*non-story content removed*

Bump to the top, seeing as editing doesn't bump

Thoughts whirled through his head faster than he could track them as Jason sat back on his couch, a can of Stag in his hand watching the TV.

"Honey, I can't believe this.  We're winning!  Not just winning, but... we're kicking their ass!  Fuck yeah!" Amanda giggled, bouncing next to him, "Oh, I can't wait to see what Beck says on his radio show tomorrow.  This election is epic!"

Jason gave her a sideways glance with a short smirk before putting the cold can to his lips.

"Sure looks that way, babe.  Sure does," he said, a small amount of mirth warming his words.   I want this to be good news.  I want that.  I want all these Tea Party folks to sail in to DC in January and show these clowns who's boss, but I still can't shake it.  God, I hope I'm wrong, but this is only a reprieve.  

They sat, drinking and watching the results as they came in, each sudden interruption with new information giving Amanda's spirits new wind to soar ever higher.  It took a few beers to loosen things up, but eventually Jason relaxed, letting himself stop worrying for the first time in many months.  The good news of the election helped buoy his flagging spirit, but part of him looked forward to the trip he and Josh planned next month.

Away from the buzzing of the TV, some small part of him was looking forward to his first hunting trip.  He got his rifle last month; it was a beast.  Heavy as hell, the Larue Optimized Battle Rifle weighed in at almost fifteen pounds empty, but made up for that weight with extremely reduced recoil.  He'd expected a tender shoulder before he fired it the first time just from prior experience with .308WIN rifles, but he was pleasantly surprised that it didn't seem to kick any harder than his AR.   Josh had given him a raft of crap about buying such an expensive AR-styled rifle to peg deer with and only barely laid off after Jason laid out his logic for wanting something semi-auto instead of the lever-actions Josh seemed to have a fetish for.

Jason didn't tell him how much the glass mounted on the rail cost, nor did he admit he wasn't sure how well slinging the rifle would make up for the weight.  He expected that most of the trip would suck, sitting in near zero, windy conditions only to hopefully be interrupted by a few seconds of adrenaline and the kick and flash of a well aimed shot.   Time will tell.  Yes, time will tell.

Magazine fed, able to pursue quick follow up shots if necessary, mostly cheap magazines, rails for mounting a scope, these features he wanted in his battle rifle.  While he appreciated the look and feel of a good varnished wood stock, the purpose he wanted behind this rifle wasn't warm, filled with images of home and family.   This was a rifle, cold and black, that would do more than stalk unsuspecting forest animals.  Unfeeling, this rifle would reap the lives of his enemies up to ten, fifteen hundred yards away.   No, wood wasn't remotely appropriate, only cold metal seemed to fit.

Jason shook his head, clearing his mind again, watching the numbers continue to roll in.   Please, God, let me be wrong.  Let this pass, let what I'm witnessing end my worry.

Jason snorted, coughing and hacking from such a long fit of laughter and struggled to follow along with the radio and stay on the road.  Beck's radio show was in rare form and he could barely see the road through tears of mirth. (Author's note: a ten-minute segment of the referenced program is available here)

"You know, I don't feel bad at all.  Stuff your partisianship.  Let's be bipartisan!  Today, STUFF IT!" Beck said between peals of laughter and chuckling.

"Damn right," Jason said to no one in particular as he wound around the flightline on the way to work, "Let's see how those clowns like a taste of their own medicine."

Optimism was the word of the day, and everyone seemed to be in good spirits save a few co-workers who couldn't understand how their party had managed to defeated in such detail.  Under the congratulations, accusations of fraud were muttered quietly by the shop Democrats who had suddenly found out where most people stood that morning, their dour faces in deep contrast to all of the smiles.

Days, then weeks, and eventually a few months went by as the world continued its endless spin and life moved ever onward.   Optimism faded and became guarded as events spun out of the clouds of the future into present day.

Authors note:  For those chomping at the bit for real action, I've still got a decent chunk of the timeline to catch up with.  As it stands, the last section was touching on the election results from 2010 and the fireworks really don't start until 2012.  I'm not planning massive sections dealing with the build-up, but I do have to include a lot of what will become justifications later on.   There may or may not be editing done to sections to expand/clarify on various points before the balloon actually goes up.  The idea behind this is I really want to iron out the information the characters use as the basis for their course of action.

