Diary,
Today Los Angeles burned.
We’re alive. None of my friends died getting out, and most of our animals made it too. Very little else made it. The house is probably gone. The solar panels and atmospheric water generators are gone. The city of my adolescence, the city where I went to school and had my first drink and my first date and my first heartbreak are all gone too.
Or in the process of going. It’s still orange on the horizon. The year has been so dry, I’m not sure how far the fire is going to spread. Came down from the north, and it didn’t make sense to go south to more dry city, so we fled east.
Made it to Redlands, stopped in a park. Not sure if I’m hallucinating, or if I can still see the red of the flames on the horizon.
Maybe I’ll feel like talking about it tomorrow. Sky says I should shut up and get some rest. I think I will.
-Lonely
Dear Diary,
I’ve considered this might be the last record of our little colony. In fifty years, there might be no more trace of our little struggles to survive than this book filled with scribbles. If we all die tomorrow, I hope the acid-free paper of this journal might survive in the rainless climate here, protected from the wind by the shell of this RV, until some explorers stumble upon it and free it from the rot. What will they think of me when they read it? Will they even look long enough to care?
We struggled, we fought, we lived. Damn anything man or nature throws at us.
We don’t know what it was, even now. Chances are it was a little of both. The modern energy grid is so full of safeties, particularly in California. We’ve got layers and layers of failsafes, so much so that even during major earthquakes (like Northridge a few years back) we avoided huge fires or other big disasters. The city didn’t burn then.
But that was with a million people actively working to prevent something from going wrong. Not a whole city full of buildings that were simply abandoned overnight, left running right where they lay. We might not ever know what caused it. Maybe something blew over and sparked. Maybe pressure built up in a refinery or something. Maybe the HPI left a few napalm explosives on a timer for us.
It was early in the morning. I’d only been in bed a few hours when Cloudy Skies came banging on my door, saying that she smelled smoke. I didn’t even bother to get dressed, just ran outside to look, as naked as she was. She was right. Even though the sun wasn’t fully up, I could see the billowing cloud, putrid black smoke with flickers of orange. I couldn’t tell exactly what was burning; I only knew we didn’t have much time.
We didn’t have nearly enough “get out of dodge” supplies packed, we weren’t ready for anything like this. Maybe we should’ve scoured the city for anything that might cause trouble, or maybe doing that would’ve taken all our time and still not been enough. Whatever. Hindsight.
We’ve kept the cattle-truck near the ranch, and I sent Huan with Sky to get the herd loaded as soon as possible. Sky would drive the truck along the Ten and out of town, waiting on the highway itself as soon as she was out of the densest city. So that was two of us gone.
The others weren’t even up yet, though I yelled and screamed and pounded and eventually they started making their way downstairs. I explained the situation, and took charge. Only Sky had completed enough of her practice to actually know how to drive a truck, and Joseph couldn’t drive at all.
Of all we had, what couldn’t be replaced? Joseph’s data. I put the unicorns on that, cramming everything they possibly could into the nicer RV. We'd packed it for an escape more than a week ago, and the dry food was still inside. At least it was freshly fueled, too. When they were done, or when I gave the signal that the fire was getting close, Moriah was to drive it and Joseph was to ride out along the ten to meet Sky. Two more gone.
That left Oliver and me to deal with the necessities of survival, at least more than whatever we’d kept in the RV. We would load it into Sky’s pickup truck, which Oliver would drive. We briefly considered using the other RV, but in the end decided we could always find another one if we wanted, and that being able to get over rough terrain might be more important. That would leave me with the medicine truck.
We had maybe ten minutes before we saw the first flickers of flames. Perhaps an hour before the smoke started getting thick, a sure sign that we would have to evacuate quickly. Of all of us, only I had lived here, and had the luxury of any personal belongings. I brought my journal, my laptop, my new outfit, and my keepsakes from home. We filled the back of that truck with MREs, so cold from being frozen before that they burned our mouths and hooves whenever they touched them. Once we had the pickup stuffed, we covered it with a tarp, tied it down, and Oliver was out.
