Paradise Lost

Hey everybody.  This isn’t Josh so I guess some introductions are in order.  This might get long and I apologize.  As you can see, my username is Beckley.  I’d rather not put my full name out there just in case there are any that wish me ill for reasons that should be fairly clear in a minute.  If you really need a first name, call me by my initials, A.J.  It makes me sound like a frat boy, but that can be part of my penance.  You probably know me better as the UAS propaganda guy.

Yeah, that anonymous poster defending the UAS?  That was me.  There’s so much I want to explain, but another part of me is horrified at how I apologized for these selfish pricks and tried to explain away their atrocities.  A while back I decided to defect from the UAS and via e-mails to Josh I was able to make that goal clear.  I dropped seemingly benign lines like, “I would like to see Montana” and how the Union will “tremble once again at the sound of our silence.”  All lines from Hunt for Red October.  I started nerdy dialogues on why Damar was the best character in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  This had the double benefit of referencing the fact that Damar was a defector, and also being absolutely true.  I would off-handedly mention that I had song lyrics running through my head, which just so happened to be verses to “We’ve Got to Get Out of This Place.”  I thought I was pretty clever.  It went right over the heads of my UAS monitors.  But Josh got it.  Nerd.

So New Haven was able to orchestrate a way for me and a few others to get out of UAS territory.  I won’t discuss how or exactly when since I don’t want to endanger the operatives that the Union has roaming about in UAS territory.  With this post, I do want to make a plea to the UAS, but first I feel I owe an explanation to all of you.  It’s easy to judge me for being a collaborator and I’m not trying to shirk my responsibility.  But things aren’t black and white out there.  You know that.

I’m not from the UAS bunker.  I’m not even from the southwest.  I always said, back before the dead rose, that the world would end before I’d ever move to the southwest.  God clearly exists and has a sick sense of humor.  I have lived a bunch of places, but I spent my childhood in New England.  I lived outside of New Haven, actually.  The Connecticut one.  For the record, this means that I’m probably the only guy in New Haven with an actual New Haven accent.  It’s pretty wicked awesome.

The apocalypse hit me hard.  Obviously that was the case for all of us, but I really didn’t take it well.  I was a therapist working in Pittsburgh before this all went down.  People looked to me to have answers to their problems.  And when the dead rose, I just couldn’t handle it.  Everyone I ever knew was dead and walking and there was nothing I could do about it.  I made new friends only to watch them get bit or murdered by marauders, then rise again and get put down.  I’ve done things to assure my survival in this world.  Terrible things that I don't want to go into.  To put your mind at ease, at least, I was never part of a marauder gang, I’m not a rapist, and I’m not a child molester.  I am a murderer though.  We’ve all had to become that.

Due to the dead, marauders, and other issues, Pittsburgh became unlivable for me, so I decided to move to New Haven.  The Kentucky one.  This was during the amnesty for marauders thing they did a while back.  I figured I could get amnesty in case my past tried to catch up with me, and I’d have a new place to live.  So I started walking.  And walking.  I missed the amnesty deadline, so I just kept walking.  I walked for days, weeks, months.  I was like a zombie myself.  Just shuffling across states, dragging my baseball bat behind me.

And that’s when I came across my salvation.  I want you to fully understand how lost I was.  I’d spend the adulthood of my young life caring for others.  And now I had no one, no purpose.  I wanted to die, but I just wouldn’t.  Somehow the zombies never managed a bite, no matter how sloppy or reckless my bat and I got.  One time I put a revolver in my mouth with the full intention of pulling the trigger.  I ended up sobbing myself to sleep and waking up with the muzzle still in my mouth and this horrible taste of metal that stuck with me for days.  Finally I found people.  I think I was halfway hoping they’d kill me, but they welcomed me.  And that’s when I discovered the miracle.  These people had a central government.  Not only was it a government, but it was the government.  A piece of America had survived.  My family, friends, fellow survivors, they were all dead, but here was something that endured.  I was a convert from that moment.

I needed the UAS, needed to know that things were going to be ok.  That things were going back to the way they were.  I was pissed when people didn’t want to join and actively opposed the new order.  You were a bunch of spoiled, ungrateful children.  So I told you all off on this blog.  But on some level, I think I knew I was pining for a reality that could never exist again.  And I knew that the UAS was not the blameless force for good I desperately wanted them to be.  I got word from above that the UAS wanted me to start spamming the blog with propaganda.  A dick move to be sure, and one that I refused.  That’s when I was told they wanted the online confusion to cover for upcoming action.  The implication of breaking the peace was too much for me to justify.  I got out.

And now there are these attacks.  These wasteful, cowardly attacks.  What was served by that?  I even posted a few comments about that too, blasting the UAS for destroying resources.  All anonymous, of course.  Internet sockpuppeting after the apocalypse.  It’s how I roll.

So that’s me in a nutshell.  I want to end this long rambling post with a plea to the UAS:  Stop.  Seriously, just stop.  You have skills and resources that would be a boon to the human race.  But what are you doing with that potential?  You’re killing people and you’re destroying the infrastructure you claim you want to create.  Both human and industrial potential is wasted by your grab for power.  Look, I don’t know what’s going on at the highest levels of government.  Maybe you realize you’ve gone too far.  Maybe you’re just angry and afraid.  But nothing is served by the extreme nature of these attacks.  Attempting to poison an entire city?  Bombing greenhouses and crops?  There’s no justification for this.  Not when we need each other to survive.  At the end of the day, those shambling corpses are our common enemy.  You are not the American government.  You never will be.  The US government is dead.  So is your family.  So are your friends.  All we have is each other, and this shitty excuse of a world overrun by the dead.  Society is already torn down.  Are you really going to burn the rubble just so you can rule over ashes?

Please.  We can talk this out.  Just stop.  Please.