100 Provisions - Act One, Phase Three

            As the light began to fizzle out, I found myself in the middle of a clearing atop a desert ridge. Below me, the restored Owens Lake sloshed about in the wind, the lights of Devil's Junction barely a twinkle in the distance as the sun set. The time was just past seven in the evening, with a minute passing every fifteen seconds.

            Some four hundred feet ahead was a large steel door embedded firmly in a rocky outcropping. To be honest, it reminded me of an old videogame series, but disregarding that allusion I made my way toward it slowly. Up close, the door towered over me, large enough to accommodate an oversized semi-truck. This has to be the holding area. Meaning the main facility...

            Turning to my left, I began to scan the rocks for signs of glass or metal. It was understandable now why the Americans hadn't found this site. All of the metalwork I could find had been painted with a glare-resistant lacquer, while the glass was tinted in just the right way to appear natural. That's when I saw a blue pickup truck moving at a high rate of speed in the opposite direction. A transaction?

            I followed the dust trail made by the pickup and it led me to a narrow stretch of roadway. Walking back up it led me to the far side of the ridge, where embedded in the rocks was a very obscure compound. Two men stood by a set of double-doors, armed with semiautomatic rifles. Though I knew I'd appear as nothing more than a mirage to them, the sight of the weapons made me cringe. Under normal circumstances, I was certain that they would dispose of me, no questions asked.

100 Provisions - Act One, Phase Two

Jason was born October 29th, 2001. I was born April 8th, 2005. Both of us grew up during the era of collectivist warfare. We saw for our own eyes the changes brought about by radical groups using unjust means to rally their respective causes. Yet our interpretations of the conflicts of the New Tens were a complete contrast to each other. I was the Romantic; he was the Cynic. It was Romanticism which led me to immerse myself in this dark haven.

Our mantra as Romantics is to challenge the totalitarian regimes we feel bind us. We resist those chains by any tactics we feel are necessary, be them good or evil, so that we may one day be free. We are united in the context of Nationalism, of a hivemind culture even when we have no place to call our hive.

When I was a senior in high school, Devil's Junction was barely a conceptualized idea. Neo Manzanar was the first criminal city to be built in California, and the land twenty miles to the southeast would not be cleared for another four months. I remember this time vividly as it was also the time of my greatest act. The present day me is defined in a major way by that year's events.

The same could likely be said of my fellow citizens, but the two bodies laying before me in the morgue were certainly telling no tales. The man on the left, probably in his early forties, received the bulk of injury from the blast at the now-abandoned nitrous factory. His chest cavity had been torn open, and it looked like parts of his liver and intestines were missing. Not a pretty sight.

"100 Provisions" - Act One, Phase One

For some reason, no matter how technologically advanced we become as a society, certain things will never change. Weather, for example, chooses adamantly to remain constant no matter the state of climate change or our attempts to combat it. We tried cloud seeding and that worked for all of five minutes. And then, when passive solar desalination was deemed cheaper, shooting chemicals into the sky was just not trendy anymore.

If you live in the Mojave Desert like I do, you do not want to be outside at five in the afternoon in the middle of July. Unfortunately, most hospitals have a strict "No Smoking" rule, due to oxygen being highly flammable. So there I was, burning my lungs with tobacco while the sun decided to burn the rest of me. Perhaps e-cigarettes wouldn't be so bad after all, I thought to myself as I blew smoke out over the third floor balcony.

The sound of oncoming sirens snapped me back to reality as two vans rolled into the wraparound at the ground floor. Behind them was a patrol car from mainland California, its LEDs flashing in a zigzag pattern like the hips of a gypsy. As far as I knew, there was only one California officer with the testicular fortitude to make his way into Devil's Junction. With an exasperated sigh, I snuffed my cigarette and made my way down the fire escape.

"You have some goddamn nerve coming here, Stubbs!" While I knew my shouting was a write-up just waiting to happen, I wasn't exactly in the mood to care. "You know this territory is outside your jurisdiction. Pull your gun and you'll have four bullets in you faster-"

"Calm your jets, Dalia!" he interjected quickly. "I haven't even done anything yet and you're on the offensive!" Jason Stubbs is a lieutenant with the California Highway Patrol, and he has proudly served the golden state for seven years. Under normal circumstances, he is allowed to have his own vanguard of support cars, but he must leave them behind any time he enters our city. Protocol, really.

"100 Provisions" - Prologue

(This is a fiction piece I'm working on where I combine elements and aspects discussed in the articles on this blog, as well as elements and aspects of fanfictions I have written over the years. Also, the setting of this work will be based on a setting I wrote about in my 70-page text "On the Criminal MO," which you can find a GoFundMe link for on the sidebar.)

I do not believe in Heaven. Whenever pressed on my beliefs in the afterlife, I cannot give a straight answer, but I simply do not believe in Heaven. A utopia devoid of any problems, of any conflict? A world where one can have anything they want at the snap of a finger? Such a world feels much too hollow for someone like me.

Self-Actuality is the mantra with which I have lived my life up to this moment. Work which is tedious is work which is rhythmic. Work which is rhythmic is good for the soul. There is a beauty in becoming adept at something, to the point of being able to do it with one's eyes shut. It becomes natural, an extension of oneself.

To realize one's fullest potential is to pull of transcendence and become something more than human, but this may only occur in the presence of some challenge or conflict. A world in which there is no conflict is a world in which there is no change. We need turmoil to bring about the best within us. Every event, good or bad, success or failure, has a learning experience veiled within it.

Therefore, I do not believe in Heaven. Such a notion is one which instills a deep fear within my heart, which causes me to doubt my existence, my purpose for being. If I am predetermined to an eternity of idle hands, is that not the same as an eternity of experiencing an empty void?