*Re-reading this I am both struck by how we’re getting the same thing with Covid-19 and masks as we did with climate six years ago, and also by how the message in this is more urgent than ever. – SAH 2020*

The Future Must Belong to Those Who Question – a blast from the past from September 25, 2014

And even those who mock, joke and deride, particularly those who do so to an almost-universally held faith in their region/time/place.   People must be free to hold dissenting opinions without risking death.

Why do I say that?

There was that climate march in NYC and people tried, by means of slogans and shouting to insist that we must all change the way we live; that we must go back to a way of life that would necessitate the demise of 80% of human population, in order to… stop the planet warming up.

This despite the fact that we have no idea how much the planet is really warming up or why (corrupt data, corrupt data-keeping, corrupt… everything – the result of science done to government specifications.), the fact that most of the world couldn’t care less what these marchers do and say and that the ecological disaster that is China will offset any sacrifices we attempt to make, and the fact that the celebrity marchers all produce enough carbon in a month to offset any reductions I could make in my lifestyle over a lifetime, even if I went to the loony point of living as we did in the village where I grew up: a lightbulb per room and early hours to bed; no labor saving devices; a radio as the only electrical form of entertainment, etc.

Let’s leave that aside for a moment though, and concentrate on the truly appalling spectacle of Robert Kennedy Jr. demanding that those who don’t agree with him about what is causing the climate problems (?) be put in jail or killed.

The United States government, Kennedy lamented in an interview with Climate Depot, is not permitted by law to “punish” or to imprison those who disagree with him — and this, he proposed, is a problem of existential proportions. Were he to have his way, Kennedy admitted, he would cheer the prosecution of a host of “treasonous” figures — among them a number of unspecified “politicians”; those bêtes noires of the global Left, Kansas’s own Koch Brothers; “the oil industry and the Republican echo chamber”; and, for good measure, anybody else whose estimation of the threat posed by fossil fuels has provoked them into “selling out the public trust.” Those who contend that global warming “does not exist,” Kennedy claimed, are guilty of “a criminal offense — and they ought to be serving time for it.”

Let’s suppose that everything Mr. Kennedy thinks about the climate is true. Why would he want to silence anyone who disagrees with him?

If everything he says is true, surely he has proof. More importantly, surely he has ways to explain/get around the fact that without modern technology 80% of the people in the world would die, due to problems of transportation and growing enough food in enough places. Surely he has ways to convince China. I mean, if his science is that iron clad, they wouldn’t want to die any more than we do? Surely he has ways to convince all the rest of the world, which has nothing to do with the (Libertarian, and for all I know AGW supporting,) Koch brothers or the Republicans.

Unless he thinks the rest of the world hangs suspended from those peoples’ lips? And even a trust-fund-baby celebrity can’t be that stupid.

In other words, if he’s really concerned about AGW, he should be talking to the rest of the world, particularly the emerging nations, not just the US public. To pretend otherwise is a cop out, and a dishonest one.

Instead, the power he wants is the power to kill or imprison – to silence – anyone he disagrees with.

Note that people like me, who think that proponents of AGW demonstrate they don’t believe in it with their lives, don’t wish to stop them talking. On the contrary. The more they parade and berate, and show their allegiance to communist causes, the less credible they are. We want them to keep talking.

This extends all across the pet causes of the left. Feminism? Oh, please, do keep talking about how you want to kill all but 10% of males.

The lack of women and minorities in science fiction? Do keep talking. We have books going back to the fricking fifties that give you the lie and you just expose your crass ignorance.

The War on Women, in the group with the most pampered, indulged women in the world? Please, even some of the kids no longer buy it.

White privilege, which is screamed in the faces of Hispanic and even Black males who disagree with the narrative? Please, oh, insane mind, speak thyself.

However, from their side all we hear is that they want us to shut up and (in sff where they’re soft) “hurry up and die.”  Or in the rest of the world “be killed.”

Whence this recoil from opposing opinions, this desire to shut us up?

I have joked in the past that militant Islam with its demands that anyone who says anything about the prophet should be killed betrays a fundamental insecurity. Those of us who truly believe G-d exists don’t believe He needs US to defend His honor.

We figure if He’s really upset, He’ll take care of it in his own good time.

But this effect of having to defend something so much bigger than you that if you’re sure it exists, surely it doesn’t need YOUR efforts to defend it, seems to be an effect of theocracies, where people of not very strong beliefs are afraid of hearing opinions/ideas that contradict what they must believe in to remain in the fold and in the good with the society around them.

Hence, medieval Christianity and most of Islam today.

Hence, the left.

The progressive project that, in various forms, consumed most of the twentieth century, ran out of ideological justification with the fall of the Soviet Union and the transformation of China into… something more approaching Nazi Germany than the Communist Project.

This has taken the certainty from under the followers of the left. The smarter ones, surely, know their ideology is rubbish and there isn’t a working example of a top-down socialist/communist society in the world that is self-sustaining, let alone competes with the US in innovation and creation at any level.

Even the not so smart ones have to have an inkling. They can no longer point to the USSR and tell us if only we knew its wonders we’d convert.

Their leaders are old, their ideas are depleted. They, in the parlance of my kids generation “got nothing.”

So instead of real belief they have the desperate clutching at the appearance of belief and conformity, the appearance of being right.

They’ve done so much for the cause, most of these celebrities and ideologues, that to backtrack now would be unthinkable. They’d have to face themselves in the morning and realize that they supported causes and movements that killed a hundred million people worldwide and held far more in abject squalor.

They can’t do that. Courage was never their strong suit, otherwise they wouldn’t have gone along with the crowd after the fall of the USSR.

So they just want us to “shut up already” and “die” so that in their totalitarian version of reality no little voice shall mar their self image.

They are like MacBeth, trying to silence his conscience. They are in fact

“in blood

Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

Strange things I have in head, that will to hand,

Which must be acted ere they may be scanned.”

And our only hope is to keep speaking, to keep making them scan their strange things in head before they come to hand.

Because the other way is unthinkable.

Obama once said (after arresting a film maker for making a movie about Islam, which did not after all spark the murder of our ambassador) that the future must not belong to those who insult Islam.

On the contrary, Mr. President. Insofar as “insult” is questioning and pointing out contradictions and, yes, even joking, the future MUST belong to those who insult Islam, to those who insult Christianity, to those rare souls that bother insulting Hinduism and the other more exotic beliefs, and even to those who insult the Marxist religion of the left yay and verily, even its Global Warming branch.

That is because any belief, religious, scientific, economic, ANY BELIEF that would claim the allegiance of the whole of humanity must be tested and tested and tested. It must be able to withstand jokes and knocks and above all argument.

Remember at one time Aztec human sacrifice and Nazism commanded a large group of believers. This didn’t make them right.

It’s only hypocrites and cowards who demand the silence of others, afraid their own weakness be exposed and they’ll be forced to look at themselves in a true mirror and recoil in fear and error at what they see there.

If you think that saying “All Lives Matter” somehow diminishes the fact that black lives matter, you might have a chunk of Marx in your eye.  You might also be a stone cold racist.

Look, the way a Marxist explained it (I got it second hand) is that if you tell someone that your kid is having a really sh*tty time in school, and they say “all the kids are having a sh*tty time” you are somehow diminishing that parent’s experience.

Sure you are. IF the kid is having a particularly sh*tty time, in fact. For instance, when younger son was going through hell with no galoshes, if someone had said “all kids have a terrible time in that school” I’d have said “uh, not all, but you’re right, the school resembles a prison camp, and when I went to have lunch with him, I was appalled.”

I wouldn’t have said “you’re disrespecting my kid for saying that.”

And if in fact, the facts on the particular thing you were complaining about (say, you claim your kid is getting an extraordinary number of detentions) turns out to be not only false but also crazy cakes (no, statistically unarmed black people DO NOT get shot/killed more than unarmed white people, not even proportionately to their numbers in the population. Not that you’ll find that without looking very carefully at this point.) not only am I not disrespecting your kid, I’m telling you to loosen up the tinfoil hat.