I was the last to go. I could see the flames flickering from house to house in the near distance, roaring out of apartment windows. Gas lines exploded with regular force, sending up roaring mushroom clouds into the morning sky. God, I didn’t know fire could even move this fast.
I could see my transmission tower out the window as the cooler truck started. I’m sure inside that loft room it was still transmitting the summons to Los Angeles with the promise of community, food, and safety. It burned. I didn’t stay long enough to watch it burn, but somewhere in my soul I just know it did. All these months without irrigation had already dried much of the city to kindling.
Lots of concrete and steel won’t ever burn. I wonder, if I return in a few months, how many of the buildings might still be standing, massive steel and stone skeletons to be colonized by tumbleweeds and wildflowers. How many are going to topple in those flames? Will any of the history survive?
Thank god for Cloudy Skies and her inhumanly early rising. If we’d woken to flames at our door instead of smoke, we might not have survived. Or we might’ve escaped with nothing but burns, to crawl away as dying refugees.
I don’t think it will swallow the whole state. Winds won’t help it forever, and it’s too dense in places. Go a little further north, and you hit greener and greener country. South, though… I wonder just how far that fire might spread.
We’re not going back. Not for months, anyway, and not on hoof. We brought everything we could, everything that couldn’t be replaced.
I couldn’t watch my city burn. I could barely drive through the tears when I left, and the wind whipped the smoke up into billowing clouds that made it hard to drive. The Event has taken everything I’ve loved away. My friends, my family, my body, my identity, and now my whole city.
Joseph called the HPI on our communicator. They say they had nothing to do with it, said they don’t have anyone within 300 miles, and there’s nothing they can do to fight a fire that size. I believe them about that last part, anyway.
Goodbye to the city I loved. Goodbye to the not-wide-enough streets, to the buildings with their history, the familiar sights and smells. Goodbye to Union Station, the auto garage, and my crappy apartment. Goodbye to our mansion and all the work we did to make it a home. Goodbye to the garden half-grown and the fences. Goodbye to the stray dogs that would’ve eaten us if they could, and whose barking sometimes kept us awake at night. Goodbye to the radio stations and the strange runes.
Goodbye my friend, city of angels. Thank you for keeping me safe these last three months. If I’m your last child, I’ll keep your memory. It can’t be heavier than the burdens I’m already carrying.
We refueled this morning using my homemade siphon. At least all our vehicles run on diesel; looks like most of the supply is still stable. While Cloudy Skies and the others watered the cattle and let the chickens out, Joseph, Huan, and I went to find another truck and get it retrofitted for pony use. We had to pick up some new tools too, since mine hadn’t made it out of LA. Came back in mid-afternoon with a standard cargo truck, one of the ones with the nice, livable cab. Not sustainable, mind, but at least it has a toilet and a fridge and a bed. Enough.
As she seemed the most adept at learning new vehicles, Moriah was the one I gave the crash-course on trucks to that afternoon. She wouldn’t need to do anything really but drive in a straight line and relatively slow speeds, so it wasn’t hard. We’ll have to stop and have me take them down one at a time if we encounter narrow roads or steep inclines or something. Whatever.
She wasn’t happy to switch out for Oliver as RV driver, not when Joseph spent most his time there. To our great surprise, he gave up gaming (though none of his consoles had made it, his laptop had, and he apparently had tons of games on that too.) But he didn’t even bring it to ride passenger with Moriah. Curiouser and curiouser.
I saw the letter Cloudy Skies wrote in here. I bet she’s not happy, if she’s not as overwhelmed by the fire as I am. We talked before our caravan started driving again in the afternoon, and she wanted to ride with me. She knew she couldn’t, but she didn’t want to be alone. We didn’t have enough ponies for that, of course. Oliver would be alone in the RV, she’d be alone with the cows, and I’d be alone with some drugs. So it went.
