Thanks for another healthy dose of reality.
I agree that they’re trying to retool for the solar minimum.
I have a fiction concept that I’m working on in this setting.
As you may have gathered, I view people anthromorphically. Maybe I’m like Dick and stuck in an ongoing acid trip.
I see people as animals. Most are prey, rodents or domesticated herbivores. The view that are predators and hunters are incarcerated, corrupted or bought. There is no wild left.
I’ll lay it out properly later, but let me ask you:
What animal are you James?
Cheers Marius
I am not wild, that is for sure.
This Tom Cougar has been shadowing me in the mountains.
The Colonel says that by the size of the paw print it scales 250 pounds.
When I'm alone up there with my three-inch knife, I feel like a monkey in a leopard cage.
Dogs like me a lot—or they hate me and attack when they see me walking alone and are strangers to me.
I walked into a blizzard yesterday with three dogs, very much a part of the pack, all of them looking to me for leadership.
I was attacked by a strange dog a month ago. Izy, the 110-pound dog stood by me and snarled, awaiting the attack. Amos, the 120-pound dog charged the large strange hound that charged me, and tore the shit out of it—sent it packing. Canine zone defense of human door and can-opener.
When I tell Amos to round up a chicken that got loose, he grabs it and tosses it gently back into the coop.
So, as I have been discarded by the economy, unable to continue working as a laborer in my low station, unable to fight off the bigger, younger predators of my home range, I have become feral.
I am a feral human.
My basic social design failed on contact with society.
I worked like a dog—every crew I ever worked on being either the best or second best man.
I was cast out of the economic pack, lost my identity, just wander and survive and try to be useful.
So, I am even more reviled in a totemic context, than the "lone wolf" so hated by all cops and survivalists and military men.
In terms of a totem, I am the lone dog.
In fact, I broke a tooth today—nuts now forever off the menu.
The dog with broken teeth wonders.
I should have told the Captain. He would have nodded to the 12-gauge in the corner of the dining room and said, "The vet is in the corner," and we'd have laughed.
But every part that fails, even as little as a molar reminds me that life is a staircase of failure, every step bringing us closer to the end.
I do not understand longevity people.
I'm a stray dog.
Good luck with your setting and story.
I start writing Ditcher on Thursday, a dystopian adventure set in the Cascades after the Chinese take over of nearby Seattle in 2040.
This article will be in the non-fiction appendices. Remind me when I post the completion and I'll send you a pdf of the draft.
