Prologue, Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
FSA Origins Project
from the Diary of “El Unico”
Vol. 1, Recovered 2037.05.23
pp. 221-22
The sedatives usually mean sleep without dreams. Booze works, too, but it takes a lot more and is harder to come by these days.
When it happens, it’s always the same dream.
My youngest daughter’s graduation day…
We’re at the tiny house she and her boyfriend rented while she finished college. It’s May in South Carolina and it’s warm. There’s enough of a breeze to make eating outside the best option. All of my kids are there, even their mother, my ex-wife, is there and everyone is laughing and enjoying themselves. It hasn’t been like this – ever – in the years since the divorce.
My oldest, Candace, is in the kitchen. She’s doing something at the sink. I can hear the water running, but my back is turned because I’m cutting the cake.
I turn around and she stands up straight, her left hand on her back to help lever her belly upright. She’s late in the pregnancy and she turns to look at me, a smile on her face, beatific. She tells me she gave up her teaching job. She’s laughing. They said learn to code, so I did. She looks more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her in her whole life. Alive. Fulfilled. My son-in-law is outside and I can hear him wrestling with their 3-year old, Jonah.
I’m really happy for you, sweetheart, I say. Who’s the job with?
There’s a pause, so I turn around. The water has stopped.
Contract for B-A, she says. AI and machine learning. DoD.
The she tilts her head and frowns.
Why, Daddy?
I know this isn’t how it happened in real life. We had a great day that day. A great day…
I can feel the panic rising.
Why…? Why, Daddy? You knew this would happen. She’s holding her belly, moving towards me, and I’m walking backwards. Somehow the front wall of the house has vanished and I’m on the lawn, everyone’s watching from the porch, and she’s still walking towards me.
Why, Daddy? Bloody tears slide down her face, run off her neck, and down the front of her dress.
My ex-wife is laughing from the table, her nasal chuckle sounding like geese honking.
And what were you doing on the Naughty Web, anyway? She taunts, and then she has a bite of cake, her hand under the fork so she doesn’t drop any.
I want to run, but I can’t. I’m frozen, staring at my daughter while she bleeds.
I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I’m mumbling and crying, but she won’t stop asking, coming forward, bleeding.
Why, Daddy? She’s crying, I’m bawling, there’s blood everywhere, I can feel the warmth of it rising over my feet, my ankles…
I wake up with a start and the bed is drenched.
For a moment, I can’t decide whether or not I should kill myself…. My pistol is on the nightstand.
I can’t go on. I can’t live like this.
WOW, there is some dark shit going on.
Really loving the separated storylines.
oh, my.
That’s the thing–bring down the system, and the loved ones you have who work for it and depend on it may just be collateral damage.
Ayup.
I’m waiting for next week I guess, dreams,
Great stuff, Ozy. Heavy, but great stuff.
Thanks, Mr. Bear. Enjoying your “Marilee,” as well.
Damn, Ozy.
Just. . . damn.
Seconded. I really hate waiting a week for the next installment.
Great stuff.
I promise that next week’s will be worth the wait.
Woohoo!
You’re beginning to sound like my old girl friend
I don’t know your tastes, 4×20, but now I’m a little worried about the Honey Harvest.
I wanted to make a public acknowledgment of thanks to TPTB for how good the illustrations on each chapter of this have been.
Without any coordination, TPTB have been putting up (IMO) absolutely perfect images to support each week’s chapter.
Next thing – I’m going to solicit any Glib who wants to (paid work!) when the whole story is done, to help me edit this into a single, unified offering, with the chapter images.
(Moj? Evan?)
Ultimately, I’d like to either gift the rights to it to the Glibs Foundation or figure out some other schema where it can be offered here at TPTB’s discretion for Glibs.
I haven’t fully conceived the “how” yet, but this has been a fun writing and publishing exercise for me.
Thank YOU for writing for us.
Illustrations? I didn’t do nuffin!
I heard that in the Hat’s voice.
I’d buy the book.
Me too. Quite a few talented people here.
Welp, that is my raison d’etre, and my client list is just coming off the July and August slump. October is usually pretty busy.