Used CB to keep in touch, and drove until one of us (Sky) got too tired to keep driving. Stopped for a meal of our last fresh greens in the RV, then Sky and I came in here to share the truck’s cab while the other ponies share the RV. Wonder if it’s normal to cry this much. Everything’s better with friends, even being sad. Maybe especially.
We should stop at a Toys R’ Us tomorrow. See if we can get a copy of Monopoly.
The bed isn’t very big, and I don’t think Huan will be able to share it with us. He doesn’t mind though, because he’s such a good dog. Yes you are! Yes you are! At least… somebody’s not completely lost it. Thanks for being here for me, you big dumb mutt. Alright, alright, I’m sorry! You’re not dumb! Get off me… damnit, don’t step on the laptop.
Here’s praying tomorrow is better.
The HPI told us during our meeting yesterday they needed us to meet with some force, possibly a pony, coming in our direction. I wonder if that pony caused the fire. I wonder if they died in it.
-Lonely Day
And just like that so much work and progress is lost.
...!
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6149019 Jeeze is right
Man... Fuck nature.
Life isn't a story. Sometimes events spring up completely inimical to the proper flow of a narrative. At least it was just a fire and not a meteor strike.
Still, it's just been one thing after another for A, hasn't it? This isn't even square one; that had a city's infrastructure ripe for the picking. This is about square negative two. It should be interesting to see where the group goes from here, and whether there's any connection between the magical force and the fire.
That's the problem with our society. It seems both so stable and so fragile at the same time, held up only by the millions of people struggling to stay alive. As soon as enough people are gone, it cracks. But, if we replace the people soon enough, the cracks can be repaired. But if they're lost for good, or we lose more, everything will go up in flames.
This chapter was just absolutely heartbreaking. At least they all made it out.
Dammit Derpy!
It was, in the end, only a matter of time. In retrospect, they should have been setting up a fall-back base somewhere beyond a respectable fire-break of some kind. In retrospect, at least. It's very, very easy to be smart in retrospect. It's harder when facing a total physical, mental and emotional crisis to think clearly enough ahead, especially if you have no kind of training appropriate to such considerations.
One way or another, they're going to run into the Numbers Guy now, long before they would have if the fire had not happened and they're now at a massive disadvantage. Only time will tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
6149032
Exactly. It's going to be fantastically hard to start again somewhere else with no guarantee that, after months, the necessary supplies will be available in the right locations and in working order. This is a huge and disastrous setback.
That said, sometimes, all you can do is keep fighting. Every time the dead, mindless hand of chance sends your house of cards clattering into ruin, just start building again. That is the real difference between man and the animal and this is Alex's chance to prove, no matter what body he now possesses, that he is not just a mere animal.
....
...
.....
DRAGON!
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Fire, lots of fire.
Clearly due to Disco(rd)
6149210
With the right starting heat (say a refinery exploding or something similar) even aluminium, a common building material, will burn and burn fiercely. Hell, water would crack into hydrogen and oxygen and be more fuel for the fire! In the end, 'fire retardant' is only against small, accidental ignition sources, not sustained and concentrated doses of 1000-degrees or more. All those abandoned clothes, wooden items, lithium batteries and fuel... Well, you don't need to be a genius to do the math.
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Well......that just happened. I don't even know how to comment on that. It's just......dayum!!!!!!!!!!!! What the buck are they gonna do now ?????????????
6149210
I think the key to remember here is that the image of the skyscrapers burning is in Alex's imagination. Our protagonist lives in a suburban neighborhood (albeit an affluent one close-ish to the big city). A neighborhood with huge dead lawns and dead trees with no water anywhere to be seen. Even if a fire never spread into the city center (we don't know either way, since Alex's first mission was survival, not learning the precise details), we have good evidence to suggest that regular modern homes (still wood frames, even today) burn quite well under the right conditions.
I wonder if the magical source is a human turned dragon and is just like
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6149096
Were you referring to this video???
6149334 Im sorta shocked it wasnt a bleve that occurred. Though that would have likely wakened them with the noise or the shockwave.
