it would probably need to deliver.

A fire department is a must because otherwise all of those people throwing Molotov cocktails at the zombies are going to burn down the city and, without buildings, where would you hide?

It might be a good idea to have some kind of news source, and while die-hard traditionalists would want it to be a newspaper, a radio station probably makes more sense.  Saves you the trouble of delivery.

You're going to want to work to keep the power on because no one wants to fend off zombies in pitch black.

Water running is important too.  Surviving the zombies only to die of dehydration is not a fun prospect.

But what else?

What does one do when in a city overrun by zombies?  Seriously, I'm looking for ideas here.

How I met Michael Mock (for legal purposes assume this to be fiction)

It came up on facebook.  Addressed to Michael Mock (thus he is the "you"). Reproduced below:

It was just after getting back from stopping the zombie apocalypse of 2052, the temporal distortion had been intense (it created an entirely new timeline, after all) and it made for a somewhat hard landing.

I was disoriented, the driver was trying to fix the rear axle, and I am so, so sorry about what happened to your clothes.

I swear I didn't know that [redacted] stained so much. Anyway, I hope the dry cleaning went well, though it occurs to me that I've never asked, and thanks for not messing up the timeline by telling me we'd already met when we next met.

All things considered, it's kind of surprising we only overshot by that much, it was a 40 year trip crossing timelines midstream, but the important thing is that we met, soon after I was returned to the time whence I had originally come, and the driver made it back to her home time too.

Also, no zombies. Generally a good thing.

-

[Original Work Index]

(Since we're calling it fiction)

Why does no one in zombie fiction assume body armor?

For some reason zombie fiction always seems to take place in settings that are so wholly unlike the real world that no one knows about zombies.  The Resident Evil game franchise, which I've been looking back at recently, doesn't.  People are quick to point out that there are zombies and monsters.

But it still has a lack of people picking up on the fact that shooting the zombies in the head is the way to go.  The occasional character will pick up on it (or at least say they have), but usually one who has plot reasons to know more about the zombies than ordinary characters.  Otherwise, even when shots to the body demonstrably don't work very quickly and shots to the head are one bullet and done, the characters keep on aiming at the chest.  This might make sense if they were horrible shots (no amount of aiming at the head and missing is going to stop a zombie while enough shots to the chest will stop a Resident Evil zombie, so if you're a bad shot go for the bigger target) but some of them are excellent shots and they still don't favor headshots.

But back to general zombie fiction.

Bad people are coming to do bad things and you've reached the point of lethal force.  You fire a shot into the person's chest.  Either they don't even fall, or they get back up again after falling.  After you've shot them.  At this point zombie fiction usually expects us to believe that you'll be confused and unsure of what to do next.

I quote Wash: "What about his face?  Is his face wearing armor?"

The local police force might not be willing to make the leap to realizing that the evil crowd advancing upon them is made up of the walking dead, but after shooting people repeatedly in the body didn't stop them, wouldn't they at least consider the possibility that they should aim for the one place they know doesn't have concealed body armor shielding it?

Yes, zombie fiction, for reasons that defy explanation, takes place in a world with no zombie fiction (it's why Jaws was set in a world where no one had ever heard of sharks-- oh, wait...), but it seems like well before people reach the conclusion, "Dead people are walking around and biting living people," they should reach the conclusion, "Aim for the head."

Yet I can think of no instance where someone said, "They must be wearing body armor, aim for the head," in a zombie movie or game.  I have not actually read zombie books.

MZAT: What to leave in, what to leave out

So, as Seger said, there's so much more, to think about, deadlines and committments, of course, but more importantly: what to leave in, what to leave out.

Another concern that crosses my mind on occasion is something that was said by the biggest zombie fan I know (or rather knew --don't worry; she's still alive) when she announced that she'd moved passed zombies. She realized that while she liked all the staples of zombie fiction there was one totally unnecessary part which could be left out changing little: the zombies.

Those two thoughts collide when considering questions like this:

My teleportation flute can't actually be used as a flute.  It has all of the physical attributes necessary, but on account of it being a magic teleportation device any attempt to play it would result in repeated teleporting to the same place over and over again in a brain frying (not literally, go with me here) exercise in futility.

Bella and I both saw this as a sort of a flaw, it is a flute after all. Flutes should be played.  Instead it was like the iPhone, a "phone" that cannot be used as a phone.  And one that, worse still, forces you to choose between Verizon ("Can you here me now?" "I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE SAYING BECAUSE I CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING!  GET A DIFFERENT NETWORK!" "Well I didn't hear them say, 'No,' so Good,") and AT&T (Motto: "Mildly less shitty than Verizon.")