  It's all fine and dandy to have everyone say "Hey, fuck this noise, it's fo time!" grab their rifles and go to town, but unless it's properly set up, then the whole thing reads like somebody's closet jerk-off fantasy and on the same intellectual level as the utter bullshit that is crap like the Turner Diaries.

 As the Fo Clock ticks down, I do intend to expand on the character's positions as to the implication of the events they're watching first-hand and their difficulties coming to their final conclusion.   You've seen a little bit of that so far,  as the "main" characters, for the most part, all work for the DoD which puts them in a precarious position as things start to come apart.  Some of the more hot-headed characters don't see this as an issue, while others see it as a major roadblock on which they balance their financial health against their beliefs in the Founder's principles.  

I would expect introduction of a few more characters, though not many.  I've got a few I've started outlines on, but time will tell if their story is interesting enough to be included as distinct characters or if they're merely footnotes or a charred corpse the main characters happen across later.

To close, I really would like feedback, be it anything from pointing out spelling/grammar mistakes, pointing out stuff you don't think is realistic or otherwise poorly written, stuff you think I should expand on or otherwise flesh out, to even compliments if you find something you think was particularly well done.    Let me be clear:  I'm not trolling for compliments.  No writer worth their salt wants to be in an echo chamber of congratulations because at that point getting better becomes dramatically more difficult.

I like where your story is going, keep it up.

Well, you got me to cut and paste the story into a word processing document for a cohesive read, and that ain't easy to do.  Congratulations.



Meanwhile, this ought to keep the thread out of the archives.

Thanks, was going to bump it soon.  Moved to night shift and the adjustment is kicking my ass  Combine that with some recent real-world events that made me stop and look at where I was going with things and go .    On the plus side, it doesn't significantly change too terribly much.   While I was refactoring my outline I took some time to dredge up more events between current day (story-wise) and current day (real world) and figured out how to work them in.  Should be burping up another set of posts in the near future, assuming BF3 doesn't eat my life when it gets here today

"Son. Of. A. Bitch."  Jason spat, staring at his monitor as he read.  

"What is it, hon?" Amanda called from downstairs.

"Babe, you won't believe this shit."

"What?"  Footsteps coming up the stairs.

As she walked in the door, Jason said, "This isn't on the news yet, but it'll be getting there.  It looks like the ATF just got caught red-handed running guns to the Mexicans."

"Uhm, okay?" She asked.

"Well, Mexican cartels.  Some poor border patrol guy got killed a few weeks ago with one of these 'Gunwalker' guns."

"The government is selling guns to the Mexican cartels? No shit?"

"According to this, there's a few whistleblowers in the ATF claiming just that," he replied.

"Wow.  This could be interesting."

"Yep, we'll just have to wait and see how this turns out."

"Hopefully it won't get brushed under a rug."

Still waiting for more, and this should help with keeping this from being archived.

Thanks, sorry for the lack of info, been on suspension from my job the last two weeks, been shitting kittens up until this Friday when I found out they're shitcanning me.  Not exactly conducive to a creative atmosphere.

ETA:  All that other time, I was just a slacker, I'll admit it.

Shakily, Jason sat down on his couch.   He glanced at the clock, it was shortly past noon and despite his rotating schedule he shouldn't be home at this hour.  In fact, he shouldn't be home for several hours.

How did this happen, he asked himself, standing up again with nervous energy.  I was doing what I thought was right.  Our programs were a joke, I was just trying to fix them.  The world seemed to crawl by with languid ease as he donned his black trench coat and stepped out into the December air.  How could they not see that?  Yeah, I was tired as hell, I wasn't thinking straight.  I should've dotted more i's and crossed more t's.  

He stood on his front porch, surveyed his street noting the various cars parked along it and the squirrels chasing each other in the neighbor's yard across the street.  As he fished for his cigarettes in his pocket, he noted how serene everything felt, like this was the way it was meant to be.  Bright blue, the sky was crisscrossed with no small number of sizable, thin cirrus clouds and a lone airliner pushed across the sky, leaving a lone contrail of white behind it in the direction of St. Louis behind him.  

