J.E.B. Mungall – Author

  • About Antiphon: Fire and Stone

    Antiphon: Fire and Stone is a fantasy novel I recently published. I’m quickly learning that writing the story was the fun part. Promoting it has been much less fun. Nevertheless, it’s a work that I’m proud of.

    Recently updated cover art for Antiphon: Fire and Stone featuring Kord Maratha

    It is set in the world of Irden, a world in a state of transition. While medieval fantasy is still portrayed, there are indications that changes are afoot both political and technological that threaten to change the status quo. These however, are not of particular concern to Kord and Awyn our two protagonists who instead are trying to make sense of their respective worlds where they possess otherworldly powers that regular people simply do not.

    Kord Maratha grew up on the Frontier as a hunter and farmer, his father and mother coming from distant countries. But the Frontier attracts an eclectic group of people who don’t quite fit into the society of the Kingdoms. However, when his community discovers he is in possession of a mysterious power, his father sends him away to live with the Brotherhood of Trista at their Academy. Kord is then thrust into a world very different from his own, where prejudices alone would be difficult enough, but he finds himself caught between two warring groups both desiring to help him with his journey to find his place in the world: The Brotherhood of Trista and the Mages of Atzor.

    Awyn has spent years at the Academy and has long come to terms with being away from his home country. Unlike Kord, his gift brought him great renown in his community, and it was only reluctantly that his parents sent him to Trista. Awyn’s struggle comes initially between choosing between what his friends believe he is and what he thinks he has a duty to be. Thusly, his recent decision to take monastic vows has come as a shock to his closest friends. This conflict is set aside for a time as the group discovers the body of someone they know–and they suspect foul play.

    Antiphon: Fire and Stone follows Kord and Awyn as they struggle along their intertwining paths and decide who is a friend and who is an enemy eventually coming to confront one another to decide their futures.

    If you’re looking for a fantasy novel with rich worldbuilding without big lore-dumps, a fantasy novel that will go on into a series of stories and related tales, a fantasy novel that honors traditional elements but also pays homage to a world in transition, then Antiphon: Fire and Stone is for you! I hope you check it out on Amazon–and if you enjoy it, please leave a review!

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  • Meet J.E.B. Mungall

    J.E.B. Mungall

    I have been a teacher of English Literature and Literacy for over a decade, serving in inner city schools, and presently remotely online.  Now, I’m a self-published author, having written a fantasy novel: Antiphon: Fire and Stone, a children’s book, The Legend of Tam Lin, and am working on a new non-fiction book about teaching English Language Arts in the world of Artificial Intelligence.

    I earned my degree in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA where I currently reside with my wife and three children. I have long been passionate about language, linguistics, and literature–in other words, I’m all about the stories we tell, how we tell them, and why they’re so important. Storytelling (whether true or fiction) has been the mode by which humanity has shared its most important truths about themselves, Creation, and the Divine. So if you ever ask yourself “why is my English class important?” That’ll be why. It doesn’t matter if you’re interested in metaphysics, video games, mathematics, carpentry, welding, or professional wrestling. Everything hinges on the telling of the story.

  • Fisher’s War | Chapter 5: The Crimson Dragon

    Day 4 | Friday, April 21, 2034 | Baton Rouge, LA

    I was running later than I wanted, but I had to pedal my old bike the back way to the Crimson Dragon Chinese Restaurant. We picked up take out from here numerous times—and I remember Grandad treating me to the buffet here a few times when he picked me up early from school. I never made the connection that John Chiao’s family owned it. I ran into Tevin, waving me over from the back of the building. “Hey Fish, Chiao says to stash bikes by the dumpster.” I leaned mine up against the bin because there were at least ten other bikes wedged between the fence and the dumpster.

    “Lot of people, huh?” I asked Tevin.

    “Man, Fish,” he said shaking his head. “You check the app?”

    “No,” I said. “I lost my phone when the cop… you know.”

    “Oh, oh… my bad,” he said. “Just go in and see. I’m lookout, I’m down for whatever my QB wants to do.” Then he patted under his chest, and I noticed the print of his pistol. “Redeemer Forever.”

    “Highlanders, go forth,” I responded, completing our school’s unofficial motto. When he opened the door for me as though I’d given him a password, I felt a little bit like I was part of a gang. I walked into the kitchen and saw large clean woks nested against somewhat dingy gray walls. It seemed clean overall, and I decided I’d eat there again, though I realized that eating at restaurants again may still be a long way away.

    I followed the sound of voices, passing through a curtain of beads into the main dining room. Garret and an older, somewhat weathered man in camouflage stood at the front of the room, in front of a framed gold and blue hanfu that looked straight out of a Chinese opera. The man made eye contact with me as I came in, and I felt immediately sized-up—assessed. Garret too saw me, quickly nodded, and turned back to the man. The room was packed. I didn’t recognize everybody there—but most of the young men, I knew from school. A few of them seemed to have brought their dads and older brothers. “Now boys,” said the man in a thick Southern accent—not a drawl, because he spoke very quickly and thoughtfully, “what you’ve got to understand is that while it is your God-given right and patriotic duty to do what you’re wanting to do, it’s a huge responsibility.” Then he pulled out a .45 from a concealed holster. “So, first thing you need to know about is gun safety.” He then went on for at least the next thirty to forty minutes about the particulars of gun safety, intermixed with appreciation for our patriotism, and something he kept referring to as “the inevitable.” During this, I found Toby and pulled up a chair next to him.

    “Who is this guy?” I asked him.

    “Garret’s uncle—Jerry, I think he said. Says he’s a prepper—but I think he’s one of those militia types.”

     “What’s he mean by ‘the inevitable’ you think?” I asked him.

    He looked at me, puckered his lips in thought, then he blurted out, “Yo, sir, sir, I apologize for interrupting. And maybe it’s a cultural difference. But what do you mean by ‘the inevitable’ and such?”

    “Ah,” said Jerry then put his finger up to his lips in silence then pointed up to the sky and mouthed “them.”

    Day 6 | Sunday, April 23, 2034 | Denham Springs, LA

    The sanctuary of Providence Presbyterian filled with familiar and unfamiliar faces. A smaller church, we averaged maybe 60-70 people every Sunday (I was sometimes asked by one of the deacons to help count after Dad died.) Today, it was over 140. I imagined other churches around the world would be experiencing the same. There are no atheists in foxholes—and it seemed like the whole world was a foxhole now. It may seem strange, but I doodled in my journal as Pastor Phil preached. I argued it help me pay attention, though it kept me occupied and awake when his sermon went a bit long—like today. He had a lot to address admittedly. He quoted Isaiah 45:7 “I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.” I’d heard it many times before—and it was a comfort now. The Highlanders as we decided to call ourselves had spent the last few days going over tactics, gun safety, and various prepper-doctrine from “Uncle” Jerry—and it was all about preparing for the worst. There was no doctrine of God’s Sovereignty in Uncle Jerry’s lessons—it was all up to us. I wasn’t one of those “let go and let God,” sorts of people. I believed God gave us jobs to do, commands to follow, work to fulfill—not that those things made us any more acceptable to Him, but that it was just for our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of the world around us. It might make a better story to tell you I had some crisis of faith in all of this, but I didn’t. At least not in the sense that many others seemed to have. It felt strange to me, but the destruction of Los Angeles, Tokyo, Seoul, and North Korea seemed to shake the faith of people less than the flying saucer ominously floating over the East River. I guess the Cold War gave folks the ability to reconcile our ability to destroy the world with nukes, and the Stanford Incident made us all realize that we could easily do the same with rogue AIs. But the thought of aliens somehow shook people to the core.

    It took Pastor Phil some time to get to it, but eventually he did. “I don’t know what that ship is in New York. If they are extraterrestrial beings from some other planet, then it stands to reason that they need the Gospel too. God is God before all worlds, as we confess in the Creed. They too then are subject to the Kingship of Christ Jesus.”

    There were some “Amens” at that—not typical in our congregation. But that was the relevant point people took and what I wrote out in my journal. He went on quite a bit after that. But my mind was torn so many ways—everybody’s was. Specifically, I was thinking about my new patrol duty that Garret sent me this morning on my new phone that the Amazon drone delivered yesterday. My squad had the stretch of Goodwood near my neighborhood—where Deputy Williams was murdered—all the way to the Crimson Dragon. It seemed like a large piece for just four of us, but we’d call other squads for back-up if something was going down. We got tacit approval from the Sheriff’s Department—or at least Uncle Jerry said we did. It was more like they couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything to stop us. We were patrolling relatively “safe” neighborhoods. They focused on commercial and civic areas downtown. The rougher areas of town though… those quickly became no-go zones. Gangs had quickly asserted their own control and de facto authority. At least that’s how Uncle Jerry explained it to us from “his friend” in City Police.

    Day 7 | Monday, April 24, 2034 | Baton Rouge, LA

    Toby, John Chiao, Tevin Daniels, and I walked through the hot, sticky night along the bike lane of Goodwood Boulevard, four across. “I think it’s a load of crap,” said Tevin. “People are gonna say anything to get some attention right now. All the craziest of folks, man.”

    John shook his head. “Okay, okay, but what if they’re telling the truth? Or some of them…”

    “And the aliens are sending them messages directly into their heads? Why couldn’t they just come out and talk?” asked Tevin.

    John shrugged. “If they’re different enough from us, then… well maybe they can’t talk. Maybe they can’t broadcast signals our technology can read. Maybe they’re culture just does things differently. Maybe it’s the polite way to make contact.”

    Tevin scoffed. “Polite,” he said and sucked his teeth with a smack. “It’s them that caused all this to begin with.”

    “We don’t know that,” said John. “I mean, the nukes were all ours.”

    “It wasn’t nukes,” I said.

    “What do you mean,” said Tevin.

    “They quit saying it on the news after everything hit everywhere else,” I said, “but when Pyongyang got leveled, they were adamant that it wasn’t nuclear weapons. There were hours between that and when everything else hit. That’s why China didn’t exchange with us—they deemed North Korea struck first. If we’d struck first, we’d all be ashes now.”

    “So, you think the aliens did Pyongyang?” asked John.

    “I have no idea,” I said. “But if it wasn’t nukes, I don’t know who or what else could do that and escape blame.”

    “You’re on the alien train now?” asked Toby.

    “I mean, it could be advanced human tech,” I said, “but I just don’t see how.”

    “Well, what about alien tech that we reverse engineered?” suggested John.

    “We’ve all known each other since middle school,” said Toby, “ain’t none of us know top secret CIA stuff. And I know your grandad served in the Marines, Fish, but that ain’t the CIA.”