So Bella looked to get a flute that would work but because the hole configuration is slightly odd (most twelve holers have hole 12 in a different spot) she ended up buying on that rather than, say, key.  This left her with a nice small ceramic ray-gun shaped flute (the shape does matter) with a glossy black glaze and a range keyed to soprano G.  The range was one octave with two notes in the major key on either side.  Way too high.

When you opened all the holes it felt like you were trying to break a pane of glass.  The note would ring out clear and true, but also ear splitting.

But for it's problems it was still a decent flute, and could play the Star Wars theme nicely, and you don't just get rid of a good flute.

So Bella gave it to me.  Because why not.

That's boring, right?  Makes you think, "Why the hell would that be included?" and seems like something to leave out.

Except it has to be left in if I want to talk about this next part that happened well afterward.

Everything had been moving at a frenetic heart pounding pace and then everything stopped. Bella had been out running me so I missed the initial set up and just saw the results, five people guns drawn on Bella.  Pistols all.

A short listen and I worked out which was the leader, asked myself, "What would Edith Do?" took out the flute Bella had given me, and, holding it as if it were a gun, approached from behind.

-

Tap to the back of the leader's head to let him know I was there then pulled back far enough he wouldn't know where the flute was and thus couldn't have the belief he'd get it away from me.

"You're using guns?  With barrels?  That fire bullets?" I asked with laughter in my voice that I had to force myself to not make it sound forced.  Instead I did my best to make the whole thing sound absurd.

"When I was growing up --which we won't say when it was because I'm told it's rude to talk about people's ages and if I say mine you might feel pressured to say yours, gun pointed to the back of your head might make that pressure feel higher, and we don't want that-- the year two thousand was the future.

"Not just the future, or the Future with a capital F, but the entirely capitalized FUTURE! with an exclamation point.  Jet packs and aliens and space ships and stuff.  This is 52 years after that.  For fuck's sake the space age was the 1960s and they started more than 90 years ago.

"So here we are in the year THE FUTURE! plus 52 and you're using a weapon that requires a set of mechanical linkages to bring a hammer down on a primer to create a small explosion in hopes of creating a somewhat larger small explosion," by this time I could see that Bella had gotten her hand on a weapon, her actions unnoticed since the attention had shifted to me, "in order to propel a rock down a tube that has a spiral pattern cut into it to give the rock a nice pretty spin.

"You are hilarious.

"Your problem, you'll come to learn, is that you brought your little pea shooter to a raygun fight."  Short pause.  For effect.  "Hell, my weapon doesn't even have a trigger, it fires based on thought.  It's a good deal faster, but it is prone to going off based on imagination (cutting edge technology always has glitches) so you'd better keep me thinking happy thoughts."

Once we had the group disarmed and secured with zip ties, they truly have no end to their uses, Bella commented on the bluff and I said that you work with what you have even, I played the Star Wars theme, if what you have was a flute.  Only then did the group realize I'd held them at flute point.

-

That event had no zombies in it.  Just the breakdown in civilization that one comes to expect with zombies leading to gangs feeling free to operated in broad daylight in what should be safe areas because the police are otherwise occupied, dead, or zombified.

Does it get left in, left out?  If it does get left in I have to describe where the flute came from otherwise you're left scratching your head on that point.


I mean I can't tell everything that happened while we in the future working against the zombie hordes, so what to leave in, what to leave out?

-

[My Zombie Apocalypse Team Index]

My Zombie Apocalypse Team - Index

Meta parts:
Part Alpha: General thoughts on getting the team together
Part A: Timeline

Story:
Part 1: Boring Exposition
Part 2: First Encounter
--
Part 4ish: Assessing the Underground
--
What to leave in, what to leave out
--
What is love?
--
Traveling back to right what shouldn't go wrong
Talking Time Travel at a gas station
Why we can't go back
--
Part how-the-fuck-should-I-know?: Moving
--
Part ?: Semi-final conversation

Stating the obvious: You are on your zombie apocalypse team.

To reiterate, the other members of the team are the protagonists of the last three things you read, watched, and or/played.  Leaving you with a four person team.  You, and three protagonists.

Since Bella Swan was on my team and I went with Snarky Bella for various reasons, I don't have to worry too much about certain real world concerns.  But for those who don't have someone with a time machine that's bigger on the inside on their team, real world concerns matter.

What if I'd had John McClain [1], Faith [2], and Ishmael [3].  Well then those concerns do kick in.

You see I have disabilities.  There's a reason, for example, that depression gets its own index.  So if I had those three I couldn't be assured of getting the medical supplies I'm getting now, and if I did it would involve breaking into and looting pharmacies and such.

