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Home Planet
© 2008 by Ron Sanders
If you’re reading this I have to assume you are of an enquiring disposition, can access basiccomputing equipment, and are able to open, close, and copy documents.
 PLEASE SAVE THIS DISK!
Or make copies, if you can, and send them to any known survivors, and to any agencies— especially those expressly formed to deal with this horror. If you have a printer, print this out anddistribute copies to any parties capable of plumbing it for clues. I can’t print off this thing, even if Icould find an AC source.I’m not a scientist, I’m not a journalist, I’m not some hot-shot professor able to pull stringsand make noise. I’m just a guy with a little solar-powered word processor. I’ve been retired for sometime now, so I’ve had plenty of opportunity to take notes. Due to my analytical bent, a penchant for hoarding provisions, and a lack of family and social responsibilities, I’ve been able to ford thetragedies, the death and the madness, and still remain reasonably sane and emotionally cool. ThoughI’m slipping, goddamn it. I’m slipping.This entire journal shows exactly as processed, from the first keystroke to the last. What youare now reading is an addendum, cut and pasted to the page’s top. If the following seems stupid, it’s
 
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the stupidity of honesty. If much of it comes off as trite and ignorant, well, I guess that’s the real-time scratch-and-stumble of innocence. I could proof and edit, provide a neat and cogent trail—I’velearned enough from just banging away to produce a strong file. But I’m not going to polish this, for one simple reason: I could be unintentionally deleting clues—no matter how homely, clumsy, or seemingly inconsequential; clues that might be needed by some surviving researcher. Also, as I’mnot a diarist, I did not include dates. For this I apologize—but who could have predicted, from thosefirst dire whispers, the horrific reduction, the brutal extermination—this impossibly repulsiveobliteration of man.Here is my journal; unadulterated, naked, done with. It’s over, you fuckers. I quit.We pass.Icant’ believe it.My first wordprocessorrr@ Ill getthe hang of this thing soon enoguh.Its’ just like a typweriter. but it saves ontoa disk, Very cool. I’ts solarpowered so I don’t n’eed tochargeit. Colplasible keyBoard. Stores in a fannypakc.I bought it to record myobseRvations on the ozone layer issue. Evrybody and their mother’’’s running around like chikcens.but Idon’t’ see anybody else taking notesOkay. I’m going to hunt-and-peck until I get good. Here’s what’s happening:The ozone layer is breaking up into what scientists term Z Pockets. There’s that famous oneover the Antarctic. But now there’s one over New Zealand, a couple over Europe, six more aroundAfrica, and that really big one over the Pacific. The layer is undergoing an effect meteorologists label“tattering.” You can see it. Kind of. Here and there the sky shows streaks, or “rifts,” as they callthem; sort of a burnt umber look, approaching maroon. But they seem to vanish as you stare, thoughevery once in a while something resembling a crack will appear for a bit. I’m talking over greatexpanses of sky here. Yet from a ground vantage you do get this tectonic effect. We’re told theatmosphere is stabilizing, that’s all. I sure do hope so.
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