    “Never said it was. I don’t know what all of this means, but like everybody else, I have theories.” I said I had theories, but none of it was particularly novel or well thought-through. I would have been pressed to give some of them then and basically parrot what I’d stayed up late watching on YouTube, but our phones all chimed at once.

    It was a text from John’s aunt: Looters in Saigon Village across the street!

    I felt for the pistol on my hip. “That’s clear across our patrol area.”

    “It’s just a mile,” said Tevin. “We can run there in six or seven minutes.”

    No one seemed to want to tell Tevin that none of us could run a six-minute mile. But we followed after him anyway, huffing and puffing with the gun holster rubbing my hip raw. Tevin slowed up for us and encouraged us as we ran through the neighborhood.

    Toby, carrying a bit more weight than the rest of us lagged well behind. “Keep going,” he said as we came close to Florida Boulevard—where the houses gave way to businesses. “I’ll catch you up, man.”

    Tevin slowed to a jog to wait for me and John. My heart raced, I tried to slow it exhaling through my nostrils. But my heart wouldn’t slow its pace, not as I saw the mob across the highway. I asked God to send the rest of our Highlanders quickly as we came to the Crimson Dragon—our squad was the first there. John waved his aunt back inside and said something to her that I didn’t understand.

    Tevin drew his pistol, holding it low with good trigger-discipline. I remember putting my hand on his forearm as gently as I could manage. He seemed tense, frustrated, almost eager. I wanted to tell him to holster his weapon, but I couldn’t bring myself to, though I never really figured why. I had been friends with Tevin in middle school, but we were never close. But there was a strange connection between us that time away and separate friend-groups hadn’t spoiled. He stared across the street and a small group of six looters spotted us as we lined up in front of the restaurant’s boarded up windows. “Here they come,” he said.

    “Sacre bleu,” said John as he too drew his .22 revolver from his belt. “When do we shoot?”

    “When we have to,” said Tevin, echoing something Uncle Jerry had taught us.

    “They armed?” I asked. I couldn’t see any weapons in their hands as they crossed the deserted highway. But no one answered. John trembled, and Tevin bit his lip. My hand rested on my pistol, but I kept it holstered. I wasn’t ready to take a life and I knew it. The six looters shouted and jeered at us—baiting us. “Stand your ground,” I said. “John, did your aunt lock up?”

    “I told her to.”

    “Then we stand firm.”

    They six ran up to us quick, sprinting across the service road and into the parking lot—I would have sworn Tevin was going to shoot, but it was Toby who out of nowhere collided with the biggest two of the group—his weight now anything but a liability. The two he plowed through with his charging didn’t want any more and turned to run. Tevin holstered his pistol and jumped kicked another looter as they were distracted by Toby’s shoulder tackle. The rest slowly backed away, and seeing that we were all armed, decided the better of it and moved away. A few minutes later, two more squads joined us, and we watched as the larger mob looted the cell phone shop, convenience store, and BBQ joint across the highway.

    “What are we doing to ourselves?” said Tevin.

    Toby shook his head. “We killin’ each other, man.”

    “I guess the aliens won’t have much work to do at all,” said John.

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  • Fisher’s War | Chapter 4: Emergence

    Day 3 | Thursday, April 20, 2034 | Baton Rouge, LA

    I spent the rest of Wednesday in front of the television as my phone was either in a pool of blood or in evidence for the murder of a police officer, my laptop still in my booksack in my car. I had contacted my mother with the AI Assistant to let her know what was happening and that I was safe. I talked for a little while with the investigator from the Sheriff’s department. He assured me they’d caught the guys who’d murdered the deputy and attacked me—I say “caught” but the two died in a shootout with deputies. I regretted leaving the fallout shelter and wondered if the deputy would still be alive if I had stayed. The news played on pretty much all the channels—most of it showed the aftermath of the Los Angeles attack. Pure chaos: Miles upon miles of cars clogged the freeways out of the city and all the spaces in between, paved or unpaved, it didn’t matter. There were wide shots of Tokyo and Seoul as well. They too focused on the devastation and chaos. In between the lines, there were maps showing these megapolises and the areas hit—but still, millions were dead in the blasts alone. Millions more were dead in North Korea—apparently the Chinese sanctioned the US retaliation as they themselves only narrowly avoided a retaliatory strike in Beijing. In fact, this was the silver lining of the whole horrible thing: nuclear defenses actually worked. It was one of those really impressive feats of AI and human engineering. Apparently, only one missile striking Los Angeles was a miracle—six had been shot down before reaching the US mainline. Seventeen more had been shot down over South Korea and Japan. Guam and Hawaii too were both targeted, but successfully defended. And now, North Korea, its tyrannical government and its nukes were gone. And yet, in all of this, there were still so many question marks about how it all began: the UAPs over Pyongyang.

    Thursday was the day that I hoped some of the dust would settle, even as the radioactive fallout still fell. That hope was misplaced. April 20th, 2034 was the day that the aliens came—not from the sky, but from under the water. I watched hours of footage of a saucer-shaped craft rising out of the East River in front of the UN Building in New York City. At 8:43 A.M. EDT, the water of the East River began to swirl, and lights appeared just beneath the surface, then slowly, the craft which at first looked smooth and metallic like mercury, took more of a concrete shape—with distinct lights and creases in the metal hull and what appeared like they might be rows and rows of windows. It rose nearly to the top of the UN Building and stopped. It just hovered there in mid-air, as still as the building it seemed to stare at. If it had been a movie, the director would have rejected the shot—no lights moved, it didn’t seem to slowly bob with the air, it didn’t spin or rotate. It simply stayed suspended—fixed and motionless.

    And it stayed like that—there was plenty enough movement elsewhere. Once China and Russia together confirmed that North Korea had initiated hostilities and had no further intention of escalating the nuclear war, and instead wanted to move quickly to initiate relief efforts in all the affected areas, people started going home, despite the fact that martial law had been declared, despite the fact mandatory shelter-in-place orders had not been lifted, and despite the fact that in many places across the country and around the world, violence and mobs were creating massive havoc. Between Tuesday and Wednesday, no less than twelve law enforcement officers had been killed in Baton Rouge alone. I didn’t want my mom out in that—but nevertheless, at 10:22 A.M. she walked through the door and hugged me—held me really. We sat in each other’s arms for a long time while the flying saucer stood watching the UN on the TV. She cried. I cried. Then she saw the gun in the holster sitting on the coffee table.

    “What the hell, Fisher?” she asked. “Seriously? Where did you even get that—thing?”

    Now, I don’t normally advocate for lying to your mother. But there are some things that you learn need a bit of a sugar-coating, glossing over, and couching in the right terms. Then there are some things you should avoid addressing altogether. “Mom,” I said, “I do not want to answer that question. You do not want the answer to that question.” Here, I had to raise my hand and cut her off—which she thankfully indulged, because she could have completely barreled over me. “This is not a secret I need to take to my grave,” I said, “but it is a discussion I’m not prepared to have with you yet.”

    She pursed her lips and bit back whatever she instinctively wanted to say. I felt like she was having a silent back and forth in her head—I felt like she was imagining discussing this with Dad. She never confirmed it, but when she didn’t know what to do with me, she discussed things with Dad. When Dad didn’t know what to do with me, he discussed things with her. They were always so different, it always seemed to give them a better perspective. “Okay,” she said calmly. “We can… table it for now.” Then she hugged me and shuddered at the TV screen. “I want to leave,” she said. “I think we should go to your Uncle Jimmy’s.”

    “No,” I said, “I don’t think we should leave quite yet. This is our home. This is—I don’t know. I just don’t think we can just go crash at Uncle Jim’s trailer and try living off-grid.”

    “It’s hardly off the grid,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He’s got electricity, wifi, and—”

    “Mom, everybody’s got wifi. Uncle Jim’s barely out of the parish.” I wasn’t sure what to say to convince her not to leave—At the time, I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to convince her to stay.

    She sighed. “I just don’t know what to do. I’m tired—I need a nap. I brought what was left of my emergency lunches from the office,” she said, pulling a handful of high protein granola bars from her purse and tossing them on the coffee table. “You’re probably hungry.” I devoured two of the bars and drank a glass of water. Mom and I sat together on the couch while we watched the news. “I didn’t think I’d ever see it,” she said. “Your dad used to ask me if I believed in aliens, you know. I never did till today.”

    “What do you think they want?” I asked her.

    “I doubt it’s anything good.” She untied her ponytail. “Pops used to think they were all our own experiments—experimental jets and stuff like that. But your dad didn’t agree.”

    “What did he think?” I asked her.

    “Well,” she said, “we didn’t talk about it much. Just long car ride talk, you know? He believed there were aliens, and I know he read a lot about them from time to time. Never obsessed with them—but I… I mean, he believed in Big Foot too, so…”

    “Okay, okay, I get it,” I said. I felt like I wanted to do some research now. I knew everything on the Internet would be flooded with theories—the news said as much, and I guessed that much was reliable. “Mom, I want to go get my car.”

    “From the bridge,” she asked, “now?”

    “Yeah,” I said, “I want my laptop—or at least see if it’s still there.”

    She sighed. “I guess it’s just around the block.”

    She watched me strap on the tactical belt with the pistol on it and bit her lip. Honestly, it was only a joke at first—maybe more of a test. Had she said anything about it, I’d have left it. But she didn’t, and I let myself guess at why. I concluded that she was as lost as everyone else in this mess. Dad may not have known what to do any better than she did now, but they would have brainstormed—talked it out. She’d never been quite the same since he died—me neither. Who would? But the biggest difference in her was consistency—or rather the lack of it. So I clicked the belt around my waist and I went out the door.

    My car’s door was still ajar. I peeked in and found my booksack where I’d left it in the passenger seat. I could still see specks of blood on the door panel and the seat. I sat down and tried to crank the engine, but the battery was dead. I hadn’t considered—or even remembered leaving the door open. I still had a hand-crank window, so I rolled up the window, locked it up, and started walking home—but I stopped on the bridge, sat, and opened my laptop. My essay exam was still up—how long ago that all seemed! The subject of religion was going to be strange now that apparently aliens had shown up. It didn’t seem to have been addressed on the news yet—but I knew it would. It had to. The world had seen a religious revival in my lifetime—they called it the New Great Awakening. Grandad had predicted it, Dad said when the news outlets new and legacy first started noticing. We were still in the midst of it by all accounts. Christian churches had taken a greater role in public life in the last few years, and people were going to church again. My own school, Redeemer High, used to be the same public school Dad and Grandad went to back in the 70s and 00s, but had been purchased by Mission to the World, a Presbyterian missionary organization. Don’t misunderstand me, it seemed that the country and even the world was more divided than ever. There were even two fistfights in Congress last year. It seemed that everyone was just more convicted in their beliefs—and it was causing fights—even riots. China too was having their own political problems. The Communist Party seemed to be struggling under the weight of a Christian movement gaining ground in their political sphere, as well as Muslim pressures from the southeast, and secular democratic movements from Hong Kong. The groups made what was known as the “Three Front Coalition” and the CCP blinked. That’s how Grandad put it, anyway. I explain all this because it helps make sense of what happened next. I downloaded MorseWhisper to my laptop and checked the Highlanders group message:

    Redeemer Highlanders:

    (23 Members)

    GarretS: Vo, can you check in? How is everyone doing?

