In the second part of Cory Redmann’s expose', written back in 2076, she delves into the aftermath of the financial debacle which saw the implosion of America’s economy and the destruction of its proud society. America’s lingering greatness revealed itself in many ways. Citizens supported one another throughout the upheaval. But the sanitized version detailed in government-approved history books doesn't tell the full story.
In reality, thousands tried to flee the big cities and make it to foreign destinations or vacation homes aiming to ride out the crisis. Many that Cory interviewed remembered freeways choked with vehicles. Those who owned homes in the suburbs tried desperately to catch trains and subways full of terrified people; or clamored for tickets onboard jet airliners. Thousands upon thousands tried, but few succeeded. Those left behind often found themselves trapped.
In “Part 2”, Cory focuses much of her attention on the days of recovery (also retribution) that followed the first six months of the debacle. The U.S. military eventually moved into major cities to quell rebellions that continued to spring up, eliminating the last of the deadly “war bands” - urban militias formed in response to the crisis. As for Europe, the effects of the crash were much the same as in North America. Looting, clashes with riot police, starving refugees fleeing the cities for the countryside … Europeans certainly saw and experienced their fair share of turmoil. Yet through it all, one person – one right honorable gentleman - managed to surface amidst the ongoing tumult and rise to prominence. His name was Karl Habsburg.
In the second part of Cory Redmann’s expose', written back in 2076, she delves into the aftermath of the financial debacle which saw the implosion of America’s economy and the destruction of its proud society. America’s lingering greatness revealed itself in many ways. Citizens supported one another throughout the upheaval. But the sanitized version detailed in government-approved history books doesn't tell the full story.
In reality, thousands tried to flee the big cities and make it to foreign destinations or vacation homes aiming to ride out the crisis. Many that Cory interviewed remembered freeways choked with vehicles. Those who owned homes in the suburbs tried desperately to catch trains and subways full of terrified people; or clamored for tickets onboard jet airliners. Thousands upon thousands tried, but few succeeded. Those left behind often found themselves trapped.
In “Part 2”, Cory focuses much of her attention on the days of recovery (also retribution) that followed the first six months of the debacle. The U.S. military eventually moved into major cities to quell rebellions that continued to spring up, eliminating the last of the deadly “war bands” - urban militias formed in response to the crisis. As for Europe, the effects of the crash were much the same as in North America. Looting, clashes with riot police, starving refugees fleeing the cities for the countryside … Europeans certainly saw and experienced their fair share of turmoil. Yet through it all, one person – one right honorable gentleman - managed to surface amidst the ongoing tumult and rise to prominence. His name was Karl Habsburg.
Hello, and welcome back to Twin Paradox. I'm King Everett Medlin and what you're going to be hearing over the next 60 episodes is a SciFi trilogy I wrote four years ago under the pseudonym Purple Hazel. Twin Paradox follows my first podcast series entitled Deathwalker Colony, which is now a full length novel available for purchase on Amazon. It's on sale today in E-book format for only $2.99, as well as the first two books in the Rijel 12 Series, The Rise of New Australia and Return of Anarchy.
When I set out to write Twin Paradox four years ago, I wanted to create a realistic and believable world less than one hundred years in the future. In this first book of the Twin Paradox trilogy, the setting for which begins in the year 2086, the reader learns of our current society's collapse. How the major cities of Earth plunge into anarchy. How the American credit-based economy comes crashing to the ground, bringing an abrupt end to a system that essentially goes back to 1971. Part One is called Collapse and Aftermath and in the first five chapters you'll hear of a new world order taking shape following the debacle.
Twin Paradox is a SciFi series encompassing three full length novels; all of which will be read in their entirety during the coming weeks. You can go online and download the E-books by searching Twin Paradox ... Purple Hazel ... or, if you prefer, tune in each week and listen to me read them to you. So let's continue, shall we?
Ladies and Gentlemen, Twin Paradox, Chapter Two, A New World Order ....
In the second part of Cory Redmann’s five-part series, she delved into the aftermath of the financial debacle which saw the implosion of America’s economy and the destruction of its proud society. True, America’s lingering greatness revealed itself in many ways. Citizens supported one another through the upheaval. But the sanitized version detailed in history books approved by government officials didn’t tell the full story.
Thousands tried to flee the big cities and make it to the supposed safe haven of foreign destinations or summer homes aiming to ride out the crisis. Many remembered freeways and highways choked with vehicles packed with provisions or desperate people stuffing wads of cash into pockets, purses, briefcases, or backpacks in hopes of getting out in time. Those who owned homes in the suburbs tried desperately to catch trains and subways full of terrified people; or clamored for tickets onboard jet airliners. Thousands upon thousands tried, but few succeeded.