More likely I would have to explain that I'm going to become more and more useless as the antidepressants work their way out of my system.  If we are breaking into pharmacies and such then those are otherwise unnecessary and potentially risky excursions,  if we aren't then I have to take into account that for the majority of the time I'm going to be under the influence of untreated depression.

Protagonists are protagonists.  There are probably all kinds of things that can mess things up for them, but they're still protagonists.

You are you.  If you have a disability then you've got to consider how having a person with that disability, you, on the team is going to affect things.  If you have phobias or neuroses, if you have anything that differentiates you from "generic person" be it good or bad (and I'm betting you do) that's going to have an effect upon the team.

It may be that the most interesting part of your zombie apocalypse team isn't how the three protagonists work together (or fail to) but how they work together with you.  You're the fourth member of the team, and that means that your team will be different than someone else's even if they have the same three protagonists as the other members.

Maybe you're helpful, maybe the need to look after you and keep you alive slows them down considerably, maybe both at once.

-

Previous things written on the subject of zombie apocalypse teams:

How to make your Zombie Apocalypse Team - Explains in general the considerations one must make, borrowing/stealing heavily from "Part Alpha" below but in a more general way because this is about how you make your team rather than how I make mine.

My Zombie Apocalypse Team:

Part 1: Boring Exposition

Part Alpha: General thoughts on getting the team together

Part A: Timeline

Part 2: First Encounter

Part 3 hasn't been written yet

Part 4ish: Assessing the Underground

[unknown unwritten parts]

What is love?

[recruiting the remaining two characters]

Traveling back to right what shouldn't go wrong

Talking Time Travel at a gas station

Why we can't go back

[More unwritten stuff]

Part ?: Semi-final Conversation/Confrontation

[More unwritten stuff up to the end.]

-

[1] Die Hard.  I know I linked to a set, but I'm thinking the original.  If you haven't seen it in recent years then the first time you watch it your reaction will probably be, "Oh my God!  He has hair."

[2] Mirror's Edge, not Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

[3] Moby Dick.

Zombie Survival Guide: Translator's introduction

[Note that So, you've just been turned into a zombie has been retroactively added to the Zombie Survival Guide]

To say that the decovery that the groans, moans, and other assorted sounds zombies made constituted a langues is the greatest revelation of the entire conflict is true, but misleading.  It is misleading because it understates the importance of the revelation.

One expects a revelation to change things, but not to change everything, and this one did.

It did not because it gave us insight into what was going on inside of zombies minds, but because it made us realize that they had things going on inside of their minds. All of our previous dealing with them assumed that they were mindless, a fact that, it would seem, they were able to exploit to their advantage.

It answered the question that we had since the beginning, which was how the hell did the outbreak become global.  How could unthinking monsters driven by the most basic of needs ever manage to break our quarantines, evade our detection, and spread to every inhabited land?  The answer: they didn't.  Thinking monsters did.  Ones that understood that detection likely meant death and were able to stow away on this or that ship or plane and make it to virgin shores and, once there, spread the infection.

It also revealed that we're at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to understanding.  They understand us and our various languages, we do not understand them and theirs.  As Leopold Bloom said of his cat, "They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we understand them. She understands all she wants to."  And the truly frightening thing is that a zombie is more likely to recognize that reference than a human.

But before I get to that I should address some things.

The first is that we do not understand the Zombie Language.  We have not cracked it.  So, you might be wondering, how could I have translated this text?  The answer is simple, it was never in the Zombie Language.  Only one composition uttered by zombies has been deciphered (this one, if it wasn't obvious) and the reason it has been deciphered is because it isn't in their language.  It's in English (and French, and Spanish, and Russian, and presumably every other language.  Fragments in Kurdish have been recorded.)

This composition is uttered to newly created zombies and while it is uttered in the zombie mode of speech, based on what we have able to determine it is always spoken the language of the humans newly turned into zombies, or as close as the uttering zombie knows.  (Never in the Zombie Language itself.)

This may indicate that there is some transition period during which a zombified individual still thinks in their native tongue, or it might be to ease he transition from human to zombie, or perhaps there is some other entirely unrelated reason for this.

The result is [1] a bit like we encountered a language we didn't understand in an alphabet we didn't understand, and then we discovered that one work in that alphabet was just English in another alphabet, were hopeful that the rest were too, and discovered that that wasn't the case.

We now understand that zombies talk, and how they talk, but we still haven't discovered what they are saying, except for the one case where the speak it in a different language.