Having seen how many things can go that way, even with the failsafes, and no folks it could happen so easily. So many household items are just so capable of nasty explosive properties, that modern machinery prevents, now having failed.
6149210 If LA is a Rain shadow area, or near enough it. Its very possible with shoddy construction that gets plants such as vines or other greenery to dry out, Fires can leap with a good wind, No water about would mean many plants are near dry tinder waiting to burn, Though, to spark enough to spread fast, something or someone had to act as a catalyst here.
Because what Alex needed was another dose of trauma and loss. No, wait, wait, the opposite of that.
I'd interrogate the cows. Are any of them distant relatives of one owned by a Mrs. O'Leary of Chicago? Family history of arson and all....
6149210 A gas leak changes all the rules. Get a fire going off of one of those and even modern buildings will become infernos. And three months is a lot of time for dangers to build up....
So... I take it that the second first contact event went south?
Huh, okay maybe not, just a random fire with no firefighters around to attend to it and an empty, dry city to consume. Hopefully the super powerful magic source both didn't cause it and survived it.
Edit: Fascinating ideas in the comments, particularly the dragon theory.
That's one Wham Line if I ever saw one. (And one of the best I can even remember: coming from nothing at first yet making more and more sense as one started thinking about it and the entry continued)
(I'm not considering the "Incomplete" tag (or next chapters) in the fic's main page for this reply)
I hope not, I like to think that this diary/journal has been as important for the
LAHerd as a register as it's been for Alex personally.Out of all the hints you had been giving us, I had completely ignored all the references to the seasonal fires. I honestly did not expect that to happen.
And now we have a whole new situation to explore, along with the lingering questions from before.
You're really quite good at this...
6149404
Not really but funny connection still!
Could have been worse...
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Jussayin. >.>
6149730
Pitchforks!! Get ya pitchforks!!! Can't be an angry mob without pitchforks!!!
Torches!!! Dirt cheap torches!! All your angry-mob needs right here!!!
Cotton candy!! Get some sweet, delicious cotton candy clouds, right here!!! It's not really related to being an angry mob, but it's tasty!!!
6149374 You sir are a genius. I hadn't thought of that...
6149836 Wut?!
6149373 I like how this is the first time (I think) Alex has written their name as "Lonely Day" in full--I know we've gotten Lonely before, but I believe that this is a nice transition mirroring the fall of the city.
LA is gone and so is Alex, nice touch.
Well... I know that it's already been said but that really can't be natural, most buildings in big cities like Los Angeles are separated by roads, so if a fire started in one building, only the whole block would be affected, I find it strange that a city made of steel was not able to curb the fire somehow, even spreading throughout the block to quickly would be a stretch of the imagination.
I mean... there has GOT to be something behind this, for this to happen can't be a coincidence right? Unless the city was doused in lighter fluid overnight don't see how this could happen.
My side story takes place in Long Beach California. Which is South of LA.
I now have a deadline to get outta dodge.
6150015
Well, what else would burn down the entire place? Dragons are huge, maybe that's what the satellites were picking up? There are a couple clues pointing to that.
However, if the HPI couldn't get a lock on what was moving towards their position, it may not be a solid being, so maybe some magical creature or storm or something. There are a lot of weird things going on.
JUST HAD A THOUGHT: What if the magical thing is the smoooooze?
FUUUUUUUUCK! This the WORST! POSSIBLE! THING!
6150371 isn't long beach a suburb of LA?
6150516 Nah, it's prob a dragon.
6150550
...You're right
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6150567 And that pretty much sums up How To Train Your Dragon.
6150546 It's its own city in the Greater Los Angeles Area.
I think I remember someone writing about fires in California during one of these stories (I'm not up for searching back through all the chapters I've read to find it), but yes, it was probably inevitable. Not all of the fires in the state are caused by human actions - there are still some by lightning and such. And barring "divine intervention", there should have been lots of processes running away, from stoves left on to big industry running away unchecked. What I'm saying is fires are a very real possibility in "life after people".