You have my email. 😀
Okay, I’ll reach out on email when I get it finished, Moj, and we can talk about the stubby pencil details.
That’s dark.
Keep the parts coming Ozy.
Did he do a micro-dose of SF?
Related to Part 4, or just guilt?
“Tune in to next week’s exciting adventure to find out!”
(No, really. Next week’s has this answer.)
I wish I could expense my vacations like this.
I pictured your road trip more like this
https://youtu.be/6Zbi0XmGtMw
This is more how my life works.
This is how you do product placement.
Finally went back and read everything from start to where we are now. Damn this is good. Now it occurs to me why serial installments were so popular in the old ‘zines and such – if it’s done right it’s really compelling. Good work, Ozy!
I’ve heard that serial fiction came about before copyright protections mattered. It was the best way for an author to get paid, because as soon as a book was published, it could be pirated. So, authors would sell their work to magazines and release a chunk every week/month. The pirating just didn’t work on serial publication. I believe at least some of Dickens’ work was published that way.
Seems more plausible it was down to money. To pay for and print a whole book outright is a risky business. To sell it piece meal along with other piece meal stories would be more cost effective. If 1 of the 10 you publish is successful you garner the same readership.
Interesting overview of serialized novels. Some big ones in there, but no discussion of “why”. A very quick scan of search results doesn’t really illuminate the “why”, other than it was apparently a way for newspapers in England to avoid taxes for awhile (if they printed enough pages, they were “pamphlets” and not taxed as newspapers).
I’m pretty sure the Leatherstocking Tales by Fenimore Cooper were done that way. That’s my recollection from the dim past of my English degree memories.
I think you may be right as to the reasons for publishing that way RC. If a story wasn’t popular, it could simply be abandoned at the last of its chapters.
I think it’s a lost art, both as a writing style and a publishing mechanism. I’m digging it, both reading Animal’s installments and writing my own.
Aw, English degree. ❤️ (Not me, too much fiction.)
Quite a few of Dicken’s work was done in serial, as did Alexander Dumas. I remember reading that Dumas was one of the first to hire warehouses of authors to pump out works in his name. Related to that was that there is no currently in print version of the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo, because it was padded out more then a George R.R. Martin novel.
Even as late as Hunter S. Thompson it was being done.
Dickens was paid by the word and it shows.
I thought Penguin had an unabridged edition of “The Count of Monte Christo”?
I think my copy is the Penguin edition, and it is huge. Somewhere around the same size as “War and Peace”.
I’ve got that Penguin version. 1,103 pages (including the notes – 1,078 without).
Still available:
https://www.amazon.com/Count-Monte-Cristo-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140449264/
(i’ve got the 1996 edition)
And if it’s done wrong, people still go see it. That’s the power Marvel is still trying to pull off, but fucking up.
I think of TOTB as a comic book,
Modern equivalents might be comic books and manga.
Issue I find on the manga I read is authors who don’t know when to end the gravy train. You take a great series and gradually becomes mediocre and finally has an unsatisfying conclusion.
This is really well done. I keep waiting eagerly for each chapter.
It’s also terrifying.
Ozy,
I know I’ve said it before. But, this is really good stuff. You’re quite a talented writer.
Very kind of you, wd. If I were “quite talented” you’d think I could make a living at it, but not so far…
Okay, not quite true – I’ve made a fine living on my legal writing, but not on my fiction.
Talent alone is not enough to make a living in the arts. You also have to find an audience, which can be quite difficult. Some works now considered classic only took off in popularity a long time after publication, sometimes not even until after the author’s death (which made it kind of hard for them to make a living off of it).
See Confederacy of Dunces. His mother got that published after he committed suicide.
The market for my kind of books is just not there. They’re women my age or older who grew up on bodice rippers and Harlequins and, well, they’re busy or they’re dying off. It took me a while to realize this.
The problem is that there are so many TALENTED writers out there who can’t get past the signal-to-noise ratio. You must be a salesman to do it and mostly the books of the salesmen are exactly what people are buying. I personally can’t write that way, although I haven’t really tried very hard since my 20s. I will also admit that I like a certain genre of these salesman books and I do enjoy a long jag of reading. They have value, but it’s not what *I* value enough to *write*.
