Mark A. Rayner

Winter arrived with December, and the world continued to suffer the loss of the Internet and most forms of communication. Supply chains were disrupted. The only mass form of personal communication was the letter, and postal workers were having their worst year ever, as they were actually meeded. Food was becoming scarcer and more expensive, as was fuel for vehicles and heating. Major cities experienced riots on a regular basis, spurred on by religious fervor and want. Civilization was on the brink of collapse.

But the more I think about it, the more I think PC words are a crock of shit. If I want to describe something using a stupid word, I should.

To live for the hope of something isn__ really living at all, and so, like a child putting away its toys and picking up a tool, he marched to Lyca__ bathroom, to shower off the stench of failure, soap up the death of hope, then wash away the ashes of his love for Daphne.

It was a brave old world.

People who have so much of their personality invested in the Internet can__ really survive as whole individuals without it.

That__ the thing about the collapse of civilization, Blake. It never happens according to plan _ there__ no slavering horde of zombies. No actinic flash of thermonuclear war. No Earth-shuddering asteroid. The end comes in unforeseen ways; the stock market collapses, and then the banks, and then there is no food in the supermarkets, or the communications system goes down completely and inevitably, and previously amiable co-workers find themselves wrestling over the last remaining cookie that someone brought in before all the madness began.