Right, I just got through gifting out all the games from the previous contest, but since it left such a warm, nice feeling down here in the cockles of my black heart I thought I'd hold another contest. This one is a Fallout-themed one!

Since we still have about a week left of the interplay promo I thought this would be a good time to hold a Fallout-themed game giveaway. Here are the rules this time:

I'm giving out 5 Fallout games, winners can freely choose which Fallout title they prefer. 5 games, one game per winner. The point is to get people who haven't had the balls or the money to buy any of the Fallout titles on GOG to try them for the first time and hopefully enjoy them. If you're in a pinch I guess you can change your prize to be one of the other games from the Interplay promo, but we'll think about that later if the issue pops up.

Right, rules! Your mission...no wait err... your task...task? Your task is to write a 80-120 word long thingie about something post-apocalyptic, preferably something to do with Fallout. It could be a poem about how you ran out of water in the middle of the wastes, it could be a rant about why Fallout: New Vegas is better than Fallout 3, it could tell the tale of a gunslinger who had some help from a certain stranger because of a certain perk, or it could just be a short essay on why we as a human race do not cope well with world annihilation and the post-apocalyptic issues that it brings with it. I will read all entries, you have 3 days and I will choose what I think are the best five. Let's all have fun with this and hopefully a lot of people will try their luck and write something awesome!

EDIT: The word limit is there to make the competition fair for all participants, and to prevent me from simply plowing through long entries because I don't have the energy to read them properly. I don't mean to strangle your creative flow, but we also have to make sure that everyone has fun and doesn't get bitter because some participants bend the rules

I own & love Fallout 1 & 2, great contest. +1 for you!

Dust and roaches. That's what makes up most of the scenery nowadays. But every once in a while I stumble across something that makes me remember the better times. Like last week when I saw the contrast of orange against seemingly constant gray. Curious, I picked what turned out to be a small cardboard box from the rubble. "FALLOUT" was emblazoned boldly upon the mildewy front. A shame I had never played it while the juice was still on, I mused as I tossed it back upon the heap and walked once more among the dust and roaches.

I've already bought all three Fallouts, but I'll throw my hat into the ring anyway. This is the form of a journal entry.

Just three generations it's been since the fall of civilisation. In fact, when ol' Gary kick's the bucket there'll be nobody left who was around in the old times, well, at least not amongst my village. They always said we could rebuild, return to the old age of technology, but how? There is not only precious little old technology left in working order, but few people know how to use it. Not to mention, I'm only one of fifteen in my village who can understand the old written language. I fear it is inevitable that soon any possibility of re-learning the old ways will be lost forever...

Night, that longest time of the day. Darkness has fallen in my mind. Blurred my mind so long as I can remember.
Bitterness, hate and anger. Those things came with depression.
Fear is always has been here.
Fear of change. Fear of chance to fight against the waves of change.
sometimes I tried more, sometimes I think that I don't need anybody.
But I will change everything evil and I turn away from help.
Still my own soul screams for help and I need strenght.
I'll be always tortured by my own thoughts.
I let them.
That is fear.
I think that I am a good person but if I was.. why do I hurt so much others, with my thoughts, words, actions.
I deserve nothing. No joy, no hope.
Nothing.
I don't exist. I'm only a shadow. "step forward", I say to myself. My head screams but I let those voices disappear in my mind as most things. Still, never forgetting.
I guess that I'm waiting the end. But I still live.
I bury my feelings or I rage those outside but that is never enough.
I drink and drink.. never enough, is this it?
End now?
I collect myself again and again..
I try to break the cycle.. Without results.
Two options.. I can be awake but there is a limit for everything.
I wake up and it's always the same.
Full of hatred,full of pain.
Only thing that I really hate, is this cage.
My own doing.
Small cage, no purpose.
Morning arises and I know that there won't be long that death will take me.
Or do I start all over again.
The cycle, pain.
But there was a friend..
I think that is now only in my mind.
He says, there is hope and a new dawn.
Why do I seem to forget that hope.
Time for change.
Time for new beginning.
I will continue these days as long as is necessary.
Someday I will see the light.
Perhaps it will be sanctuary or perhaps it's death.
I still continue searching.
Note to myself: Never give up, never stop trying.
Remember that as long as you live.
Maybe someday, I am more than a shadow full of hatred.

