It’s 2012 already – Part 5

This post is fifth in a series by Edward W. Pritchard.  To read more of his writings please visit: http://eddwardwpritchard.blogspot.com

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It’s 2012 already – part 5

fiction
edward w pritchard

Civilization again – I visit a city

It’s hard for me to criticize the State of Tennessee, or more specifically the City of Nashville.  Both have been exemplary in remaining hospitable to the influx of refugees from Northern States, mine of Ohio included.  In the catastrophe-to-civil order following the bad air plaguing Northern States to date, and slowly drifting South across America, Tennessee is being kind and welcoming to us refugees.

Several States, Texas and Arizona leading the charge, have sealed their borders.  More moderate States will let in their fellow Americans, providing they do not have health insurance, mandating coverage in their State under Federal law.  Those States fear the collapse of economic union.

I took Laura to the airport in Nashville.  After she safely was on a plane to Chile and her new life, I witnessed what is probably the new normal for Southern cities.  I shudder to contemplate what we have become.

A desperate man at the airport refused to be convinced that his airline frequent flying credits, painstakingly acquired over a dozen years, had become worthless in the last month.  As he became violent, I watched part of an incident of him being initiated to the newest generation of DNA tasers.  The technology usually reserved for our foreign enemies, often called terrorists by our military, is painful and long remembered.  The invasive, orally-delivered technology is apparently now in use in US cities because of the threat of civil disobedience caused by the new ‘normal’ of the bad air epidemic, and the movement of peoples South it has ushered in.  I was unable to watch longer as he was overpowered by five security persons and the tentacled device was rolled toward him down the sloping airport concourse.

Nashville, Tennessee
Fall 2012

It took me a while to get out of the airport.  The manager found out I had walked from Ohio and insisted on pumping me for information on the storms aloft, as he called them.  He tried to wine and dine me, but it’s too soon; upset stomach and myriad physical complaints from the bad air lingers.
I finally agreed to be his guest at the Westin Resort Casino Hotel for a few days in return for a brief written report for the airport’s use in planning for the storm which reaches here in earnest in ten days or so.  Somehow Nashville, Tennessee has a brief retrieve from the winds.

Here is part of the report I wrote for the Airport manager, and then my impressions of the fin de eternity atmosphere here in Nashville, representing the transition of American civilization as it adapts to the changes caused by movement of vast amounts of people south, and the death of nine out of ten American citizens caused by the miasma.

Impressions of a Disaster
edward w pritchard – pilgrim

The air comes in slowly like a fog.  It is deliberate, intelligent, and in my opinion people are being herded South by it. It moves to within six inches of the ground and if a large animal, over thirty pounds, lingers in it, all seem to die in a few days.  Being inside a building or house is no protection.  Fleeing is the only alternative, although nine out of ten humans seem to succumb.  Physical strength or physical condition helps a little, but survival is somewhat a matter of luck, it seems.  I’ll leave it to a physician to describe the cause of death, but basically it’s some form of suffocation.  Treatment with a conventional asthma inhalers prolongs life if one stays ahead of the worst of the storms, which travel relentlessly North to South.  On the road we say the winds travel at seven miles per hour, but I understand from talking to experts at the airport it’s never more than thirty miles a day, reason unknown.

I walked from Mansfield, Ohio to Nashville, Tennessee in a three week period.  My vehicle died from the fog as did all others I witnessed.  I saw many people trying to use animals to transport humans, but all failed.  I was carried a little in a litter by humans just North of Nashville, as were several others I observed who had the funds to hire struggling bearers.  Conditions on the road South were desperate and pathetic.  People aren’t buried, the sick aren’t helped, and there is little human kindness.  Survivors choose one of two strategies:  assume they are already dead and just walk, or do anything to survive and head South and hope for a miracle.
There is little civil order in cities; pilgrims are advised to avoid cities, see notes on Nashville.

Sometimes for no apparent reason the storms jump, as if to give humans a chance catch up in their fleeing.  This is where the idea of intelligence of the winds come in. However far the storms travel in a day, thirty miles per day is a lot to walk for a sick person.  I stayed with the pack on my walk and we were never overtaken by the worst of the storm.

I have heard that the worst of the storms, caused by sunspots some say, will tear dirt and life from the ground, and leave the landscape as a primordial orange hell.  That’s the whispered description that’s supposed to have happened in Canada.  I saw nothing like that.  To the best of my knowledge anyone from where I started from who didn’t flee is now dead. God bless us all.

Nashville, Tennessee
Sin City meets Middle America

Nashville has a week to live and I hit the Wal-Mart.  I sold an asthma inhaler for $2000 Brazilian and so I am loaded for now.  I had traded all the gold I had acquired on the trail to get Laura, the little girl I befriended earlier, on one of the last planes to South America; so it’s good to have money again.  I rented a car, 1967 Olds Cutlass and I am cruising around Nashville.  Most people have left, just tourists, nuts, and old people who decided not to run are left.

I spent most of my time in Nashville gambling at the casino.  I spent a few dollars for a companion and have been paying for her gambling and she is my friend for a few days.  She used to be an English teacher in Kentucky and she wants badly to edit my stories I write, we will see on that later.

The federal government is governing in Nashville and other Southern cities I hear and they are making a mess of things.  That’s all I’ll say except they are very high-handed, cruel really, and I will be glad to get out of here. 

What’s to say about a collapsing city?  It’ so historical that it’s trite, and if poignant, mundane to just a flinch-and-a-head-roll-to-the-left.  Part of the dwellers of Nashville go to the Wal-Mart and work even though their city will end up like all the Northern ones they read about in the newspaper, covered by up to ten feet of dust and dirt in a week or two.  Like Ur, or an Egyptian City or Asian City before them.  We don’t have city walls any more but who will maintain the city walls here in Nashville soon? Civilization dies and moves on.  The young and hopeful, who can forget the death of nine out of ten of their friends and countrymen, flee South in desperation and hope. The old go about their routines oblivious to doom and their extinction.

Me, I still gamble and let the pretty girl I am with talk.  It’s nice to have someone to listen, too.  The Westin casino hotel here is very plush and exclusive and the staff are like the first class employees on the Titanic an hour after ice was impacted.  Service is good but can be erratic.  I go to the fine restaurants here and always only order oatmeal, rolled and heavy for my upset stomach, or dried biscuits Southern style, or grits.  Still it’s nice to eat and be served on a silver platter.

Here at the Westin, from my room high above Nashville on the eighteenth floor, at night I watch the stars and the fires.  The fires are from fleeing people burning their houses before they leave, direction South.  They are afraid their bankers will try to enforce their mortgages even though their houses are covered in dirt and dust ten feet high and now functionally obsolete.  Maybe one hundred thousand houses are ablaze on any given night, not as many as a Northern city, because of the Federal troops, or these Southerners seem more compliant than their Northern neighbors.

Tennessee has sealed their borders and Federal troops are not letting anyone in or out of Nashville without proof of upper class status, [ie] net worth above a certain level. Rioting in Nashville in all parts of the city this morning, so far the casino here is safe.  Back to the real world soon.  We can’t stay at the casino forever.
end