- [x] Set timer for 20 minutes - [x] Start writing It was the day after she lost faith in the world. And, her tooth hurt. She must have a piece of popcorn in the gum, it was swollen and tender. Flossing didn't seem to help. She had been to the movies last night. No one had been there. No one had been there to share the experience of hiding from reality, for just two hours anyways. When she had come out of the theater, the news told the story. Her country, the greatest country in the history of the world, the richest country in the history of the world, had chosen to invade, to destroy, to become possibly the worst country in the history of the world. Mexico held the world reserves of Cobalt, a necessity for so much of the technology that a modern society runs on. And the US had become dangerously close to falling off a cliff from the access to Cobalt, since China had become all chummy chummy with Africa and the supply had been essentially cut off. Her country, under the auspices of keeping our "borders safe," had invaded. But, we all knew what this was about. This was about keeping our technology moving forward. So, we now had 51 states. After all that we had done to keep Mexicans _out_ over the last eight years. Like a toddler who's toys had been taken by a sibling, and ran over to steal from their baby brother. So when she came out of that theater and saw the drones heading south, she knew, she couldn't trust the world. And her daughter, just by way of being a 20-something alive in a country that no longer supported it's government or its Army, would be conscripted into a killing machine. We were losing a whole generation, we had not yet learned how to live in a digital social world. Modern war was remote, bunkered, screened, and abstracted. But still, her own daughter. There were so few 20-somethings, there really wasn't a choice. If she were in charge an immediate draft would be put into place. The news would tell all patriotic stories, just as it had for the last eight years, since that fateful day when the balance of power America had known for over 200 years had been crushed by our own fear. She used to have faith, that we would come to our senses, that we would garner one more burst of energy to keep the rule of law, that we would protest, or somehow rise up and that would be enough. But marching time after time had not changed anything, so she stopped marching. How had she lost her faith? "A little at a time, then all at once." As the famous saying of bankruptcy had gone. The "all at once" was tonight, during that stupid movie, during that stupid A/I generated crap that made Nicole Kidman and Carey Grant look 30-years-old at the same time and in love. That stupid movie that was a prequel of a sequel of a trilogy that had lost all meaning after the first indy version had been a surprise hit back when that type of thing was possible. She had already forgotten the title, "Loved and Lost" or some other version of the same goddam thing that she had already seen with actors who actually existed, instead of the people who marked the place on the screen where the faces of the most beautiful and elegant (white) people in the history of the world were painted. Was there no new art? Was there no one with their original face? What was wrong with just being you? She got in her car, threw her phone out the window, and started accelerating west. She pulled over, and opened the blade. She cut deep down into her forearm, a horizontal incision, like she had seen on the dark-forums. Blood pooled and welled out of the cut. It hurt so much, but she kept going, deeper and deeper. Finally, she heard the "tink" of carbon on metal. She reached in with her fingers, now blood was everywhere, and she out her "Trax-all," threw that out the window and sped up towards the mountains. She stopped after a quarter mile and bandaged her arm. The pain was overwhelming, but at least it was feeling something for the first time in so long, besides that tooth ache and the emptiness of her heart.