I’m sure that Marxist — I don’t talk to him, because frankly 2020 is enough of a problem — would come back citing rates of single parenthood, rates of failing in school and statistics of employment.

And yeah, you can say that black people in America have a really rough deal in those respects. But — and this is very important — do they have a rough deal because no one gives a d*mn or because they’ve been the state’s particular pet project since the Great Society?  Because you know what? I’ve never seen the government actually do something to improve the lot of Americans or in fact anything outside its allotted duties in the constitution that doesn’t in fact result in the exact opposite of what they say it will. Examples? Oh, hell. Radio Free America is a source of anti-American propaganda. The department of education has resulted in generations of uneducated, barely literate children.  The department of energy seems hell bent on making sure that energy supply is irregular, fragile and expensive. The government’s space program, after a burst of some achievement now seems mostly devoted to keeping Americans out of space, at least Americans in their own bodies.  And–  Why go on?

In fact anything beyond protecting the borders (wouldn’t it be a great idea if they actually did THAT) and enforcing the law equally (Wouldn’t THAT be another great idea?) seems to be beyond the reach of the government. Mostly because government is force and it’s at its best when breaking things.

Yes, I know the racists of both sides (Joe Biden “Poor kids are as smart as white kids” Head desk.) will come and say that black people couldn’t achieve or find their way in society without help. I not only find that argument nauseating, I find it bitterly funny.

To the idiots who think that black people are genetically inferior I say that the diet in the poor parts of Africa influences IQ and that the culture distorts the whole thing further, and besides IQ doesn’t mean what you think it means.  Or as a friend who works in the field put it “We don’t know what IQ means, but it doesn’t mean what people think.”

Oh, you mean black people in America?  Yeah. genetically speaking, unless we’re talking about the children of very recent immigrants, the technical term for black people who are American is “Caucasian.”

As someone who was once not culturally American and who has acculturated, let me tell you that the way Americans identify races makes me think of the farside cartoon with the two penguins on the doors of the bathrooms and “only they can tell the difference.”

Not only could the Reverend Wright and Kamala Harris disappear into the general population in Portugal and not even be thought anything but white (not that Kamala Harris pings anyone’s radar as ‘African” or at least I hope not) but it would have shocked me 34 years ago if you told me I looked or could be identified as anything but white. However I recently found a 20 year old picture of myself (I’ll probably be using it for the Jane Austen fanfic pen name’s author page, once I figure out where Dan put the scanner after the office move.)  I’d never thought of myself as anything but white, even then, though people tend to identify me as Latin.  But I was wearing a perm at the time, and the picture is black and white.  And looking at it, I realized, if I saw it now, and didn’t know it was me, I’d assume it was a young black woman.  (Oh, I DO have black ancestry, according to 23 and me, though frankly the total changes back and forth. Probably enough I could claim to be black if I so wished. But it’s not something that would cross anyone’s mind in Portugal. Or here, when my hair is straight.)

As for the racists on the left side…. I was extremely shocked not so long ago when someone told me with a straight face that the government needed to hire black people even for make work jobs, because as technology became more advanced, all these people were going to be unemployed. I didn’t say “Say what?” though I should have.  I mean, seriously? Up until that moment I’d never thought that being able to tan killed brain cells.  Never mind.

Moving right along, it occurs to me that telling these people “All lives matter” is in fact inadequate.

If we’re talking about deaths-by-police, well, you know, it’s not a problem. And if it’s death in life by government, yes, black people have it worse than many — most? — in the US. But how is identifying them as a group and giving them more government loving “care” make things better?

And if its’ crazy cakes insanity like what Bully Lament and Murder as an organized movement do, such as demanding that people just hand things over in reparations?

That’s just the insanity induced by Marxism. And it would work as well as Marxist redistribution does. I.e. total immiseration of everyone.

You see, people aren’t classes. Or colors. or any external characteristic.

People are individuals. Which means whatever things affect them personally they affect THEM not everyone else who looks like them.

While you can make a lot of noises about the generational effects of slavery, let’s be brutally honest, even 100 years ago most people were traumatized in ways we weren’t and ways that would break our kids.  We don’t know how that affects family culture, or individual lives. We just don’t know.

We know in the long run — though it would shock most graduates of American high schools — we’re ALL no matter what color descended from slaves and slave masters, from cannibals and rapists, from the raped and the tortured. There are no universal winners in the human race, only temporarily “privileged” people, and that privilege is often less than it seems.

I recently watched some crazy person tell us that the ability to go the new world and colonize was white privilege.  Let’s look it over: you get in a vessel that will take months to get somewhere you’ve never been, leaving your entire family behind, every tie, every connection, and you get to wrestle a living out of unfamiliar soil  This is an endeavor that killed most people. But hey, privilege!

Then there are the ones who claim death camp survivors have white privilege, something that would make you cry if it weren’t so funny.  Also, nauseating.

One starts to think that “privilege” as defined by the left might be a Marxist mirage.

Anyway, the point is yeah, given horrible schools, broken neighborhoods, and the fact that social programs have destroyed family structure, it is true black people have a harder time in America.

Who was it — sorry, no memory for celebrities, but it’s a black man — who said the way to end racism is to stop talking about race. Just stop it. Stop trying to turn it on its head. Stop telling me — a first generation immigrant, married to a man whose family never owned slaves — that I owe reparations to some black immigrant — say Ilhan Omar — who arrived in America this generation and who — yeah, surely — has slave ancestors, but NOT HERE.

Stop telling women, for that matter, that they should humiliate and mistreat men because women were humiliated and mistreated in former generations.  Sure, some women — not all — were.  But I can guarantee they weren’t mistreated and humiliated by any man alive today.  If a man alive today mistreats women PUNISH HIM, not all males in general.  And anyone who thinks a man deserves what is coming to him because some distant ancestor might have been an abuser, let me point out women can be abusers and tyrants too, and that you undoubtedly also have a lot of those in your ancestry.  All of us are descended from sinners, criminals, saints and martyrs. Of both sexes. AND more importantly, none of us are our ancestors OF EITHER SEX, OF ANY COLOR, OF ANY CONDITION.

Humans are individuals. And individual lives MATTER.  They matter profoundly.  In fact, to other humans they are the most important thing in this world.

I don’t care who your ancestors were, if you tan or not, or if your nose if like mine or tiny and inconsequential like my husband’s. I don’t even care if like me and the boys you have Neanderthal brow ridges.

I care that you are Human (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) and your own person.

It is not the government’s or the culture’s job to punish you for the crimes of people who look vaguely like you, long ago or now.  And it is not the government’s job to compensate you for the oppression of people who look vaguely like you, long ago or now.

It is not the government’s job to decide your potential and give you pity jobs, or chain you to low performing schools, no matter what your color is.

The government’s job is to treat you equally with other individuals under the law, with no prejudice in either direction.

And the government’s job is to guarantee your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.  The later of which includes securing to you your property legally acquired, the fruit and sweat of your brow, and everything that gives life meaning.

Giving the government power to strip people of their property, either because they got in a stupid panic over a virus OR because they think they should hold you accountable for the crime of long dead people to whom you have no relation will only make sure that no lives matter.  Not mine, not yours, no matter what color the people living these lives are or think they are, or perhaps aspire to being.

Humans aren’t born responsible for the crimes of anyone but their own.

A system that punishes people for things they did not do is called INjustice. It has always been so. And you don’t create justice via injustice.

Stop lumping people in arbitrary groups and pitching them against each other in obedience to the system of a long dead and honestly very evil man.

Individual lives matter. They’re the only thing that matters. Let’s give people the freedom to live them to the fullest.

