This TL is a rework of my previous fascist America TL, done in prose, through the experiences of one man, being set approximately 80 years after the POD. As such, feel free to move it to another forum should you desire to. This does NOT mean I am abandoning the TL in my sig.
Part 1: Recruitment
July 18th 1999
I look around my room, my small apartment with a small bed, the portrait of President Harding set up by the landlord staring down at me. It's kinda creepy, the portrait, so I ignore it. I look down from my window, high up, at the street. The usual, people walking, wondering around on their way to work. I notice my watch - Austrian-made, a luxury in the current economic climate. I wonder if, walking to my garage, I'll get mugged, maybe killed, for it. Times are hard like that. I get dressed in my best suit - God it reminds me of my last girlfriend, something of a radical who got taken to Blackshirt Headquarters on some charge or other (after we had only spent one night together) and was never seen again. It could have been worse - the members of the Eagle Army are reputedly worse than any Blackshirt, for at least the Blackshirts are a bit dumb - Eagle Army men are smart.
I get out of the apartment, walking to the garage which has my car. It's an old one - I remember using it for illicit liaisons back in the College days, but still, it works. I'm young, just went out of Uni, working as a programmer. I don't make much money but it's worth it.
At least I'm not in the camps out West and North, I remind myself. I've heard horror stories about them, from people who went there and were released or worked in them, or from the propaganda series currently showing. Then, just as I'm thinking, it happens. Two Blackshirts force a woman, a young woman, into a nearby alley, groping her breasts, dragging her to its end, out of sight. I try and walk past, ignoring her plight. But that doesn't work. I hear clothing being ripped off, followed by screams, screams of the uttermost agony. They subside, followed by agonised moaning, and then a pistol shot.
I quickly move away, they're Blackshirts, they can do what they want to anybody. They're government members, beyond prosecution. They go out of the alley, laughing sickeningly.
I have had enough.
I turn around, going back to my apartment. I can't handle this anymore. My name is Karl (usually calling myself Charles) Hoffmann - descendant of a German (or was it Austrian?) family who moved in here pre-'33. Before the North American War, and the immigration restriction that followed. I think, and decide to myself - the old order has got to go. I know about the Red groups, the old anarchists, the man who shot Harding back in '63.
I'll have to go to the seedy parts of this city, try and find somebody who knows about them.
Failing that, I'll go cross-country, driving, walking, going by railroad, to the Deep South, the cities of the Occupied Territories, the West Coast, and the Canadian States. I'll do anything to find or start a group that can tear this wretched system to the ground. It has to happen, sooner or later, I know.
And if everything works out, I'll help make it happen.
Part 1: Recruitment
July 18th 1999
I look around my room, my small apartment with a small bed, the portrait of President Harding set up by the landlord staring down at me. It's kinda creepy, the portrait, so I ignore it. I look down from my window, high up, at the street. The usual, people walking, wondering around on their way to work. I notice my watch - Austrian-made, a luxury in the current economic climate. I wonder if, walking to my garage, I'll get mugged, maybe killed, for it. Times are hard like that. I get dressed in my best suit - God it reminds me of my last girlfriend, something of a radical who got taken to Blackshirt Headquarters on some charge or other (after we had only spent one night together) and was never seen again. It could have been worse - the members of the Eagle Army are reputedly worse than any Blackshirt, for at least the Blackshirts are a bit dumb - Eagle Army men are smart.
I get out of the apartment, walking to the garage which has my car. It's an old one - I remember using it for illicit liaisons back in the College days, but still, it works. I'm young, just went out of Uni, working as a programmer. I don't make much money but it's worth it.
At least I'm not in the camps out West and North, I remind myself. I've heard horror stories about them, from people who went there and were released or worked in them, or from the propaganda series currently showing. Then, just as I'm thinking, it happens. Two Blackshirts force a woman, a young woman, into a nearby alley, groping her breasts, dragging her to its end, out of sight. I try and walk past, ignoring her plight. But that doesn't work. I hear clothing being ripped off, followed by screams, screams of the uttermost agony. They subside, followed by agonised moaning, and then a pistol shot.
I quickly move away, they're Blackshirts, they can do what they want to anybody. They're government members, beyond prosecution. They go out of the alley, laughing sickeningly.
I have had enough.
I turn around, going back to my apartment. I can't handle this anymore. My name is Karl (usually calling myself Charles) Hoffmann - descendant of a German (or was it Austrian?) family who moved in here pre-'33. Before the North American War, and the immigration restriction that followed. I think, and decide to myself - the old order has got to go. I know about the Red groups, the old anarchists, the man who shot Harding back in '63.
I'll have to go to the seedy parts of this city, try and find somebody who knows about them.
Failing that, I'll go cross-country, driving, walking, going by railroad, to the Deep South, the cities of the Occupied Territories, the West Coast, and the Canadian States. I'll do anything to find or start a group that can tear this wretched system to the ground. It has to happen, sooner or later, I know.
And if everything works out, I'll help make it happen.