There were a few good reasons why I couldn’t consider myself a communist, as much as I sympathized with the general causes. But when the revolution occurred, you were dumb not to join. I mean, looking at history, it became clear that you wanted to wind up on the right side of it, and the right side of it is usually the one with the most momentum.
During the revolution’s early days, I lived in a small community in the midwest. We read news reports of what went on in the cities, but it meant little to us. Eventually, it found us, and our options were either go with it and live or don’t and die. So we all went with it. None of us died.
Other than the awkward breeding partner forced upon me, and the fact that they made me destroy my phone and VR headset, very little in my life changed. I tended my farm and worked and my partner gave birth to new revolutionaries and life was good. With some sadness in these my last days, as I sit beside the hearth and listen to the oldies saved on old hard drives, I look back on the America I grew up with and the one it turned into, and I can say that all in all its effect on me remains minimal.
But for others, there’s been some great change. My children, they all get to go to school—something I never really did. I had the internet, of course, back in its heyday, and that was an education in and of itself, I think. It’s hard to believe now, but many people back then couldn’t afford to go to the doctor, so they’d go to work sick and sometimes die. As she gets older my partner tells me how lucky we’ve been to live when we lived, and I can’t help but agree wholeheartedly.
I’ve never seen Our Commander, he is smart to not show his face. It used to be boisterousness that got you love and support, but thankfully we all got tired of that, and change, that ever-present cosmic force, made its way around again. Some say we’ll slip back into dark times, but I’ve hope in my children and their children.
Sometimes I wonder if the world’s actually changed. As I said, for me it didn’t change all that much, but for those to come, life looks somewhat brighter. I know some people are mad about the destruction of Smart Phones and VR headsets, but with fifty years of distance, I can only say that I do not miss or yearn for them but do wonder how we spent so much time with them in the first place. Maybe we were trying to hide from all the pain and badness and felt that talking about the pain and badness made the pain and badness go away.
I’d like to write you more but I am tired. Your letters keep me spirited. Sorry I am not more help. I am old and, as I’ve said multiple times, I don’t know how much things have really changed. But changes change, and rest assured your country will get out of this war, and in five, fifteen, five-hundred, or five-thousand years, you and your people will find peace. That is the nature of things.