 

*For the previous chapters, please go here. These are posted first draft, as the brain dictates to the fingers which are remarkably stupid. Also there will be inconsistencies because until September or so, the timing on these is wonky, and I’ll forget stuff between posts. Eventually it will be cleaned up and fixed just before page is made secret/taken down and the book is published. At that time I will take lists of typos or volunteers to proof read. For now, it’s written in a hurry, usually an hour before it goes up. And, let me remind you, it’s free – SAH*

Problem And Path

Michael had never thought of swans as particularly sarcastic.  Which probably just went to show the limited understanding he had of poultry.  Because, though he could not understand what Geoff Blackley said in swan blerts, as he led Michael up the stairs and — by use of his beak — opened a closet door to reveal much male clothing of varying sizes, Michael was sure there were sarcastic comments along the lines of “Help yourself, why don’t you?”

The same in the bathroom whose ingenious construction fascinated Michael, as there was piped in hot water, whose temperature you could regulate with a turn of a dial, and Michael was sure the swan-trumpeting about that meant “The old geezer had a lot of time alone here and pleased himself by making the place comfortable.”

But it was only as Michael carrying a change of clothing stood by the bathtub and stared at the swan and before leaving the swan made a particularly trenchant trumpeting, that Michael though thought meant “Right, I’ll leave. It’s not like I want to see you naked, bucko,” that he was absolutely sure that swan had a sarcastic turn of phrase.

After Geoff left the bathroom, Michael washed.  The warm water on demand, and as much as he wanted, without having to worry about putting the servants out by making them carry endless buckets was an amazing convenience.  Particularly as the first tubfull was gritty with glass particles from Michael’s hair.

He wondered if Seraphim had got home, and what he’d found after the Gather had broken his window and stolen his brother.  He knew that Tristam Blackley had said that he was in a place impossible to find, but between Michael’s brothers, surely they would find him.

Then he sighed, because that was probably true, but it also meant that once more Michael would be rescued, and once more reveal himself the helpless younger brother who had to be rescued, yet again.

He wondered what had possessed Tristan to send the Gather to get him.  Surely he knew it would bring retribution from two very powerful men.

On the other hand, considering the magician’s position, isolated and and with his sons’ missing, one by one, perhaps he was desperate enough not to care?

When he finally felt clean and dried himself on a towel also magically kept warm,  and dressed in the really good quality but grey and rather bland clothes, Michael wondered how the clothes had got here. Had they been magicked in? He doubted that. He had some idea of what it took to magic objects past the betweener.  He could just about believe a Gather, but anything else, particularly the parts to make the elaborate water piping or the material for these clothes…. no.

He had to talk to Tristan Blackley. He must be a transmuter of no common skill.

It was only when fully dressed that it occurred to him he’d taken an untoward amount of time, and that surely he was being ungallant. he should have let Albinia wash first.

He hurried out the bathroom and almost collided with Albinia, looking much as she had in the drawing room of The Darkwater town home: her hair properly dressed, and wearing a dark green dress.

He stopped, and felt once more afflicted with not knowing what to say or how to say it.  So instead of speaking he cleared his throat, twice, finally managing to say in a voice not quite his own, “Oh I see you already bathed. I didn’t know there was another bath.”

She smiled a little. It was amazing how being washed and in fresh clothes made her look so grown up, like she knew more than a mere girl, like she was some ancient and powerful entity.  “They have three other baths, here. Remember for some time there were eight people living here.  It is more than a simple cottage.”

“So I perceive,” Michael said, and could kick himself for how stupid and supercilious he sounded. To make things worse, a divine smell of fresh-cooked food seemed to surround them, and his stomach growled most embarrassingly.

And almost immediately Tristan’s voice echoed up the stairs, “Dinner time, milord, and miss.”

And like that, on cue, the swan appeared, making a sound that could only be interpreted as “come on you ninnies.”

Albinia gave Michael an embarrassed smile and blushed under her freckles, which made him feel slightly better, as they followed the swan who moved at a pace just a little too fast for comfort.

He took them down the stairs, but instead of staying in the deceptively simple entrance room, they veered down a corridor, and into an ornate dining room, where Tristan sat at the head of the table, and three chairs slid back to allow them to sit. Well, Geoff simply jumped up on the chair, in front of a plate piled high with some sort of soft food that looked like meat with chopped greens.

“When I first got confined here,” Tristan said, conversationally. “There was only the front room, but I amused myself by adding to the house.  For about ten years, there was nothing else I could do, really.  So I had my fun.  And then once the boys joined me… Well, I did what I could to make this a civilized inhabitation for the Blakley family.

He looked at Al, “I see you made something feminine out of the provided clothes. Not a mean feat madam.”

It was quite a compliment from Tristan Blackley, and yet Michael found himself wondering at that “Madam.”  Like calling her “Whelp” in the letter, it was a very strange way for a father to refer to his daughter. Or to speak to her.  He supposed there was no love lost between Blackley and Albinia’s mother, but really.  Then again, it seemed to him, Blakley must be a very strange man.

As they sat, plates circulated, unseen, appearing at their side, as though being presented by accomplished servers.  There were cauliflower patties, and lobster, and some kind of roast fowl which made Michael look askance towards Geoff, wondering if he’d take offense. Not that there was any logical reason he should. It wasn’t as though he were naturally a fowl after all. Just an enchantment.

“It is a very ingenious setup you have here, sir,” Michael said, trying to break the ice.  “The kitchens, like the bath, I presume, run by magic.  I would at some time like to discuss what spells you used and how.  But–” He took a deep breath.  “I’d like to know how you got the smog Gather past the in betweener–”

“What?” Tristam had been eating steadily, with manners but with what was obviously a great appetite.  Michael supposed the transformation to and from wolf took a lot of energy. It normally did.  Even when not voluntary. it was a great magic.  But at Michael’s mention of the Gather, he stopped abruptly and let out that startled “What?”

He set his knife and fork down.  “Young man, the Gather was no magic of mine. I’d not kidnap someone much as I need rescue, and I know your family is not one to trifle with.”  He paused.  “I merely sensed it, and controlled it to come here, instead of taking you back to my Lady wife.”

“But the In Betweener…”

“It’s the nature of this …. prison of mine,” he said.  “Not as difficult as you’d think to pull things here.  It’s not a full fledged universe you know? just a pocket one, existing within a few square miles. That’s how I built it.”

“Sir, I don’t understand.”

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ONE NOTE: IF YOU SEND ME PROMO AND IT DOESN’T SHOW UP IN THE NEXT POST, PLEASE PING ME BY ANOTHER MEANS.  I JUST FOUND THREE BOOKS IN JUNK, ONE 3 WEEKS OLD.

Since some of you — apparently — missed the announcement: I write Austen fanfic under Alyx Silver (or at least that’s the nom de publication.)  This one was the first one I wrote, though not the first one I published under that name.  Most other ones aren’t completely insane. This one, I’m afraid, IS.  (And yes, I’ll get it out in paper soon.)

FROM ALYX SILVER:   What if He Were to Pick Me: A Pride And Prejudice Variation With A Dash of Insanity.

What if Mr. Darcy, trying to avoid the appearance of being lofty and proud, so far mistook himself as to be charmed by Lydia Bennet?
How long could the fair strumpet lady hold his interest? How would Elizabeth Bennet feel about it?
As all the Bennet sisters fall into the strangest of relationships, you’ll fear you lost your mind. But you haven’t. Just grab your sweetie and a whip – in case of unruly pillows – and hire a Bennet coach to Gretna Green. They have the best carriages, and guarantee no one will catch you.
Then hold on to your hat. You’re in for the ride of your life.

 

FROM JERRY STRATTON:  The Dream of Poor Bazin: A Novel.

“All for One and One for All.” When Stephen Price Blair’s letter of introduction to White House Press Secretary Bobby Trevor is stolen by a mysterious Senator, he vows revenge against the most powerful people in DC. He risks his life, and his reputation as a journalist, to protect the President and Vice President from the plots of House Speaker Janet Richardson, and duels the Speaker’s journalists to advance the cause of beltway bipartisanship.

