Rather than whine about it I guess I should just make a really concerted effort at something creative on here tonight before I go to bed. Be warned: this may not be pretty.
-------------------------------------------
Once upon a time there was a boy named Harland. Harland grew up in the dirty south saying dirty words to his typically unbathed and thus dirty friends. He was a fan of classic rock and smiled a lot at pretty girls, but they usually didn't smile back. Harland was a good friend. He was such a good friend, in fact, that he easily fit in with lots of different types of people. He told jokes and people would laugh and ask him to tell the same ones over and over. This continued throughout his adolescence until one day, Harland realized he was kind of popular. Not so popular that anyone disliked him for it, but popular enough that he easily won his senior class presidency and was voted "most likely to succeed" by his classmates. At graduation he also spoke to his class as Salutatorian, because he was also quite smart, much to his own surprise. In that speech he famously quoted John Adams as a warning to his classmates on the importance of their political involvement:
"Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."Five days after his graduation he, along with most of his classmates , would witness the end of their country in a nuclear holocaust. The cause of the war was subject to the person you asked. Some said the US finally had its hands in too many honey pots. Whatever the case, when every major military installment and metropolitan center fell on the 5th of June, all hell broke loose.
North and South Carolina were almost completely unaffected by nuclear fallout, as well as most of southern Georgia. Harland had an uncle who lived in Charlston that collected guns and knew a thing or two about survival. His unofficially official redneck father packed the family up in a van and took them there in late June, when the rioting and looting became open murder in the streets. Survival, he was told, came only in good provisions and an even better defense of them.
When they got to Charleston they discovered one of the many militaristic coups had taken control of the city. With no way around and no method of getting a message to their family on the inside, they turned back north and, on a tip, tried their luck in Raleigh. Arriving on the fumes of what would be their last tank of gas on July 4th, they found a makeshift police force held together by a ragtag group of state senators and house members. The once-proud governor had gone west some time before, leaving the mayor as the only figurehead to the city's nearly half-million refugees.
Harland slept in the van for the first few nights in Raleigh. On the fourth day his little sister was taken and he spent a week in the madness of the streets looking for her before conceding that she would not be found. His father refused to give up and pressing on, left he and his mother alone. Some months later, a man traveling from Forsythe said he had met their father and took him for mad. In the end, the madness and grief finally did take him. They would never hear from him.
Life itself would never again be easy, but luckily, Harland knew this and managed well in the years that followed. He kept his mother safe and worked to organize a community of like-minded folks who wanted to protect their families from the lawlessness of the new age while inventing a new, sustainable way of urban life. The town itself began to look much different. Folks on horseback became a common sight and the filth they left in the streets made some parts of town unbearable. When he had obtained his own horse, Harland would make raids on the public library downtown from time to time and bring back volume after volume on civil governance and organization, history, agriculture, and the natural sciences. More and more people left Raleigh for the west, but those who stayed found there to be plenty of open land within the city limits to grow food and meet the needs of their new communities.
News came from other parts of the country and world came in fits and starts, but no one knew if any of it was true. No other country in North or South America had survived the global economic collapse. The Northern US was a barren wasteland, along with most of the great lakes region. What was left of the west coast had been completely given-up to the newfound savagery of its former citizens. Texas and a good portion of the mid-west were controlled by three powerful and influential families, none of whom cared for the others to any particular degree. Some said that the Union still existed in North or South Dakota and rumors even circulated that the U.S. president still lived there, though if that were true he had certainly been striped of all effective influence.
Within four years, Harland's community was the clearly predominant organization in the city and, perhaps, in what was left of North America. Over 100,000 now lived in relative peace in Raleigh, which by most estimates was at least 6 percent of all souls still living after the initial attack and the years that followed. Where older men had relied on outdated wisdom, the pluck, cunning, and luck enjoyed by Harland gave him a leg-up as a leader. His eloquence as a speaker saw him gain favor in the sight of the remaining local officials and public-at-large. He was named deputy president of the City of Oaks community at the age of 23 and became heavily involved in the drafting of new documents that many believed would birth a new nation. A short time later, he would once again stand on a stage in front of his new peers and deliver a speech.
"No soul here wishes more than I that the union we once enjoyed under one flag in this land could live on, but truthfully it must not. It has become an unlikely burden that we can not, in our present condition, bear. As such, we have arrived at a sobering yet altogether magnificent moment. It is a moment of great anxiety but one of great hope; a moment of necessity yet one also demanding so much of its participants. This path will not lead to peace on Earth but it will lead to civility, the reestablishment of personal rights, and yes, another mighty and complete rebirth of freedom."
His vision, the vision of the people, would be set into motion the following day, his 26th birthday, when he was inaugurated as President-in-chief of The Republic of the New South.