    CharlesVo: Doing okay—it’s my dad who got the worst of it. Still in the hospital. Highlanders need to get together to decide how we gonna stop this stuff from happening to someone else.

    KevMerc: Can we meet tonight?

    JChiao: We can meet at my parents’ restaurant.

    KevMerc: Which one is that?

    JChiao: Crimson Dragon on Florida by Little John.

    Tevin888: Guns?

    GarretS: I wouldn’t leave home without one if you can help it.

    FishTomlinson: I agree ^. I was there when one of the officers got murdered. Got shot at too.

    CharlesVo: =O

    KevMerc: Damn!

    Tevin888: #takeourneighborhoodback

    FishTomlinson: John, can we meet at Crimson Dragon late? Do your parents care? I don’t think my mom would like me leaving—especially after what happened.

    OldToby: WTH FISH?!

    JChiao: Yeah, we’re good. Whenever is fine. I have a key.

    GarretS: Fish makes a good point. Sneak out and meet at the Crimson Dragon tonight at midnight.

    GarretS: Oh yeah, bring a friend.

    OldToby: Are we not going to talk about the effing aliens?

    KevMerc: Yeah, def need to talk about the effing aliens.

    GarretS: Of course. Keep an eye on the news. I don’t expect the Highlanders to be taking on looters for long.

    That was the gist of the messages that were sent that morning. It was the start of what I later learned was happening all over the country and elsewhere in the world too: groups and communities started banding together ready to protect themselves from whatever was coming. The biggest difference of course was that in our country, for better and for worse, a bunch of people from the worst thugs to the best-intentioned high school kids had the ability to get their hands on guns.

    I shouldered my booksack and walked through the Ditch back home. I tried taking the route that I’d taken when the men chased me. I didn’t see much to distinguish it from anything else, save that I thought I saw a little dried blood on a bush by my house—but I couldn’t be sure. They were dead now—and part of me felt sad for it. There was no hope of redemption for them—but then again, they had gotten what they deserved. I stood there watching the water trickle over a broken piece of concrete as I went back and forth in my mind about how to feel about them: whether I forgave them, hated them, or needed to decide at all. I wondered what their names were, who or what turned them wrong, and what would have turned them back right. Resting my hand on the gun uncomfortable and conspicuous on my hip, I wondered if I would be making a mistake to go to the Crimson Dragon that night. But I shook my head at the doubt and let it roll away with the stream. I considered telling (not asking) my mother about it—we didn’t do well with lies and secrets. It was something we worked on together, and I don’t know why, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought I could tell her about the meeting that night. I walked in the backdoor and found her sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of Cap’n Crunch. She was still in her work clothes—a button-up blouse and gray pencil skirt. When she looked up at me from her bowl, she reminded me a bit of how Dr. Milne sat by the door in the bunker, and I knew I couldn’t and wouldn’t do to her what I had done to Dr. Milne—what I wish I hadn’t done to Dr. Milne.

    “No car?” she asked.

    “Battery was dead. Anything change?” I asked her, looking back at the flying saucer on the TV.

    “Nothing,” she said, “They’re debating the wisdom of sending helicopters up to respond.”

    “Who?”

    “The talking heads. The President came on again—urged ‘calm preparedness’ I think he said, whatever that means.”

    “I think banding together would be a good measure,” I said.

    “What do you mean?”

    “You know, just neighbors…” I faltered, I wanted this to sound convincing. “I mean, the community protecting each other. Strength in numbers and purpose.”

    “Is that what that’s for then?” she asked looking at the gun on my hip.

    “Yes, ma’am.”

    Then she cried again. I don’t mean to portray my mother as a weepy sort of woman. She really wasn’t like that, but the world as we had known it for all our lives was now over. Whether aliens popped out of that saucer, or robots, or humans from the future, it didn’t matter—everything we felt like we’d known was gone and we all felt impotent. Mom had lost so much already. While I hugged her, her hand drifted and patted the pistol in the holster. “Fisher,” she said, “I won’t ask questions to which I don’t want answers. And I know God doesn’t give guarantees in this life—but promise me you will be safe.”

    I nodded and with tears welling in my own eyes, I hugged her hard. Grams used to talk about there being a time when a person renegotiates their relationship with the parents. I never got to do that with my dad, but I think that was the day I renegotiated it with my mom. It’s not just that she and I both understood I wasn’t her little boy anymore, but I was going to have to be a man for both her and our community, even if she wasn’t ready for it yet. The four-wheeler murderers, nuclear war, and the flying saucer hovering over the East River had determined that for us both.

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  • Fisher’s War | Chapter 3: The Gun

    Day 2 | Wednesday, April 19, 2034 | Baton Rouge, LA

    I woke up sweating, unsure of what time it was. Toby had fallen asleep on my shoulder, Jessica rested her head on his lap. I checked my phone: just after midnight. The battery was low—I blamed planned obsolescence.  My phone glowed with seven unread texts from my worried mother. She told me more nukes had gone off since I’d fallen asleep. Seoul and Tokyo had both been hit by North Korean nukes before North Korea had been obliterated by the US. Mom said this is what they’d all been fearing would happen years ago when Russia expanded back into Eastern Europe with China backing them. People had said the US had grown too weak and complacent, opting to prioritize domestic social issues over foreign policy. I don’t really remember much of that—I was little at the time. And I understand it was a simplification on my mother’s part—but when it’s bedtime and your child asks complex questions about global politics, you get to skip some details—it might’ve been her fault for playing political podcasts in the car so much. She texted that we were all waiting to see how China and Russia would react.

    So far, there’d been no other US cities hit—but I couldn’t get a lot of news on my phone. Every website seemed slow or just down completely. I only later learned this was largely due to the cyber war taking place. I popped one of the little candies—it was rough and mostly just sweet. I didn’t feel hungry so much as thirsty. But I didn’t think getting up, waking Toby, and trying to step over my sleeping classmates lining the floor to the water barrels was a great idea. I could be thirsty for a little while. Besides, I really didn’t want to have to pee in the bucket again.

    I checked my MorseWhisper app. Garret Singer had sent a message to a large group of us called Highlanders: “Hope everyone else is okay. Was sheltering in place, but looters hit Vo’s family store. He and his dad got beat up pretty bad. We are out patrolling the streets.”

    My jaw dropped—I couldn’t believe anyone would be out and about right now. We had already broken the long-held nuclear armistice—and destroyed one nation. We stood on the brink of total nuclear war and the death of civilization as we knew it, and people were out looting convenience stores? I sighed and wondered if maybe we deserved to get blown up. I shook the thought away, it was stupid—uncharitable. Everyone reacted to fear in their own way—fight or flight. Garret had decided to fight—I looked at most of my other classmates here with me underground. We’d decided the opposite. I bit my lip as the idea to leave came into my head. I pushed Toby off of me and against the wall. “Hey,” I said, not even sure I was going to finish the statement.”

    “Huh? What’s it now?” he asked bleary-eyed.

    “I’m leaving.” I said, waiting for him to say something—but he didn’t, so I continued. “I don’t think we’re gonna get bombed. And if we do, I’d rather die up there.”

    “Okay,” he said. “My mom and Derrick are at home. You want to drive me and Jess?”

    “If she’s even willing to leave, she should go home, huh?” I didn’t really want to bring Jessica along.

    “Her parents left,” he said.

    “What?”

    “They went to Mississippi—at least her mom did—something about an old hunting camp.”

    I couldn’t believe what I was hearing—of all the things I’d seen and heard today, this made the least bit of sense. “How could her mom leave her?”

    “I don’t know that, man,” he said, “I just don’t think I could leave her alone.”

    “I get it,” I said, standing. “Wake her then. I’ll meet y’all…” I nodded towards the steel door. I picked my way through my sleeping classmates—and it was just as precarious as I thought it would be, but I made it through without kicking or stepping on anybody.

    Dr. Milne manned the door, she looked the least disheveled save for the worry behind her hazel eyes. “Did you need something, Fisher?” she asked as I approached.

    “No, I…” I fumbled for a lie. She struck me dumb with her eyes, her scent—she had that effect on not a few of us boys—some teachers too. I glanced back at Toby who’d roused Jessica; he shook his head solemnly. I’d be going alone. “I’m leaving,” I said, surprised to hear the truth coming out. “Also, I think and have always thought you were incredibly attractive.” She narrowed her eyes and thinned her lips—she thought I was playing her or coming onto her. She said nothing but just slowly blinked—she was letting me give her more information before deciding what to do with me. “I’m leaving,” I said again. “And I just figure if we all die, I want to be the student who told you what most of us think anyway.”

    “Well,” she said, “I appreciate your honesty. But you know I can’t let you leave.”

    “I understand,” I said putting my hand on the door handle and jerking it up, “but I’m not asking.”

    She rose and tried to interpose herself between me and the door—but I was faster and more convicted than she seemed to anticipate. That mysterious conviction I found that day confounded me when I thought about it. It’s part of why I started writing this all out. I don’t think I pushed her—but I don’t think she let me go either. But I came through the door and back under the stage, alone and in the dark. I walked up the aisle of the auditorium and out into the night. The air stuck to my face—even the wind seemed still tonight.