FROM CHROME OXIDE:  28 Minutes Into The Future.

 

Was there ever a time when the world needed to laugh more than it does right now? Thankfully, the cavalry has arrived. Nine rib-tickling, irreverent short stories take aim at political correctness and blow it to smithereens—in a hail of hilarity.”I found myself laughing with his tale[s] over and over.”—David Farland, New York Times Bestselling Author; and Coordinating Judge of the Writers of the Future contest”…entertainment pure and simple… a welcome breath of fresh air in an increasingly stuffy room…” —Dave Truesdale, Editor, Tangent Online”It’s terribly hard to write political commentary with such a strong sense of irony.”—The late, great Jerry Pournelle, John W. Campbell Award, Prometheus Award, Seiun Award, Heinlein Society Award,National Space Society’s Heinlein.

FROM BENJAMIN TYLER SMITH:   Blue Crucible.

The end came fast for Lieutenant Nathan Ward. One moment he was participating in an international convention of mounted police officers, the next he was in a command bunker watching the world’s two biggest Corporations—Obsidian and Teledyne—destroy it in an exchange of nuclear hellfire.

While Columbia, Missouri was spared a direct strike, a near-miss EMP fried most of the vehicles and the electrical grid. Then the Corporations started a shooting war in the streets, and they didn’t care who got caught in the crossfire. But Columbia was one of the last cities still standing, and Nathan and his fellow officers weren’t going to give it up. Even if it meant facing the worst the Corporate militaries could throw at them.

The Corporations had no intention of giving up the city, either, and Obsidian called in reinforcements to match Teledyne’s Specialist, a woman with the power to defeat a company of soldiers all on her own. Both Corporations intended to reign supreme and were willing to crush anyone who got in their way. In the post-apocalyptic world, there was only one law—theirs—and not the one with a badge.

The world may have fallen, but the Thin Blue Line’s battle is only beginning.

FROM ALLENE R. LOWREY:  Einarr and the Demon Fleet (The Adventures of Einarr Stigandersen Book 4).

FROM MARY CATELLI:  Winter’s Curse.

Who but a fool would linger after Zavrien laid his curse? Ill luck can kill — and all the more in Zavrien’s enchanted, endless winter, haunted with ice giants and frost fairies.

When the soldier Gareth is cursed, the young wizard Perriel learns how dangerous lingering can be.

But she can hold out a sliver of hope for breaking the curse — if it doesn’t break them first.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN:  Familiar Vows: Familiar Tales Book Fourteen.

From Familiars who horn in on their new mages to a quiet night with Master Saldovado and a sorceress with a single spell, nothing’s quite what it seems in this Familiar world.

Lelia and André just want a quiet wedding celebration, but his family seems determined to add excitement to things. Mike comes home to Riverton on leave and backs into an old problem. Eugene Moorehouse fixes a fence under closer supervision than he’d planned. And Martin and Chester discover that sometimes, a mage in need is a mage indeed.

Six short stories in the Familiar Tales universe.

 

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: CAT.

I’m going to postpone chapter till tomorrow. I’m going over the previous chapters and making a bible and making sure I have everything pointing the same place.  This book has been so broken up, I’m afraid it’s a mess.

As with Obama, I’ve been confused over whether Polis problem was malice or sheer stupidity.

It turns out it’s stupidity.  No, seriously.

This dumb bunny has us all locked down and has now demanded we all wear masks or stay home because he believes a model that’s even more stupid than the one from England.

While the United States and rest of the world panicked in response to a widely followed — subsequently discredited — Imperial College London report predicting 2.2 million U.S. deaths if we did nothing, Colorado’s modelers, led by Dean Jonathan Samet of the Colorado School of Public Health, determined that 2.2 million dead was too low. Samet and his team created a report for Polis on April 6 that showed Colorado’s no-mitigation fatalities would be above 80,000. Applying their simulated death figures to the entire United States would mean 4.5 million Americans would die from COVID-19.

On several occasions, Polis has presented Samet’s modeling as the basis for his decisions regarding restrictions. Samet also appeared along with Polis at the governor’s press conference on July 9, where Polis referred to Samet as “Colorado’s Dr. Fauci” and his model as “informing state decisions.”

Look at that date. This dumb bunny actually believes this bullshit, even though the Imperial College model has been COMPLETELY discredited and proven insane.

Read that article. It’s amazing that Polis can manage to walk and talk at the same time, and since he’s made it impossible for him to be recalled during the “emergency” it’s time someone started a change.org petition to force him to wear a red nose at all times.  At that, it would be an insult to clowns.

We’d be better served if this arrant idiot took his clues from chicken entrails. As for the Colorado School of Public health, these people are obviously computer illiterate, innumerate, and unable to count their own toes twice in a row and get the same number.

As for business leaders and churches in Colorado: You’re going to go along with this buffoon and his Rasputin?

At least the idiots who pretended to believe Hitler’s theories had the excuse that they weren’t — not even the hollow Earth one — as fricken in your face dumb as this.  When you follow the orders of this mentally deficient, paste eating, cargo cult governor, do be aware of what happened to those who followed Hitler’s orders.

Does Colorado have a proviso for removing mentally incompetent governors? If not why not?

Let’s make this very clear: this complete arrant idiot is keeping people locked in their houses, only able to go out — even outside — while wearing face diapers that spread disease. He’s destroying the economy of Colorado. Because he apparently believes ALL stupid theories over his own lying eyes, he’s turning Denver into the Mile-Hi San Francisco, with homeless making the streets unsafe.

And he’s doing all this because he’s dumber than your common, average potato.

To clarify further: COLORADO NEWS STATIONS AND NEWSPAPERS KNOW THIS. They know it’s stupid to the level of eating your own feces. I know they know it, because I had to find out what this idiot was doing from the Federalist.  News sources in Colorado have buried this moron’s idiotic faith in a ridiculous computer model that can be discredited by anyone with two brain cells and a knowledge of Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Their complicity has been noted.

As for businesses and churches: IF you want to survive, it’s time to break out of jail. If you want to be polite about it, first inform Governor GIGO that he’s a moron, (Yes, you’d think he’d know it, but you know…. too stupid to.)  And send a letter to that School of Public Health and tell them they’re fired. The taxpayers of Colorado could more advantageously bring in a Voodoo priest to do chicken sacrifices on their behalf. He’d probably be cheaper, too.

Because this arrant insane clown and his posse are going to keep kneeling on Colorado’s neck till the economy collapses and real estate with it.  They’re going to stare, gold-fish-like into the depths of their self-confirming reality-ignoring program and tell us we’re all going to diiiiiiiiie if they don’t further curtail our lives, our liberties and our pursuit of happiness.

And — wait for it — this clown-shoes fascist thinks he’s safe because he’s made it impossible for us to recall him and thanks to fraud by mail knows he can manufacture enough votes to stay in power.

He thinks — honest to bog — that this makes him SAFE.

I probably shouldn’t be surprised. Apparently computers are just the tip of his ignorance. He’s obviously also never studied history.  Has anyone made sure that he can READ? Because at this point I kind of doubt it.

Hey, Polis, you clown-shoes brain damaged moron: snap out of your cargo-cult faith in a risible computer model and stop killing my state.

The only people even dumber than you in this state are the media who hide your idiocy and the church, business and cultural institution leaders who have somehow failed to notice you only have two functional brain cells in your head, one of which is devoted to power seeking, and one to believing the most bizarre nonsense.

The rest of us aren’t that stupid. We’re just being kept in the dark.

You won’t like us when we’re angry.