“My Daddy picked me up from school one day after stories got around about gangs stalking the city,” detailed one elderly lady, sitting in her government apartment with an oxygen tube plugged into her nostrils. “And I remember how worried he was even though he kept trying to reassure me everything was going to be alright.”
As she breathed through her nasal tubes and exhaled rhythmically, she added, “And he was quite frightened, I could tell. Mommy worked across the city, and typically I’d remain at school until six before she would come pick me up. Daddy usually didn’t come home from work until seven, you see?”
She remained silent for a moment before Cory Redmann could be heard off camera speaking in a calm voice, urging her to take her time and relax.
“But this day was different you know? Daddy was out front of the school in his little hybrid electric car waiting for me, so I thought at first he was knocking off work early, thinking he’d take me for ice cream or something. One look told me that was not the plan for the afternoon. He was in a hurry. Scared about something, I could tell. He waved at me to hurry up and get in the car. ‘We gotta go honey,’ he hollered out the window. Lots of people were there picking up their kids that day. Folks were yelling. I heard ‘em saying things like ‘let’s get home fast’ or ‘we’re leavin’ town right now.’ I thought people might be heading out for vacation … wondered if there was some school holiday comin’ up. But it just didn’t feel right, you know? Teachers left the school building right along with us and scurried off to their cars tryin’ to get out of there fast as they could. I wasn’t sure just what was going on. I was only nine at the time … didn’t know I’d never see my teacher Miss Monica ever again.”
At that point, the elderly woman fell silent for several moments while she shifted in her chair to try and get more comfortable.
“Daddy drove across the city; and let me tell ya’ … traffic was terrible. He kept gettin’ frustrated too - whenever it’d jam up and we’d get stuck for a while. Tried calling her on his old cell phone – Mommy I mean - but couldn’t get reception. Tried texting her when we’d get stuck in traffic but there’d be no reply for quite a spell, then Mommy would send short messages that Daddy tried telling me were hopeful: like she was waiting for us at her store and looking forward to a nice dinner with us. Things like that. I could sense he wasn’t telling me everything, but I didn’t argue. I was just scared, and didn’t really know why, you see? People and cars were everywhere.”
The woman then described how, when their automobile, after nearly an hour, reached the on-ramp for the highway, they inched along at a snail’s pace for several kilometers to the section of town where her mother managed a small coffee shop. Dad worked for some company in an office building in the city, she explained, but she never fully understood just what he did there – only remembered him complaining about folks in his department being “laid off soon” and that he “might be next, if the company keeps moving its operations overseas.” She said they eventually got within a few kilometers of their exit before traffic ground to a halt and some man on the radio could be heard warning people to try and stay off the roads. Get somewhere safe and stay there.
“Daddy kept muttering, ‘I’m tryin’ to, dammit!’ but then he’d look back at me through the rearview mirror and keep reassuring me things were gonna be just fine, and not to worry. Being a little girl at the time, I just kept on sayin’ ‘okay Daddy’.”
When traffic stopped and remained gridlocked for a time, that’s when she said she saw men … “scary men” … walking along the shoulder of the highway. She also noticed people panicking and leaving their cars trying to run across the median and cross the highway into nearby neighborhoods. Her father grew tense and she could tell he thought they should do the same, but likely worried about making a break for it with his little girl in tow. The car was full of blankets, towels, and bags full of warm clothing. Under her feet was a duffel bag. A suitcase was on the floorboard next to her. It looked like the car was packed for a family vacation. Nevertheless, all she could focus on was the sight of those frightening looking men with baseball bats and tire irons walking toward them. She could see them in the rearview mirror as they approached. There were at least four of them.
The next thing she remembered was the men passing their car, looking in through the window and pausing for a brief moment before looking away and proceeding to the next group of cars. It was like they were looking for someone, she thought. Her father remained silent, both hands on the steering wheel.
“I’ll never forget how one of them stared at me, then some guy in the group hollered about seeing something that musta grabbed his attention. Don’t know what he said exactly, but the whole gang moved on up the line to a fancy car ahead of us a little ways. Then Daddy started muttering somethin’ I couldn’t understand. Somethin’ ‘bout a ‘big Beemer’ … and ‘Yeah buddy, go on ‘n leave us the hell alone’.”
She described watching in horror as the “angry men” smashed in the windows of the car directly in front of them and dragged the driver out onto the road while they ransacked his car. She said she asked her father if they were police or something.