So you’re not competing with wannabes. You’re competing with truly gifted writers and the moderately artistically talented salesmen.
Really good, Ozy. That’s dark, but it is good dark.
But is it… swinging from the rafters (safely loaded, of course!!) dark, CA?
Biden is suing Texas over its abortion ban. What’s next? Will the Supreme Court take it up?
I guess standing doesn’t enter into it if the cause is politically correct.
Standing is only required of the peasants.
Much like Trump, the best part of the Texas law seems to be whom it pisses off. Unfortunately, it’s probably not half as good as its opponents make it seem.
This is the way, though. If the Blue Tribe is going to make its places unlivable for the opposition, the Red Tribe should do the same. The whole point of having 50 semi-sovereign states is to do things differently. If we can’t have fake and gay Eisenhower-Cronkite postwar consensus, and we shouldn’t, then we ought to have people live in places where the values align with their own.
Unfortunately if the Blue Tribe get butt hurt enough, they’ll see it as a reason to pack the SC.
I say let them. Pack the court to absurdity. Strip it of jurisdiction. Depopulate its subordinate courts. Do whatever it might take to render the entire judicial system legislatively inert. Its job is to resolve disputes between parties, not to remake the land in a perverse image.
Given our current status, this can’t happen in any meaningful way without the federal government being subject to hard and narrow limits. That’s not going to happen peacefully.* TEAM BE RULED likes things the way they are – a federal government with unlimited scope. As long as the feds have unlimited scope, states can’t do much that TEAM BE RULED doesn’t like. And TEAM BE RULED does not like non-progressive values.
*I think we have learned that the electoral system provides no route for replacing our current masters with ones who might be amenable to devolution of power to the states.
At some point, states and localities are going to have to stop caring what the robes in DC say. Let them take “your” federal funding away. It’s the bribe they pay you to abandon your values and adopt theirs instead. It’s not even their money, and they devalue it daily. It’s worth less by the time you get it back then it was when they withheld it from your paychecks. Write it off as a loss, for now. People need to recognize that compliance costs more than money, it costs your soul as well. Make it more expensive for them than it is for us.
Won’t happen overnight, has to start small, there will be setbacks. Their victory condition is total control, ours need only be to frustrate them further.
People need to recognize that compliance costs more than money, it costs your soul as well.
I agree completely, but I believe you will get blank stares from 99% of our ruling class if you tell them to give up their federal funding on . . . principle.
Massive Democrat election fraud scheme that shakes the foundation of American elections..no standing.
Democrats in DC sue to prevent regulation of abortion within Texas…STANDING!
I would bet that if they absolutely have to, the DOJ can find somebody in one of their Texas offices who will get pregnant in order to claim she wants an abortion.
Not that it will come to that, of course. But I have no doubt DOJ would go to those lengths if necessary to slap the irredeemables down and let them know who their master is.
lolol
Great story
I was wrong yesterday. Megacorp is not waiting for fedgov to write rules. Everyone must disclose within 30 days. Everyone, including work from home, must be vaccinated by 2022. Any approved booster will be required.
Any approved booster will be required.
I have a bad feeling we are heading that way. That could be my line in the sand. Unfortunately, I have deferred comp vesting in the middle of next year, so the price tag for leaving early could be very high indeed. I’ve thought about trying to get fired and getting my prenegotiated severance, but that would probably require renegotiation to avoid losing my vesting date.
Even a couple of months ago, I really enjoyed my job. That has changed.
Have they explicitly said they’ll require the boosters already?
Yes
The company disclosure yesterday was silent.
Staff meeting today it was explicit. Boosters required.
I’m not all that surprised, but the degree to which they don’t even pretend to care about the process anymore is hopefully going to catch more people’s attention.
For the fucking flu. Dumbasses.
Criminy, that’s dumb.
