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nuclear impression

John Wade

when it happened, i was stationed in the north pole. all my dad ever gave me was the advice, “make sure you make decisions you won’t look back on and regret,” and all the government ever gave me was a job in a place no country would want to bomb.

i have to go to the deck.

i get rationed:

one article clothing or one piece cloth

one can vitamins

one case hot dogs (that is 12 hot dogs a week. that is 1.714 hot dogs a day. that is .071 hot dogs an hour.)

two sacks water

i have to go to the deck.

i am living well compared to most other people still alive, but only because the food I eat is extremely radioactive. i will die very soon in the natural course of my Heroic Mission, so i can eat level five radioactive food. level six does not exist except in the blast radius (that is, as ashes). I have been chosen to leave The Home and volunteer on The Boat to scavenge resources to build Our Society and Repopulate The Planet.

i have to go to the deck.

the control board is extremely fond of using capital letters to emphasize ideas. i once saw a 257 word Proclamation with only 16 words that started with lower case letters. sometimes i only read the lowercase words in Proclamations. it lets me understand what they are saying in new ways and has contributed greatly to my intellectual growth while on The Boat. the last Proclamation was about a storm that hit The Home. i read it like this:

has been storm care be in the a a help indefinite and a an but present no no no instill and and and evidence

i have to go to the deck.

i get a lot of time to read and write because i am now too sick to do much but sit here in the belly of The Boat and watch all sorts of dials. as far as i’m concerned, my Primary Mission is to not throw up down here. last time i did i couldn’t stand being in the belly for days. cold hot dogs are even less appealing after they have been digested.

i have to go to the deck.

the plan is to somehow build an underwater housing unit before everyone dies of radiation poisoning. apparently, radiation does not easily penetrate water. nearly all marine life has perished anyway due to obvious indirect effects. my job is to find level one construction materials and food. we travel to the seaports that weren’t directly hit and try to find submarines that still work. i am convinced that this is actually the primary mission. i believe the control board is concerned only with their own safety and want to find enough submarines to save themselves and leave the rest of us to die. it doesn’t really matter because i’m dead anyway.

i have to go to the deck

it is odd what things survived well enough to be used or consumed. you can’t use some things because their level of radiation, and other things can’t be scavenged because they exist in an area of the world that is too irradiated. canned food is a major resource because the food is suspended in water and thus more protected. the control board is actually the board of directors of pitt coal. they were all touring a mine shaft when it started. their rule has been very efficient.

i have to go to the deck

it is strange how well my mind works. walking is getting harder and it is beautiful up top. i might stay there this time. so goodbye and be careful, whoever is reading this. if the events described here happened less than 12,348,238,193 years ago, these sheets of paper are deadly. 

Based on Claude Monet's Poppies (Coquelicots), 1873
Musée d'Orsay

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