    Walking to my car, I felt my footsteps echoing against the concrete until slowly they were drowned out by the hum of helicopters. The three of them flew in formation low and overhead—I recognized them as military, though I was unsure what exactly they were used for. They weren’t the big Chinooks that could carry jeeps and a bunch of troops. There was a certain level of security I felt in seeing them—that despite whatever misgivings I had about our government, our military was still reliable. I found my car, sat inside, and turned the radio on. All stations tuned to a few different news feeds—a couple local feeds, some national, but all basically the same. I stopped on a local channel when I heard the unmistakable drawl of my neighbor, Cid Martello, the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff warning that anyone breaking the mandatory curfew would find themselves in jail for the duration of the emergency—with hefty fines to boot. I rolled my eyes and sighed. Despite staying out of any real trouble, Sheriff Martello did not much like me. I do not have to guess that it directly had to do with kissing his daughter Amber in the ravine behind our neighborhood when we were twelve years old. He’d love to have a reason to arrest me and keep me detained for a while—even now. Nevertheless, I wanted to go home—I wasn’t going to die in my car either. I pulled out of the parking lot and killed my headlights before pulling out onto Goodwood. I made it about a mile down the road before I spotted a police cruiser. I jerked my Chevy into the bike lane, threw it into park, and killed the engine. I could see the deputy’s silhouette in the streetlight, so I reclined the seat back as far as it’d go. I watched as his spotlight hit my windshield, praying I wouldn’t be heading to the parish lock-up. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep—then came the three sharp taps of metal against my window. “Hey,” he said, “open up.”

    I pretended to stir, rub my eyes with my knuckles, and roll the window down with the crank. “Yes, sir?”

    “You live here?”

    “No, sir.”

    “You know there’s a curfew,” he said. “You got a reason to be out?”

    I considered a lie, but again, it made no sense. “I’m just trying to get home, sir.”

    “Everyone’s supposed to be sheltering in place. Where’s home? You have your ID?”

    “Yes, sir,” I said, pulling my ID up on my phone and handed it to him. “I live on Arlingford, just a mile or so that way—just off Florida.”

    He looked at it briefly before we both took notice of the headlights coming up the boulevard the wrong way. It wasn’t a car—maybe a motorcycle. “Get down,” he said pulling his sidearm. I ducked and heard the shots as the vehicle sped past—my ears ringing. The deputy slumped into my open window with a bullet wound in his head. I pushed him back out and cranked my car engine and floored it. I could see in my rearview the four-wheeler turning around and heading back towards me. I turned into the neighborhood. I hoped to lose the ATV in there. Anybody willing to go off and shoot a cop wouldn’t bat an eye about shooting me, I thought. They’re doing it for fun. They think the world’s ending—and maybe it is, but damnit all, I want to be here for the bitter end. The scent of cordite struck me as I tried to catch my breath, and then I noticed the officer’s pistol wedged between my thigh and the center console. I grabbed it and put it in my lap. I’d fired guns before with Uncle Jim—but the last time was maybe a year ago. He wanted me to have one after Dad died, but Mom wouldn’t allow it. She’d gotten rid of all of Dad’s guns—she wanted nothing to do with them. I didn’t even blame her, but now here one had literally just fallen in my lap—my only real hope to defend myself. My heart raced, the blood pumping hard into my neck. I felt lightheaded as I turned down another avenue. I thought I could outrun the four-wheeler, but they’re both maneuverable and quick—at least as fast as I was willing to speed down the streets in my neighborhood. I could see in the lights there were two of them on the ATV. I thought I could maybe get home with enough time to get through the door before they could get to me, but that was unlikely. The house would be locked—I’d only have seconds. I thought to call 9-1-1, but I then realized I didn’t have my phone at all. It had to be with the dead officer. I wove my way to Archery Drive—it ran parallel to my street separated by a ravine named Lively Bayou, but we all just called it the Ditch. And it felt as though all my summer days and weekends building clubhouses and bridges with wood pallets in the Ditch might pay off. I could lose them in that canal. I floored it down Archery and put some distance between me and them. I turned down Locksley and threw it into park at the bridge and killed the engine. I tore out of the car with my keys and the pistol, hopped the guard as I heard the engine of the four-wheeler get closer. As I descended into the gully, I felt the strange sensation of bullets snapping by my head. I instinctively hit the dirt—rolled to my back and pointed the gun, just waiting for them to come to the edge. They whooped and laughed. “Got eem!” said one.

    “Aw, let me see,” said the other.

    I waited—holding my breath, trying to get my heart to stop pounding and my hands to stop shaking. But it didn’t help—I didn’t have time. I tried to line up the three dots of the iron sights where I thought they would come—but it was blurry, shaky, too dark. I saw the silhouette of a hat and I fired once. The sound surprised me, and when the head silhouette disappeared, I thought I’d taken a life—but the cussing and retreating footsteps proved me wrong. I waited a moment for the four-wheeler’s engine to rev up, but I didn’t hear it. I got up and ran for home. I’d like to say that I had good trigger discipline, but in the moment I leapt across the stream, I shot another round into the water. I heard more cussing. They were on my tail. I kept running—full sprint, hurdling roots, broken concrete, and drainage pipes. I had a good place I could ascend the steep side of the Ditch. Not everywhere was so easy—it was one of the few things I felt like I could count on to buy me another precious second or two. I found the old carpet someone had dumped down here a decade ago—that was my first step. Then an old bag of concrete—step two, then a well smoothed tree root—step three, and then a rusted piece of an old railroad coupling—step four, then onto the grassy edge. I could see my backdoor—the light under the empty carport shining like a beacon. They shot at me once more—I didn’t feel anything, so I kept my pace. I fired one last time as I ran for my backdoor. There was no way I could have hit them as they were still in the gully. I just wanted them to think about it one last time. I skidded to a stop at the door, keys in hand, I fumbled them for half a second or maybe more before I jammed the right one in. I slammed the door behind me, unsure whether or not I’d just given myself away—and where I lived if they ever wanted to come back later… if later would even come.

    I chained the door and threw the deadbolt. I sat down on the floor pistol pointed more or less at the backdoor, I listened for footsteps but I could only hear my own pulse throbbing in my ears until I heard two blasts of a gun coming from the Martellos’ back patio—bigger and louder than what the men had shot at me. I heard Mrs. Martello holler something indistinguishable and then it was quiet. I peaked out of the window—I couldn’t see anybody. I opened the door, and I could see Mrs. Martello kneeling behind a wicker couch with a shotgun pointed towards the edge of the ravine. I called for her by name, but it came out more as a strained croak. She looked and motioned me over. I flipped on the safety of the pistol and slipped it into my pant waist and ran over at a crouch.

    “Jesus, Fisher, are you hit?” she asked.

    “N—no, ma’am.”

    “You’re covered in blood!”

    I looked at myself spattered with blood. “It’s from a deputy—they shot him.”

    “Come inside,” she said.

    I quickly explained what had happened—though, I thought it best to leave out the parts about the pistol now in my possession. She texted her husband as I talked. She wanted to know who the deputy was, but I couldn’t remember if he’d ever even identified himself. If he had, it had escaped my memory at the time. “We’ll get this sorted,” she said and went into the back down the hall. I could hear her talking to Amber. “It’s okay, you can come out now.”

    “Did you—kill them?” Amber asked.

    “No,” Mrs. Martello said, “I don’t think so. Might’ve peppered them a bit. I got your rifle out of the safe. You should go make it ready—and put your go-bag by the door. We might have to get out of here after all.”

    “Yes, ma’am.”

    “Oh, and Fisher’s here,” she added. “There’s been an incident.”

    “What happened?” she asked.

    “In a minute,” she said.

    I sat at their kitchen table, the pistol awkwardly and uncomfortably pressed against my back. Amber came out and her mouth went slack as she saw me. “Oh God, Fish, what happened?”

    I told Amber much the same as I told her mom. “It’s like people have gone crazy,” I said.

    “They always been crazy,” said Amber. “They just need an excuse to act on it.”

    Mrs. Martello came back with a change of clothes. “Might be a little big on you,” she said handing me an EBR Sheriff’s Dept t-shirt and some old black sweatpants. “I found some of Cid’s older stuff from when he was a bit thinner round the middle.” I thanked her and got up to change. “You can leave the pistol on the table,” she said.

    “Yes ma’am, sorry.” I placed the pistol on the table and went to change in the bathroom. When I came back out, Amber and her mother seemed to be arguing at a whisper. Amber held a tactical belt with an empty holster and a box of ammunition.

    “Fine!” said Mrs. Martello after seeing me and walked away. “We are leaving in two minutes!”

    “Fish,” said Amber handing me the belt and placing the 9mm ammo box on the table. “Dad wants me and momma at HQ after what’s happening. There are deputies being targeted all over the city. You’ll need a proper holster and more ammo if you’re gonna keep you and your mom safe. We can spare this—and my dad don’t need to know about it.” She helped me adjust the belt and put it on. I holstered the pistol and pocketed the box of 50 rounds of 9mm Luger. Then she hugged me and led me to the backdoor. I ran back to my house and locked up. I sat on the couch facing the door and eventually fell asleep.

    , , , , , , , ,

  • Fisher’s War | Chapter 2: The Fire Spreads

    Day 1 (Part II) | Tuesday, April 18, 2034 | Baton Rouge, LA

    Coach Kirk left us standing stupidly in the locker room, asking each other whether or not we could really just leave school. That was when Garret Singer, captain of the football team, clean cut, well-liked, maybe a little dense, but someone with a good heart and a strong arm, called us together. He looked comfortable in the center of the crowd of us in the locker room—and I imagine he’d done something like this before.

    “Alright Highlanders,” he started—now I knew he was pulling on his team captain experience. “You saw what you saw, and you heard Coach Kirk. You need to supply your families—get water and gas. If there are weapons in your house, keep them ready. We don’t know what’s coming for us. But we’re going to stick together—if we can put aside our differences and rally together to show out against other schools, we can put aside our differences to defend this community against… whatever they are. We come here every day together. We eat together. We learn together. We study together. We worship together. And we work our asses off together!”

    I never had the pleasure of hearing one of Garret’s motivational speeches, but it drew us all in. Toby was a good leader too, but watching him, eyes fixed on Garret and nodding agreement. He told us to get our girls and brothers and sisters and get off campus. He had us all take his cell number. Then one John Chiao suggested an encrypted messaging app “in case the government is infiltrated.” Everyone nodded and downloaded MorseWhisper on their phones. But Garret hurried us out of the locker room after that.

    We walked out of that locker room like we owned the school and ready to do combat with alien invaders. I headed for the parking lot as some of the seniors peeled off to the different buildings to pick up siblings and girlfriends from their classes. I crossed under the skyway and headed down the corridor between A and B-buildings—but Toby grabbed my arm. “Fish, where you going?”

    “My car,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ll drive you home.”

    “We got to get Jess, first,” he said.

    I pursed my lips and exhaled. I didn’t want to get Jessica. I wanted to get Natalie, but she 1.) drove herself to school and 2.) wasn’t at school today due to having her wisdom teeth removed this morning. I had intended to bring her some ice cream this afternoon—thought maybe I still could. Aliens or no aliens, she would be recovering from surgery and in pain one way or another. I had mine pulled a year ago and spent the whole day in a bit of a haze. It wouldn’t be a drain on time. I knew there would be a whole lot of tense waiting in our future. Just like a hurricane. I had no idea how much waiting or the intensity of it then—but I wasn’t wrong.

