Sort of thinking about NatNoWrMo this year
===== Prologue====
“Forget all that, what really happened?”
The president scratched at a fleck on the window of his railcar and turned to face the other character, “Something very bad. We know that,” he stabbed a finger into the air, “for certain. We know the broad outline, but the details are open to debate.”
“On April the first, 1878, a nice springtime day, a huge tidal wave washed over the east coast of North America, all over the Atlantic basin really. Florida was wiped clean, the old port cities of New York, Boston, Baltimore, hell Breast in old France were flushed away. Not a single survivor on the entire east coast up to the fall line. Washington, Philadelphia, Richmond, that was in old Virginia, Fayetteville and Colombia all gone without trace nor reemergence.
“In lower areas, the wave smashed further inland. Basically it ran up the river valleys. Towns in the mountains and further inland in hills were bypassed, but of course there were few large towns in mountains and hills. Everything west of the Allegany was spared from at least the water.” The president fiddled with the tip of a cigar using a silver knife he fished out of his desk. “Well, except for the Gulf Coast, old New Orleans and Galveston.”
“Now of course we know a mess of asteroids, meteors or some devilish thing had smashed into Europe and the Atlantic. Everything in the Northern Hemisphere from Moscow to the middle of the Atlantic was directly impacted. One came damned close to Paris. But we did not know that at the time.”
“It wouldn’t have meant a bit of difference,” I said.
“Still,” the president continued, “it would have been nice to know what had happened, to have been sure. In any case, the wave was followed by winter-like conditions running from the day of the impact to the spring of 1886. That is to say we had no growing season for six years, and spotty conditions for maybe ten seasons more, call it 1896. In any case, there was mass starvation. By the end of it, the inland cities Chicago, Kansas City, Saint Louis had all been burned to the ground for firewood. Some stone buildings, banks, churches made it.
“But,” the cigar went into an ashtray forgotten, “easily eighty percent of the population did not make it. The 1878 population was about forty-nine millions, by 1900 we had about ten millions. Further the vast majority of the industrial base was destroyed. Thank God for California! Bill Wheeler was in Colorado when it all happened and got to San Francisco in time. He got things organized and managed to blow up the rail lines through the mountains. I can’t add anything to what has already been said. People died in those mountains trying to make it through the ice to California, shot down by the army like starving dogs. But he did what he had to do and he saved the United States of America.” The president stared into his interlocked fingers.
“If he hadn’t done it, our last intact outpost would have been stripped bare by the mobs fighting for life. Forty million people dead. Starved. Gruesome stuff.”
“To get back to your question, what really happened, I have to say again we do not really know. Heroism and savagery, courage and even cannibalism all snuffed out in the end by ice three feet thick as far south as Missouri. Hardly any records survive. Just fragments.”
“Now, we do know what we did. Wheeler simply assumed the presidency and set up shop in Sacramento. They had copies of just about every industrial and literary document they needed. They had at least a sample of every possible industry and discipline. Thank God they had salmon to eat during those lean years!
“Then, starting in 1880, we started moving east again in a serious way. First in the south, through Utah and Texas. We managed to save the Texans in a war they were about to lose with Mexico. By 1884 the railhead got as far and the Mississippi and from there we exploded north. The rivers were in new channels of course, hell frozen solid in winter, but still they were our main routes to recolonizing the Plains. Once we got a shipyard going we were able to start mapping the new east coast and we got the rails out as far as Baltimore and New York Stations by about 1894.
“Americans, it seems have a natural ability to lay railroads. Further we, the government, knew that the population in the ruined areas was also recovering. We had to push east to secure the national territory before those areas declared independence or some fool thing. There were some nasty fights, the stuff you see in dime store novels, but savages could not, cannot, stand up to modern weapons backed up by bribes. The Reconstruction Department has its hands full building schoolhouses at the stations along the lines. Sort of like the opening of the West in the 1860s, but going the other way. There are some holdouts here and there. Missionaries have brought back some alarming reports from the hinterlands of Kentucky and Virginia. Still, there is no real threat to the United States reestablishing itself. Now, its 1928 and we are where we are, on the site of Old Washington drinking a pretty good red,” he poured himself another glass.
“The British were less lucky. Further north after all. They were able to get a handful of people and most of the industrial equipment to India, South Africa and Australia. No fun for them, but now the British Empire has the Indian Ocean as a lake. Latin America fell into the hands of local warlords and bullies. Really more or less as before the Fall. If some Dago in Rio says he is in charge of the whole mess, well I say God bless him. The French, Italians and Spanish have a single rump state that controls the western Mediterranean at least. Southern European cities are being reseeded. Japan has become an industrial state comparable to the old European powers. That is to say the British and French are so reduced even the Japanese are their equals. China is a mess, same as always but now with a Jap army on their necks. The Russians fled south into Central Asia. The stories from there are just unbelievable. They are held back by their new bloody religion and lack of an industrial center. The Muslims are always wavering between a strong central government bumping into British Africa and India itself and bouts of internal civil wars fought for one reason or another only they seem to understand.
“The main thing, something we forget, is that before The Fall the Atlantic was the center of world trade and industry. Now the Pacific is, but it is far larger than the Atlantic and our cities and settlements are just shadows of what we lost. The world now faces the Pacific and Europe is a bit of a backwater. Further it is a much emptier world. Delhi or maybe Shanghai are the largest cities, but they are sprawling slums compared to Old London, Chicago and Old New York. All of this,” he waved at the forest outside the window, “space seems normal to us. But not too long ago these forests were farms towns and even cities.
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