{"id":29175,"date":"2011-05-12T10:36:07","date_gmt":"2011-05-12T14:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=29175"},"modified":"2020-06-26T10:36:19","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T14:36:19","slug":"the-new-world-off-kilter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=29175","title":{"rendered":"The new world, off kilter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Superman screamed across the Atlantic, going at a speed undetectable by human eyes.\u00a0 He got a late jump on the missiles, and he actually worried if he would make it on time. \u00a0Superman narrowed his eyes and focused hard on trying to fly faster, thinking if he could hit the speeds in which he could essentially turn the Earth the opposite direction on its axis, and turn time back to just a few minutes ago, to where he could hope to prevent the launch of these nukes.\u00a0 But as hard as he flew, he couldn\u2019t catch up.<\/span><\/p>\n

He was within visual sight of the first two mushroom clouds that emerged from Moscow.\u00a0 Superman slouched in failure, as the savior of the world couldn\u2019t prevent such destruction.\u00a0 This moment of desperation was ill-timed, however, as screeching right past his head were several more missiles, headed in the opposite direction, at an amazingly fast speed.\u00a0 Superman took off, hoping to intercept these Russian missiles, but again, his moments of hesitation proved to be costly.\u00a0 By the time he got within visual of the remains of the New York skyline, all he saw were clouds of smoke, and dark skies.<\/span><\/p>\n

I wake up in my dad\u2019s old Caprice Classic station wagon.\u00a0 My family is together, my mother, father, and sister.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re here,\u201d my dad says.\u00a0 Where is \u201chere<\/em>,\u201d I\u2019m thinking?\u00a0 It\u2019s our new home, it\u2019s explained to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

New home?\u00a0 What happened to my old home?<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The television was set to BBC, and it was on breaking news alert.\u00a0 The United States was no more, and Russia was badly damaged, but apparently still alive.\u00a0 The 68 remaining power-countries in the world were in chaos, and there were already thoughts of it expanding to 81 countries.\u00a0 So I guess that answered what happened to my old home \u2013 like the rest of the United States, it was, destroyed.<\/span><\/p>\n

So where was\u00a0this<\/em>?<\/span><\/p>\n

The building is large, and most definitely old.\u00a0 It reminded me of the old Woolworth\u2019s department store in the downtown region of where I grew up in rural Virginia.\u00a0 As we walked inside, I was surprised to see just how much stuff was still in the place. \u00a0Televisions, electronics, and all sorts of knick-knacks, although I wasn\u2019t really seeing many places to sit, or any beds for that matter.\u00a0 As my sister and I explored through the expansive building, it seemed like a cross-hybrid of a store that was going to be used for as a home.<\/span><\/p>\n

What struck me as odd was just how much accessibility this building had.\u00a0 It was obviously once a store of some sort, and there were entrances and doors all over the place.\u00a0 And they were all glass too, and with no bars or reinforcement behind any of it.\u00a0 So if anyone wanted to break in, they could literally break in fairly easily.\u00a0 Not all of the doors and windows had steel shutter curtains available to use, either, which I felt was a bit unnerving.<\/span><\/p>\n

More stuff.\u00a0 Music instruments, kitchen supplies, more electronics.\u00a0 This place seemed to have a little bit of all sorts of things.\u00a0 Some things old, some things surprisingly modern, but just in general, there was simply a lot of crap.<\/span><\/p>\n

We walked outside of the building, and surrounding the area were more old buildings, and only about a view of 1-2 city blocks.\u00a0 As desolate as it may have seemed, there were people walking about, and the occasional late 50\u2019s era cars chugging along on the street in front of my supposed new home.\u00a0 It\u2019s at this time I realize that these people are entering my new home from the various entrances.\u00a0 Shoppers, obviously interested in the vast variety of wares available for sale still, at my new home.<\/span><\/p>\n

Disliking the idea of people coming and going into my supposed new home, back inside, I begin locking doors, and boarding up windows, and where applicable, rolling down steel curtains.\u00a0 I don\u2019t give a fuck if these people are paying me money for this shit, it\u2019s still my home, and I expect home to be a home, and not a store.<\/span><\/p>\n

The people in the area I did interact with, I was surprised to discover that they spoke English.\u00a0 But there something off kilter about their diction, almost as if people were speaking a language instinctually, but with no real understanding of the words coming out of their mouths.\u00a0 One pretty blond who looked precariously like porn star BiBi Jones, asks me if I\u2019m gay.\u00a0 I ask her if she knows what gay even means.\u00a0 She responds a definition of\u00a0not<\/strong>\u00a0liking guys.\u00a0 So looking at her, I tell her, sure, I\u2019m gay then.<\/span><\/p>\n

Somewhere along the line, I anger one of the locals who wants to know what happened to the previous owner of the store\/home, to which I simply asked if he had any idea of what happened to the United States?\u00a0 One, I didn\u2019t really know myself, and two, I was just trying to get him to shell out some information.\u00a0 The interaction pissed him off somewhat, and he vowed to come back and wreak havoc around the building.\u00a0 I ask my dad if we sold guns, and sure, next thing I knew, I was in possession of a snazzy pump shotgun.<\/span><\/p>\n

Next thing I know, I\u2019m doing my best to sell a Street Fighter-optimized XBOX controller to a black guy who really wants an XBOX controller, but since we weren\u2019t carrying any standard XBOX controllers, the Street Fighter pad was my only shot at a sale.<\/span><\/p>\n

**<\/span><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s about where I woke up.\u00a0 Thinking that I had possibly the most bizzare dream I\u2019ve had in ages.\u00a0 Even more incredible is how vividly I could remember it.\u00a0 As I jogged around the hood, I tried to think about the subconscious meanings behind everything, and trying to derive some sense of it all.<\/span><\/p>\n

America was essentially destroyed, and my family had relocated to god-knows-where to survive.\u00a0 Somewhere in my head, it\u2019s speculated that it\u2019s not even Earth, but some habitable, populated planet elsewhere.\u00a0 No answers on where the location of this dream was taking place.<\/span><\/p>\n

I came to the conclusion that I was dreaming that my family and I were in some sort of purgatory, and were probably already dead from the Russian retaliation, without really realizing it.\u00a0 And in purgatory, there are some cool things like an interesting setting, lots of junk to amuse one\u2019s self with, but also it\u2019s not perfect, because I\u2019m working in a form of retail, and there are people out there that want to hurt my property and family.<\/span><\/p>\n

What happened to the previous owner of the store?\u00a0 Who knows, but I have to speculate that he had served his time in purgatory long enough, and had moved onto his genuine conclusion, with my family taking his place at the store.<\/span><\/p>\n

Either way, it was certainly one hell of a weird fucking dream.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Superman screamed across the Atlantic, going at a speed undetectable by human eyes.\u00a0 He got a late jump on the missiles, and he actually worried if he would make it on time. \u00a0Superman narrowed his eyes and focused hard on trying to fly faster, thinking if he could hit the speeds in which he could … Continue reading The new world, off kilter<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,15,32,49],"class_list":["post-29175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-dreams","tag-og","tag-running","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29176,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29175\/revisions\/29176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}