Snowblind
imagine.
Imagine if you will, a world not so different than our own. buildings still scrape the skies. people still have jobs, families, lives very much like our own. America still waves it's faded glory in red white and blue.
imagine though, if the question of "race" was taken more broadly than simple skin color. now i'm not talking about "wascowy wabbits" or mice named "mickey" but what if humans weren't the only tool-using species to call this planet home? like i said, wev'e seen this scenario a hundred time in children's stories, cartoons, but what if? what if animals spoke and walked alongside us, living their lives as we live ours?
what if planet earth, in all it's monochromatic glory, were not the standard for diversity, but the deviation? just imagine, for a moment, somewhere else.
elisha maxwell is a rare breed: "Pennatus Alopex Lagopus" or Winged Arctic Fox. The mythos of creatures other than bird having wings exists in even in our own culture, stretching as far back as ancient sumeria and the dawn of recorded civilization, in this word, it's not myth, it's fact. The sentient Winged Arctic Fox stands between four and a half to under six feet tall, has an average I.Q. equal to that of most humans, and is in many ways, very similar to humans in stance and build. they are however, a breed of fox, and sport the fur coat, tail, and facial features common to that species.
the winged arctic fox however, sports a pair of fully functional, six foot feathered wings. the color patterns are similar to those found on the arctic snowy owl (Nyctea Scandiaca)
Elisha lived a normal, uneventful life until one fateful day during her childhood. while plying outside in midwinter, she became lost. Snow began to fall and soon turned into a blizzard. Elisha, cold and afraid, began to cry. the tears stung her face as the wind picked up causing white-out conditions. the temperature dropped. numbness. frostbite. hypothermia. even an arctic fox can get cold.
Her eyes began to bleed, causing her cheeks to stained.
she fell asleep in the the midst of falling snow, thinking she would never see her parents again. she was partially right. she awoke in the hospital to find she couldn't see. the hypothermia and frostbite had damaged her corneas and tapetum (the reflective tissue in an animals eyes that allows it to see in the dark) she was blind. the cold damage had also frozen the feathers off her wings, leaving them naked and ruined. her wrist also suffered minor cold damage, as well as her cheeks, which were frostbitten and stained black.
Elisha learned to live with her disability, learned breaile, sound navigation, and coped with her situation as best she could. but something happened: several years after the accident, she lost her fear of the cold and ventured once again into the snow. she found being back in her natural element exhilarating. but she found something else as well: when she was back in the cold, her eyes began to feel strange. as the temperature dropped, her irises shifted. dull shapes began to form, and eventually sharpen into images. she could see perfectly, but only in shades of cold grey.
the corneas had been damaged and no longer could register color, so they compensated by shifting everything into perfect focus. her tapetum was what was causing the blindness, as they cooled, the tissues relaxed and receded allowing light to pass through the membrane once again. the tapetum however, could not be removed to allow permanent sight because of it's location at the back of the eye.
the optometrists fashioned custom Co2 glasses with chiller bars to allow elisha to see. in warm weather
all these incidents earned her the nickname "snowblind"
Snowblind (Elisha) got into computers. after graduating high school, she entered collage to begin studying computer programming and design. she was an adept student, and learned quickly.
then "it" happened.
our country has a policy for dealing with nuclear attack. it's called M.A.D. and it stands for Mutually Assured Destruction. it means, if another country launches tactical nuclear weapons at us, we have no other alternative than a retaliatory strike against them from our own nuclear arsenal. Endgame, if we go, you come with us. every other country with nuclear capabilities shares this policy, it's the only thing that's kept nuclear missiles out of war. a kind of mutually agreed on mexican standoff. no one fires because they know they will be destroyed.
it failed.
no one knows who fired first, but it really doesn't matter, they other side struck back, and in a matter of hour the civilization mankind had built up over two millennia was reduced to fire, ash, and background radiation. millions of people, entire cities, governments and world powers were eradicated, leaving the none but the dead to mourn their passing.
snowblind and her classmates had followed they growing hostilities on the internet, and when the first of the nukes fell they retreated underground. the main building of the campus had been built back when buildings were constructed to double as bomb shelters and shield those inside from fallout. they waited inside for over a week for the power to come back on, waiting for someone in authority, anyone to tell them it was over. in the end they ventured out themselves to find the entire east coast smashed, the skies dark, and the sea level rising.
there was chaos. there was no law. but almost more frightening, they were few left alive to care.
