The Shutdown

Hours 'Til Shutdown

   Driving home, I listened to a playlist of youtubers who have varying ideas on current events around the world. Some I was agreeing to strongly in my head, others I was struggling to try to understand it from their point of view, but in all I was staying engaged in my long drive on the 395, thinking along to them in my head.

   'Why does anything anyone does matter as long as they are not hurting anyone else. Let us keep out guns and people can do what they like to their bodies as long as they are not hurting anyone else.'

   Sadly many of them have gone offline. Some countries have been halting all communications, while others, many in Europe, have been fighting each other over territories and immigration policy. Germany has seemed to have just fallen due to internal riots and civil unrest. 

   People were being arrested left and right over there just for having opinions, which only led to more riots and destruction.

   Many people blame the United states and the United Kingdom as the first stopped acting as the World Police, and the other just sealed itself off from the rest of the world to protect itself.

   I drove by a gas station and noticed the prices have finally hit the $8 per gallon mark. Seeing this I turned off my heater to save gas, hoping my heavy jacket would protect me from the freezing winter temperatures that's had just started.

   'Damn, I know that Reno has always had high gas prices, but that's double what it was four months ago..'

   "Some people think that the US's behavior is caused by the Republicans gaining control, but really it's just that the average citizen is done with caring about the rest of the world's problems. They want a focus on the well being of this country, and the world relied too much on the United States as a weapon to threaten each other, and with the recent invention of the B5 adventurer, the US can harvest the mass quantities of oil under it's waters. Why would they care for us or the middle east's well being."

   'The world has gone to shit', were my exact thoughts as I heard that from my car speakers and looked out my window to see some protesters down by the Grand Sierra Casino, trying to get people to "Stand Up, Speak Up, Save the World!" But they just seemed to be wasting time standing around in the snow.

   After another 15 minutes of driving I pull up into my driveway. A house on a small piece of land, which is nice to not be bothered by neighbors all the time, and having a little firing range in the back.

   Walking in I'm greeted by the sound of silence. My family must be out for dinner.

   Since I recently graduated high school I have been working a lot at a fast food place to make some money while I take a year off before I to go to college. As well as fund my nice little firearms collection that I have for fun. Nothing crazy, just some stuff to plink around with in my backyard.

   I see the picture in the hall of the five of us, my parents, my two brothers, of whom I'm the middle child, and myself, smiling after a day of riding dirt bikes, covered in dust. My dirty blond hair, green eyes, and light skin make me stand out from my family. My dad and younger brother have the skin color, but dark brown eyes. On the other hand my mom and older brother have brown skin that makes me looking blindingly pale, but their blue and green eyes respectively combined with similar facial features shows we are related.

   'Hardly see them with how are schedules have been lately, maybe I should take them out for a family dinner.'

   After showering and playing some video games my family arrives home. I ask if they were busy friday, which they were, but we decided we would find a day to go out for that dinner together, but money was running tight as the stock market had crashed and prices ran high.

   We were lucky that we had quite a bit saved up collectively and that four of us worked, but the US still relied heavily on trade for things it needed like electronics, and people wanted things that were not traditional American products.

Walking off to my room I crashed onto my bed and pulled out my phone. Scrolling through Facebook I wanted time away looking at friends updates and reading about how it will be the hardest winter in decades, which that and the already large population of hungry people and the riots around the country do not look good for the United States. But we were pretty far away from the major cities, and the activists group behind most of the riots didnt appear to be of any real threat, so I put it aside. Laughing when I saw that they planned an uprising tomorrow of some sort.

I decided I would play some Xbox before heading to bed as I didnt work the next day. So I played through the night, until around one in the morning.

For some reason the power went out, but that happened when it snowed alot like it did today so i took it as a sign to head to bed, and that's what I did.