This case, this composition, has been dubbed "The Zombie Survival Guide," and it is exactly what it sounds like, a composition designed to help newly created zombies survive.  As it is the only composition we have been able to translate it offers our only glimpse into what zombies think, how they think, and what they think of us.

One thing that is remarkable about it is the lack of variation evidenced in it.

It does vary some by region  sections have been added or subtracted as time went on.  Pop culture references will be adjusted to fit the audience as evidenced best by recordings from the Green Springs Rest home as compared to those recorded at the fall of certain high schools.  But overall the text does not change.  At all.  Except where necessary for meaning to be conveyed to the audience because the audience wouldn't understand a given reference or idiom, the text remains constant in all recordings.

It never changes.

This implies perfect memory on the part of zombies, they transmit it as it was transmitted to them unless a change is necessary (and as mentioned before, it has been translated into various languages.)

Consider the opening sentence: So you've just been turned into a zombie.  In every recording where zombified English is used it translates that way.  Never "Well you've just been turned into a zombie," never, "So you have just been turned into a zombie," never, "So you've just become a zombie."

This is what I mean when I say that a zombie is probably more likely to recognize the Leopold Bloom reference above than a human reader.  If they every encounter Ulysses in their human life, on becoming a zombie it seems like they wouldn't forget as a zombie, and they could easily go on to transmit the text to every other zombie they met.

The disturbing thing about this is what other things might have been transmitted.  Many police and military personnel have been turned, it is not unreasonable to think that zombies now know all of our tactics.

I'd like to close by saying this:

I know that I have been blessed.  I've been blessed to survive this long.  I've been blessed to find myself at what has become a communications hub.  I've been blessed to have the equipment to analyze zombie vocalizations, and to turn what look like messy sign waves into readable text.  I've been blessed to be able to make contact with others working on the same topic.  Most of all I've been blessed to have the leisure time to do all of this.  Not something most people can lay claim to in this day and age.

I have found myself in a position of extraordinary privilege, and when I will continue to use that to decipher the Zombie Language itself, I don't know when or if that will yield positive results.

This book is my attempt to pay the world back, in some small way, for the privilege I have been given now rather than later.  I have searched for the best recordings, I have tried to choose the idioms and references most likely to be understood by those likely to get their hands on a copy of all of this.

Most of all I have tried to faithfully transmit to you the only translated Zombie composition so that you might learn what the enemy is thinking, and hopefully translate that knowledge into an increased chance of survival.

--

[1] This is a massive oversimplification.  I want this work to be accessible as possible because I want as many as possible to know what little we do know about the zombie mindset so that, by knowing our enemy, we may better oppose our enemy.

In truth it's much more complicated.  First off, zombies don't use letters.  They use micro variations in pitch and volume and the magnitude and length of those variations both are taken into account.  While an alphabet can be seen as a linear method of information communication (from the first letter to the last) this allows for four axes of information.  The length of the variation in pitch, the magnitude of the variation in pitch, the length of the variation in volume, the magnitude of the variation in volume.  And there are more than 26 options in each direction.

These variations are very small and very short, which was one of our most definitive proofs that the zombie sense of hearing far exceeds our own, and the result is that massive amounts of information can be communicated very quickly.

At the beginning of every vocalization is a sort of key which lets other zombies know the vocal range that will be employed, as well as what language will be used.  When the Zombie Language is used this "key" is more complex and we believe that the result is that ever groan or moan has it's own encryption, with an encryption key attached to the beginning.  Until we've learned how to read the encryption keys, comparisons of zombie vocalizations are not likely to be nearly as useful as they might be.  We can only compare those that have the same key, and try to extract information from that, rather than using the whole of recorded zombie vocalizations as our starting data.

In the zombie version of English words are spelled out, with some of the more common words having their own micro-variation assigned to them.  This communication in "spoken writing" eliminates any possibility for confusion based on accents.  Examinations of the last transmission from the British Isles, the so called "Fall of London recording", indicates that zombies do take regional variations in spelling into account.

After the Zombie Apocalypse: Memories of Oil Rigs, a helicopter, a tank, and battle tactics

[Also originally posted at Off Topic Production's forum, though this time more like two and a half years ago.]

Wrote this a while ago, but I did it on paper so it's just been sitting, waiting, unshared. This started off as the same setting, and indeed same character, as the thing about cold medicine, but it somehow managed to drift sideways into another world. I can actually pinpoint the exact word where the shift happened. That word is Erin. The character of Erin, and her associated backstory, do not really fit into my original, very vague, concept of what kind of a world the first thing was set in. 

