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[idreamintypeface]

Dots in a Line

[Time Skip: Year 2]

Dust rises into the air as I throw my gear onto the back of the next caravan. It’s been 2 years since I left Falkenstein Castle and Ramguard, ventured to Crystal Creek, then came back to ride the Black Diamond Trading Company caravan routes and map them all out. You wouldn’t think it would take that long to draw some stupid dots on a map, but people keep moving, places keep changing, especially due to the destruction of our biggest trade center, waves of radiation, increased raider activity, and the ever ubiquitous zed. Especially at first. They seem to be settling down a bit more, now, and the dots are more frequently staying put than not.

I’m starting to get tired of the travel. Sometimes the miles yawn on before me in a desolate landscape of nothing much and it’s hard to keep my eyes on the road. Sometimes, too, we travel at night, and I have to go back over the same stretch of road more than once to make sure I got the entire trip marked out properly, because I’m shit at reading most of the stars so far, and sometimes radiation clouds block them from view anyhow. I do most of my measuring by how far a tank of fuel will get us and there’s always a bit of adjustment on a new caravan, a new ride. If I’m lucky, there’s a handy DJ driving to help me understand the quirks and personality of the vehicle, if I’m not, then I’m stuck taking a couple trips to get myself calibrated.

Most of the caravans go over the same smaller leg of the route, back and forth, because it’s safer that way. Smaller trips mean the road is more familiar and more frequently traveled. Easier to tell when something is wrong, when things ain’t as they should be. But Ezra and I wanted to see what the bigger picture looked like, with all the little pieces put together. So here I am 2 years later, printer turned cartographer, trying to determine if that next lump of dirt is big enough to be a hill, or if it’s a dune, or hell sometimes even just a damned mirage. Regardless of how I know it sounds, I don’t regret the time spent. I’ve gotten to see a bunch of places, watch as settlements appear and begin to flourish, and met a hell of a lot of people along the way. There’s some interesting folks out there. I sure do miss having a newspaper and a solid place to rest my hat, though. Maybe sometime soon. Next stop is Bravado and maybe some time off the road.

[idreamintypeface]

Faithless

“It sounds like you don’t know what you believe.”

The Final Knight’s words rang out again in my mind. Here I am, a day later, a brain surgery in progress in front of me, and my mind is a million miles away...

*screams from the patient*

The Seasons turn and I’m part of Winter, but what does it mean? What has it done for me? The Pontifex, Sukra, had asked “How does it make you grow?” I watched everything I’d called home turned into slag, how does knowing the Seasons will change help me grow?

*another scream*

Does it just numb me, instead? Just give me something to cling to, words to mouth to myself? Is Faith *supposed* to help us grow? Sukra seemed to think so... and that Faith was about Power, too. I’ve seen those with power, she seemed to think that my place as a newspaperman held some. All I’ve felt recently is powerless, though. I write, I print, I write more, but it’s not going to affect much, y’know. They’re just my notes, my way to remember things that I share with others... I couldn’t really meet her eyes as we talked, it felt like her intense gaze bored itself into my mind, trying to pick through the things it found scattered there. I blink at the memory, and it causes a small, sharp intake of breath.

*long, extended, bloodcurdling scream*

...

... What in the hells am I actually watching? 

I look away from the gory scene in front of me as another extraction occurs, thoughts in turmoil. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I squint through the ash that burns my eyes, gaze turned back, towards Crystal Creek. The caravan is bumpy and the day sweltering. Another town gone.  Radioactive fires and ash lay waste to everything we’re headed away from. In a few days, storm clouds will move in and wash everything here with poisoned droplets, killing pretty much anything that might have survived. In a few seasons, the only thing here will be another irradiated pit, with a brew of radioactive storms making the path here treacherous. I don’t know that many will be willing to brave it to try and come back, but who knows. So many people having to flee, each one hoping, believing, in something different... and I can’t look away from the destruction. There’s nothing to believe in out here. The seasons will turn if I believe or not... and things happen out of season all the time. It doesn’t need me to believe in it, so... I think... if it’s all the same, thank you... I just... won’t anymore.  The caravan keeps rattling its way along, but I’m still looking back at the wreckage, my mind finally quiet.