*Before I turn this over to DGM — who is talking about stuff my kids talk about but I don’t get at all (it’s not even age. I’m not a visual person. I feel the same bewilderment when husband goes on about movie actors. Mostly I read and write. Blame it on early training.  — let me explain he wrote this not only before Greebo died, but when I had no idea he’d leave us this soon. The emails have just made it impossible for me to get this post till now.  I told him to leave the references in, I figure the fuzzy buzzy would have enjoyed it.  Turns out his editorial enforcer is Havelock who, if you don’t write, licks your fingers with his sand paper tongue while shedding enough to make you die of asthma, so…. it’s not what we expected, but it’s not wrong. – SAH*

Let’s Play Promo – by DGM

Being somewhat overwhelmed by life recently, our beloved hostess has sent out the call for guest posts.  And so I find myself writing one for reasons that have nothing to do with Greebo the Editor and his hired leg-breakers (as said leg-breakers have instructed me to assure you).  So I’ve decided to do a variant on the Sunday book recommendation threads, but with let’s plays instead of books.

For those who don’t know, a let’s play is an art form in which you record or write about your experience playing a game for an audience.  They can range from dramatic to comedic to purely analytical.  Some even involve audience participation.  As with all art forms Sturgeon’s Law applies, but there are some good ones and – as someone who’s read a fair number of LPs – I can point you to some of them.

 

 

I’ll start with someone whose work I think will be of particular interest to this crowd.  He goes by Nweismuller and is a long-running LPer over at the Something Awful forums.  There are two reasons I think you’ll like him.

First, he’s what people here would consider a Human Wave writer.  He specializes in a genre of games known as 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) in which you control one of several factions and gradually build up an empire.  While the SA crowd often goes for chaos, silliness and outright evil for the lulz, Nweismuller runs his empires with an eye towards achieving peace, prosperity and individual liberty for his people.

Second, he has a very strong focus on lore and world-building.  He’ll take whatever elements the game provides and build on them, turning what might normally be a dry play-through into an epic, detailed story of a civilization’s rise.  He’s also very heavy into audience participation; not only do the readers get to make major policy decisions for him as he plays, but they’ll often spontaneously create and role-play characters whose actions sometimes even get incorporated into the LP.

The links for his LPs go to a database for completed SA lets plays, which are free to read.  These entries also include links to the original threads in which the LP took place, but you’ll need an SA forums account with the archives access upgrade to read those.  As of this writing it’s $9.95 for a basic account and the same again for the archives upgrade, so it’s not cheap.  But it’s a lifetime membership and there’s plenty to read there in just the gaming sub-forums alone.  And the Nweismuller threads might be of interest as there’s a lot of roleplaying and humor from the readers that doesn’t always make it into the LP proper.

But enough of that.  On to the games!

 

 

SID MEIER’S ALPHA CENTAURI

 

BACKSTORY: In the year 2060, the Unity – mankind’s first starship – leaves Earth bound for the Alpha Centauri system.  It’s mission: to deliver sleeping colonists to the planet Chiron.  But as the ship nears its destination 40 years later a malfunction forces the premature revival of the crew, leaving them trapped on a ship that was never meant to hold them all while awake.

Overcrowding is rampant and supplies are dwindling.  The captain is assassinated by an unknown party and the crew fractures into 7 opposing factions, divided along ideological lines.  There is no signal from Earth, suggesting not only disaster back home but that the colonists might even be the last humans left alive.  Worst of all, the damaged ship is locked on a collision course with Chiron and is doomed to break up in atmosphere.

Desperate to avoid extinction, the leaders come together and strike an uneasy truce.  Each faction will take one of the Unity’s landing vehicles and a share of the remaining supplies and make their own way down to the surface, to govern themselves as they see fit.  The colonists survive Planetfall but find that their troubles are only just beginning; Chiron is nothing like what they expected and there’s far more to its hostile, alien ecosystem than meets the eye…

LP NOTES: Nweismuller plays as Morgan Industries, a faction dedicated to free market economics and prosperity.  If you only read one of his LPs, I recommend this one.  Same goes if you decide to only read one of the original threads.

Here’s a video with the intro cutscene followed by a short piece of character-establishing dialogue for each of the seven faction leaders (plus a guy reciting a poem for some reason): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZxKDaOBMKc

And here’s the LP itself, with a link to the original thread near the top of the page: https://lparchive.org/Sid-Meiers-Alpha-Centauri-(by-nweismuller)/

 

MASTER OF ORION 2

 

BACKSTORY: Long ago, two races – the Orions and the Antarans – dominated the galaxy and made war on each other.  So advanced was their technology that it is said they hurled entire star systems as weapons.  In the end the Orions won and banished the surviving Antarans to a pocket dimension, where perhaps they live still and scheme to return.  But sometime afterwards the Orions themselves disappeared for reasons unknown.  They left behind nothing but their homeworld and a mighty, unmanned warship known only as the Guardian to protect its riches.

Aeons later, a new set of younger races have begun to reach the stars.  One of them is yours…

LP NOTES: Nweismuller plays as the humans, who have the Charismatic advantage and a representative democracy.  This makes them good at science, wealth production, diplomacy and assimilation of conquered populations (yeah, I know), although it does mean they’re weak against espionage and can’t just annihilate the people they conquer.

They also have Sean Connery as their chief scientist for some reason.  Don’t ask, I don’t know either.  It’s just there.

The LP is here: https://lparchive.org/Master-of-Orion-2-(by-nweismuller)/

He has a second MOO 2 LP in the database if you want to look it up, but this is the better one in my opinion.

 

MASTER OF MAGIC

 

BACKSTORY: Welcome to the parallel worlds of Arcanus and Myrror, where you are a fledgling wizard-king with the potential to become the greatest wielder of magic of all time.  Of course, you’re not the only one.  Others are competing with you to not only expand their own kingdoms but to discover the Spell of Mastery, which will give its caster total control over magic itself and render all others helpless before them.  With nothing less than living godhood at stake, don’t expect your rivals to play fair…

LP NOTES: Nweismuller plays as Queen Dagmaer Flodmarsdottir (a character he made up himself), a specialist in life/holy magic and ruler of the industrious dwarven race.

The LP is here: https://lparchive.org/Master-of-Magic/

 

 

Moving on, let’s turn to comedy for a bit and look at another LPer: Tom Francis.  Tom is a former game journalist who eventually turned game designer.  If you’ve ever heard of Gunpoint or Heat Signature, he’s the guy behind those.  He’s currently making a game called Tactical Breach Wizards.

Many years back he did two LPs for a game called Galactic Civilizations 2.  It’s a bit like MOO 2 in that it’s a space-based 4X game, but not having played it I can’t say much more about it.  But his LPs for it both become somewhat famous, and deservedly so.  In the first he plays a race of vicious, warmongering bunny rabbits who utterly fail at conquest and have to research their way out like good little nerds.  In the second he plays a race of pacifist rabbits who end up slaughtering half the galaxy.

 

Yeah, it’s as weird as it is entertaining.  But then, so is Tom.  I can’t help but think he’d fit right in here.

 

The first LP is easy to provide, as it’s all right here: https://www.pcgamer.com/tag/galactic-civilizations-2-diary/

The second is a bit trickier.  The original copy of the LP is gone but I’ve found a text-only copy on a site called Pastebin.  The images seem to be lost permanently, but you don’t really need them.  Interestingly, it seems there was also a book version that went out free with an old issue of PC Gamer.  It’s listed on Goodreads, but none of the online stores they link to seems to have it.  I’ve no idea where you could find a copy now.

Here’s the online, text-only version: https://pastebin.com/VAmetaDf

And here’s the Goodreads page, in case anyone wants to take a stab at finding a hard copy: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18067822-galactic-civilizations-ii

 

 

Anyway, that should be enough to keep you entertai- hang on, Greebo is insisting that I pad this out a bit more.  I want to tell him no but I just don’t have it in me; I never could resist a cat, especially when he’s menacing me with a switchblade.  I think it’s the eyes that just melt my heart.

Fine.  I’ll give an honorable mention to Chokes Mcgee and his let’s play of the original Wizardry.  Chokes is another Something Awful regular who focuses on CRPGs (computer role-playing games) and extremely oddball adventuring parties.  Wizardry 1 is an old game that helped father the CRPG genre, and it’s not a game you’d expect Lincoln Sternn and company to wander through.