Time caught up to him, and he realized he'd done little more than work and sleep for almost the last year and the last moment like this flashed into his memory.  Almost a year ago, he'd stood on his porch, fishing for a cigarette, looking at his neighborhood through the yellow glare of sodium lights, he'd stepped outside after hearing about the death of a border patrolman, an event that would spawn a drawn out controversy of no small proportion and more than a few conversations between himself, friends, and coworkers.

Time had flown by since that day, Christmas last year was barely more than a happy footnote, and vague memories of the various outrages and events that had occurred since then fluttered by as he finally retrieved his pack of Marlboro Reds.

 A Democrat from Arizona had been shot in public along with more than a few supporters, and the anti-gun crowd wasted no time to stand on the corpses of the fallen to make political hay.  It didn't seem to matter to these hoplophobes that their initial claims of it being a politically motivated assassination by the 'violent' right wing were baseless.  They prattled on ceaselessly, glossing over the truth of the matter that the shooter had hard leftist progressive leanings and was, by all accounts, insane and off his medication.

  The current administration had attempted to enforce Davis-Bacon Act prevailing wage pay scale restrictions on private sector companies who didn't hold Federal contracts and they'd raided one of his favorite guitar makers, Gibson, for potentially violating a foreign law, despite that country's insistence that the woodwork in question had been exported legally.  Both of these actions were taken against companies that favored the administration's political foes and didn't bode well for the future.  

The President had also used the military to backstop the civil war that sprouted in Libya in February, claiming we'd only be supporting our NATO allies from the air and sea, and that there would be no boots on the ground, and, finally, that we'd only be there a few weeks.  All of that turned out to be lies: there were reports of US Special Forces and CIA units operating in-country, and as the operation dragged on, it became apparent that NATO was little more than a shell held together by US presence.  None of the European members could actually support the effort on their own, they had to fly from a US flagged carrier if there were no airfields available, and after a month, they'd expended the vast majority of the munitions they had.  The civil war slogged onward, neither side capable of pushing forward until the Khadafi loyalists suffered a brutal collapse in the late summer that ended with Khadafi shot trying to surrender in October.   Jason couldn't help but wonder where all the outrage over unilateral authorization by the President of use of military force against a country that presented negligible threat to the United States was.  The only people outraged were the more right-wing people he knew and some of the moderates.  Evidently the current President would receive a glowing rubber stamp from the media, the leftists, and the progressives of both parties where the previous President had been excoriated for every decision, big or small.  

 The local economy had seemed to be on the mend, up until a surprise session of the Illinois legislature passed the largest corporate tax hike in Illinois history, literally at the last hours possible before the newly elected legislators could be seated, since then business after business had left Illinois, leaving a dragging, hopeless feeling.   The national economy sputtered and stuttered along, some months looking better, others worse, but no noticeable overall improvements until the newly split congress had a showdown over the national debt.  From Jason's point of view, the Republicans had caved and sold everyone out yet again.  Both sides shook hands, smiled, and waved for the cameras, hooting and hollering and slapping each other's backs over their compromise that established a joint Senate/House super committee to cut the budget and if they failed to reach an agreement by December 23, they claimed the budget would be cut across the board.  Though he knew better at the time, the intervening months had proven the lie to the general public.  The mainstream media resisted releasing the details for no small length of time, but eventually they disclosed piecemeal that, should the committee fail,  the reductions wouldn't touch Social Security, Medicare, or any of the other pet projects of the progressives of both parties used to ensure their reelections through bribing voters with their own money.  Jason wasn't surprised to hear that the cuts would primarily focus on the military, despite the wisdom of doing such things in the middle of an active three theater war.  

Of course, Iraq had gone off the media's radar the moment the death tolls couldn't raise their ratings and faded away into the collective memory as it wound down.  Libya was a blip, but Afghanistan was still grinding forward and barely registered on the minds of most people.  Simply put, the US military was an organization that refused to fail and Jason had seen that first hand.  It ate the worst scraps given to it and eventually excreted victory despite the rocky shoals it had to traverse to get there.  The truth of the matter couldn't be dismissed, however much anyone wanted to, in that the Armed Forces were over-extended, tired, and worn.