    “Yeah, okay. She’s in Computer Science now, huh?” I asked, pointing to the windows of the computer lab in B-building.

    Toby ran over and peaked through the glass. “I don’t see her.”

    “Bathroom? Maybe she got checked out?” I asked.

    Toby shook his head. “No one’s doing anything today.”

    I nodded. “Band room,” we said together.

    3rd Period was Mr. Elliot’s planning period. It wasn’t infrequent that a bunch of us would get passes from PE or Computer Science to “work” in the music library. We rarely got much done, but Mr. Elliot didn’t seem to care, he enjoyed our company as much as we did his. There were decades of music to go through all the way back from the 60s some of it. Most of it from the 90s and 00s when the school was still public. I felt silly walking into the band room like this—I respected Mr. Elliot, and I wasn’t going to just tell him we were taking Jessica and getting the hell out of there. Toby flung the door open like he owned the place.

    “Big bad going down, today, Mr. Elliot!” he said and stopped short. A dozen or so students sat in the semi-circular seating arrangement for concert band, eyes on Toby and me. Mr. Elliot raised his eyebrow—somewhere between annoyed and amused. Jessica sat up front where she normally did next to Esther—everyone in their place. It felt strange to see them sitting there without instruments.

    “We know,” said Mr. Elliot. Then he jabbed a thumb up in the direction of one of the old TVs mounted in the corner of the room. Though it was a little fuzzy, the news replayed the footage of the flying saucers over and over. “You two have a pass?” he asked.

    “Nope,” said Toby. “Coach Kirk told us to scram, get our tails home.”

    “What?” Mr. Elliot who seemed rather calm about the situation seemed suddenly concerned. He popped up from his stool, went into his office, and closed the door. We could see through the window he was on his office phone—the one he only ever used to call the front office.

    After he hung up, the principal Dr. Milne came on the intercom. “Attention teachers and students, we are on lockdown. All students who are out of classes please report to the nearest classroom. Teachers, please lock all doors and do not allow any student to exit your classroom. Keep an eye on your Slack chats for more information. To be clear, no students should be out of class. No student has permission to leave campus.”

    Toby glared at Mr. Elliot. “Really?”

    “Yes, really, Toby.” The young band director cleaned his glasses with a handkerchief. “We don’t know what’s happening out there right now. And there’s no reason to panic.”

    “Then what’s got Coach Kirk so spooked?”

    Mr. Elliot shook his head. “He’s a Marine—he’s ready for the feces to hit the agitator. But let’s remember that this is literally on the other side of the world, and we also have no idea if what we’re seeing is real.” He glanced at Esther, and pursed his lips as though he wanted to say more.

    “What do you mean?” I asked. “What are those then?” I pointed to the TV showing stills of the disk-shaped craft.

    Mr. Elliot sat back down on his stool. “People have been faking this kind of thing for years. Now granted, this is a lot—like a lot-a lot. There used to be a lot of AI-based fakes—first of people’s faces. They called them ‘deep fakes’, but then they got better and started looking so real no one could tell for sure if any interview was real or fake. Somebody once even tried to fake President Gorman resigning. It was picked up by Chinese Communist TV and tanked stock markets around the world. It was a big deal at the time. It was cleared up pretty quickly, but most didn’t think it was an innocent mistake. My point is simply that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions on this so quickly. This could be a cover-up for any number of things.”

    “Like what?” asked Mercy, who sat with her clarinet case in her lap, fidgeting with the latch.

    “Let’s say we did nuke North Korea,” said Mr. Elliot, “we feed some doctored footage to the Chinese making it look like aliens, so that we avoid retaliation and world condemnation. Or maybe the Chinese did it themselves—they’ve always had problems with North Korea’s nuclear program.”

    “Come on, wouldn’t we pick something more plausible than aliens?” Jessica suggested.

    “That would be the beauty of such a plot,” said Mr. Elliot. “Or we’re simply demonstrating our ability to the world that we have better technology now than they do and we can destroy any installation, any city, any nation at a moment’s notice and your defenses can’t stop us.”

    “Come on,” I said, echoing Jessica’s incredulity, “you’re suggesting that we have technology like that?”

    “Why not?” said Mr. Elliot. “How big is our military spending?” He posed the question to everyone.

    “It’s huge—we all know that,” said Jessica. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”

    “Doesn’t it though?” Mr. Elliot got up and leaned on his music stand. “Money funds research. Things that have a potential military application get funded. Simple as that—and if things like UFOs or UAPs as they like to call them now have been studied since the late 1940s… you know, Roswell and all that… so getting onto a hundred years now, don’t you think they’d have discovered something in all that time?”

    I flushed at this—though I’d not really felt like I’d had time to work it all out in my brain, I was convinced that what I and everyone else saw was alien spacecraft. That was when the first bomb went off. I never heard the anchor break the news. Mr. Elliot and I saw the wide-eyed gaping of everyone else and turned to the old TV again to see the mushroom cloud over a distant city I didn’t really recognize. The video appeared to be taken from a mountain or hill and by an amateur as it zoomed in and out on the slow billowing plume of smoke and raging fires. “You are looking at a mushroom cloud over downtown Los Angeles,” said the anchor. “CNN News Center is just beginning to get information in on this story. At this time, we don’t have detailed information on this—but it does appear that America is under attack.” The video cut and began replaying—no audio accompanied the video. Or if there was, I don’t remember it. My mind was too busy echoing with the cacophony of curses and denials in my head. This isn’t happening, I told myself. They always said this could happen—that it eventually would happen. My grandparents lived through the Cold War; Grandad had told me about “duck and cover,” the Cuban Missile Crisis, and even the bomb shelter built under the stage in the auditorium in the aftermath—he graduated from the school back in the 70s when it was still Broadmoor High School. As my mind drifted to the bomb shelter supposedly just yards away, our phones started blaring and vibrating with the Emergency Alert System claxon—the TV broadcast too was interrupted. My heart sank. “It’s not over,” I said—or maybe I thought it.

    “This is an emergency broadcast system alert. I repeat, this is an emergency broadcast system alert. Please remain calm and listen carefully to the following important message from the United States Government. There are credible reports indicating a potential threat of nuclear strikes on multiple locations. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. Immediate action is necessary to ensure your safety. If you have access to a designated fallout shelter, proceed to that location immediately. If you do not have access to a designated fallout shelter, seek shelter in a basement or the innermost part of a sturdy building. Stay away from windows and exterior walls. If you are outdoors, seek immediate shelter in the nearest building. If no shelter is available, lie flat on the ground and cover your head and neck with your hands. Do not look at the explosion or fireball. If you are driving…”

    “Mr. Elliot?” I said interrupting the broadcast, “Should we—do you know about the bomb shelter under the stage?”

    He looked at me, his eyes fearful behind the glare in his large glasses. “Yes,” he said. “You know how to get in?”

    I nodded—though I was only half sure. He thrust his large ring of keys at me. “The one with the red cap is the master key,” he said as he whipped out his phone and strode towards his office. “What are you all waiting for? Go! Follow Fisher.”

    “What about lockdown?” asked Travis Beauchamp, one of the trombonists.

    “Screw lockdown,” said Mr. Elliot. “Go!”

    “You’re not coming?” asked Jessica as everyone grabbed their bags.

    Mr. Elliot shook his head. “I need to call my wife and tell the office where you all are going and send everyone else that way.”

    I pushed out of the band room and into the hallway where I found the auditorium’s side entrance locked. “Red key, red key,” said Toby. He took it as I struggled with the lock. “You have to jimmy it just right, yeah,” he said, throwing his beefy shoulder into the door as he twisted the lock and pulled the door open. “Into the dark,” he said, as he held the door for me. I walked slowly into the pitch-black auditorium. My shoes echoed on the wooden stage as I stuck my arms out feeling for the wall with the light switches. I had an idea of where they were but groping blindly in the dark made me fear accessing the door to the shelter would be impossible. I only had the vague idea the door was accessible from the old orchestra pit that had been covered over from what I assumed was decades ago. “What’s taking so long?” asked Toby as he turned on the flashlight to his phone, revealing the light switches to my left. I flipped them on—just enough light to see by. It didn’t really matter as long as we could navigate the stairs down to the pit. I had no idea just how deep the orchestra pit actually went without the cover. A fall from the stage would have really hurt before the cover was installed. I dropped prone in front of the stage and saw the descending stairs in a passageway through a grate beneath it.

    “How do we get in?” asked Jessica.

    “I think we can slip down—” I started, but those of us at the front of the stage turned as we heard the thundering rumble of sheet metal. I’d be less that forthright if I didn’t mention how the sudden noise caused me to freeze—every muscle tensed at once. For the first, but not the last time, I thought it was all over. I sighed in relief to see Toby, Travis, and the rest of the low brass section prying and flipping the pit cover from the center aisle of the auditorium seats to the stairs under the stage.

    “If Mr. Elliot sends the rest of the school, they’re not gonna be able to shimmy through there like your skinny-ass,” said Toby.

    “Okay,” I said shaking my head and turning down the stairs, using my phone as a flashlight. I saw I had eight unread messages from Mom, six from Natalie, and three from Grandad—they’d have to wait another minute. I came to the heavy steel door and looked for a keyhole, but there was only a double drop bar latch attached to the handle. At first it wouldn’t budge, but I didn’t want to have Toby come in and do this one for me too. I gripped it as hard as I could, locked my arms, and jerked my knees straight. The bars popped up, and I pulled the door to me. I could feel Jessica gripping my shirt from behind in the dark—the familiar smell of her shampoo giving her away. There were more steps down into the wide room. I could see a line of shaded light fixtures running down the center of the shelter. “There should be a light switch here somewhere,” I said as I shook Jessica loose and headed into the shelter. The air smelled a little stale and like mildew—and it was surprisingly cool. Turning my phone up at the ceiling I could see old duct work running the length of the room.

    “Over here,” said Jessica as she found the light switch. The lights clicked and hummed, and one quickly flashed out. The room was lined with black barrels and cardboard boxes—some of which appeared to have been rifled through at some point.

    “Drinking water,” said Mercy as she and Esther looked at the barrels stacked and lining the wall.

    “Office of Civil Defense,” said Esther. I walked over and nudged one of the barrels. It was full. “How long are we supposed to stay down here?” she asked.

