2083

WWII in Color. Digital image. Dramatic Photos. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Jan. 2016. <http://www.ww2incolor.com/dramatic/AtomicEffects-p29b.html>.

The thawing process is a very peculiar one that starts from the top of the head, allowing you to absorb and comprehend information for the first time in what has been a dozen decades, slowly climbing down your vertebrates, all the way to the toes. This was part of the Western League’s (WL) cryogenic research, which was conducted not long before The War. Lucas just happened to be caught up in the middle of it all.  

Soon enough, Lucas gradually woke from his overdue slumber. Lucas picked himself up, almost dragging himself across the floor, stretching muscles, which haven’t been stretched for years. Strictly staying to protocols, he picked up the .09mm pistol in addition to the gas mask in the provided bag. Lucas had stepped out to what he later found out was known as the Vast Wastelands.

The natural sunlight was blinding. Disoriented, Lucas tried to grasp at the new reality he is faced with. “Food, water, shelter and civilization. Food, water, shelter and civilization.” He repeatedly mumbles to himself. Lucas will find out that these necessities are extremely scarce in the Vast Wastelands.

If you were to have stood exactly where Lucas stood at that very moment, tilting your head slightly North-East, you would see a structure made out of post-apocalyptic scrap, yet surprisingly seeming meticulously kept. And for any level headed adventurer, the most obvious way to go about is to head towards the unknown, which is exactly what our protagonist seems to do.

2 hours 39 minutes and 57 seconds later, Lucas stands in front of what appears to be an abandoned two-floored construction. He warily enters the wrecked building, diligently searching for any sign of civilization, but merely finds stacks of demolished bricks and dust.

Lucas spent days deprived of food and drinking the unsanitary puddles that laid among the mud, breathing in the toxic, ashy air of the deadly Wastelands. He traveled 145 kilometers up North to find any trace of life before the starvation and toxic air took him.

Lucas’s body lay among the muddy snow. His decomposing body had been melting away into the nuclear waste, first breaking through his now grey skin, and then eating at his flesh. The toxic chemicals reached to his weak bones, and then devoured his organs. He lay there sizzling away, deteriorating into the ground.

However, what he was oblivious to was that 146 kilometers up North laid a flourished society rich with “food, water, shelter and civilization.”