Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness…" — Isaiah

We all tuned our radios to AM 850 and heard the voice of our destinies.  There was static for everyone and it got worse the farther away you were from Pittsburgh.  I guess some people weren’t able to get the signal, but word got out to them in other ways.  As one of the eldest, I’ve been asked to write down what I heard that night.

It was a woman’s voice.  She said, "My name is Melissa Connor.  I have a story to tell.  Some of that story is about the past.  Some of it is about the distant future 1500 years from now.  Much of it is about the present.  You don’t have to listen, but you may as well.  You know what the other channels have to say.  We won’t be on the air long.  This station and others will repeat this recording on this channel as often as we are able to broadcast, but drones are already inbound.  This station will be eradicated.

"The story goes back to before written history, and it is about thugs and parasites.  They took from everyone and built a city called Babylon, which fell.  They built a city called Rome, which fell.  They built a city called Washington, and it has fallen.  Seeing the forces of resistance arrayed against them, they fled into their underground bunkers.  Then they set fire to the world.  They deny it, and seek to shift blame, but you know it as well as I do.

"So much for the past.  The volcanoes and the nuclear blasts have brought on an ice age.  It will be longer than the Maunder minimum, but not as long as many.  We have reasons to believe the ice will retreat in about 1,500 years.  Meanwhile, everywhere above 45 degrees north and below 45 degrees south will be growing ice sheets.  Every stream above 5,000 feet will form glaciers.  The ice will grow and spread, and only the ends of the glaciers and the edges of the ice sheets will melt in the summers. 

"If you can get to the Alleghenies, please do.  We have been preparing for this day for years.  We have food, industry, technologies, many of them from the past.  We have lore on how to live and tools for gearing back, shifting to the 16th and 17th Century tech that brought us from the Renaissance to the scientific revolution to the Enlightenment to the industrial revolution.  We can keep the information age alive, and, God willing, the space age. Everyone who is willing to work in voluntary cooperation is welcome. 

"Let me say that part again. Everyone who is willing to work in voluntary cooperation is welcome.  We have aluminium, copper, silver, and gold coins, we have rad-hardened digital systems, we have food caves where we grow good food, and we are ready to start you in your business.  Free marketeers are welcome.  If you are willing to work, you’ll find help with living, fitting in, succeeding, and thriving.  If you aren’t willing to work, you’ll be cast out. 

"Finally, we have charted most of the bunkers.  We know where they are, and many of their vulnerabilities.  These will be rooted out.  Those who imagined they owned this world, those who burned our planet, are being held to account.  Yesterday a small fuel air bomb was detonated in a cavern in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas.  That was ours. 

"Our special volunteer cadre went in and mopped up.  You’ll be pleased to know that the last of the Clintons are gone.  We’ve located the Bushes, they’re next.

"The future we are building is not for everyone.  We are not going to include the slave masters, the war profiteers, the people who built death camps for our brothers and sisters. 

"Last night at midnight, a series of launches went up from small launch gantries at locations where no rocket had ever been launched.  These delivered a thousand people to low Earth orbit, and the elements of several space stations.  They are armed against efforts we anticipate will be launched to bring them down, and they are shifting their orbits.

"Over the last several months, many airships were launched within five degrees of the Equator.  These are providing look-down-shoot-down capability to eliminate the drones which have been attacking centres of civilisation.  Meanwhile, get into the trees, and keep moving.  Foot and horse-back traffic have not been targeted, except in the presence of military vehicles. … "

At that point, static overwhelmed the broadcast, and nothing further could be heard.  We think the radio station was destroyed, because refugees from Pittsburgh reported seeing an explosion where the radio station was located.  That was the longest the message played on any of the broadcasts I heard. 

They’re still up in the skies, and out in space.  We have messages from time to time.  The fallout has fallen out, and the dead zones have started to come back to life.  Ten thousand are now living in the Moon, there are people on Mars, and in the asteroids.  Many of the airship groups built space vehicles, too, and went roving. 

Things are better now than they were thirty years ago when the nukes went off, and we’ve found a lot of the archives of the slavemasters.  They detonated Yellowstone, but it wasn’t ready to be a supervolcano.  Even so, ten feet of ash fell as far away as Kansas City.  They burned the world.

But they didn’t finish us off.  We’ll go on.  The Sisters and Brothers of the White Rose will prevail.

 

Jim Davidson is an author, entrepreneur, teacher, and storyteller.