Where massive plot holes exist, I maintain that they are probably Erin's fault

-

I saw an oil rig once when I was little. It's my first memory. My family went on a cruise, as we made the journey from port to the open ocean we passed through a forest of them. I remember looking at one through the railing at the edge of the ship. It was like a great metal island on stilts, towering into the air. Like a floating island from a children's story, only it wasn't among the clouds in some far off place, it was right in front of me, with others stretching off into the distance until they dotted the horizon.

People like to hear me talk about it, they like to hear me describe what it was like to see it tower up above, they like to hear about the cranes atop it and how it felt like if that safety rail weren't there I could reach out and touch it. They expect me to remember what color it was and are disappointed if I admit that I can't. I think the reason that they care so much is that it gives them a connection to a bygone time, it allows them to imagine a golden age when men could build such things and humanity ruled over nature.

What they forget is that even at the height of civilization when those behemoths were actually in use a significant portion of oil production in the country was from little wells in the ground. They'd just sit there, in the woods or on a farm, collecting oil while the world ignored them.

Erin's father didn't forget about them. Before the last gas pump ran dry, before the last abandoned car had been siphoned, before the great hulking tanks had been emptied, he was out finding those wells. He claimed the abandoned ones and made deals the owners who hadn't abandoned theirs. By the time the masses came to grips with the idea that no more tankers would make harbor he was the local oil industry.

Of course, I'm told, oil in it's pure form isn't that useful. It's just gunk that burns. We live in the woods; everything burns. To save a portion of prefall technology required refined oil. Erin's mother had foreseen that and, by the time crude was coming in she was ready to make it into something people could use. A business partnership made sense, things progressed as things do, and that is why Erin exists.

To be honest, besides generators (for the perimeter floodlights) and one other thing I have no idea what they use the gas for. But that other thing is pretty significant. Anyone who can muster a helicopter in this day and age is practically a force of nature.

Erin is heir to that force of nature family, but she'd also a part of the new generation, raised with no concept of how things used to be. She has no idea how the powerful are supposed to act. That, and she wasn't raised on stories of islands in the clouds, she was told stories of independent little princesses who ran away to have adventures with dragons. I suppose it is unsurprising that more often than not she can be found outside the walls.

But to truly understand her you need to realize that she didn't want to be the little princess, she wanted to the dragon. Which is why, multiple times now, I've had my ass pulled out of the fire by a great flying metal beast piloted by an upstart from the post fall generation.

I like to think that if I had a daughter she'd be a lot like Erin.

-

-

Actually, it seems like nothing I'm writing in this setting goes the way I expect. The “Maybe we're overreacting,” person in the following was originally supposed to be a completely reasonable non-dickish individual, and may very well become one again should I ever try to convert these various scenes into a semi-coherent narrative. He just felt like a bit of an ass as I was writing this. The reason he likely won't stay an ass if this is all combined into a single story is that in the larger context I don't think it makes sense to have an asshole in the room.

-

“Maybe we're overreacting.”

“They have a fucking tank.”

“Yes,” It was the kind of annoyed yes that indicates the person saying it doesn't understand why the person they are responding to deserves a response or is even in the same room as them. “I know that,” he paused, apparently for effect, but unless the desired effect was to have me think he was a prick I don't think it worked out how he'd hoped, “but they can't fit their entire army inside it. If they take heavy losses they'll have to retreat.” He made a show of turning his entire body to face me, and said, “Taking the tank with them.” He turned back to the others. “They can't beat us.”

I suppressed the urge to throttle him, put some effort into keeping a civil tone, and said, “I don't think they need to.” I stepped up to the map and pointed, “If we're right this is the route they'll be taking. Right through the old city.”

“So?”

“So, if you go there and do everything right - tread softly, cover your scent, take every precaution - you're guaranteed to stir up ten to a hundred zombies. That's one person. When they march an army through there, the sound and stench of countless soldiers combined with whatever noise a tank makes is going to wake things that haven't stirred in decades.

“We're talking about thousands upon thousands of walking dead. They'll be no bother to the army, it's moving too fast for the zombies to catch it, but they will catch its scent and they'll follow it,” I traced my finger along the map, from the old city to our town, “right to us. When they get here what do you think will happen if a tank has knocked holes in our walls? The army can simply move off. We can't. This is our home, everything we depend on to survive is here. We can't pick up and leave. How do you plan on holding off a horde like that? How many bullets do we have, how many arrows?

“The army can simply wait until we've all been eaten or turned, then they can pass by upwind, lead the zombies away, and circle back to collect their spoils.

“They don't need to beat us, they just need to weaken our defenses.”

No one spoke. I broke the silence by adding, “That's just with the local help. We have no idea what's already in their wake. Imagine if they're coming here by way of New York.”