-Antimateria.

Cool idea for a contest!! My entry:

Gray....gray was the sole color of the world nowadays. When the big one fell, the world we knew vanished instantly and a pall of death fell over the land. Gone were the traffic of the city, gone were the people and their sounds of life. The only sound present now was the haunting, mocking wind. The ceaseless wind only emphasized the absence of life in the wasteland. The distant gunshot allowed one to believe that some vestige of civilization still existed, but in reality, the sound was merely evidence of further anarchy. Humanity had indeed fallen into an abyss, it could not hope of emerging from. And so, tonight, if you can hear, there will be one more gunshot.

yes.. cool "contest".. something which in my case somewhat put the spark in my soulless black heart. =)

Here is my entry. Thanks for the contest.

________________________________________________________________________

Reality

When I reflect upon the concept of heaven, troubling questions arise. How would it look? Where would it be? If tomorrow I wake in a land of total bliss, will I believe, or will I take it for an illusion?

There’s plenty wrong with my life: wearing a gas mask all day, eating bugs, sleeping in an infested wilderness. That is all horrible enough. Yet what perturbs me the most about this world is the chilling feeling that it may not be a world at all, but Hell itself.

The nightmare that we do not wake from isn’t contained in toxic gas canisters, but in our minds: where sanity and insanity fight an eternal pitched battle for control.

The funny thing is, among end of the world scenarios, Fallout is the happy ending – Earth abides, humanity survives, civilization begins anew. An asteroid impact, a solar flare or supernova, volcanic everwinter, gray goo, a doomsday virus, a mini-black hole from the LHC… It only takes one of these for our fragile civilization to cease to exist completely. As an average person, I can do little about many of these existential risks, but what little I can do, I will. I don’t have the answers, and I don’t know if anyone does, but I do know some people asking the right questions: The Singularity Institute is one, the Future of Humanity Institute is another. Sending a couple bucks their way could help prevent Fallout and all the other nightmare scenarios from happening.

War. War never changes. It really doesn't. And even if you think it is, it's not. Ok, sometimes it does. But only for a moment. And then it's all the same again. Really. I mean that. If you think that war ever changed in human history, you're wrong. And all the future wars will be just the same. Don't believe me? Just you wait. You'll see. World never changes, people never change, so does not the war. Peace to you my brother, and prepare to war.

The caves ain’t a bad place to live considering we have plenty of rats and bats to eat and water comes up from under ground. Plus the air comes in from somewhere nobody can see so those bastards who tried kill us that time by lighting a fire at the door to suck up our oxygen just gave up and moved on.

Then I got elected to form a group to go outside, stay hid, and keep watch. I grabbed some guys who went with me to light up the dark corners of the caves and kill snakes. We went out into the gray, rainy world to learn survival and watch for what we had been hiding from: people.


I want to write more about these guys. But thanks for this Deus_Ex.

I know its more then was asked for but I had fun writing it.

I would appreciate Fallout 2 if I win.

Thanks for the Contest!


<Entry>

The day started like any normal day, I woke up in my bed the mattress was scratchy because it was only 2-3 wool blankets used to soften the rock I laid upon to sleep. I normally lay their for 10-20 minutes thinking about how 6 months ago I would wake up at a normal hour of 6:30 dress and go to work… not anymore.

I gathered what I’d need for the day an empty can of beans I used as a cup, a battered tea pot I used to cook and or heat water with, and a sturdy walking stick I used to kill small animals to eat to survive, and sometimes the larger ones.

I walked to the lake that was only a mile or so away, once I got there I waded near the water to see if there were any fish I might take with my walking stick, lucky for me there was one bashed it on the head grabbed the tail and flung it up onto land, tonight will be a good fish soup.

My neck for the past couple months had been bothering me I seemed to have been developing a rash on both sides of it I’ve tried to keep from scratching it, so that it wouldn’t start to bleed but today it was being to insistent so I scratched it. Still looking at the water for another fish I hadn’t heard the mutant that shadowed up to my back and started to strangle me with what looked like a rope… interesting way to start the day.

