The Town that Time Forgot
Its the twenty first century. At least, for the rest of the world. In the lonely reaches of the West, lies a town that rests forever in the year 1888. Eternally blind to the workings of the outside world, they toil on in the heat of the sun without ice, live the night without the comfort of electricity, and brave the winter without heating. There, they entertain themselves with books (of which there are few), and singing songs around a bed of coals. In this town, they eat off the land, with the food that they grow and the game they hunt. Supported only by their gardens and their ability to hunt, they dance on the edge of possible calamity. Should the harvest be too poor, of a disease or storm kill off game, they would starve. But if their bodies were to be weakened by hunger, they would fall to sickness long before the emptiness of their stomachs. There was no idea of bacteria, or sterilization. They drank from wild streams, touched the blood of the injured, loved without a worry. And so they rose each morning, oblivious to the troubles of our world, toiled to survive, and slept at ease, knowing that they would awake to the same world they closed their eyes on. Until time remembered them. The changes came slowly, like water seeping through the ground. At first, it appeared as if nothing had changed. Then, the days became hotter, and the nights colder. The air turned sour, and tasted of metal and waste. The mountain streams that once flowed crisp and clear were transformed into rotting cesspools of stagnant bilge. The dirt tighter it's grip on the soil, making is poor in quality and scarce to find. The harvest dwindled, the land died, the game vanished. The people, in their little town with its backcountry roads and wood and nail buildings that lay in the reaches of the West, cried. The children screamed with the pain of empty bellies, the young raged at the injustice. Mothers cried for their children, and the elderly wept silently, for fear of being heard. The people turned from despair to hate. They shouted at the sky, the stars, and themselves. They blamed one another, and fought. As the cries of the children started to lessen in number, they turned to fixing the calamity. But it was too late, as time had fully discovered them. Soon, our world found them too. We sent healers, thinkers, speakers. But the more we tried to help, the more the people of the town fled in terror. When the speakers, and healers couldn't help, we sent the fighters. In all their glory, we sent them. They flew in their metal birds and rode their steel horses. The town people saw these, and struck out in fear. The shouted and cursed, throwing rocks, and shooting their guns. It did little to the metal beasts on the land and in the air. Our thinkers could not tell us where they were from, or how they appeared there. The leaders soon began to yell at one another, preaching about morals, giving sermons of war. And all the while, the harvest dwindled, the land died, and the game vanished. The leaders switched from leading to fighting, and soon, they called an order. They demanded a storm be called, and from it try would rain down wrath and ruin on the town. The clouds gathered, the sky darkened, and the rain was ready to fall. As the downpour began, the clocks blinked. And time forgot. It forgot the town in the reaches of the West, that in January of 1889 was struck by so terrible a storm that the town was wiped from the map. Soon, the harvests were bountiful, the land was vibrant, and the game flourished. Time forgot, never to again remember.