Yes, THAT Sternn: the comedically corrupt space captain from Heavy Metal.  Wizardry is one of those games that lets you create your own adventuring party and Wizardry + Sternn is not a combination I would ever have expected to see.  This LP gets the honorable mention for the sheer weirdness of the concept.  You can find it here here: https://lparchive.org/Wizardry-Proving-Grounds-of-the-Mad-Overlord/

While I’m at it – and by that I mean “while Greebo is still glaring at me impatiently” – here’s a quick rundown of other notable CRPG LPs by Chokes in case you want more:

He has one for the first Final Fantasy Legend game for the original Gameboy.  It’s a heartwarming tale of a ragtag bunch of misfits banding together, climbing a strange tower that connects multiple dimensions and murdering God with a chainsaw.  It’s here: https://lparchive.org/Final-Fantasy-Legend-(by-Chokes-McGee)/

He also did the second Final Fantasy Legend game (also for the Gameboy).  It involves another group of misfits climbing a tower-like thing that connects dimensions, because apparently the multiverse is just lousy with those.  There’s less power tool-assisted deicide in this one, but there’s a robot and a murder-happy valley girl if you’re into that sort of thing.  And if you are into that, I probably don’t want to know why.  Here’s the link: https://lparchive.org/Final-Fantasy-Legend-II/

He also LPed Paper Sorcerer, which is actually a more modern game that’s sort of a love letter to old-school CRPGs (Wizardry 4 in particular).  You play an evil sorcerer who got captured and imprisoned inside a magic book and is trying to escape with the help of summoned minions.  One of said minions is even a minotaur, although his personality is nothing like our Orvan’s.  Sadly, Chokes didn’t actually finish this one, which is a shame as I think it was his best one so far.  But it went on long enough that it’s still worth reading.  Since it wasn’t finished it wasn’t put in the database, so you can only get it by reading the original thread (which requires an SA account with the archive upgrade).  But if you have access you can find it here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3763641

Finally, he’s got a currently-ongoing LP of several of SSI’s Gold Box games for the Advanced Dungeons and Dragon system.  The twist is that instead of making yet another weird party he’s shanghaied characters from his previous LPs (though you don’t need to have read them all to appreciate it).  Since this one’s still ongoing (as of this writing, at least) it’s not in the free database yet, but you’ll only need a basic SA account if you want to read it (or even participate in it).  The thread for it is here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3899403

 

 

…Okay, is THAT enough?

 

Good.  They’re finally letting me go so that will be all for now.  That turned out way longer than I expected, but I guess that’s what happens when you’ve got Greebo’s Editorial Mafia breathing down your neck and demanding content.  Please be sure to let Greebo know how much you hated this whole idea and never want to hear from me again so I don’t get another visit from him.

So, who had “Atlantis rises” on their 2020 bingo card?

No, no. Sit. Don’t go scouring news sites. That I know of, it hasn’t happened yet. But would anyone really be surprised?  How many of us have gotten used to shaking our heads and going “D*mn it, 2020.”

I mean there have been other years that had certain trends before 2016 was a stone cold killer, probably due to the fact that a lot of celebrities hit their terminus at around the same time. (Even the ones of different ages might have done the same drugs. Who knows?)

But 2020?  We just don’t know what to expect next, and certain government agencies proclaiming things like machines originating in other worlds isn’t helping.

However, the truth is that most of us — if we’re honest — saw a lot of 2020 coming.  Some of it was like a nightmare — I’ve been having a lot of what I call filthy nightmares (the kind you wake up from asking yourself what possessed you, perhaps literally — where you see the disaster coming, but you can do nothing to stop it.

I mean, we knew this would be an election year, so we knew things were going to go completely pants-on-head insane.

But I doubt many of us saw “entire country put under arrest for months over a virus that ultimately is perhaps as bad as a bad flu.”

The problem is this: We should have seen it coming.

Why should we have seen it coming?

Well, decades of apocalyptic fiction centering around viruses. General lack of science knowledge or understanding. A fetish of safety.

All of them coordinated with the press’s need to destroy the country’s economy in order to win an election for their leftist (and Chinese) masters, to create the perfect storm.  The fact that they are convincing people to wear what they’re told, eat what they’re told, and only interact in approved ways is just a bonus (for the left.)

In retrospect, we should have seen it coming, but of course we didn’t because it seemed completely incredible. Last year, you couldn’t have sold a story with this plot. Even the craziest of small presses (and I’ve worked for some of those, off and on) would laugh in your face at such a ridiculous idea.

And yet here we are. And hindsight is 2020, which is why it sucks.

However, we’re not leftists.  Leftists suffer from a curious tunnel vision which means they believe whatever they intend to result from something is what will result. Nothing more, nothing less.

We’re not like that.  And even though we know looking forward is difficult, there are things we can predict now that we’re here:

Publishing, education, entertainment in general is in trouble.

They were in trouble for decades, to be honest.  But this entire insanity has dealt them a much more severe blow than they would otherwise have suffered.  I expect those industries to hemorrhage jobs, not over the next decade, but over the next year or two.

As for the news…  Well, I’ve been waiting for people to stop believing them for twenty years now.  And to some extent it seems to have happened.  Otherwise 2016 would not have turned out the way it did.

But have they turned away enough?  Well, obviously not, since people think that 10% of Americans have died of Winnie the Flu.

So–

So, I think — believe — this is because people had learned not to pay any attention to the news when it came to politics, or international politics, or any of that. They had learned that the news lied in the service of the left.  They simply hadn’t processed that they would lie about something as seemingly non-political as a disease.

They’ve been used for years to, to some extent, believe warnings about the weather, or about flu epidemics in their area.  So it was easy to believe in this too.

I think — expect — what happens, as the massive hoax (not the virus but its lethality and the need for drastic measures are definitely hoaxes) is exposed — and it will be, though I expect not fast — the MSM will lose the last shred of its respectability. Whether that’s before or after most of the stations collapse, I won’t venture to guess.

And yeah, most of us know now that a lot of people are simply not going back to offices after this, not even if their job remains more or less intact.  One thing this has put paid to is the age old belief that people work better all together and in a regimented environment.

Now, I don’t expect everyone will want to work from home.  I know people who are gregarious and prefer offices. And people who have kids and no privacy.

However, I expect that the “default expectation” will flip from “everyone drives to work” to “people work at home, unless…”

The thing that’s bothering me though, is this:

I can see all these changes coming.  Most of them, however, amount to things dying.  And even if they were leftist dominated, all of them dying at the same time is a heck of a change.

All of them dying before “what comes next” is fully ready.

What comes next, when movies die?  What comes next, when colleges die?

My guess is things step in and step up and fast.  Because there are embryonic things underway for everything that will collapse in the next couple of years.

And after all, we’re American. The future comes from America for a reason.

BUT that is what REALLY worries me.  What’s at the back — I’m sure — of those filthy nightmares:

Are we still Americans? Will we be allowed to be?

The one thing that changed fundamentally in 2020 is our assumption that if you start a business, pour your heart and soul into it, damage your health to work enough to keep it alive, you will — most of the time, and barring freakish occurrences — be allowed to reap any benefits from it.  Whether those benefits are making a modicum of money or becoming filthy rich, you have some control over the business.

But in 2020 our government, for no good reason, forced most small businesses in America out of business, and destroyed what, in some cases, took lifetimes to build.

Can we trust they won’t do it again?

How?

As the elections approach, I urge you to consider that.  Because without confidence in private property and the freedom to pursue happiness?  The destruction will be permanent and nothing will emerge to replace what collapses.  We might as well be North Korea, where the whims of the leader make you or break you.

Think about it.  Then vote accordingly.

A republic. If you CAN keep it.