    “No idea,” I said. I walked over to the boxes that lined the wall: Survival Supplies furnished by Civil Defense United States Government | Food | 7 Shelter Occupants | 5 Pounds Per Shelter Occupant | Date 1962. I opened one of the boxes and found it packed with two large tins. I pulled one out. “Ah, look—survival biscuits!”

    “Crack it open,” said Travis. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

    I shook my head. “No, we really shouldn’t. If these things are still good to eat at all, we’re going to need to save them—ration them, you know?”

    “Yeah,” said Travis, and he sighed and went to pilfer through another box. “I don’t like this, man. Did anybody figure out how long we might have to be down here?”

    “Google says two weeks,” said Jessica. “At least typically…”

    “Let’s wait and see what happens before we start making any long-term plans,” I said, sitting with my back against the wall of boxes. I pulled up my texts:

    MOM

    Are you safe?

    Text me back ASAP
    They’re closing non-essential state offices—I’m leaving work

    I can’t get the school on the phone—busy signals
    ☹

    Change of plans—we’re sheltering in place

    Please tell me you’re safe

    I love you, Fisher please answer me. I’m scared.

    I’m okay.

    We are in the old fallout shelter under the auditorium.

    Thank God!

    NATALIE

    I’m just seeing what happened in North Korea

    Surgery went well. I feel like crap tho…

    I’m confused about what’s happening

    My dad just packed us in the car and we’re driving to Krotz Springs

    Are you okay? He keeps talking about more bombs dropping.

    I hope you’re okay… please text me back.

    Hey! I’m okay.

    Some of us from band are in the shelter underneath the stage.

    GRANDAD

    Hey, are you taking shelter? Your mom is okay.

    You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Be careful. Follow the news.

    I love you, Fish.

    Love you too, Grandad. I’m okay.
    In the old fallout shelter under the school.

    Ha! STAY THERE! I always wanted to go in.

    You’ll have to tell me all about it when this is over.

    Yeah—they say two weeks to stay in here?

    Only if a bomb hits Baton Rouge. That’s not likely.

    This looks like North Korea retaliating or going out in a blaze of glory.

    If it were China or Russia, it’d be different.

    So you don’t think we’ll be in here for long?

    No. I sure don’t. But you need to stay put until they give the all-clear.

    Yes, sir.

    Thoughts on the flying saucers?

    I’m not sure. But I think we have a lot of secret military tech. That’s more likely.

    I went on to tell Mom that I’d stay put for now—that we both should. Natalie didn’t respond immediately, probably passed out in the car. I remember having my wisdom teeth out, I spent the day in a haze. I looked around and almost everyone was now glued to their phones. Grandad’s confidence was reassuring, but it made me miss Dad more. I felt like he’d have known what to do, though I know he probably wouldn’t have. But he wouldn’t have made me feel like I had to figure it out alone. I looked around the room again. Toby manned the door waiting to greet other students and teachers. Jessica sat next to Esther, sharing her phone with her. Mercy leaned on the water barrels madly texting. Travis and the rest of the low brass guys had stopped rifling through the supplies to text too. I realized how young we all were—still needing our parents. I was only sixteen, almost finished with my junior year. But here we were, hoping to survive nuclear fallout on our own.

    My phone buzzed again—Grandad. “See if they have any of those candies still down there. Should be labeled ‘carbohydrate supplement.’ A little sugar might keep the mood up.”

    I joined the low brass guys and found a heavy tin in a box labeled like Grandad said. “Here, we can open these,” I said, heaving the tin out onto the floor. I used the can opener on my key chain to slowly cut the tin and peeled it back to reveal yellow and red candies dusted in a fine sugar. I popped a yellow one in my mouth. “Mmm! Lemon!” It didn’t really taste much of lemon. “Come on guys, y’all try one!” Slowly everyone came and joined me. Travis and the low brass guys tried it first. Mercy declined, shaking her head, as did Jessica and Esther. Some of the others tried it with a shrug as though I were offering them a potentially dangerous drug. They clicked the candies together and dropped them in their upturned mouths like shots of liquor.

    I had started on my second candy when I heard the muffled intercom—it sounded vaguely like Dr. Milne but making out announcements in the auditorium was difficult at the best of times. I looked to Toby still at the door. He nodded. “They should be coming in a few minutes.”

    “All at once?”

    “I don’t know,” he said. “I couldn’t make out all her announcement.”

    “Okay,” I said, popping to my feet. “If everyone’s coming, we need to figure out how to do this organized. Let’s move the boxes here—stack them back up.” I scanned the room again now trying to maximize the space in my mind.

    “Uh, Fisher?” said Esther.

    “Yeah?”

    “There’s no bathroom.”

    “Oh…” I couldn’t imagine how that wouldn’t be a problem—even if we were only down here a few hours. Bank heist movies even had hostages need to pee before the third act.

    “Here!” said Mercy, as she scooted a cardboard barrel out from the wall that read: SKIII Sanitation Kit with all the rest of the contents of the barrel—which included toilet tissue and commode seat. She grimaced with her eyes wide—I matched her expression. This wasn’t going to go over well.

    “Let’s move it to the corner then,” I said. “Travis, come help me. The rest of you, let’s start making a partition with the boxes here.” We finished making a make-shift bathroom as Dr. Milne entered the shelter in her glorious heels and pencil skirt.

    “Heavens!” she said. “I didn’t know this was accessible!”

    “Yes, ma’am!” said Toby. “We are getting it all ready for everybody. The guys just set up the bathroom.”

    “Bathroom?” she said.

    “Such as it is,” he said with a shrug. “No plumbing.”

    I sat with my back against the wall reading about fallout shelters on my phone as everyone started filing in. Dr. Milne and the teachers took over, directing everyone to sit in rows, cover their heads against the wall like it was some tornado drill. I rolled my eyes as Dr. Milne instructed me to face the wall with my head down. I shook my head. “Doc, it’s a fallout shelter. If a nuke hits nearby, we’re dead.”

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  • Fisher’s War (Chapter 1)

    This is a work in progress that I want to share here.

    Foreword

    Dad died when I was thirteen; that was when I started journaling. I never really considered it to be a skill that’d be useful, but when the nukes launched and the aliens came, I started writing down everything I could. If humanity survived, we’d need a record of what happened. I put everything on paper just in case the EMPs fried all our computers. If I could have written it all in stone, I would have—but sometimes the pragmatic outweighs the ideal. Fisher’s War is about my participation in the war; its text is what I’ve managed to piece together from my journal entries, filling in gaps, elaborating some, and adding some context for those who didn’t live through it.

    Chapter 1: The Destruction of Pyongyang

    Tuesday, April 18, 2034 | Baton Rouge, LA

    My nose itched as I took another sip of Dr. Pepper. As I drove to school, Waldo and Huck blared through the speakers making fun of one of the crazier politicians running for the Democratic presidential nomination. She was an easy target, a politician with blue hair and chains on a pantsuit who blamed everything wrong with the country on systemic patriarchy. I sighed and tried to remember the topics I’d write about on my World Religions exam this morning. We’d made it to the final unit in the course: Modern Religions and Cults. Pulling onto Goodwood Boulevard, I tried to remember some of the Gnostic terminology we went over earlier in the year so I could tie it to New Ageism. Then I noticed the hosts cut off their chatter—awkward and abrupt. I could still make out their hushed voices over the hot mics. When they came back on, Huck had dropped most of his Southern drawl. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said suddenly sober, “we have breaking news that we feel obligated to share. Reports are coming in of a catastrophic event in the city of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. According to reports from CGTN, the entire city has been completely destroyed. The cause is uh… not yet clear. Authorities are scrambling to gather more information, and we and our partners will continue to keep you updated on this developing story as more details emerge.” He paused here as the message sunk in. Then he went on. “I know that we often view North Korea as our enemy. We have made fun of the succession fight in recent weeks, but I think I speak for both myself and Waldo when I say that we are going to pray for the Korean people. The people aren’t our enemies. God have mercy on them.”

    There was some dead air, then Waldo asked, “Huck, do we have any idea who or what’s responsible?” He sounded almost fearful. “Looking at the AP report, it doesn’t give anything more than what you’ve said, really. Were they nuked? Did we nuke them?”

    “Producer Gwen is telling me… hold on, okay.” Huck paused a moment. “CGTN hasn’t reported China believes any particular nation is responsible—and it hasn’t ruled out some sort of natural disaster.”

    “CGTN is China’s state-run television?”

    “That’s—yes.”

    “So, it’s Chinese Communist television? How are we supposed to trust the reports we’re getting out of there?”

    “Shoot, Wal, I don’t know. They’ve got more access to North Korea than anyone else does.”

    It was about here that I realized I’d pulled over into the bike lane. I hoped to get more information out of the hosts, but they were comedians. Sure, they could still say what we were all thinking, fearing. They were mouthpieces of concerns about the state of things, not reporters. Was it nukes? Was it us? If China wasn’t saying it was yet, then missiles weren’t going to start crashing down all of a sudden. If North Korea retaliated, then well… I guess we would know soon enough.

    Driving the rest of the way to school felt like swimming. I kept my eyes on the skies as best I could, but the trees blocked most of my view. I half-expected to see our jets and helicopters flying in formation overhead—or worse, enemy paratroopers falling from the sky like Red Dawn. But thankfully, there was nothing. I pulled into the student lot at Redeemer High School and sat on the hood of my 2011 Chevy Cobalt with my phone in my hand trying to see if any social media had anything to add of value. It didn’t—which was no real surprise. My feed was just flooded with unread notifications that had accumulated since I last logged in a week ago—which I only did because Grams tagged me in some Easter photos. My feed hadn’t caught up with the news cycle yet—more of the same political rhetoric calling for a “national divorce” and averting a bloody civil war, #USexit. I looked up and saw Toby getting off the bus. I searched: North Korea and there it came. All the same stuff I’d heard already. Nothing new just yet. Toby dropped his ratty booksack and came and sat next to me.

    Now I fear I’ll never really do Toby Castle justice. He’s one of those guys that’s just inherently likeable—no, that’s not it. It’s that he inevitably finds something to genuinely relate to most people. For Toby and me, it was band and vintage pro-wrestling. We tried out for drum major together, he won. No surprise, he was far more talented than I was in that—even having stayed out all night partying with the flag corps after Tiger Band’s Spring Camp ended. I went home to bed—Jessica having again decided that night we shouldn’t date anymore—because I danced with the flag captain and “obviously had a thing for her.” Anyway, the only thing I was better at than Toby when it came to band was mace flourishing—time well-spent with the flag captain.

    “Have you heard?” I asked him, holding out my phone to him.