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Milo Facial Hair Test

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The Wastelander, Issue 1

The Wastelander, Issue 1

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The Quiet Folk

[Time Skip: Year 3]

You think it’s just you. You hate yourself for being gullible, for being childish, in the way that you tend to trust what people say. Everyone else out there seems to be able to tell the difference. Makes it like a punch in the guts when you find out what’s true ain’t what you know. Sometimes you end up wondering if you’re the only one who believes like that.

It’s a funny thing for a newspaper man to not know when people are lying. But what does a newspaper man care much, so long as the paper sells? Even if he’s wrong, the headline the next day can declare yesterday’s informant lying scum, and the news continues on with a life of it’s own... the newspaper man just has to hold on, really.

I didn’t mean to start a paper, honest. I just wrote down what people told me so I wouldn’t forget. I wrote down what happened to me, so I wouldn’t forget that, either.  One of the first things people ask an orphan is “Where didja come from?” and only the youngest ones don’t have an answer. Everyone else has a story. A place they lived, the people who were there. Except me. I was one of the oldest ones at the orphanage, and hadn’t been there all that long, I don’t think. Where did I come from? Home. Home is where I came from. But I didn’t know where that was, or who my parents were, or who had been taking care of me before I came to the orphanage, or hell, how I learned to read n write. It was just... home... somewhere, out there, somewhere not-here in the great wild wastes. My story was blank, so I started writing it all down. It wasn’t until people started to ask to read my notes enough that I thought I’d put them together in a paper.

Most people don’t expect me to be to as quiet as I am when they meet me. I don’t mean to be quiet. It’s just that next to the others, my voice is softer, my words fewer. I don’t mind, it means people sometimes forget I’m there and I get a chance to watch them, hear them, without all the extra... stuff. People act different, talk different, when they don’t think you’re paying attention. It’s not that they mean to. Just people bein people, I suppose.

Imagine my surprise to find others like me. Not that forget, so much, but that are quiet and tend to believe you more often than not. If you’ve got a moment, I’ll tell you how I found ‘em...

When Bravo went up in the acrid stormcloud of heat and death during Hiway Rob’s Stampede, everyone left, cause there really wasn’t much left to call a place. I left with the rest, staying with Ramguard at Castle Falken for a time. They’re a rambunctious, lively crew, used to protect Tent City in Bravo-That-Was. Lion-Hearted folk, but in need of doctors, crafters, and the like to make their Castle survive and thrive. I tried to go out in recruitment, hit up Doc Ezra’s Black Diamond Trading Company to beat feet along the supply lines. We’d hit up the different settlements and I’d grab what news here and there I could to help get people to places that needed them. I consider Doc Ezra a friend, he’s decidedly been proven the most honest and trustworthy man in Bravo-That-Was, as dangerous a title as that may be to hold. Lucky for someone like me to have met up with him when things were quieter, I think. Not many one can trust out there like that.

Anyhow. When a newspaper man gets wind of homesteads cropping up in what was a smoking, irradiated crater not a year before, he tends to want to get evidence of it with his own eyes. But by jove, even hearing of it wasn’t enough to prepare me for the sight. People were already working the land, trying to coax blasted earth to bring forth bounty. And they were succeeding. How, I’ll never quite know. Sam and Jed Lovelace were the first couple I came across, their house along the outskirts of the settlement. They invited me in, let me stay a few days while I ranged the place, taking in all the changes these people had wrought. They had come from all over, converging together here. They go by the family name Lovelace, and they’re the Quiet Folk. And they were like me. They were all like me, with the believing... and the quiet. It’s the damnedest thing.

[idreamintypeface]

Beware "The One Who Writes" For the people read And they remember The pen is mighter than the sword Beware what is written

Tony Ferrer

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Plague

[Time Skip: Year 1]

