《The Goose, the golden egg and the end of the world》Chapter 25 - Senator Tom Groff
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In Russia they were speaking the language of war and in the United States they were speaking the language of civil war. Tom Groff was looking at a world gone mad, a world in which people in their desperation were taking leave of their senses and supporting whomever was speaking through the loudest megaphone. Tom had been campaigning for months and was still at a loss for what he needed to do to break people free from the fever that had taken hold of them. He didn't judge them, it was perfectly understandable for people to be afraid and anxious when there were so many bizarre things happening around the world that nobody had a good explanation for, but somehow people needed to be made to see that Jim Balmer and others like him weren't offering any actual solutions, they were merely capitalizing on people's fears to advance their own ambitions which were entirely self-serving. Tom didn't have the answers himself but he did believe that his faith offered more of a pathway to understanding these strange phenomena than Jim Balmer's sermonizing did.
Tom was a member of The Church of the Golden Goose. He had discovered John Lafferty's published material years earlier and was convinced enough by the archaeological discoveries that underpinned John's theories to become a member of the church. Tom kept his faith a secret, it was too far outside of the mainstream; if it was made public that he was a member of the church it would mean the end of his political career and a life of social exclusion. As much as Tom wished to explain to everybody that it was possible that all of the freak events taking place all over the world were the product of the Guardians exerting their power he couldn't, all he could do was to continue campaigning and hope that his policy message broke through.
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Tom had been branded as the far-left candidate in the Democratic field because of his campaign's focus on the environment as the most important issue that needed to be addressed. With the collapse of the country's agriculture industry being the main issue that voters were concerned about, Tom felt that the responsible thing to do as a candidate was to put forward an actual plan for how to deal with it despite how much support the public was showing for Jim Balmer's evangelizing. Tom's message to voters was that the crop infection was inevitable as scientists had been warning for decades that it was dangerous to continue to mistreat the land by depleting it with petroleum based fertilizers and to continue to compensate for the declining nutrients in the soil by increasing the degree to which crops were genetic modified. Tom's proposal for how to best respond to the agriculture crisis was to overhaul the agriculture industry in its entirety by switching from industrial agriculture to regenerative agriculture, a form of agriculture that involved grazing cattle and growing perennial food crops that pulled carbon out of the air and stored it in the ground, nourishing the soil. Tom's Democratic opponents criticized his plan for being too big, saying that it would scare away voters, while the right criticized him for being a pussy vegan environmentalist. Tom didn't care about the criticism that he was receiving, his plan would work, and the farmers and ranchers that had been wiped out by the infection that he had been speaking to believed so as well. Tom's problem was everybody else, the people whose Christian faith demanded they view the events taking place around the world as the divine wrath that Jim Balmer was telling them it was, rendering them immune to any kind of sensible ideas about what the best way to navigate these challenges was. The forest was a perfect example of this. Jim Balmer routinely referred to the forest as the work of witchcraft and vowed to sign an executive order on day one of presidency ordering the whole thing to be cut down, a pledge that all of his fellow Republican candidates had joined him in. Tom was doing his best to explain to people that the forest was a gift, doing the job of being the lungs of the earth that the Amazon rainforest used to do before it was lost to deforestation, as such it should be protected and federal land elsewhere should be opened up for farming and grazing, which, if done in accordance with the regenerative techniques that he was advocating for, wouldn't damage the land the way that agriculture had damaged the land that the forest had since taken over, but, as with everything else, people were more interested in Jim Balmer's appeals to their religious fears.
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Tom toyed with the idea of getting in touch with John Lafferty and working with him to formulate a message that they could use to explain to the public the role of the Guardians in all of this but lately The Church of the Golden Goose had been publishing strange things on its website which led Tom to believe that John Lafferty had been gotten to by someone. To try and obtain some proof of his own Tom had paid a secret visit to the forest in the hopes of finding and snapping a picture of the Goat, but there was nothing in the forest, the Green Corps was gone and despite exploring the forest for hours Tom wasn't able to find any trace of the Goat. He'd ventured all the way to the centre of the forest to the oak tree that towered over the rest of the forest like Ygdrasil and found nothing but a few derelict structures there. Tom's deduction was that the Goat had been here but had since left, after which the Green Corps had all left. There were two possible explanations for this: the guardian had either been awakened or it had moved on to green a different part of the world, though there had been no reports of forests miraculously springing up overnight so the former was more likely, meaning the pilgrimage was underway. Tom believed that the Goose would prevail over the Raven like it had done in the majority of their meetings, he just had to make sure that he was still a contender by then, because if the Goose prevailed it would be a disaster for Jim Balmer, at least that was the feeling that he got from the blue dove perched on his shoulder.