    “Nah, what?” he said taking the phone. “My God, did they blow themselves up?”

    I hadn’t thought of that, though it made as much sense as anything right now. “Misfired a nuke? Can that even happen?”

    “Do I anywhere remotely look like Oppenheimer?” he said handing my phone back. “I don’t know what the hell they get up to in North Korea, except that they’re real dumb with nukes.”

    “Yeah,” I said. The bell rang and I powered down my phone with a sigh. I hoped maybe Ms. Pine would bring it up in class. She was younger, and I assumed paid attention to things going on in the world.

    “You talking to Jessica yet? Or is she… you know…”

    “Being completely unreasonable?”

    “Put charitably,” said Toby. “But she’s just intense, you know?”

    “Yeah, I know.” But I didn’t care at that point, Jessica Comeaux was stress I had little time for right now. I wasn’t ready to get back together—and I didn’t think I’d ever be at this point. I replayed her berating me outside the camp dance in my head as we walked up the stairs and Toby talked about how she’d been having issues with her mom and her stepdad fighting. I was tired of that excuse too. A poster-boy for negative immigrant stereotypes, all I ever heard Mr. Hassan did was lay about the house and harangue Jess and her mom—never his son. I felt guilty for my lack of sympathy, but there comes a point in some toxic relationships where you completely understand why some people are always victims. They have some sort of masochistic craving for it. Jessica was one such person. She provoked people and got hurt when people responded to the bait.

    “Are you okay?” asked Toby hitting me on the shoulder. “You look really ticked.”

    I huffed and shook my head and softened my expression. “I just feel bad that I don’t feel bad for her anymore.”

    Toby sighed. “Talk truth. She does poke the bear sometimes.”

    “How come she gets along with you so well?” I asked him, though I thought I knew the answer: he never tried to get with her, and he never judged her. But Toby just shrugged. “God, why do I even care about this right now?” I said, annoyed with myself. “We could be going into World War III!”

    “Breathe easy. Fretting about that’s a waste,” said Toby meeting my eyes. “If the world goes to Hell, then we in it together. They’re like to draft all our asses.”

    “Not Jessica’s.”

    “You want to give her a gun?”

    We entered class smiling. Jessica was sitting alone looking at her phone. A couple guys had their heads on their desks. “Where’s Ms. Pine?” asked Toby.

    Jessica turned, her eyes looked a little red and glassy. “She said she needed to go take care of something real quick—said she’d be right back.” Then she turned to me. “Looks like you were right after all.”

    Now, I couldn’t remember that ever coming from her mouth. “About?” I asked.

    “The whole World War III thing,” she said, and Toby looked at me like I’d been lying to him about not having spoken to her since Friday. “You called it,” she said.

    “Is there more news?” I asked, hopeful for something.

    “I mean, someone obliterated North Korea—or the capital at least. But it’s just like you said when Russia started massing troops near Poland and propping up the government in Syria.” This was how she always drew me back in—she paid attention. She paid attention to the things I liked, to the things I said, to the yellow flowers on the weeds growing through cracks in concrete. She seemed to pay attention to the whole world around her—except for other people’s feelings. Her brown eyes looked beautiful for a moment, then they narrowed, and I knew she was going to gig me somehow. I braced for it, but it never came. Her expression softened and Toby gave me a look as if to say he’d seen it coming too. My immediate thought was, she’s being nice to me—she must be a little sorry.

    We took our seats and popped out our laptops and composition notebooks. The journal topic Ms. Pine had left for us stood in pretty cursive on the board: Describe how fears about AI have been addressed in fiction and how AISA addresses them.

    Opening the composition book, I sighed and thought back to everything we’d covered so far. I stretched my fingers and started writing.

    In this course, we’ve gone through Shelley’s Frankenstein, read about the Golem, watched clips of 2001: A Space Odyssey, trailers of The Terminator and The Matrix, old videos of Elon Musk talking about the dangers of AI. But then there was AISA, the Artificial Intelligence Suppression Agreement of 2026. I didn’t really understand it at the time, though Dad tried to explain it to me. There’s just only so much you can understand when you’re eight—even if you’re a bit abnormally into history like me. As AI rapidly progressed towards the Singularity in the 2020s, and Earth moved closer to becoming the proverbial robot-hellscape feared in the old Terminator movies, with the Stanford Incident of 2025, the UN had perhaps never moved so quickly and decisively to start listening to experts in the field and address concerns before more lives were lost—and civilization irreparably damaged. Now, though we use AI almost daily, in many ways we don’t even notice. It’s largely fragmented and decentralized as AISA requires, and research into more advanced AI is highly regulated and centralized Super AIs are forbidden. Of course, there’s the chance that rogue technologists could be attempting to create Super AIs—but AISA actually provides for AIs to be used to detect other AIs and then—I don’t know, bomb the lab or whatever the military does with that sort of threat.

    Then I noticed my classmates chatting about Korea and nuclear war and arguing about the merits of nuking China too. Too? Did they forget a few weeks ago when we went over the Cold War in US History? Mutually Assured Destruction was called M-A-D for a reason. They didn’t get it. No way would we just nuke North Korea—I couldn’t buy it. I loved my country—and yeah, it had done bad things—but it wasn’t suicidal. Shaking my head with their silliness, I said, “It’s more likely an AI went rogue and nuked Pyongyang.”

    The statement surprised me as it came out of my mouth, but given what I’d just written, I guess it was on my mind.

    “Good,” said Ms. Pine, walking in a little breathless, “you’re already talking about it, so I don’t have to break the news to you.” She hopped up on her desk at the front of the room and swung her short legs with what seemed to be nervous excitement. “Anyway, Fisher, they’re saying on the news it’s not a nuclear explosion.”

    “What else could level a city like that?”

    “Okay,” said Ms. Pine hopping down from her desk and around to the white board. “Let’s brainstorm.” She wrote in purple marker and said, “What could destroy a city?”

    “Nukes,” I said.

    “Right,” she said writing it out. “What else?”

    “Asteroid,” said Christine, a girl I’d gone to school with since kindergarten but never really hung out with.

    “What about a comet?” asked Tevin, the wiry lead wide receiver for the Redeemer Highlanders. “I saw this old movie with my dad about that…”

    “I think a comet’s too devastating,” said Ms. Pine still writing it on the board. “A comet would likely end civilization. But I don’t know if there are smaller comets—this is good. Keep going. This is the process.”

    “Earthquake?” said another.

    “Volcano,” said Jessica.

    “Terrorist attack—like regular bombs,” said another

    “Or rogue AI,” I added, “but still conventional bombs. Like underground tunnel bombs.”

    “Can you account for AISA with that?” asked Ms. Pine.

    Jessica answered before I could. “Well, that’s the point of AISA—it’s there for a reason. Just like any other law, it could be broken. North Korea was never supposed to get nukes—but it did. The old Iranian regime was never supposed to get nukes, but they did. Laws are broken all the time.”

    “Fair enough,” said Ms. Pine. “I shouldn’t have stopped you… keep going.”

    I glanced back at Jessica with a little smile. As I turned back I closed my eyes and shook my head wondering why couldn’t she be this agreeable all the time?

    “What else?” asked Ms. Pine.

    “Well, I’ll out with it: aliens,” said Toby to some laughter. “Oh, like y’all weren’t thinking it?” He smiled but I could tell he meant it. “Seriously now, a city is destroyed all hush-hush, and they say, ‘def wasn’t nukes’ and we are going to rule out aliens?”

    “Well, are we going to rule out that they’re lying to us?” asked Jessica.

    “We aren’t going to rule anything out,” said Ms. Pine. “Not only is this brainstorming, we are also in a position where ruling things out doesn’t fall on us. It falls on our leaders.”

    “Well, that’s encouraging,” said Jessica rolling her eyes a little.

    “They told us the truth about Stanford,” said Christine.

    “Well,” said Jessica, “they couldn’t exactly hide a gang of killer robots and drones on a college campus, could they?”

    Christine laughed. “But they could cover up a city-wide destruction of what a few hundred thousand people?”

    “Closer to four million,” said Ms. Pine solemnly.

    “Four million?” asked Christine as though she didn’t fully comprehend the number. “Wait, there—there are survivors right?”

    “Not that we know of,” said Ms. Pine. “Dr. Milne has specifically asked us to not show footage of it right now. We just don’t know what we are going to see. I know you guys are just going to look it up on your phones—but be warned: you cannot unsee things.”

    After English class, I walked halfway across the stuffy skywalk A-Building to B-Building and powered up my phone. I looked out at the courtyard while my phone booted up—everything looked peaceful. Spring already looked like it was giving way to summer. But it felt strange—like it does in the days before a hurricane hits. The priorities in your head start to shift homeward—to batten down the hatches, charge every battery, get gasoline, fill the bathtub, and stock up on your very favorite snacks and beverages. My phone buzzed as a text notification popped up.

    MOM

    You okay? Check in when you can.

    Yeah, I’m fine. Something else happen?

    Just everything on the news.
    I just wanted to check in with you.

    Makes sense, I’m good.
    I’m going to Religions class—my test is today.

    Good luck, sweetie. Don’t choke ❤

    I usually checked-in after first hour. Teachers never patrolled the skywalk. It was either too hot or too cold—and everyone knew it. If we wanted to stop for a kiss, Jessica and I would meet there between classes. I had the feeling the teachers knew, but no one seemed to care. It was like our own little space.

    Ms. Baker didn’t meet us at the door as usual. She sat at her desk in the red-carpeted classroom. I never asked her why hers was the only classroom like that—but she had spent years in the same room—in fact she was the only teacher still here from when the Mission to North America bought the building from the district. Her room had accumulated knick-knacks and reproductions of famous pieces of art—most conspicuously a three-foot-tall reproduction of Michelangelo’s David with a plastic fig leaf covering his crotch. Though as controversial as the practically naked ancestor of Christ was in a Presbyterian school, he was hardly the most controversial thing in the classroom. There were idols, most prominently a statue of Kali, a reproduction of the Buddha in a lotus from Avery Island at the Tabasco factory, a menorah, and even an Islamic prayer rug she liked to call her “flying carpet.” She had crosses too—many of them—one supposedly for every major sect of Christianity (that used crosses). She seemed to like tempting fate—walking the line between what parents paying for a Christian education would find acceptable and unacceptable. But her classes were universally praised all the same. I think I understood why—sheer force of personality. It was strange though, she wasn’t your friend and never pretended to be, but she was honest, measured, and thoughtful. But walking into the room, I could tell something was wrong. She stared at her laptop, her jaw slack. I could make out the news footage in her glasses’ reflection. I sat and checked the board for the bellringer, but she’d just written: Study for your TEST!