Having said that, I still think it was arson...
Well, heck.
A new (final?) act begins.
6150608 okay, my great grandmother lived there before she died and everyone always referred to it as essentially a part of LA which is why I thought it was a suburb. Thanks for clearing that up
6149210
Yes, absolutely yes. There is more than one reason fire departments scramble to put out blazes.
6147922
Already been said, but no. My Little Pony does not exist. Everything is just way simpler that way. I didn't want this to be another "brony in equestria" genre. I think it's more fun to have the characters discover things naturally.
6148791
well, if that was the case, it'd probably be a few generations down the line. Also, I... probably wouldn't have said anything about it. But who can say. Maybe telling you exactly what's happening is my latest bit of misdirection.
6149032
At least the progress of their friendship hasn't been lost! There's no way to replace friends! Is magic... or... something.
6149130
Yeah, they probably should have had some kind of fallback. Maybe an organized evacuation plan. Alex did admirably under the circumstances, but if they'd been a little wiser, like keeping server backups already ready to go, maybe a caravan already out there, or a building full of supplies somewhere close, that would've made all their lives easier. As it stands...
6149372
Well, that's what we'll find out. Assuming they don't all just break down and the colony falls apart. Wouldn't be the first story to end that way.
6149374
If so, that's one going to be one guilty dragon when they learn that their accident destroyed a successful little community.
6149435
If the cows had been responsible, they probably would've been the first to burn. I don't think the flames were that close, though I guess we'll never know for sure. Fire forensics is not a skill possessed by any member of the group.
6149579
I think Alex just lets her win every game. Doesn't really seem like the sort of person to be personally invested in the game's outcome either way.
6149730
Hey I promised! Maybe they'd do some posthumous autopsy? Or... have a chapter for the funeral agenda? Maybe the obituary would have the gender in there somewhere!
6149758
Living in Southern California really was living on borrowed time. Even without humans, something was bound to start some serious flames eventually. Now here we are, looking at the wreckage. I hope it didn't get everything; there's a whole heap of industry in the LA area that those survivors will probably need one day.
6149836
That second hand. I do believe Alex specifically described gas explosions in the escape, though. Good thing that pony wasn't close. I doubt even an earth pony could survive a gas explosion.
6150203
I've said this already, but we don't actually know it was downtown that burned. We don't know if those skyscrapers took damage at all. It's possible, but we don't know. Alex's drawing was clearly something from the imagination (the bus stop sign was on fire for Pete's sake). The fire spread through the suburban neighborhood, that we know for sure. In the California climate, all those manicured lawns and trees were just dried firewood ready to go. And yes, the flames can leap streets naturally. Here in California, they regularly leap ten-lane freeways without any dragons.
That said, it could've been supernatural. It just ddin't have to be.
6150371
Well, the fire did start from the north. Maybe it didn't make that far? Or maybe you better watch out.
I knew things were getting way too cozy to last.
Oh, the sweet and familiar - yet oddly often unnameable - sense of enoument.
Also, I too theorize that this was a dragon's work.
6151134
Seems like a leap of logic to me... but who am I to question? I live in Scotland, one of the wettest damn countries in the world.
6151444
With a quick Google search, I turned out numerous videos of it happening. Here's a particularly dramatic one from Australia (which has a very similar climate to southern California).
[youtube=GJ0ZWgCk5Ak]
That opening line has to be one of the most unanticipated and hard hitting I've seen yet.
Even despite all the background knowledge of this being almost inevitable and it even being mentioned at some point that "it is fire season" it still came completely out of left field. The narrative flow kind of demanded something completely different... you're the master of the unexpected twist that one could or should have seen coming; but everyone was too distracted by all the other ongoings.
Argh. The feels.
Ouch, this chapter just brought a big downfall to their progress. We were all waiting for the fires to start, anyway.
Don't worry, we can all still bond over a game of Monopoly!
6149196 Now I kind of want to see the HPI blimp fight a giant fire breathing dragon...
...
Starscribe, please make this happen at some point!