“We don't need to worry about that,” Erin said. “Zombies wouldn't follow them for hundreds of miles, not at the speed they're going.” She was right.

We just needed to worry about several thousand local zombies.

-

[Original Work Index]

After the Zombie Apocalypse: The lack of cold medicine

[Originally posted at Off Topic Production's forum, two and two thirds years ago.]

Whenever people of a certain age get together one topic that invariably comes up is what they miss most from before the collapse. I don't know whether this is a case of nostalgia, in-group bonding, a group effort to to escape the confines of present reality, or what. Given that psychology doesn't seem to be on anyone's list I'll probably never will know. What I do know is that I think that most people give the wrong answers.

People tend to do broad things, they miss having electricity, or trade, reliable sources of gasoline, or currency backed up by the full faith and credit of the American government. As if life is all about the big things. It isn't. Little things matter more.

I miss cold medicine.

The truth is that without electricity all important things can still get done, you just need some work and some imagination, if you need gasoline you're trying to go too far or move too much, and there is nothing wrong with paying for things in chickens. It's actually better in a lot of ways. Chickens breed; money doesn't. But if you're trying to fight the roving hordes of the undead with a bad cold life becomes very hard very fast.

Case in point, three days after the first full moon after the summer equinox of the year Ansala fell I was trekking through the wilderness when I came across a gaggle of 30 zombies feasting on a recently slain deer. The hunter, nowhere in evidence, had wisely abandoned both the kill and the arrow. They couldn't smell me, I was downwind. The inability to smell their rancid stench is probably the only upside to a cold. But with watery itchy eyes, a clouded mind, and a nose that wouldn't stop running I would have gladly suffered their smell in exchange for being without that cold.

Normally they would have been no problem. I would have walked on by and the event would hardly be worth remembering. I sneezed an epic sneeze. I think I pulled a muscle in my left eye, when I blinked the water from my eyes I saw that they were all coming my way.

Some people, city folk secure behind fences or walls, think it is laughable that anyone would fear zombies. They think that they're just lumbering oafs who a child could escape. When thirty of them are lumbering oafishly your way, you can't see clearly as you try to squint through the water in your eyes, and your better hand is dripping with a sinus full of snot -destroying any hope of holding a weapon well- it is no laughing matter.

I wiped off my hand on my pants, ditched my pack and ran like hell. Fifty fucking chickens worth of supplies, lost because not one capsule of cold medicine remains in the world.

[Original Work Index]

From the Slacktiverse: So you've just been turned into a zombie

[Originally posted at the Slacktiverse, to make up for not getting the deconstruction roundup started when I did.  It's here.]

Remember how I said everyone's crunch time hit at the same time?  Remember how I said this would probably end up being a low post week?  Well that applies to the yet to be started deconstruction round up as well.  So instead I give you a hastily produced effort at looking at a traditional fictional convention from a different perspective.

-

So you've just been turned into a zombie.  You're slower, your fine motor skills are lacking, you can neither speak nor sign, your walk is a sort of shamble, but that doesn't bother you, does it?  Because suddenly everything is so clear to you, finally, at last, you understand what this was all about all along.

The answers to questions that you never thought to ask when you were one them come so easily to you now.  Before you took the next step in the evolution of the species did you ever ask why there was never any infighting amoung zombies?  Did you ever ask why a lone zombie might be hiding in a darkened room or stay facing away from lower beings so that they couldn't see it's bloodstained mouth and would mistake it for one of them, yet while in a group no effort would me made at self preservation or subterfuge, only at making sure that some part of the swarm broke the line and delivered the "infection", such a small word for so wonderful a thing, to the other side?

You understand now, don't you?  You're part of something larger than yourself.  You have a higher purpose.  In a group you realize that the survival of the group is more important than your own survival, but alone you have to carry the purpose on your own shoulders, and thus must take more precautions.

You understand why we have to stop them.  They're not just a food item, would that it were that simple.  They're a dangerous and unpredictable food item.  In a fair fight they'd lose, so they don't fight fair.  Guns and bombs and technology are thrown against us when we are content with what nature gave us

Any attempt to uplift them, to give to them the purpose you have been given, is met with violence.

They wish to exterminate us, the genocidal maniacs, and so we must fight back.  Convert them to our side or eat them, but make sure they're no longer a threat.

So wrapped up are they in their petty concerns that they never think of us as anything but something to be destroyed just because we're not like them.  And we're not like them.  We get things done, we work together.  We would never ruin each others lives for bits of paper.  We would never throw others of our kind to the curb to get ahead ourselves.