All of the booster shots to date appear to be based on the same S-protein expression scheme used to vaccinate against the ancestral variant. Taking a booster to deal with the latest variants (including any immune escapees due to accelerated selection pressure) makes about as much sense as taking 2017’s flu shot to fight this year’s flu.
On the “my province went 90% fascist today” front, I just went into a store where a full-on Karen works, and she did not ask to see proof of vaxx. Something tells me there may be a lot more non-compliance this time around, which would be an unalloyed Good Thing.
Two FDA mucky mucks just resigned because they felt pushing the booster was a bad idea.
The boosters will be updated at some point. The current apparent belief though is that the lower efficacy is more due to declining immunity levels than true breakthrough variants.
Sorry kinnath. My belief is that the ones running things at large companies are either true believers or hoping this will end their covid costs. The only way they will stop is if they personally are opposed (unlikely) or the costs are too much. It’s going to take multimillion dollar lawsuit wins to derail that train.
I am still surprised there haven’t been any on disparate impact of protected classes or using obtained medical information for impermissible use (body temp records to screen our pregnant women, etc). Doesn’t even have to be concrete, just a pattern of gray areas has added up to more than one successful suit.
End their Covid costs? How does crushing the remaining supply chains and a wobbly economy do that? By putting them out of business?
During a hiring crisis, they want to shrink their employee base by 25%* or more?
*Based on most news stories I’ve seen.
Those are indirect costs and just fall under existing categories. The cost of Covid mitigation, social distancing/worker density, WFH, quarantine/lockdown stoppages, healthcare, etc is what they’re looking at.
Besides, getting rid of a large chunk of non company koolaid drinking no-men is an opportunity not a threat.
I am baffled that I haven’t heard about a disparate impact suit yet. It should be a laydown win – mandates and passports will have an undeniable disparate impact on blacks and some other minorities. Jab Crow is a very real possibility.
And you’ve got to love the complete silence of the professional race mongers, up to and including the Congressional Black Caucus, on this issue. It really goes to show that the whole thing is really about money, no principles need apply. The Repubs and the Dems are nothing more than the fundraising wings of TEAM BE RULED, ginning up fake controversies to whip up their supporters into giving them money.
“And you’ve got to love the complete silence of the professional race mongers, up to and including the Congressional Black Caucus, on this issue.”
The biggest irony of all of this is that these mandates will hurt lower income people whom the Left pretends to care about. It’s just like with criminal justice reform, if there’s any real reform it would put these grifters out of a job, so they’ll rather let people suffer to maintain their place on the pyramid and get paid.
I listen to various international broadcasters, and as in America, the reason “approved” minority groups have lower vaccination rates is because they’re being oppressed by a lack of “vaccine equity”. Israel’s English-language program had a long interview the other day with a professor on why Israeli Arabs have a low vaccination rate. Contrast this with the new government’s open hatred of the Haredi, who also have low vaccination (and higher case) rates.
Ditto Australia and the Aborigines, and New Zealand with respect to both Maori and Pacific Islanders. The Goodthink Class went apeshit when A New Zealand opposition politician published a “jump ahead in line” access code for Maori.
There have been some equal protection complaints on the treatment of unvaxxed versus vaxxed – as well as the additional testing requirements.
Az’s AG just filed against the entire Biden mandate because they’re not requiring illegal immigrants to be vaccinated, so AG used 14th Amendment attack.
Sorry.
Yay boosters! Covid protection as a service. It’s a new business model.
Subscription services are all the rage.
I hear pharma execs are now lighting cigars with $1000 bills instead of $100’s. (If any Bee lurkers are present, feel free to use that).
Sorry to hear that, kinnath. We are living in a dystopia, without the soma.
Sorry kinnath. I hate that you, or anyone else, has been put into that position.
Last night we had our hockey kickoff meeting. As expected, we will be required to have a vax and wear masks in order to play. We all knew that was coming. But the depressing part was when they listed all the sporting events and other activities that now or will soon require a vax card.
As I mentioned yesterday, the wife and I both got the Moderna vaccine last April when it seemed to be the prudent thing to do for two 60-something people with comorbidities.