Covid – by Galaxy Jane

As a medical provider (PA-C with ten years of practice and a focus in Adult Primary Care and Occupational Medicine) who was recently the poster child for physically fit, middle-aged adult with zero co-morbidities hospitalized with a severe COVID-19 infection, I’ve been given an unusual perspective on the disease process from the inside with lots of good colleague conversation and education from the doctors, respiratory therapists, nurses and others that have been on the front lines of the pandemic during the course of my stay. I came out of it with a strong desire to counteract the constant media fear-mongering by demystifying a highly-predictable disease process and help people understand what they may experience if they fall ill and some of the progress we’re making with treatments.

I’d also like to offer some practical tips that can help you make the best recovery possible.  We are almost certainly going to be living with this disease for a while and I think greater understanding can help us be appropriately cautious but less fearful as we go about our lives during this outbreak.

Nothing said herein should substitute for medical advice and care from your primary care provider or other medical specialist. I would also note that treatment protocols will continue to change as more data comes in, so any comments about current treatments is a snapshot in time reflecting practices in a specific East Coast hospital in mid-July 2020. All remain in stage 3 clinical trials, so are being implemented under experimental/compassionate use.

COVID-19 is a three-stage disease, following a predictable pattern and course over time. Each stage lasts approximately one week. Most people will not experience all three stages.

The first stage is the Viral Stage. These are your asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic people, who may never realize they had COVID-19. Symptoms are generally non-specific and include sore throat, low grade fever, post nasal drip, generalized aches and pains, nausea or diarrhea. The symptoms of this stage that are most specifically associated with COVID-19 are a fever higher than 100.3 F (38 C), and profound loss of the sense of smell and taste. Approximately 80% of those infected will not progress beyond this stage and will recover in approximately one week without further health issues.

The second stage is the Respiratory Stage. This is when cough develops, usually after about a week of non-specific illness, although it can be the initial symptom noted. The cough is usually dry and hacking, but can sometimes be productive. For most people who enter this stage, this is as far as the disease will progress and cough will remain mild. Mild disease simply means that you have good oxygen exchange on room air (i.e. without supplemental oxygen) and can range anywhere from a slight dry cough through mild viral pneumonia without respiratory compromise.  So you can be quite uncomfortable while still being “mildly ill”.  Most people who enter this stage will continue to be able to care for themselves at home and will make a full recovery without lasting side-effects.

The important thing about this stage is that this is where things may take a bad turn and if they do it will most typically happen around day 8-10 from the original onset of symptoms. This is the time to be extra scrupulous about monitoring your symptoms for worsening shortness of breath, chest pain, and to use a home pulse oximetry device (a small tool that clips to the end of your finger and measures the percentage of oxygen in your blood)  if you have access to one. Worsening symptoms or a sudden drop in oxygen levels should prompt you to seek immediate care through your local hospital emergency room.

If you require admission to the hospital during this stage, you may be treated with a steroid called dexamethasone that has been shown in European trials to significantly reduce the risk of death and may also prevent future complications by reducing inflammation in the body. If the latter is borne out over time, this is going to be the real game changer. Preventing deaths is important, but preventing lung, heart, and other organ damage in the survivors will affect more lives long-term. Fortunately, dexamethasone is also cheap as chips and readily available. If you are sick enough to require supplemental oxygen, you could also be treated with something called convalescent plasma, which is an antibody rich blood product from a recently recovered patient, that can help directly fight the virus.

The respiratory stage also lasts approximately one week and most people who enter this stage will recover about day 14 without any additional care. This is what they mean in the media when you hear that people with mild disease will fully recover by about 2 weeks.

The third stage is the inflammatory stage. Entering this stage is rare but very dangerous. This is the stage where inflammatory markers rapidly increase causing blood clots in small vessels throughout the body and other sorts of lung, heart, blood vessel and other organ damage if not controlled. This is also the stage where patients develop ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) due to damage to small vessels and alveoli in the lungs and may require intubation and ventilatory support. If this becomes necessary, outcomes are generally poor with both high mortality and lung damage in survivors.

If you enter this stage you may be treated with an anti-viral drug called remdesivir if it was not started earlier for decompensation (worsening ability to for the lungs to take in oxygen) during the respiratory phase. In an ideal world, we would start this medication even earlier, even before dexamethasone, but high cost and limited availability means that it is currently being reserved here for the sickest patients. It is given IV over five days (sometimes extended to ten), so if you are put on this medication you will have to stay in the hospital for the full course of treatment.

This stage also usually lasts about one week and is what is meant in the media when they say that severe cases usually resolve in a total of three weeks (although recovery in critically ill patients may be protracted). Even here most folks will recover, albeit possibly not without high level medical care and long-term health effects.

My own illness followed this pattern slavishly. For the first eight days, I still felt perfectly well and healthy, despite some mild aches and pains, nausea and the inability to smell or taste (which both sucks and is really, really, weird). Day nine, I developed a pertussis like cough which worsened rapidly over the next two days, but as my oxygen levels remained normal I continued to care for myself at home. Day twelve, I woke up feeling “not right” although not short of breath per se and when I used my pulse oximeter, discovered that my oxygen levels had dropped quite low overnight (normal is 95% or greater, mine was 88%), prompting an immediate trip to the local ER from where I was admitted.

According to my in-hospital pulmonologist, I presented right on the line between the second and third stages. I was developing respiratory decompensation, but while my inflammatory markers were high and rising, I was not yet to the point of irreversible inflammatory cascade. I received my first dose of dexamethasone upon admission and within twelve hours my markers were trending back towards normal. While my respiratory status did continue to worsen  and my oxygen requirements increased steadily over the first 36 hours of my hospitalization, the second night saw the beginning of rapid improvement in lung function and I was able to be released home without oxygen on hospital day four (day sixteen of my illness) to complete my dexamethasone treatment there while I recovered. By day twenty-one my cough had resolved and my lung capacity had returned to near-normal although I was still somewhat short of breath and extremely fatigued (also crazy from the steroids).

I’m now five weeks from my first symptoms, my chest x-ray has returned to normal and I started running and weight training again last week. While it will be a little longer before I am all the way back to my previous fitness level, I can say with some confidence that I am fully recovered and my PCP has no worries about long-term health effects because I turned the corner before I showed any signs of organ damage.

Very few COVID-19 patients are requiring ICU treatment here in East Coast City now, because slowing things down back in March and April not only succeeded in keeping the system from ever being overwhelmed, but it has allowed time for treatments to be developed and deployed so local patients are now pretty evenly spread between the Medical/Surgical ward (this is a general hospital ward, basically where you go for observation to ensure you are stable), the Intermediate care or Step-Down unit (so called because it is a “step down” from the ICU and is for people like me who need closer monitoring and telemetry, but do not require critical care nursing) and the ICU/CCU (An Intensive Care or Critical Care Unit, for patients who require close round the clock monitoring. This is also where any ventilator patients will be).

About 2/3 of those admitted here now are not getting sick enough to reach the need for ICU/CCU. They are also admitting patients now for observation that would have been sent home to care for themselves earlier in the pandemic, when we were worried about overwhelming hospital resources. While the hospital ICU was fairly full during my admission, I have it directly from staff that very few patients were there for COVID-19, it was simply full of the normal ICU things that ICUs are typically full of this time of year.

I am not going to talk about things we can do to keep from catching COVID-19 as I feel we are all well aware of risk mitigation at this point. The constant drumbeat of the last five months has been, “don’t catch it, don’t catch it, don’t catch it”. But with sustained community spread, it is important that we have get comfortable with the idea that eventually a lot of us are going to be infected, no matter what precautions we take. So what practical things are within our power to reduce our chances of a bad outcome? And hopefully also reduce our stress about the parts we can’t control.

