Comment from Alpha1476
Great post. You’re saying what we’re all thinking! Glad you’re still here man. I think I might be immune, what about you?
Reply from BrettFieldMRA （Site Administrator）
Glad you’re still around! Yeah I hope so. Those bitches thought they’d get us all but they were wrong.
Reply from Alpha1476
We won’t be incels for much longer I bet. Before we all get shipped off to some labor camp anyway. The odds are in our favor now.
DAWN
London, United Kingdom
Day 131
I know it would be unbecoming for a member of the British Intelligence Services to send a memo around the world asking very nicely if everyone could please CALM DOWN but I’m an inch away from doing so. I can just imagine Zara’s tone, the very epitome of a boss talking to someone who’s messed up. “Dawn, you’re going to have to do some communications training to make up for this.”
Almost every country in the world is, to quote my daughter, freaking the fuck out, and I’ve had it up to here. Maybe it’s because I’m British, but for God’s sake, you can’t just fall apart in a crisis. I’ve had more phone calls with panicked ambassadors in the last week than I’ve had hot dinners. You’d never know it to look at me. One of the only silver linings of this whole sorry mess is that I’ve had a nice office upgrade; I now have an office twice the size of my old one, on the third floor, with natural light no less. I’m dressed as I always am, in a smart black suit. My hair is freshly relaxed thanks to a visit from lovely Candace, my hairdresser who texted me to say she needed the money and would I still want my hair done? The most surreal moment of the last few weeks hasn’t been any experience at work. It was feeling the tears from Candace’s eyes dripping onto my head as she applied the relaxer to my roots. I haven’t checked, but I’d be very surprised if hair relaxer will be on any of the government’s priority products for domestic production. More’s the bloody pity.
“Sorry I’m late, sorry, sorry.” Zara rushes in, wearing the same dress she was wearing yesterday, which, by the smell of it, she has tried to cover up by wearing too much perfume. I hope no one makes a nasty comment in her earshot. Grief is never easy to deal with and she’s doing her best.
“Let’s begin, shall we. Dawn, Asia, you’re up.” Just the biggest continent in the world. Nothing cheers the room up like a civil war.
I start the PowerPoint presentation I’ve prepared. One of the things I was most looking forward to about retirement was never having to produce a PowerPoint ever again. “First, China. Key risks in the short term are nuclear and other weapons making their way into unknown hands and refugees feeding into neighboring countries causing mass disruption. We pulled our ambassador a few weeks ago in a rescue mission along with the remaining Foreign Office staff so we have no diplomatic presence.” Every time I see the numbers of potential refugees from the war, I thank God silently that I live on an island.
“Who would we even engage with?” Zara asks. “We need to wait and see how the various factions manage over the next few months. It’s important we don’t risk a relationship with the future government, whomever that may be formed of, in the midst of war.”
I look at the photo on the screen we saw once the telecommunication networks were restored by one of the Chinese factions. The Guangzhou Bridge is on fire, it’s the only way to describe it. A woman from one of the factions has her fists raised in defiance. Entire generations of suppressed anger finally being let loose. We don’t even know what to call the various sides that are fighting each other.
We were all quite surprised when the Communist Party fell as quickly as it did. I suppose we shouldn’t have been. The deal with Communism is that someone makes sure you have food and a job, in return for your freedom. Not a deal most people choose but when the food shortages swamped China, it was inevitable the system would crumble. Women comprised only 7.5 percent of the People’s Liberation Army. They didn’t stand a chance. Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Macau and Tianjin swiftly declared themselves independent and threatened unholy hell on anyone who dared to test them. The Chinese Civil War rages on as its people battle for the rest of the country. Hundreds of millions of people, and who knows where they’ll go, what they’ll do, who they’ll support, how far they’ll go to win.