One of the bombs that fell nearby cleaned the city out with its radiation, and those that remained fled when the coastline began moving in. Elisha and her classmates began to gather supplies: canned food, freshwater, fuel. what was left of metalshop began re-tooling the camups' generators to provide electricity. The campus grounds where snowblind attended school were on a hill, high above the rest of the city. so it was assumed it would be safe from the rising sea level, at least for a little while.
The reality of they're situation began to sink in. a few of the remaining students left to try and find their families, a few just left, struggling with some inner demons of their own.
a few survivors gravitated towards the collage and life began to fall into predictable patterns of careful survival. certain things had to be done to make sure everyone had food, water, the essentials. in the meantime, they sent out expeditions to find more survivors, and try and find out news about the rest of the world, or if anyone else was even alive. it was around this time it started getting cold.
it's called "nuclear winter" it happens when enough nuclear weapons discharge to send up a large enough cloud of ash, smoke, and radiation to block out the sun. depending on how bad it is, it could last for as little as a single season or as long as... a very, very long time. the vikings had a legend about the end of the world, they called it "fimbulwinter" or "final winter" it was their ragnorok, their apocylipse.
it was early july when it began to snow. less than a month after the sky had fallen.
in all this time, they hadn't found more than a few hand fulls of survivors. they had overheard a few faint scratchy conversation over the low band A.M. radio waves, but nothing substantial. They gave their last chance to elisha and the computer. it took a week to get to the main network hub in what was left of the sunken city, set up the power and get online, but when they did, no one was ready for what they found.
main servers all over the world had been seized by refugees, would-be warlords, fragmented governments and rebel groups.
The south and west African coastline had been hit badly, rebel groups from all over the country were fighting a bloody civil war for what was left of the capitol
Canada had only takes a few light hits, but was oddly quiet. meanwhile Australia was considered a 'minor target" so it's government was still up and running, and it was offering aid to any nation that needed it, and was taking in refugees.
one of the worst off was central Europe. none of the European servers were up, and the French and Italian data lines were shaky at best. the best they could tell was not pretty: paris, london, rome either gone or in ruins.
Russia had taken several hit but was still running. that was the bad news, their armies were mobilizing to "suppress boarder skirmishes" and " neutralize possible rebel threats."
china, Japan and the middle east had been struck mortally and were picking up the pieces, they're governments non-existant and their populations devastated. America was in the same state.
America. home of the brave, land of the free. Gone. the ideals America had been built on, lived on only in the hearts and minds of what was left of it's people, for it's government had fallen. from what elisha could tell from the pirated communications, they were several warlords gathering armies to themselves and establishing power bases all across the states. the west coast was a little less organized, and the south east was a bit quiet, but for the most part, people were gathering all across the midwest, texas, norther states, east coast, nevada region, smokey mountains, everywhere. armies were being built. devoid of a government, petty warlord were trying to establish a new order: their's.
but then she found something: washinton was gone but NORAD was intact. some iteration of the US government remained, and it wasn't giving ground one inch. the us military was calling for the aid of it's citizens with a call to arms. a sliver of what was the united states remained, but only a sliver, and it had to withstand a coming hurricane.
before the generator burnt itself out, elisha uncovered one final bit of information: one of the warlord groups was headed toward the city to seize the main network hub and data line. She established an uplink, and returned to the campus.
back on campus, everyone was gearing up for the coming winter: supplies had been laid down in storage, the botany majors had the greenhouse up and running, and the waterpipes had been jury-rigged to bring in freshwater from the nearby reservoir. Elisha told them what they had found and broke the bad news: an army was approaching and war was coming. they started stockpiling one more supply: weapons, and Snowblind got back online to try and get help.
NORAD was unresponsive, and no one was nearby enough to send help. she was able however, to get information of the approaching warlord. apparently, they needed control of the local network hub so their hackers could go after what was left of the government servers, and get some sort of "code" for a nearby government structure. Elisha dug a little deeper. there were no remaining government structures in the whole region so at first she was puzzled. She dug through old government archives and maps. he puzzlement turned to cold shock. the only Government structure left standing in the whole region was the only one built to withstand a nuclear attack: a remaining nuclear missile silo.
They were after a nuke. and they were going to go through them to get it.