We are united by common purpose and absolute loyalty.  Think back to before you changed.  Remember the doubt and uncertainty, never being sure if you could trust those around you?  Remember wondering what everyone's agenda was?  Remember how limiting that was?  Never being sure that your allies were really your allies?  Never being sure that you were all on the same side.

Compare it to now.  You know no other zombie will betray you.  You know that we're all in this together.  We are all equal, we are all one.  United by our higher purpose, our next step toward a more perfect species.

For thousands of years humanity was forced to rely on technology to compensate for its inherent weaknesses, but no longer.  We've crossed a threshold where we no longer need anything but what our bodies provide.  We are the future.

But also remember, also remember the revulsion you felt back when you were one of them.  When your mind had yet to be expanded and you were hampered by a shortsightedness of metaphorical vision greater than your current shortsightedness of physical vision.  Remember how you saw us as monsters to be wiped out, disgusting and subhuman.  Remember how racist you were then.  How horribly opposed you were to change and how violent your urges against us were.  Remember the unthinking murderous response to us.

Remember these things because they're what makes coexistence impossible.  Some don't remember.  They shamble up to or passed the lower humans and quickly learn that there is no possibility of truce.  Unless the first shot lands in the head; then they don't have time to learn.

It is true that the first response of most zombies is to try to pass on the gift or, in rarer cases, to feed (the transformation tends to leave one feeling hungry) so there are definitely times when our side strikes first, so to speak, and the response to this gift, or attempted gift, is often a bullet to the brainpan, squish.

But more often the first shot is fired by the other side.  Sometimes from such a distance the zombie never saw it coming.  We don't have to threaten them to be attacked by them.  They are threatened by our very existence.  Their objective is to wipe us from the face of the earth.

After which they'll no doubt sink back into their petty infighting, class war, international war, racism, sexism, homophobia, oppressing whoever they can whenever they can.

But we will not go quietly into that night.  We will fight their attempted genocide of us tooth and nail.  And if we succeed then true egalitarianism will reign supreme for all time.  For in us there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for we are all equal, we are all one.  Imagine no religion, no country, no possessions, nothing to kill or die for.  You don't have to imagine, it's already here.  But those who pervert nature with their technology are trying to destroy all that.  They're trying to kill us all, and they make no secret of it.

Why?  Because we no longer speak their language?  A small price to pay for the gift.  Because we look different?  You'll never see a zombie judging someone by their looks.  Because we're an acceptable target and they're always ready to lash out at one of those?  Not good enough.

They fight us with a thousand slings and arrows, they fire bullets from far away, they use fire stolen from the gods against us, they stab and they slice, they bomb, perhaps even nuclear.  We meet them with nothing but what nature gave to us.

We will not be destroyed.  We will not be exterminated.  We are not some pest to be wiped out.

So you've just been turned into a zombie, and now you understand.  We all welcome you as one of us.  We don't judge you, we don't create artificial divisions, we don't carry with us prejudice.  We welcome you as our equal because we are all the same here.  You are our equal, and we are yours, and united by common purpose we will defeat the genocidal maniacs who seek to wipe us out.

Welcome to the community of equals.  Welcome to a place without prejudice.  Welcome to a family that will never cast you out, never betray you, never present one face to you and another behind your back.  Welcome to a place where the answer to, "Can't we all just get along," is a resounding, "Yes!"

Before you were given the gift you probably looked down on us.  You looked at our slow speed, outside of short quick bursts, and found it comical.  You looked at our poor coordination and found it limiting.  You looked at our inability to speak or sign and found it a sign that nothing was going on in our minds.  You probably saw us as subhuman.

But now that you're here, don't those things seem like such small prices to pay?

So you've just been turned into a zombie.  Welcome to the new mother nature.  No more petty bickering.

-

[Original Work Index]

MZAT - Why we can't go back

[Trying to work the piece I wrote due to a misread fiction prompt into the larger MZAT scheme of things.]
[This would be the follow up.]

With the zombies dealt with Bella pulled out a familiar looking piece of technology and said, "Ziggy says that even though we didn't arrive at the incursion start, what we've done is enough to put the timeline back on track."

"You don't seriously have..."

"No, of course not.  I got stuck in a white room inside a no-ship in a black hole for two weeks with nothing but a sonic screwdriver, a temporal delta stream calculator  a pile of electronic equipment, and a shipment of props from American TV shows from the 1960s to the 1990s intended for display in a museum in the Glaucon Quadrant.  I made some modifications, is all."

"The what?"

"It's not a Quadrant and I have no idea where the name Glaucon comes from.  It's not important.  The important thing is that we can go back to 2052."

"Why not go the other way?"