Start exercising today. Just a walk around the block if that’s where you are. Then add a bit every day. I know a lot of us went into lockdown thinking it was going to be a few weeks at home baking sourdough and drinking wine (no judgement from me!) and now it’s 5 months gone and we haven’t set foot outside the house except to work or get groceries. That’s OK, start where you are. The better condition your heart and lungs are in, the faster you will be able to recover. And better lung health will better enable you to withstand the respiratory symptoms of the second stage of disease. I do believe that going into this with a high level of aerobic fitness contributed to my rapid and complete recovery.

Exercise, fresh air and sunshine also naturally boost immune response, making you more resistant to becoming ill and hopefully helping you throw off disease more easily. And let’s face it, outdoors is probably the safest place you can spend time right now, no grotty surfaces or enclosed air circulation to spread the virus around, and viruses don’t like sunshine. Take advantage while the weather is still good, because colder days will be around the corner before you know it.

Corollary to the above. Other than age, the greatest risk factor for a bad outcome with COVID-19 is diabetes, the next greatest is obesity. These outweigh even chronic lung conditions such as COPD and asthma. While exercise alone will not necessarily help you lose weight, it will help keep your blood sugars in a safe and healthy range. Blood sugars spike uncontrollably even in some otherwise healthy people during the course of illness and this is associated with significantly worse outcomes. Make sure all of your diabetes medications are optimized and that you are checking sugars daily to stay in the ideal range, this is not the time for poor blood sugar control.

Lose weight if you can. I know we always say that when you come in the office, but this time instead of it being an abstract thing that may lengthen your life ten or twenty years down the road, during this pandemic it may make a difference next month. No crash diets right now, but a steady controlled weight reduction program with the knowledge of your primary care provider  is a really good choice. I’m agnostic about how you choose to lose it, the best diet is the one that works for you.

Make sure you have all your chronic conditions under the best possible control. Diabetes, Blood Pressure, Heart Disease, Asthma, COPD, etc. Make sure you are staying in close contact with your PCP, even if this is telephonic or virtual, and ensure all your medications are up to date, you have any refills you need and that all your dosages are optimized for best overall health. Any co-morbidities need to be managed aggressively before you become ill.

As far as supplementation goes, if you do get sick, the supportive care regimen from the local ER for patients who can care for themselves at home is Tylenol for aches and pains, plus 500 mg Vitamin C and 220 mg Zinc Sulfate both taken 3 times a day for 10 days. I also was prescribed these during my admission and upon discharge. These supplements may have properties that slow viral replication and they are both readily available and unlikely to cause harm, so it’s not a bad idea to have them on hand to start taking if you become ill.

There is also growing evidence that low Vitamin D levels are associated with adverse outcomes. Most Americans are Vitamin D deficient, so in addition to daily walks in the sunshine I suggest supplementation with 2000 IUs Vitamin D3 daily. This is in addition to any you may be getting from a standard multivitamin. This you need to start now, and not after you are sick as it will likely take 8 weeks or more to get levels close to normal if you are currently deficient (and you probably are).

If you get sick with anything you believe could be COVID-19, no matter how vague and non-specific, STAY HOME, even if you choose not to be tested. CDC guidance for patients with symptoms is to stay home for a total of 10 days from onset of illness. At the end of that period if respiratory symptoms have improved (they do not have to be completely resolved) and you have had no fever during the last 3 days of your quarantine, you can return to work or school. This may seem obvious, but I was surprised how few people know the guidelines. Staying home if you are sick is the single most important thing any of us can do to slow the spread of this virus.

I do advise going ahead and getting tested if you develop symptoms, even if you are fully able to take care of yourself at home. This is both to give yourself peace of mind and because I suspect that in the next few months there are going to be situations where proving you have already been infected will just make your life easier. No, I’m not talking about “immunity certificates” per se, just that if my choice is between showing some business (say, an airline representative, or a conference organizer) a copy of my positive test result, rather than having a swab shoved halfway into my brainpan again 48 hours before some event, I know which I’d prefer. I would also get tested if a family member or close contact becomes ill, even if you remain asymptomatic. This can keep you from spreading the virus unknowingly and may actually allow you back in society more quickly if you test positive than if you don’t. The Virginia Department of Health guidelines for those exposed, but not symptomatic can be found here https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/local-exposure/ I think this breaks it down better than the CDC page and I include it here as the guidelines for asymptomatic contacts are actually more complicated than for those who get sick.

Testing options are going to vary by geographic location. Locally, we have one pharmacy chain that will test anyone, usually within the hour and another which is still using criteria from back in April and turning down most of those who ask.  If you have kids, be aware that many of the drugstore chains are unable to test under 18s and they may require a trip to the local Urgent Care instead. The best advice I have is to check websites or call ahead about requirements and see if you need to make an appointment wherever you plan to be tested.

Also be aware that, again depending on location, results may be coming back really slow right now. Mine took eight days (by which time I was already hospitalized) and I understand that the average in my state recently reached ten days, which is not super practical from a contact tracing perspective. It is still valuable information to have for yourself. As contact tracing cannot function when tests are this untimely, I urge you to do the right thing, and if you have any suspicion you may be infected, reach anyone you came in close contact with (defined as within 6 feet for more than 15 minutes) in the 48 hours before you developed symptoms. The faster you do it, the faster they can take precautions, and waiting for your local health department to be notified of a positive result may mean it’s two weeks before they have any clue they were exposed. You are most infectious in the 48 hours before and the 72 hours after developing symptoms.

If you become ill, and particularly if you enter the respiratory phase of illness, a home pulse oximeter (pulse ox) is a really useful tool for knowing if your cough is just annoying or becoming something dangerous. Always listen to your body first. If you are short of breath or having chest pain, go straight to the ER, even if the numbers look fine. Don’t be afraid of wasting their time, that’s what they are there for.

A normal oxygen saturation level (the percentage of oxygen dissolved in the blood, also referred to as sat) is between 95-100%.  If your levels are in this range you are most likely safe to care for yourself at home, but should keep in touch with your PCP so they can help you stay on top of your symptoms. They may also be able to prescribe medications to keep you more comfortable while recovering at home.

If you are between 93-94%, reach out your PCP, Urgent Care, or your local ER (who should have a COVID hotline) right away to let them know of the change and see what steps they want you to take next. If there is no response, go to your local ER for further care.

If your sats are 92% or lower, go straight to the ER. One of many weird things about this disease is that oxygen levels sometimes drop dangerously low without subjective symptoms of shortness of breath, so this may be the only early warning sign you get that things are going bad. In my own case, this was how I knew it was time to go to the hospital and upon admission, I was told that I had come at exactly the right time. A day sooner and they’d have sent me home, a day later and I would likely have been much further down the path of inflammatory cascade.

A very important part of this, is that you need to get the pulse oximeter before you get sick, and learn both how to use it correctly and what your normal is, in order to use it effectively when the time comes. Some important things to note are that nail polish or artificial nails can interfere with getting a good reading, your hands should be warm before you apply the device and you should give 30-60 seconds for the reading to settle before taking the result. But they cost around 20 dollars on Amazon or at your local pharmacy and should be sitting right next to your thermometer in your medical toolbag.

I don’t want to underplay that COVID-19 can be a severe disease with serious consequences. I am living proof that even the lowest risk can have an unpredictably bad course and there is very little we understand about why that happens. But I think the overall picture is encouraging and looking better by the day as we learn more about how this thing works. If I had been ill even a few weeks sooner, I would have had a far more protracted recovery, and possibly long-term health issues as dexamethasone was not yet being widely used outside of a handful of academic medical centers nationwide.

Getting as sick as I did was pure bad luck, rather like being struck by lightning, but my ferocious recovery was not accidental. It was the work of really good doctors and medical care team members who knew how to treat me, and the fact that I knew when to seek care instead of waiting to get sicker. And probably a little bit because I was in really good shape prior to my illness.

My hope is to give some knowledge and tools to aid in understanding what COVID-19 is, how it typically presents, the latest in treatments, and what steps you can take to ensure the best possible outcome if you get sick. It’s time to move from a place of fear to a place of cautious confidence. There is still a lot we don’t know, but we really are making progress.