    I didn’t study. I almost never study—at least not in the traditional sense of how TV shows suggested students should study—with a plethora of notes and stacks of books. I took notes in class, I thought about the material, and that was enough. I looked around the room and spied Esther Jeong, our Korean exchange student, at her desk near the wall. She stared ahead, expressionless. I wanted to talk to her—I did sometimes in class or at youth group. We weren’t close friends—I hadn’t even thought of her all morning even though I knew she was from Seoul, but we went to the same church and knew a lot of the same people.

    I moved to sit next to her—I reached out to put my hand on her shoulder, but I stopped myself. I didn’t know if I should. “Hey,” I said, “I just… I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. But I’m here if you need anything.”

    She turned and looked at me slowly—her eyes brimmed with tears waiting to drop. Then she abruptly hugged me, sobbing. We had never hugged before. When she was new here, one of our first conversations was about how she thought it was weird how everyone hugged people—even if they’d just met. “Thank you,” she said between sobs. “Pray for my family. I can’t get in touch with them. I know the North will… they’ll attack.”

    “They say it wasn’t a nuke,” I said, only half believing it—but she nodded readily taking any reassurance. “But yes, I’ll pray for them.” In truth, I felt like I had been praying all morning—talking to God in the back of my mind, wondering where he was. In control, I’d remind myself: God’s in control. But I wasn’t sure I was acting as though I believed it. Jessica came in, made brief eye contact with me, then looked at Esther. I saw her nostrils flare—but then her expression softened. She knelt near us and took Esther’s hands and hugged her. They were better friends—both flutists. The band’s sections all tended to bond during marching season. I excused myself—I didn’t know what else to say or do anyway.

    I went back to my desk and pulled out my pen and tried to refocus on the test. Ms. Baker handed out our tests and told us we could take it home and bring it back the next day—or whenever we came back to school. She seemed to think that we weren’t coming back the next day. “I just have a feeling,” she said. I looked at the test. It just had a single essay prompt on it:

    Explore the rise of new religious movements and spiritual practices in the modern era. What are some examples of new religious groups that have emerged in the latter half of the 20th century, and how do they differ from more established religions? How do these movements address some of the claims and concerns of established religions? How have these movements responded to the challenges of modernity, including globalization, secularization, and rapid technological change?

    I smiled. Ms. Baker had a knack for assigning tough and thorough essays—graded them pretty hard too. After a few minutes, when she realized no one was actively working on their essays, she turned the news on the smartboard. It was all the same CGTN footage I saw earlier—basically on repeat with different so-called experts offering different theories as to the cause of the destruction of Pyongyang. I shook my head as they had no ideas we didn’t already cover in Ms. Pine’s class—and they never brought up aliens, at least not for another hour or so.

    3rd Period we had PE. With everything going on, I was looking forward to playing a little halfcourt with Toby and the guys. I met Toby outside the locker room, but when we went in, most of the boys huddled around Coach Kirk’s office, some standing on benches to look through the window at the TV that normally ran game footage. Other than the shuffling of feet as all of us elbowed in closer, we saw them for the first time: the alien ships.

    There was no audio backing to the helicopter footage—just the sounds of the prop and the muffled frantic talking of the cameraman as they emerged from the dark rubble—disks, black even against the night sky ringed with lights. They came seemingly out of nowhere and everywhere—flashing into place, wavering a bit, then stopping dead in the air. Six craft I counted as the cameraman panned to get the full scope of the scene. They stood still long enough for us to get ahold of ourselves and start looking at each other to make sure we were at least hallucinating together. It was probably about a minute or so, and then they flitted away in different directions. The cameraman tried to track them, but he couldn’t spot them. Then the talking heads came back, looking as stunned and dumbfounded and we all did. Coach Kirk shot up, his jaw set. “You boys ought to go home now. Straight away,” he said, the authority in his voice unmistakable. “I’m going to Dr. Milne. This is going to get bad.”

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  • An Introduction to Highland Swordsmanship

    Background

    I’ve been teaching at the high school level online since 2015 (you know, before COVID made it vogue to do so). But I’d had a taste of it as a student since 2010 with the Cateran Society, where I began learning Highland Broadsword. It involved reading primary and secondary sources on Highland Broadsword fencing, videoing myself and fencing partners performing these, sending them to skilled instructors, and implementing the feedback given, then working toward fencing a competent fencer of another discipline entirely. The method isn’t ideal, but it worked. After writing some online curriculum for my English and Speech courses, I considered that I should perhaps also petition my principal to approve a Highland Broadsword course–sort of a hybrid of history and PE. My then-principal agreed and I was off. I thought I’d use this medium to republish some of the informational/historical portions of that course.

    Scottish Highlanders and the British Empire

    During the 18th Century, the Highland Scot came into vogue in Great Britain.  After years of repression and persecution of the Scottish Gael, it was ironically the Highland Regiments of the British Army that preserved many of the proud Gaelic martial traditions of the Highland Broadsword.  In the British Empire, this sword-fighting tradition made its way around the world and was tested by all manner of martial arts: from Europe, to the Americas, to India, China, and Japan.

    Highland Broadsword Practiced Today

    People the world over have begun to take up the old art of the Highland Broadsword.  Through the research and interpretation of old Highland Broadsword manuals written by various broadsword masters in the period, dedicated swordsmen have been able to recreate and resurrect this once prolific and highly effective style of swordsmanship that is as much finesse as it is brutal force.  Now, Highland Broadswords are being seen again all over the world.  Broadsword Academies can be found in Germany, Finland, Russia, all over the U.S. and Canada, and of course, in Scotland and the U.K.

    Singlestick and Cudgeling

    Like the Scots of centuries past, practitioners of the Art of the Highland Broadsword continue to use some of the same tried and true methods of practice:  one being the use of a wooden singlestick with a leather or wicker basket to protect the hand.  This training tool eventually developed into a sport in its own right called “singlestick” or “cudgeling”.  This system was even at one time an Olympic event! Though short-lived there, it has seen a great resurgence and is used by not only Scottish, but also English, Irish, and American fencing systems.

    Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA)

    Historical Scottish fencing is not the only European martial art that has been rediscovered, revived, or relearned from old written sources.  There are many different styles of Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) that have come to light with varying degrees of popularity in recent decades.  These range from German and Italian Longsword, English broadsword and smallsword, Irish and French stick-fighting, wrestling styles from all over, French, Spanish, and Italian rapier, Polish saber, and the list goes on and on.  Unlike with Eastern Martial Arts, like Kung Fu or Karate, there is not a linear unbroken line of master to apprentice for most of these arts.  When reading older sources, sometimes interpretations will need to be made and sometimes scholars and practitioners will disagree with one another. 

    Closing

    Highland Swordsmanship is not only part of a rich and varied combat tradition of Europe, but also part of the tapestry of Scotland’s storied culture, illustrating both the mystique of the Scottish warrior and the narrative of cultural borrowing and transfer from those around it, and also its interplay around the world with those whom the British Empire colonized, battled, and defended prior to the advent of mechanized warfare.

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  • Wrenhaven Webcomic #3

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  • Ceding an Arsenal to Your Ideological Opponents: ChatGPT

    I’ve been a big proponent of AI-language generation tools like ChatGPT and AI-art generation tools like PhotoLeap. I find myself often at odds with fellow English teachers, authors, and artists in this. They argue that these tools can undermine the creativity, nuance, and originality that are essential to artistic and literary expression. I likewise find myself discussing ChatGPT with more conservative friends, who express concerns about the Left-leaning programming inherent in the AI. They argue that use of the tool is too limited and designed to support Leftist political agendas. However, I think that it’s foolish to cede such a powerful tool to ideological opponents and likewise foolish to pretend that such a tool is going to go away.

    English teachers, authors, and artists argue that AI-generated writing or art lacks the emotional depth and human touch that is necessary for truly meaningful work. Others worry that the use of AI language generation tools can lead to a homogenization of language and culture, where all writing and speech sounds the same, and individual expression is lost. Some also express concern that the use of AI-art generation tools can lead to a devaluation of human labor and talent as the creation of art becomes increasingly automated and less reliant on human skill and creativity. These critics caution against relying too heavily on AI-generated content and encourage a continued emphasis on human creativity and expression. I can’t say that these arguments lack merit. Further, the idea that as automation increases, making production-type jobs fewer and fewer, that we will be moved towards more artistic endeavors becomes problematic as AI-created artforms flood the world.

    I’ve discussed this at length with other teachers at my school (which is fully remote online school), and there is significant concern about cheating and plagiarism. When I first came to ChatGPT, I spent three weeks in a daze trying to figure out how I could address this in my courses. I could input my detailed prompt for my students’ essay exam on Beowulf and get quite good responses that differed each time I put it in. Gone were the days where I could easily pick out plagiarized work based on certain phrases I’ve seen across multiple papers. But the more I considered it, the more I realized this tool would not be going away, and as good as it is now, the technology will only ever get better. What I should be doing then, is teaching my students how to use the tool responsibly to put their own thoughts and understanding into well-written text rather than just let my students find it and figure it out on their own. To ignore this tool would be a disservice to my students. Does this mean to discourage my students from writing? By no means! In fact, it can actually facilitate writing among students who would otherwise NEVER write any text longer than an email beyond their academic career.

    Of course, that ChatGPT facilitates MORE people from sharing their thoughts in a more coherent fashion than ever known in human civilization. This can create a flood of information—which is already an issue with the Internet. But right now, content-creators of various ideological perspectives are widely available. However, if tools like ChatGPT are wholesale eschewed by any prominent political party you run into a number of problems. Conservatives or those of any political ideology should not ignore AI language generating tools like ChatGPT or cede such tools to their ideological opponents because these tools have the potential to shape public discourse and opinion in significant ways. As AI-generators become more sophisticated and widely used, they have the potential to influence public policy, shape public perception, and impact social and political outcomes.

    By ignoring or ceding AI language generating tools to their ideological opponents, conservatives risk losing the ability to shape public opinion and influence public policy. As AI language models become more prevalent in the public sphere, they will increasingly shape public perception and discourse, and it is essential for conservatives to engage with these tools in order to ensure that their perspectives and beliefs are represented and considered. Moreover, ignoring or ceding AI language generating tools to their ideological opponents may also reinforce existing biases and echo chambers in public discourse. If only one side of the political spectrum is using AI language generating tools to shape public opinion and discourse, then the perspectives and beliefs of the other side may be excluded or marginalized, leading to an even more polarized and divided public discourse.

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  • Wrenhaven Webcomic #2

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