A Day in the T2K Life

[atiff]

Hi all,

I'm interested in describing more the life that goes on for people in the T2K world. I thought one way to do this would be to write short narratives of "a day in the life" of someone, anyone, describing the world they live in. Would others like to contribute I realize we all likely have different viewpoints, but I thought it might be a nice creative outlet as well as a source of ideas sharing.

I'll start...
Andrew

edit:
Re: the below: well, that was a bit longer than I first intended, but anyway.... I'd be keen to see what else people come up with.

[atiff]

Henry, the farm laborer

Henry rose at dawn, as was his habit at this time of the year. The spring sun shone strongly through the window. His two children stirred as he rose from their their common bed, but did not wake. He let them sleep while he dressed and prepared breakfast.

This consisted of building up the fire in the makeshift hearth next to the window they had turned into a chimney using some bricks and sheet metal. Then he reheated last night's meal - a kind of thin stew made of potato, carrot and a little chicken. It wasn't great without seasoning, but the best he could do. His wife could have done better, if she was still alive; but alas, she had succumbed to influenza during the winter of '98.

By the time the food was heated, the children were up. Thomas, the oldest at 12, helped his 8-year-old sister, Helen, tidy the bed after they were dressed. They joined their father and ate quickly. Henry reminded Thomas that the boy was due to help at the sawmill today. Thomas nodded but said nothing, and lowered his head somewhat glumly. Henry had the suspicion that Thomas was not treated so well at the mill. It wasn't easy work for a boy, Henry knew, but they needed the chits to trade for things at the market, as well as any wood that Thomas could scavenge.

Before leaving the house, Henry reminded Helen to bolt the door while they were gone, and to keep the zip gun handy when she went down to the market. He hoped to God she never had to use it, but it was there just in case. Everyone in the town remembered what had happened to the Elsmore sisters, and no-one wanted that to happen to their own child or anyone else's. The hobby gunsmiths had done a brisk trade after that incident, despite the assurances of the mayor that the militia would be more watchful of strangers from out of town. It wasn't only strangers that could do that kind of thing...

Henry made way over to Anderson's farm, where he was tasked with helping to do the planting. Old man Welch was already there with his plow-team, jabbering away to himself and cursing anyone who got to close to him, as he always did. He was a bit crazy, pushed just over the edge by the effects of the War, but he was one of only three men in the district with a plow-team, and as such everyone put up with his abuse. Henry picked up his seed bag and planting tool from Anderson and got to work.

----------

By day's end, Henry was covered in dirt, dust, and sweat. It has been a hot one again, and he could feel the back of his neck tingling from mild sunburn. It would have been a lot worse if he still had the more pale skin he sported back in '96, but the intervening years had tanned him considerably. He picked up his day's pay from Anderson, nine embossed metal discs that the town called 'chits', and made his way back home in the fading light.

By the time he got there, he was famished. The bread-and-soup lunch provided as part of the work had been quite tasty, but not filling enough for such a strenuous day. As he approached home, he could smell dinner cooking; Helen had been busy, it seemed. Thomas was talking with their neighbors, the Patersons, and waved them goodbye to join his father in entering the house. Thomas seemed happy; the day must have gone well for him, and Henry was happy because of it. Thomas handed over the three chits he had earned. Henry gave 10 chits to Helen for tomorrow's shopping and added the remaining two to the stash in the hidden wall cavity where their other few valuables were stored.

Dinner turned out to be hard bread and stringy vegetables. The vegetables were quite overcooked, but Henry thanked Helen for her efforts anyway. She was becoming a canny haggler at the market and the amount she had bought today was a pretty good haul. As they ate dinner together in the light of their two alcohol lamps, Thomas pointed out the stack of wood off-cuts he had picked up from the mill grounds with the permission from the foreman. Helen also talked about the progress of their vegetable garden out back, small but developing well, it seemed.