Until an approved Moderna booster is approved and recommended for everyone (not just those with weakened immune systems) we don’t have any problems.
But the problems will happen some time next year I imagine.
Retirement is always an option.
Or until crossover boosters are mandated.
Wow. Ozy, this is a great series. This chapter sent chills down my spine, packed a whole lot of angst into a very short space. Thanks.
Thx, ‘patzer! Glad you’re enjoying it.
Oz, I also just wanted to tell you you’re doing a great job with this. Looking forward to all of it.
My pleasure, O Hanger From Rearview Mirrors.
Are we taking bets yet on the big collapse?
By Halloween?
By Thanksgiving?
By Christmas?
I’m gonna go with Thanksgiving.
They seem Hell bent on going full throttle.
Time to pull some percentage of cash out of the bank?
Cash only gets you from a kind of stable economy to the stage where cash is worthless and people only accept trade or precious metals like gold and silver.
But yeah, you should have some amount of cash.
I doubt it would be of much value during an extended event.
If “it” = cash, I agree. But the cash will be the easiest during the early stages.
if “it” = gold and silver, I don’t think there has ever been an economic event where they were valueless. I have a stash as deep insurance, for a scenario where that’s what we need to survive. I am definitely looking at ammo as trade goods, as well. 10 rounds of 5.56 for a chicken? Deal.
Agree. I was referring to cash.
10 rounds? At today’s prices that’s $6 for a whole chicken. I’d expect ammo to be somewhat more valuable than that in a real scenario.
I would also expect chickens to be more valuable in our coming post-apocalyptic wasteland.
You know, you’re close to right. Currently a whole chicken is going for $10 at a local store. At $0.62/round (for 5.56×45 M193 55 grain ball — probably higher for M855 62 grain LAP), that’s about 3.22 rounds per lb, or for a 5 lb fryer chicken, about 16 rounds.
And smokehouse bacon is at $7 a lb, tell you what, throw in another chicken and a pound of bacon, and you can have 30 rounds on stripper clips.
We’ve been slowing accumulating mini-bar size bottles of liquor, TSA-sized personal toiletries, etc. as potential trade items.
Did that two days ago.
Been there, already done that.
I did it in 2009. Still have all the cash sitting in the safe (well protected by a modest* array of firearms), along with the gold and silver coins.
Seriously considering whether to divert money from our current retirement financing scheme to buy more specie. The specie I have now is less than 5% of our net worth, and I have mental allocation of 5 – 10%.
*Modest by the standards of this crew, anyway.
great, now i want to start panic buying…
*points to Amazon & SGAmmo*
1000 quatloos on Indigenous People’s Day
I really don’t think it will be this year. But, it will be triggered by some event, and there is no telling what, or when, that event might be.
Larf
That’s pretty funny. I like Elon as Scotty and Shapiro as Spock.
Niiiice.
If not taboo I would like to make a suggestion for the Glibs. A close friend of mine has a book published on Amazon, Nothing but Ash by Shawn Kethley.
I’m making this suggestion because this series reminds me of it. It’s a short story, $0.99 on Kindle, and I believe a lot of you would like it, for what it’s worth and if you have a buck to spare.
I’m going to take you up on it, Necron, but not until after I finish writing this. I don’t want to be influenced in any way.
This has been one of the easier, more “Muse-driven” things I’ve written, so I want to let the Universe push me the rest of the way, but I’m definitely interested.
Thanks for the recommendation.
I can’t really put my finger on what it is, but each time I read an installment of your series I think of his book. They are not at alike – somewhat sci-fi true, but style and pace are a lot different. I hope you like it, and I am really enjoying your contributions here.
In my Kindle now.
Cool, let me know how you like it.
Fantastic story. Thank you for writing here!
Great stuff Ozy! Thank you, I think…
We were discussing the government seizing retirement accounts earlier?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleaebeling/2021/09/10/iras-for-all-mandatory-retirement-accounts-part-of-35-trillion-budget-plan
What if they made them mandatory for everyone and then required a certain percentage be in T-Bills for “safety”?
Ah. Reduce effects of wage inflation by cutting take home pay. Brilliant.