“I asked Daddy, ‘is that man in trouble?’ and Daddy just turned in his seat and said, ‘no honey, they’re not police … you just look away and try not to worry. They’re looking for money that’s all. They ain’t gonna bother us. Let’s just pray to Jesus that Mommy’s okay and I promise you we’ll find her soon. You’ll see.’ I remember crying and thinkin’ ‘bout Mommy somewhere waitin’ for us … prayed with my hands folded - like I always did at bedtime.”
In the interview Cory hesitated to ask her the more obvious question: did they ever find her mother and make it out of the city together? But she never did. At the time Cory was overcome by the woman’s story. Perhaps ten years later she would have posed that uncomfortable question anyway, just to satisfy her journalistic curiosity. Then again, maybe not. After all, why ask a sweet little old lady such a thing? She’d said plenty enough already. After that, the woman had little left to add and the interview room fell silent. Cory thanked her for her time and bid the cameraman to stop filming as the sad old woman’s eyes teared up remembering that awful scene forty-eight years ago.
Stories like that abounded. Wherever she went throughout the northeast; seventy, even eighty-year-old survivors told of what they’d seen, like they were revealing dark secrets from their past that they’d kept hidden from their grandchildren. Perhaps they didn’t think people would believe them. Cory considered that a real possibility. Perhaps they didn’t want to rock the boat and seem like they were stirring up trouble. The official stories approved by the new government and taught in schools never detailed such events; and many interviewees - they were just too proud to admit what they’d seen or done, and felt more inclined to describe how brave people were and how communities stuck together.
“Maybe this was more honorable,” Cory opined in her exposé. “Pulling skeletons from the closet served no real purpose in the minds of many I spoke with.” Cory learned this was simply the way of things for the majority among that dying generation of North Americans.
What Cory did go on to reveal in her report was that there were thousands who knew of the impending disaster and sought their own survival at the expense of their own communities by draining their bank accounts before banks froze assets. They tried packing suitcases with as much cash as they could fit, then scurried to airports or train stations endeavoring to get out of the city before the rioting and looting got out of hand. They knew … many of these people … just what might happen once society came crashing down. Law enforcement had no real chance of stopping the waves of violence in the streets, they could only assume, and when days had passed and people began running out of food, desperate people would inevitably start behaving like animals. Some made it; most didn’t.
Airliners flew out of major airports never to return, Cory learned in her investigations, often loaded with relieved passengers trying to reach far-flung destinations. Scenes of people packed around airport ticket counters clamoring for a seat on those last few flights out of town were still vivid in the minds of survivors even to this day. As for the lucky few who made it onboard? Most would never return. Planes would fly to foreign countries; passengers would deboard, only to find themselves detained by local authorities and relieved of their cash and valuables the moment they reached the terminal. The crisis was worldwide after all … not surprising that police and soldiers in other nations had little respect for international law once the news of the collapse spread.
Sadly, no single nation could have risen above this and provided aid and comfort to those seeking sanctuary. Third World countries were affected just as devastatingly as any other. Only isolated communities not reliant on modern technology felt little in the way of direct consequences. Small towns in the hinterlands of America became highly sought-after destinations for refugees who’d escaped the cities with only a handful of belongings. Many simply hiked down interstate highways packed with abandoned cars hoping to find shelter from the cold; perhaps trading away all they had for a hot meal whenever they arrived in a new town.
Survivors that Cory interviewed often described this in their stories too: how endless streams of exhausted people would be seen filing down major roadways, shaking off the cold, only to find nothing but a gymnasium or community center open for the night. Food was often available in those early weeks – from good-hearted souls motivated to assist their fellow man. Yet it was not plentiful and usually of low quality.
Churches became safe havens almost immediately. But with resources strained, and with wary parishioners hesitant to relinquish food stores as the crisis continued, they could only do so much. Within a few weeks of the crash, even they had to turn away stragglers limping down highways from major cities. So many died that way, of dehydration and hypothermia, but the biggest killer by far was hunger. People just weren’t in any kind of condition for living like that, walking from town to town begging for food and pleading with rural residents for a place to sleep for the night. People had to look out for themselves and their families. Desperation and fear turned normally compassionate, caring individuals into selfish and occasionally hostile beings at times.
But in “Part 2” of her series, Cory focused much of her attention on the days of recovery (also retribution) that followed the first six months of the debacle. The gallant heroes of the U.S. military (as the government-controlled media now boldly portrayed them) eventually moved into major cities to quell rebellions that continued to spring up, eliminating the last of deadly “war bands” as the military tended to describe them. These hastily-assembled paramilitary groups were often headed up by an individual who had recruited street toughs and thugs to help him or her seize control of a neighborhood or section of the city. Many of these war lords were opportunists, no doubting that, but more than a few were actually normal everyday people prior to the crisis; people who felt compelled to defend their local “turf”.