After dinner, while Thomas performed his role of reading tutor to Helen using a badly-damaged copy of a David Eddings novel, Henry investigated the off-cuts and selected the ones he could use; the rest went into the firewood pile. Then, after putting the kids off to bed, he got back to his project of making chicken boxes. His old carpentry hobby was paying off here. If he could finish 10 boxes for McLeod by Friday, he could take his pick of two live hens in exchange (a cheaper rate than McLeod could get by going to the professional carpenters in town). Henry thought of fresh eggs as he finished two more boxes before turning in to get some much-needed sleep before the next day of planting.

[Arrissen]

I liked this alot! I thought it really captured the daily struggle that most common folk would be enduring, and the uncertainty of it all. Most people would live in constant fear and worry and only a very few would thrive. It was well written too. Well done. Might have a go at it myself if I get time...

[dragoon500ly]

Thump.

Sergeant Stovall slowly paced the line of dead marauders laid out in the hastly dug ditch. This particular bunch had made a try on the grain silo, trying to steal the seed grain that was stored there. PFC Parker had been on the ball, spotting the forms making thier way through the early morning fog, he mused, the PFC had earned himself an extra ration chit for sure.

Thump.

Two of his men, Privates Anderson and Yates tossed another mostly naked body into the ditch after they finished stripping the corpse of anything useable. Sergeant Stovall paused and looked over the collection of weapons, old bolt action rifles, a couple of shotguns, three AK-74s, a couple of battered M-16s, enough ammunition for about three seconds of fighting, a couple of home-made crossbows, and several makeshift spears and home-made shanks.

The clothing was equally battered and torn, when it was washed clean of the filth and blood, the stuff might make decent rags, Stovall thought to himself.

Thump.

Stovall looked down the line of corpses, a body count of eleven, LT will be pleased, he mused, taught them raggedly marauders a lesson, mess with Charlie Company and you get your ass handed to you!

Private Yates paused, holding a couple of .30-30 rounds that he had just pulled out of a pocket. "Anderson, this crap ever get you down"

Anderson looked up as he pulled the bodies home-made sandals off, "Nope! Better us then them, at least we get two meals a day and decent clothes ta where!" He spit a thin stream of tobacco juice into the face of the dead marauder.

Yates, watched this final insult to the body and thought to himself....but these people are Americans too, aren't we supposed to be protecting the civilians

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Dan trudged along the cracked, weed-grown asphalt of 17-92 towards Orlando. Sunlight beat down, but a broad boonie hat kept the worst of it off of Dan's face and neck. Slung on his back was a mesh bag filled with oranges, so large and heavy that it almost dragged the ground. Dan stumbled and cursed; it was another seven miles to the market in downtown Orlando. Seven miles of carrying nearly fifty pounds of oranges, tangerines and grapefruit that in all reality, nobody but the fuel guy or booze merchants would buy, and they paid for shit: citrus, in Florida, was essentially a weed even after the storms and freezes.

Still, it was all Dan had left to trade. Looters had stripped all the houses from Altamonte to Sanford - unless you were in the market for high end electronics that had long ago ceased to function. There was plenty of that to be had! Computers, VCRs, laserdisk and DVD players, TVs... Scavengers wouldn't touch the stuff unless they had to move it to get to more valuable things.

Dan stumbled again, twisting his knee. The weight of the sack bore him down and he ground his palms on the hot asphalt. He sat up and examined his calloused hands. They were pocked with small abrasions, but no cuts. These days, a deep enough cut could be a death sentence. Hydrocortisone, peroxide, even "clean" alcohol was as scarce as hens' teeth unless you were admitted into a hospital, and that was a grueling wait outside in the heat and humidity. Unless you were seriously bleeding, pregnant, or otherwise in dire need of medical attention odds are you'd end up sitting out there while a charge nurse took your name, your condition and told you to come back "later". So tending to one's injuries was a must.

Dan regarded a skull, sitting in the weeds in the middle lane. Join me for a spell the jawless apparition seemed to ask. Near the skull lay a cell phone: a fancy one, by the logo. Dan picked it up and turned it over and over. The sun had permanently bleached the plastic case, and burned the LCD screen black. The denaturing process had left the plastic brittle and the once-upon-a-time expensive status symbol crumbled in Dan's hands, exposing the greenish circuit board within. Gossamer-thin tracings of wire were etched into the surface, a chip of blue plastic sat underneath a wire retainer clip.