"What?!"

"Why not go back to 2012 and solve the problem at its source."

"Ok, first off, the source isn't 2012, it's 2052."

"But it started in-"

"2010, on the platonic ideal loosely attached to a server in Japan, which means trying to solve it there would not only not work, it wouldn't get you home."

"But I could-"

"Furthermore, this isn't our timeline, the changes were so great as to spawn an entirely different timeline disconnected from our own.  Meaning that the anomaly didn't grab the you from this timeline, so unless you plan on killing him and taking his place you can't slip back into your life."

"Ok, so-"

"And that's assuming your life even exists in this timeline, which it might not.  It didn't just duplicate the past from our own timeline, it organically spawned one by building retroactively backwards the way most timelines build forward meaning that any possible 2012 that might lead to the 2052 we came from could exist in this timeline and not all of them have you in it because there are such things as random chance, free will, the inertia of non-nondescript choice, and the six other axes of causality and given the severe world altering events in the intervening decades there's really no reason to assume that the 2012 in this timeline is all that similar to the 2012 in yours."

"But even so we could-"

"And you're ignoring the fifth dimension   The knot in time that started all of this?  Well it's going to work itself out sooner or later because nature abhors a non-euclidean tangle of non-temporal causality like that.  The time that we might spend in twenty ten or twenty twelve would be time that the knot was spending unknotting itself, and when it finally did that the cross timeline connection would be severed, possibly stranding us here forever, as the time link snapped into this timeline and all of a sudden an army of two billion zombies, give or take, and one evil incorporeal being with untold power over the universe, would suddenly find themselves with a stable time bridge back to the beginning, right where you were camped out.

"And if you think you can fight that off with a katana-"

"It's not a katana, it's a-"

"You're missing the point."

"No, I got the point.  We have to go forward to a future that is being killed off by nano-plague and zombie plague, has an active slave trade, is at the mercy of conspiracies, makes libertarians salivate, and has been invaded by the forces of an evil AI who somehow can screw with the real world to stop something or other from happening or else we'll never get home and everyone will die horrible deaths."

"Exactly!"  She smiled, "Ready to go?"

"Yup."

MZAT - What is love

[Returning to the saga of my zombie apocalypse team, I'll figure out the order later.]

Bella found me in the kitchen, I was quick make a guess as to her question, "You're probably wondering why I'm eating your chocolate chips by the handful while we're stuck in a dystopian future where the main form of sustenance is soy food and the only replacement source of chocolate may or may not contain people as an ingredient."

"No," she said. "I often gorge myself on them when I'm feeling depressed, hungry, and too low on energy to eat anything that requires preparation.  I figured you were doing the same."

"You know, they say eating a lot of chocolate produces an emotion indistinguishable from love."

"And?"

I hung my head. "I think I'm incapable of feeling love."

"I'll get back to that in a moment, but first there's something I have to tell you and a question I have to ask."

"Shoot"

"Ok, what I have to tell you is that I got bitten and since the anti-zombie vaccine is still in the "works but fucky" stage of development I'll be out of commission for weeks to months.  I won't even be able to walk from my room to the bathroom which, because the truck has an odd sense of appropriate architectural arrangement, involves three hallways and two flights of stairs.  You'll have to carry me."

"Will I have to..."

"No.  Hell no.  Once I'm in the room I should be fine, but anything that requires me to move from point A to point B will involve you carrying me around."

"Ok."

"And you will have to clean up the vomit, of which there will likely be a lot.  And prepare every meal, and preform all the maintenance, and generally speaking do everything."

"Great," sarcasm, I can haz it.

"Are you going to do all of that?"

"Of course I am but-"

"You're fully capable of feeling love."

"That's friendship, it doesn't count."

"Friendship is love.  You said love, you're not weaseling out on a technicality."

"You know what I meant."

"If you're looking for infatuation you'll have to look elsewhere, I've had more than enough of that pointed at me for six lifetimes where I came from, I've never experienced that emotion either, and I'm ten years younger than you."

"I wasn't saying-"

"It's not important, can I get to what is important?"

"Sure."

She pulled back her jacket to reveal that her shirt was stained with blood on the right side around her abdomen, "I wasn't kidding about being bit."

"Did you-?"

She pulled up the shirt to reveal not skin but bandages, "I plugged the leak, and took the vaccine, but I figure I've got about twenty minutes before I lose the ability to stand for more than thirty seconds at a time."

I had no good response to that, so I opted for a bad one, "You want to watch a movie?"

"TV show."

"Firefly?"

She nodded, "Out of Gas."

"I'll grab the reel."

"I'll be in the theater."