This was quite understandable given the circumstances they faced. There was no “help” on the way for those trapped in the cities. If a gang of miscreants sought to take over the local grocery store (or gas station or shopping mall) once things began to degenerate into chaos, who could stop them? Urban gangs soon ruled practically everything and everyone still eking out an existence within their sphere of control. For those who remained, to survive meant accommodating them or at times collaborating, with people reduced to serving these ruffians, at the very least for their own protection, paying tribute or performing services which most survivors would now simply wish to forget. The young reporter found only a few who would comment on experiences like that; and most preferred to be interviewed anonymously.
Open warfare among these groups of hooligans soon escalated, resulting in gun battles out on the streets and in the urban apartment complexes of Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, New Orleans, Dallas, San Francisco, Boston, Houston, and Denver. For that matter every major US city experienced this at least to some degree, and when the gangs established themselves, the government soon grew to realize there was nothing that could be done short of aiding the handfuls of refugees who’d somehow made it out.
But it wasn’t as simple as that, as Cory went on to report in her expose’. The military’s tactics were quite harsh at times and not always “just”. Rarely “just” at all, some confided, and usually off-camera when they did so for fear of retribution from the government, not to mention ostracism from their own neighbors who most likely had demons of their own to deal with regarding what they’d done (or not done).
Cory reported that many thousands of refugees escaping the cities months after the crash found military barricades blocking their exit. Meanwhile the process for assimilating them back into society often brought them under intense scrutiny as to their conduct during the crisis. Citizens underwent questioning after being herded into “holding pens” as the military referred to them, often as small as football stadiums and sometimes massive compounds encircled with razor wire, until military officials determined they could be released.
Faced with such an ordeal, some reported to Cory, neighbors desperate to exonerate themselves of collaborating with gangsters would at times turn on one another and accuse each other of looting, robbing, or committing mayhem. It literally happened that way to hundreds of otherwise peaceful people who found themselves ordered by the local warlord and his band of thugs to aid them in their nightly raids. Accusations led to inquiries. Inquiries led to witness verification. And if the officer in charge of the investigation felt there was sufficient evidence; those unfortunate enough to be found guilty would often be taken out of the compound and shot. Just one less mouth to feed, is the way they rationalized it in those days. That’s probably why stories like that rarely got passed on to succeeding generations. No one wanted to remember it. Most everyone who’d passed through this nightmare had blood on their hands in one way shape for form.
As for Europe, the effects of the crash were much the same as in North America. Cities like Berlin, Paris, London, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Rome … they all experienced riots and roaming bands of delinquents taking over whole sections of urban areas. Looting, clashes with riot police, starving refugees fleeing the cities for the countryside … Europeans certainly saw and experienced their fair share of turmoil. Yet through it all, one person – one right honorable gentleman - managed to surface amidst the ongoing tumult and rise to prominence.
His name was Karl Thomas Robert Franziskus Georg Bahnam, and to the world he became known as Karl von Habsburg. He was the eldest son of Otto von Habsburg, who’d once renounced his claim to the Austrian throne, thereby dissolving the centuries-old Habsburg Empire. Only he and he alone had the reputation (as well as clout) to wrest control from petrified politicians who tried to save their own skins before mobs pillaged their homes. It was Karl von Habsburg who rose to the occasion during mankind’s great hour of need. An embattled and exhausted Europe, in disarray over the effects of the worldwide crash, embraced him and his progressive ideals. He was, for all intents and purposes, the right man at just the right time in history.
This concludes tonight's podcast of Twin Paradox Book One, Chapter Two: A New World Order. I hope you enjoyed it. Watch for episode three which I'll be posting very soon. I wrote Twin Paradox books one, two, and three, four years ago under the pseudonym Purple Hazel and it is still available for purchase on Amazon. You can download and read all three books if you like; or if you prefer, simply listen in as I read them in their entirety; all sixty chapters. Each week I'll be posting a new episode with a brand new chapter from this epic SciFi trilogy.
Also, and don't forget, my latest full-length novel ... Deathwalker Colony ... is available right now in E-book format and can be downloaded today on Amazon.com, along with the first two books in the Rijel 12 Series, The Rise of New Australia and Return of Anarchy.
I'm King Everett Medlin. Thanks for tuning in.
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