The Age Of Arma Gedeon

Chapter 0, Orientation

It happened.
When is now the hardest question to ask of any who calls themselves human.

Only one man really knows and we don't actually understand or believe much out of him.
He was sheltered from the purple fog, but we were not.
We call him Musk, as more of his self-naming is not believable.

What I remember as the beginning is the reports of the mountaintops being covered with purple clouds.
They released purple fog everywhere.
When every bit of everything was covered, filled and penetrated, it thickened and when it cleared, no one, no thing, no memory was intact or the same.

For example, I have what's called a large amount of prior identity retention... I can tell you, I was a tall, beached blond woman with two grown sons, living in a trailer park in Arizona with my boyfriend of six years.
I had some collage degree, but I worked at a diner.
I was overweight, smoked cigarettes and pot, didn't drink much but would.
My eyes were blue.

Now, I am a short, thin man, with dark brown hair.
My eyes are still blue, but I know they are different.
I have no children and no lover.
I live on a small homestead.
Mostly, I raise pigs, but have chickens and a bull, he has three cows, one with calf.
I have my mother here with me.
We don't know if she was my mother before or if we ever met before the purple fog.

Things have changed.

I have been assigned the task of pointing out changes as I see more than anyone else in our community and I can read and write.
Putting things in an understandable order is not required as no one has a guess what that might be.
So, I write letters to the community leaders and they share it as wanted.
Mostly, they get pinned up on a wall in the pub and laughed about over beers.
Doesn't bother me, I've pigs to feed.

My homestead is just off the road into the business village, so when security patrols come through, the knights take my letters to the record clerk.

Anyone traveling can come into my courtyard... water is two silver pieces for your horse and one for you.
A bowl of stew is three pieces of silver and if you want my mother, Farsarah, to sit with you while you eat, it will cost you a piece of gold.
I say she should make each pay, but a single knight or the whole pack and she's fine with one piece.

My home is stone and mortar with a wooden porch... three steps up and someday I really will get around to putting a hand rail on it.
There are four rooms... Two sleeping rooms, a toilet room and the main room.

We've a wood table with four chairs, a plush chair, cooking fireplace, sink with running water... hot and cold.

There is a set of eight plug-ins, but we only have two things that plugs in.
The computer which we haven't turned on yet and a grinder we use every day.

No power at night or thick cloudy days with direct solar power.
No batteries anywhere now.
They are band.
Nothing wireless and nothing electrical always on... too dangerous.

My first letter to the community, outlined my knowledge of differences.
It informed those who didn't get it in the wind, there used to be governments, countries and continents.

Now, there is land and sea. One could say that there are four continents now, but that's just cause the large salt rivers divide the land.
I think there is more land now, but I can't be sure.

The order of society is all different, but I don't remember much of what was.
I know, I was taught in school that the earth was a ball spinning in space.
It's not and it's not really called earth.
Earth means good dirt.
We know now it is a realm called Aden.
It is a nursery of sorts, incubator might be more right, but still realm is the word, just hard to undo what we think it means.