SIM card Dan mused. And...and...he held the board closer to his face, shielding it in the shade of his broad-brimmed hat. A glint of yellow: that unmistakable, precious yellow. Less than the husk of a grain of rice, but there nonetheless. That was something traders did buy. A few ounces of gold could get you firearms, antibiotics, fuel...Dan took his multi-tool out of his pocket and worked all the flakes of gold off that he could. The slivers of alloy were so thin they threatened to blow away, but he carefully slid them into the plastic baggie that held his ration card.

Dan began to think. If he could find one, why not more He looked carefully around the street. No, no more abandoned phones...but a phone was only one piece of electronics. Dan looked up a side-street and jogged towards the subdivision entrance a few yards down the road. Abandoned houses with smashed windows and caved in doors lined the road. In a heap on one lawn lay PC cases, just visible through the elephant grass almost entirely blocking the road. He ran back and shouldered the bag of fruit and started back towards the distant towers of downtown Orlando.

I'll have to get me a pan, he thought. Big flat one, a wok. The Viets in Little Saigon are always selling them. A pan, then build a fire underneath it, melt the stuff loose off the boards, the base metals'll separate on their own...

Dan's life was about to become much, much better.

[Targan]

Good story, very atmospheric. One thing though -

Computers, VCRs, laserdisk and DVD players, TVs...

Unless it is set in a homebrew or T:2013 timeline there won't be any DVD players, they weren't available in the US in RL until 1997.

[Legbreaker]

Sim cards were also the size of a credit card too at the time so I believe, and phone screens were basic things at best.

It's an easy mistake to make for most people today. We've all grown so used to the technology of the last couple of years and forgotten how primitive things were in comparison 15 years ago.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Sim cards were also the size of a credit card too at the time so I believe, and phone screens were basic things at best.

It's an easy mistake to make for most people today. We've all grown so used to the technology of the last couple of years and forgotten how primitive things were in comparison 15 years ago.

I had a cell phone (company phone) back in '97 - the SIM card was big but it wasn't that big. Like SD-card sized, IIRC.

[Legbreaker]

Possible I suppose, but my memory is the smaller ones were still very new and rare.

[atiff]

Gold recycling from electronics links

Hi, dug up these....

http://www.finishing.com/447/06.shtml

http://www.ehow.com/about_4728480_computer-gold-recycling.html

http://www.pennyjobs.com/pp/public/Articles.aspxaid=22

"Dan" might still get something, but maybe not get rich... They layers might have been a bit thicker in the 90s, not sure....
Andrew

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Hi, dug up these....

http://www.finishing.com/447/06.shtml

http://www.ehow.com/about_4728480_computer-gold-recycling.html

http://www.pennyjobs.com/pp/public/Articles.aspxaid=22

"Dan" might still get something, but maybe not get rich... They layers might have been a bit thicker in the 90s, not sure....
Andrew

They were; I forsee him being moderately better off than he currently is, not rich in a post-nuclear environment, but slightly better off nonetheless.

[kcdusk]

... more daily stories ... less discussion.

[Targan]

... more daily stories ... less discussion.

So you don't favour any critiquing of people's work Can we not have more daily stories as well as discussion Do you feel that discussion is discouraging people from writing and posting stories I'm confused

[TiggerCCW UK]

I'm guessing KC is like me - the discussion and critique is fine, but its the stories we're interested in I'm trying to write up a short piece myself to get on here, but a 4 year old and a 5 week old aren't helping....

[kcdusk]

Yep Tigger. The stories are great. Critiquing work is fine. Detailed discussion on gold/no-gold in 1980 mobile phones ... it clutters the thread. 1) it doesnt add anything, 2) we're gaming a post apocolyptic world, i think we can suspend reality re grams of gold in a phone.

Been a while since i posted here, no intent to offended anyone - more wanting to encourage people to post their day in the life rather than get bogged in detail ...