Return from Zeta: The Senator
May. 7th, 2014 01:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aaaaaaaagh_skyIt was January of 2077 when they got you. Constantine Chase had retaken Anchorage and the troops were lining up for a full-scale retaliatory invasion of Beijing. You'd approved. Damn near everyone did, but your approval was one of the important ones; your name was Wesley Reading, and you were the junior Senator from New Hampshire. You had flat arches. You wore glasses. You couldn't serve your country with a gun. You served it with your vote, behind a desk. Even if you couldn't get into committee meetings with the Commonwealth chairpeople, you were still a Senator, and your voice mattered.
And then your private plane from Manchester-Boston International started shaking mid-flight. Only it wasn't turbulence, because turbulence didn't come with a massive glowing golden light all around, and it wasn't the Second Coming, because the Lord wasn't little and green and armed with some kind of stun baton. And anyway you're pretty sure that even if He was, He wouldn't have used it quite so enthusiastically.
You have to give the little green bastards credit, though. They spared you from what came next.
You got poked and prodded and catalogued and then locked in a tube, and when you woke up it was to the sight of a man in medic's armor fresh from the Anchorage campaign. He told you what happened; they blew it all to hell a few months after that aborted flight. There was nothing left of what used to be America, except for ruins and bones. But you'd survived in the ship, and so had a bunch of other people, and if you were willing to deal with everything the Wasteland that used to be Washington and Virginia and Maryland could throw at you, there was an opportunity waiting.
There was a time when you thought being a junior Senator from a small state trying to get his voice heard on a larger level was hard. It's been six months since they put you down in the Capital Wasteland and handed you your supplies. If anybody in the little dirt-farming settlement remembers the hissyfit you threw over not being acknowledged as a leader straight off the bat, they haven't brought it up lately, and you're grateful. So very, very grateful. It's hard enough to get from one end of the day to the other without being reminded of your own idiocy.
And at least there are still soldiers. They call themselves the Brotherhood of Steel and they fly a different flag than the one you remember, but they're still wearing American armor and carrying American weapons, and they speak English and not Chinese, which, let's be honest, was the kind of thing you used to worry about before January of 2077. You still have the little matter of your glasses to deal with, but at least there are people around here competent to carry and use their guns. So that's something.
This isn't the life you, or anyone else, would ever have wanted, and sometimes it's so overwhelming that you wish you could survive the trip into the DC ruins to try and find your office and open the stash of bourbon you kept there. But it's the life you've got now, and... well, it's something.
It's horrific, but honestly, the worst has already been and gone. And if it hasn't, you don't want to know.
And then your private plane from Manchester-Boston International started shaking mid-flight. Only it wasn't turbulence, because turbulence didn't come with a massive glowing golden light all around, and it wasn't the Second Coming, because the Lord wasn't little and green and armed with some kind of stun baton. And anyway you're pretty sure that even if He was, He wouldn't have used it quite so enthusiastically.
You have to give the little green bastards credit, though. They spared you from what came next.
You got poked and prodded and catalogued and then locked in a tube, and when you woke up it was to the sight of a man in medic's armor fresh from the Anchorage campaign. He told you what happened; they blew it all to hell a few months after that aborted flight. There was nothing left of what used to be America, except for ruins and bones. But you'd survived in the ship, and so had a bunch of other people, and if you were willing to deal with everything the Wasteland that used to be Washington and Virginia and Maryland could throw at you, there was an opportunity waiting.
There was a time when you thought being a junior Senator from a small state trying to get his voice heard on a larger level was hard. It's been six months since they put you down in the Capital Wasteland and handed you your supplies. If anybody in the little dirt-farming settlement remembers the hissyfit you threw over not being acknowledged as a leader straight off the bat, they haven't brought it up lately, and you're grateful. So very, very grateful. It's hard enough to get from one end of the day to the other without being reminded of your own idiocy.
And at least there are still soldiers. They call themselves the Brotherhood of Steel and they fly a different flag than the one you remember, but they're still wearing American armor and carrying American weapons, and they speak English and not Chinese, which, let's be honest, was the kind of thing you used to worry about before January of 2077. You still have the little matter of your glasses to deal with, but at least there are people around here competent to carry and use their guns. So that's something.
This isn't the life you, or anyone else, would ever have wanted, and sometimes it's so overwhelming that you wish you could survive the trip into the DC ruins to try and find your office and open the stash of bourbon you kept there. But it's the life you've got now, and... well, it's something.
It's horrific, but honestly, the worst has already been and gone. And if it hasn't, you don't want to know.