The mutant hadn’t a tight enough grip on the rope so I painfully twirled around to face him feeling the rope rip the skin right off my neck that hurt…

The mutant looked like a human but with burns diagonal down his face and body almost as if he had lain upon a grill, I punched him in the gut but it did little to him, his grip upon the rope tightened and the world started to fade next thing I knew he raised his hand and pound me into darkness.

I awoke in the water, looking around all I could see was the murky slit of the lakes floor. I suddenly started to panic for lack of oxygen but soon realized I hadn’t the need to breath… looking around I saw a faint light above me and started to swim towards it, I soon breached the lakes surface and looked around the mutant was gone, I swam to where I had been fishing and found nothing but the tail of the fish that I had caught, the damn mutant also had taken my all my supplies even though they didn’t add up to much.

My neck burned so I went back to the water carefully watching around me to make sure another mutant didn’t happen by me, oh god… looking at my reflection in the water I was horrified to see that the scabs on the sides of my neck had been ripped off and were bleeding freely but that wasn’t all… underneath them were gills…


<End Entry>

I guess no one saw the "80-120 word" thing in the OP. Is the correct term, rebels without a word limit? I must join them!

<entry>

So, I found three more today, they're all the same. They always are. They always start just like this, seemingly in the middle of a conversation, as if to make the atmosphere more realistic. Each of them has the same characteristics, (obviously literature in the old days wasn't sufficiently advanced to match their own predecessors), and each one never strays significantly from the formula, that depressing formula. It is nothing like what we have now. Civilization as a concept and in practice continues to exist, radiation is not the threat we thought it would be, archives of our past still relate to us even in this different state.

However, it is my job to find these writings, many of them amateur, writings of what our state was supposed to be, the depression, the loneliness, the danger, etc. etc. etc. It is tiring work. An adventurer? No, a description of my work could not come close to that, besides, anyone with a gun and more than two bullets thinks he can run out and take on the world. My job is to remind our civilization of what trials we were supposed to endure, that we may see that our condition is not so bad, and we have progressed farther than any doomsayer had once thought. A historiographer, may be a better name, or really, a collector. A collector of short "post-apocalyptic" stories, of any kind, published, scrabbled, amateur, professional.

Let me give you some samples:

"Brown and gray is all I ever see"
"Dust and desert encompass the entirety of my vision"
"Occasionally I see a rise out of the flat, empty, desolate desert, but it is only a mirage"

What is this, exactly? Almost every one of the stories I collect contains this description, some of them copy each other almost word for word! Only the blind in our society cannot see our rebuilt architecture, or our sprawling farms.

"Mutant"
"mutants"
"Mutant"

While they make for a good enemy (as in, one you cannot empathize with, akin to zombies and the like), we see none of them here. Any creature so affected by impact radiation (that wasn't immediately killed by the blast, of course) died within days, if not hours, of the final explosion. As for the implications in genetics, sure, we have a slight increase in the number of stillbirths, and some genetic imperfections, but they are just that, "imperfections", that, due to the laws of nature, will never contribute to it's person any kind of advantage, but only disadvantages, and only sometimes on the scale of deformed limbs and the like.

"It is a painful struggle to survive every day"
"Morning and evening, over and over, simply trying to get by, all alone"
"Death soon awaits me, I know it will come eventually, there is nothing to do but endure as long as I can"

Of all the things they got wrong, this is the most egregious error. While at first there were some who thought they could continue a lifestyle of terror, looting, and immorality, they were quickly taken care of. Our society today has no sentient enemy, and for those forces of nature that are only competing with us to rebuild our respective environments, we humans have each other to rely upon, our families and friends, our societies, our homes. Some "other" societies in different parts of the world may think differently, and this is where our "adventurers" go to, but it is a waste.

There are many more examples I could show you, but I digress.

For while the quality of writing may be discouraging, the content is encouraging, for every story I collect shows me just how far we have come from that pathetic image given to us by the past.

</entry>

Thanks for the contest! I'd thought I try my hand at doing a meta take on post-apocalyptic literature. Hopefully it worked out well.

LOL yeah
fyi everyone: In MS Word, select your text, then click Tools > Word Count.