It was on his first trip out away from Castle Falken that Milo had encountered it. The soft coughing at the edge of hearing, held by so many that it became a background noise amongst other noises. Had it been a terrible, body-wrenching cough that took people, maybe it might have gotten noticed faster, he thought later, but no, just a soft little cough, barely enough for someone to take note of. Nobody in the Castle had caught it yet, and the printer wasn’t sure if it was because they were doing something different or if it was just a matter of time. Some blamed the Lascarians and Semper Mort for their “unclean” feeding practices, saying it had its start there. Others said it started with a Darwinist, the symptoms of the illness masked by their “love of the radiation”. There were about as many rumors about the origins as there were prejudices, and the newspaper man had probably heard most of them. As much as Milo wanted answers, a reason for this sickness spreading through refugee camp to refugee camp, he knew none of these rumors would help, so he stayed silent about the origins. His articles focused only on reports of where there were the sick and dying, and publishing what doctors and sawbones were doing that seemed to help. Cover your face. Oil of Peppermint on your mask. Wash your hands. Beyond that… well... things got wildly inconsistent. It was frustrating for everyone. The moment he saw a medicine cocktail that worked, he’d publish it, but it had to *work*. None that had been proposed so far showed any true effectiveness, just one case of snake oil and premature hope after another. Some that had been shown him were debatable as to whether it was better than the actual sickness itself. It made Milo feel more than a little unsettled at the idea of treating the many ill like laboratory test creatures. The little education that he’d had only taught him the basics of math and writing, science and medicine were known by those with more experience… and they told him that there wasn’t another way. It made Milo think of the Aggies and their research and what *that* had led to and a cold knot was slowly forming in the pit of his stomach as days and weeks passed with no progress. The death count was rising...

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Complications

Trailing Ryder Die back from Paradiso was far less an interesting experience than the trip out there had been. Milo was thankful for that, because he had a lot to chew on. The trip was long and his thoughts kept wandering. Upon getting back into town at the smallest hours of the morning, he heads to his little tent he called home and begins setting out the new things he’d gotten. Not a second after he’d taken his shoes off had there been a cough at his door.

“Uh, Milo?” It was one of the townsfolk he’d asked to ask around recent events for him.

The man looked like he’d had better days, “Well, I uh. I didn’t get that story you asked for. She apparently didn’t take too kindly to my questions right now and uh…” both arms swung out so that Milo could get a decent look at the bruises all over his face.

“Turns out the lady’s purse has a metal clasp, y'see…”

Milo only just barely managed to hide the internal grimace,“I *do* see. Here, come in and tell me what happened.”

Before too long, he began to regret giving that invitation.

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Vacation

It'd been a couple trades since the Printer had made Bravo his home, and as much as he'd liked the place, there was a definite spring in his step as he packed the last bits of his stuff for the caravan to Paradiso. Despite having died there, despite the GIGANTIC spider the last time he was there, the place held warm memories for him. The people there were so welcoming and he couldn't wait to catch up with everyone there. This time, instead of being alone, he'd be meeting up with some Bravo acquaintances along the way. Cheerimas looked like it was going to be filled with people for the first time in Milo's memory, and that suited the man just fine.

Milo slid a heavy dustcloth over the press and his box of typeface, knowing he'd be back before long to write up the next issue of the Wastelander. But -this- trade, he was on *vacation*. The word felt good in his mouth and he murmured it to himself a couple of times. Vacation. In Paradiso.

A soft smile on his lips, he closed the door to the newspaper office and used the small pane of glass on front as a mirror to get his short beard into some manner of order. The crunch of his footsteps against gravel soon faded away and before long there was only the intermittent soft squeak of the crudely-made Wastelander sign in the crisp breeze.

[idreamintypeface]

Fever

It had been a week after the last trade that the fever had started. Low-grade at first, the doc had said it was probably just lack of sleep. Not one to be held back by a little fever, Milo had persisted in trying to get the articles he'd collected to take the shape of a newspaper. It only really became a problem when he'd started having trouble standing long enough to finish a page run, and the fevered sweat started blurring his vision.

The printer had never been so itchy before, either, even counting the time he'd touched those prickly cactus things in Paradiso. It felt like his skin itself was on fire. When the ink on the last page of the paper was dry, he fell into his bunk, letting the world become a kaleidoscope of colors and noises. Dreams faded in and out, some too lucid and real-feeling for comfort, mental fabrications mixed in with memories. Somewhere in between fever dreams he managed a sip of water and saw that someone had put flowers by his bed. He idly wondered if it had been that pleasant lady from last trade... was she Full Dead? He didn't know, but she'd made him tea, and it had been wonderful. She'd had a basket full of flowers with her, and as his memory danced around the colors and shapes of them all, he wondered if she'd want to talk to him again about gardening, he'd liked that. The colors began to spin and he dragged himself towards the edge of the bed and the waiting bucket.

There was no way he'd be functional for the upcoming Trade Meet. Whatever he'd caught wasn't letting him go anytime soon. Ezra's voice floated in from somewhere above his head, sounding like he came from underwater as he said something about the TV Guide, but Milo could only weakly point to the stack of papers. The doc had said sleep. Yea. Sleep sounded wonderful... He'd figure it out in the morning. Maybe.