  The cuts that Jason knew were surely coming soon would be devastating, a throw back to two Presidents the left loved the harken back to: Clinton and Carter, both famous for gutting the military and dodging the blame for the resulting fallout from American sons and daughters needlessly killed on the battlefield.  The left had no love for the soldier, that wasn't new to Jason, but he couldn't help but be disgusted by the baldfaced hypocrisy of a group whose clarion call was compassion for the poor, for the oppressed, who turned a blind eye when their efforts lead directly to the deaths fought for them.  To Jason, they essentially spit on the fallen and those who supported them, hurling accusations against the soldiers as baby killers as if the vagarities of war justified the Progressive's backstabbing of their own soldiers.  Similarly, these tolerant people never failed to hesitate to label the right-wing supporters of the military as bloodthirsty, close or narrow minded fools, as bigoted, racist homophobes.   The labels were hurled in unprecedented numbers during the debt standoff that resulted in the supercommittee, where the Left fixated on referring to a potential default as the "Tea Party Default", that the credit downgrade for long-term government bonds was the "Tea Party Downgrade", that everyone on the right were "Tea Party Terrorists."  

 After the compromise as the campaigns for the next year's Presidential election spun up, no small amount of name calling assailed any Republican determined to be the front runner.  For Jason, it seemed that the Republican Party administration couldn't work harder to lose the advantage they had coming off the 2010 election.   All of their Presidential candidates were either lackluster, tinged with no small amount of crazy, virtually unknown, or little better than the current President.  They think this is all a game, he'd realized one day, where the prize is simply more power and to hell with the consequences and the Constitution.

The whole situation had worried him, NATO publicly showing they were little more than paper tigers, a long line of abuses of executive authority against the People, against private business, against anyone who disagreed.  Whispered were statements correlating all of the administration's missteps into a pattern of misdeeds, into something more sinister.  He'd resisted the urge to agree, don't attribute to malice what you can to incompetence but as all the pieces seemed to be played out, whatever picture the puzzle hid seemed to grow ominously darker with every passing week.  Jason couldn't let himself believe what he considered conspiracy theorist drivel fit for the tinfoil crowd, but as time had passed it was getting harder to dismiss the growing events that seemed to present a pattern.

Despite the assurances of everyone who he talked to before driving home , this didn't feel right.  He drew in a breath, cigarette flaring hotly, and somewhere in his bones, Jason knew the truth of the matter.   He was suspended, that was sure, but he knew he was about to get fired for trying to do the best job he could.   All because he crossed a bureaucratic line he wasn't aware of.  

 In an abstract way, it didn't bother him.  He had little love for corporate politics and the backstabbing that went on, but no matter what he told himself, the idea of doing the right thing getting someone fired still rankled him.

*achive avoiding bump*  Been gathering info, plotting story advancement... stay tuned, near-future update inbound.

MOAR!!!!!

More please.

Guy's I'm really sorry about my slack-asstitude on this.   Life's been interesting since about this time last year.   Between life throwing me curve balls... well,  me being nit-picky about wanting this to stay as close to reality as possible until I split it to the SHTF side... well, that doesn't help any.  That, and posting it a little bit at a time sucks ass too.  

Saw Red Dawn yesterday, it helped rekindle my inner SHTF imagination and got me to thinking about how this all goes down.  

I'll likely be reformatting everything in here and rewriting sections.    Yeah, I know, I suck, but it is what it is.    Sharing as you write sucks, especially when you have to edit.

And by curve-balls, I got canned from a job, spent a few months unemployed, and all the joy of realizing unemployment doesn't even pay my house payment.   Got me a new job, but can't surf ARF from there, which sucks, considering a decent amount of my writing was done at my old job while I was waiting for new tickets to come in  

Wish I could tell you I'm going to suck less at this in the future, but I think I already used that line and demonstrated I was lying

ETA: Oddly enough, surfing ARF was *not* why I was fired :P  It actually didn't factor in at all.  I was pretty surprised at that.  

*Authors note:  I know this is jumping around a bunch, time wise and leaving holes the size of battleships...  not much can be done for it right now, though I suppose when I'm "finished" I'll go back through and edit everything.   I'm going to try to push out a few more longer posts before refactoring to reflect reality.   Most of this editing will be done in the prologue section to reflect what's happened in real life, considering where I'm at in the story is about a year ago.

You know...the whole of arfcom is still waiting for some type of update....we demand MOAR!!!!!

Hah, says the man who doesn't return phone calls  If you did, you'd see I'm working on bigger things than this for a reason

On the plus side, it'll likely be a nugget for a follow-up story ;)