Ruins Greater Than Troy
A/N: Yes, this was definately influenced by Terminator, the title by a line in Arthur C. Clarke's novel . Now for a small plug: Visit www.thehungersite.com & the other sites in the ring everyday. Sign up for free newsletters that also give aid. Heck and check out www.thebirthsite.com/othermenu.html while you're at it, turns out there's 100s of sites like this. Clicking on the company's ads also helps give as well. (Some of the best: Poverty Fighters and MCI LifeSaver, even give to Royal Flyng Doctors in Australia!)Definately use the Against Hunger Surf Bar...donate 1 cup of food every 3 minutes. http://www.againsthunger.org/games/surf/banner.html Thanks and God bless you all! R/R/E!


January 16, 2127
Shady Acres, Ohio, Cal-American Confederacy

 Devastation was everywhere.
The once grandiose capital of the Cal-American Confederacy was destroyed, nuclear disaster was everywhere. Blacked concrete, shattered skyscrapers toppled over like children's toys, even the Presidential Palace itself was nothing more than a package of rubble.
Fights broke out over food, people died for a scrap of salami. A city that had once boasted seven million, the largest city in the entire world following World War III. The nation that President Watterson had built was gone, vaporized in a single instant.
All across the globe, there were signs reminencent of this. Hobbes Calvington thought to himself as he fingered his laser hand-rifle firmly. Because that...that....
Buzzard.
Suddenly he heard a sound not unlike the klaxons that had once sounded over London in the Battle of Britian. He hit the cracked and crushed pavement, hiding behind the wreckage of an overturned hovercar that had fallen to the sky when the air-burst explosion killed Shady Acres.
He glanced over the skyshield of the craft, looking at the driver's seat and being forced to avert his eyes. Not focusing on what he had just witnessed he raised the hand-rifle and fired twice, wounding his assilent. He moved on, rushing in the area of the City Triangle.
He had hit the man, who had rad-burns all of his face, twice in the leg, the poor soul was probably insane firing at whatever he could.
But then, who wasn't insane these days? The Fourth World War had just taken place, and it was all a bloody accident. The First and Second Wars had been pre-meditated, fought out, battled. The Third and Fourth were simply human errors, compounded upon each other again and again, until computing systems and and a few codes had been transferred.
In the Third War, one hundred years in 2027, the President of the United States had ordered an atomic strike on Beijing, unaware of the Sino-Russian alliance signed just moments before. He had acted on instinct, unaware of what would happen, believing the pre-emptive strike to be just. Maybe, Calvington thought to himself, just maybe, it had.
But this war hadn't been.
After Calvin Watterson, the first Cal-American President and former General of the GROSS Resistance Army, his successors wore corrupt, meaningless...
Buzzards.
First was Horatio Grant, then Samantha Silvers, and Jefferson Davis...buzzards, every single one of them. And President Quentyn, the last Cal-American President had ordered an antimatter missile strike against the Byzantine People's Empire. The Byzantines only had nuclear weapons, but even the CAC Defense Command's anti-missile system couldn't swipe all of the atomics from the sky.
The Middle East and North Africa were atomized by the antimatter bombs, a secret weapon Cal-America had a monopoly on. But other countries had nuclear missiles and bombs, and that was more than enough.
Oh sure, Quentyn had ordered the sinking of the British Isles and their Neomarxist Republic of London via the remaining antimatter stockpile, after they had bombed New Chicago and Angel City...but what was the point?
There had been three billion on the planet before the war, six times what it had been after the Third World War a century previous.
Now, only the Good Lord knew how many people survived on this toxic waste dump of a planet. Hobbes Calvington nervously ran a hand through his hair and hiccupped. A reaction that happened often after the first Byzantine weapons had smashed into Shady Acres on that Black Night of January the Fourteenth, 2127.
Now, Calvington thought as he bolted through the City Triangle with a solitary goal, praying and hoping that it hadn't too been destroyed by the atomic fire that rose so high into the twilight only two sleepless days previous...the secret project that had been worked on by Calvington himself under General Sam D'Voe's constance guidance...a way to preserve mankind, a way to save the future, a technology so great that it was unmistakable.
And it had already been created by Calvin Watterson, when he was six years old.
He raced on the moving sidewalks that had been installed in Shady Acres upon Watterson's takeover of the Old United States government.
They moved no more.
Calvington's mind was made up as he raced past First Tiger Street and sped through the ruined Saint Derkins Avenue. He moved past the crashed and parked hovercars, blackened and destroyed, past gang fights and beggars with rad-burns, past crumbling apartment complexes and interactive virtual malls...
Finally, the Defense Department Headquarters.
Since the bomb that had been dropped on Shady Acres had been small by Cal-American (and certainly the world of pre-World War Three) and had burst in the air, only the first ninety-seven stories had collasped. The secret project, Operation Wells, had been safely stored in a sub-level area that was safe from nuclear damage.
He walked in through the glass-shattered door, no need to place his palm on the reader. He raced through the white corridors, past dead bodies, and labcoats, people he knew, occasionally a survivor called out to him.
He ignored them.
Hopefully, yes, hopefully, there would be no need for those people to suffer, or the billions killed two days previous. Calvington shot open a door-lock, which whirred and melted under the lazfire. He walked into the room, shut it, felt the cool air-conditioning of the Wells Labortory.
He walked into the corrugated cardboard chamber, the only brown spot in a room of silver clacking machines, still working away as they crunched numbers. It was bizarre, even absurd, but the nuclear shielding had held, and the Time Machine Mk II, still survived.
He walked into the chamber.
He spoke.
The world flashed green and purple.
He disappeared.