So good having the adults back in charge.
🙄
It has an opt-out provision, which I imagine a large portion of very low income individuals will take advantage of. Or they don’t bother and then a year later take the money out and pay the penalty.
Wait…Roth by default, so no penalty on early removal (under certain circumstances). So creating a retirement account that has no up front tax benefit by default.
What if they made them mandatory for everyone and then required a certain percentage be in T-Bills for “safety”?
Ozy’s story was dark. This is truly frightening. Don’t give them any ideas, Scruffy.
The next big stock market dump is when they will make their run at slow-mo confiscation of retirement funds by requiring that they hold a certain percentage in T-Bills.
Their proposal for mandatory Roths is a giant payoff to the financial services industry. And of course, the tax benefits the government giveth for Roth accounts, the government can taketh away.
I agree. They won’t come at it head-on like Argentina, they’ll put it under the guise of personal financial security.
People seem to forget that FDR seized all the private gold back in the thirties. There’s not much they won’t do to preserve the dollar, which underpins the entire federal system.
“the tax benefits the government giveth for Roth accounts, the government can taketh away.”
This is why I dont have a Roth. Yet. I am nearing the regular IRA limit, so I may have to open a Roth. But I prefer my tax benefits up front, not somewhere down the line, theoretically.
TMITE, Chapter1337
I wonder what an outbreak is…
1263 positive tests in calendar year 2020. Scary! How many kids got sick? Anyhow…
1.28 million enrolled in NJ public schools in 2020-2021
So 0.1% positive tests. That certainly justifies mandatory masking, vaccinations, lockdowns, and travel restrictions.
OFFS. Oh well, shut it all down again.
I wonder what an outbreak is…
Eight vaccinated New York Yankees tested positive back in May, and when I posted that on another group as an example of an outbreak amongst the vaccinated, I was told it was just a bunch of isolated cases and not an outbreak.
It’s only an outbreak if you can blame it on somebody unvaccinated.
Eight Yankees – about 30% of their roster. Not an outbreak at all.
https://www.floridarealtors.org/news-media/news-articles/2021/09/fla-landlord-mandating-vaccines-tenants-it-legal
Oh, man. Wow.
Yeah, this is definitely not going to end well.
Ghettos for the unvaccinated are inbound.
Happy camps.
But Brian Korte, a West Palm Beach-based eviction defense attorney who was alerted to Alvarez’s policy by a tenant, said the policy “discriminates against people who are healthy and who don’t have a disease.” That’s ironic, he said, considering that the Americans with Disabilities Act would likely bar a landlord from refusing to rent to someone infected with COVID-19.
Many indications of pushback in that article. Should be entertaining. Y’all can load up on ammo and gold, I’m going long popcorn.
Popcorn is my ammo of choice as well – too old to fight, too old to give a crap, but too young to quit until “mandated.”
But it’s no problem not to pay your rent!
/s Joe Biden
That guy seems overly confident that someone won’t shoot him in the face in retribution.
Damn, Ozy.
Outstanding chapter. It feels like things are accelerating.
Thank you for writing this.
France, who will arm anyone with a checkbook, is PO’d it didn’t get any gravy.
France Is Outraged by U.S. Nuclear Submarine Deal With Australia
Why does Australia need subs? They should be stocking up on rubber bullets.
How else are they going to nuke COVID quarantine violators?
Similar Cuba? They don’t want to let anyone escape the island?
China
Now, almost every day, I have to wait for my daily fix of Glib writing. I’m happy that there are only 6 days in a week so I don’t have to wait too long.
Good stuff, OZY, glibs bring a talent to the table that won’t be found in any other self selected group of folks.
I’m glad there is Facebook for all the others, otherwise they would try to sneak on here.
Thanks OZY, Animal, SF, Mo and my friend UCS, (and my first grade teacher, Miss Brown, for keeping me in at recess so I could keep up with my peers in reading. I love that old lady, in retrospect)
When this is done, Fourscore, I’m going to send you your own copy, big print and everything.
Thanks, I’ll need it, OZY