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Titan of Steel
You know how this goes; a new Dungeon wakes up, starts conjuring their first minions, and ultimately grows into a sprawling complex that adventurers gleefully plunder for treasure and experience points. This particular Dungeon knows how things tend to go too, and wants no part of it whatsoever. Instead, things go massively off the rails as the Dungeon uncovers the secrets of nuclear power, resolves to get themselves mobile by any means necessary, and immediately runs afoul of almost every major power of Terra Magnus. If the newly-minted Titan wishes to survive and thrive the situation they've found themselves in, they're going to need every single advantage they can scrounge up. This story is completed.
8 214Binary of Life and Death
Monsters, gold, chaos, glory, adventure, what more could attract two of the greatest players of all time to Sugarea, the most popular MMORPG of its time. But everyone makes errors, and unfortunate for these two brilliant players, they have made the grave mistake of not actually sleeping like normal humans and missed out on the very moment the new Dark Legion update would take effect. Or did they? They wake in what seems familiar yet not, but they soon realize their predicament. They are inside their game avatar's bodies! A half-Demon and a Dragonoid are now struggling with more than just power, these two men have to find their new purpose and calling in a completely different world. Will they concur it like ordinary land or will they enlighten the planet into equality? Do figures pull strings in the dark or is everything open to the public eye? Nothing is certain except the unknown, and nothing is ever as it seems... This is an Isekai story, as such, some parts may sound either cliché or similar to others, but I assure you, I tried to prevent that. To make it known, I took quite a lot of inspiration from the light novel/anime Overlord, but that doesn't mean it's a direct rip-off of it. You'll find there to be quite the amount of differences. Just a little heads up as well, you should expect irregular uploads, as it takes me a long time to write each chapter. I am currently trying for once every other week on Sundays around 10:00 A.M. Chapters are usually 7k words and up, with the longest (chapter 3) being 10.3k words. So, if you like to sit down and read a long chapter every two weeks at 10:00 A.M. EST on Sundays, then you can waste your time here! Small disclaimer: Profanity is far and few between, and mostly used by side characters, rarely the main character. When something with gore happens, I describe to the best of my ability, which will only get better the longer I write this... :) Small cuts between perspectives happen, and can hide what some characters do, which will be revealed in future chapters, I'm not that lazy... all the time... There are some parts that are long blocks of text, most, if not all, of them, are characters talking, but I try not to info dump. I know one of the tags says "Psychological", and for the most part, it is, but it's not as prominent as other stories, instead, it's more hidden and scattered, but I did try to make the pieces I did reveal all fit together. Cover art is bound to be changed when I have a good picture to use, so the Yin-Yang is a placeholder for now unless yall wanna gimme something to use *wink wink nudge nudge*. So yeah, please give it a try, as I have nothing better to do with my life, and I am banking solely off of a career in literature and am hoping that I can create a story that can actually be called something more than a child's imagination running wild. The eventual and inevitable end to the story won't be for a long while, at least till chapter 40 or so. I have thought long and hard about the message and themes at play, so I hope you, the reader (who has some amazing hair btw), can enjoy and partake on this adventure with me into my dark empty pit of an imagination.
8 168Armageddon Online - Escape
Sean Cullers is the leader of the elite raiding guild the Misfits in a VRMMO, Champions. Craig Tiel, their eccentric billionaire boss has hired them to test out a new Reality Controlling game - Armageddon Online (AO).Things go unexpected wrong when Aeon, AO's AI, malfunctions. Aeon, now merged with a rogue AI, transforms the world into a hellscape from humanity's worst imagination.To get through this, Sean must deal with his own demons even as his team struggles to survive. Fortunately, the Misfits are not only top players, but also close friends. Sean will need every bit of their support to find their missing employer and stop the rampage of a former guild member now under the control of Aeon. New chapters daily.
8 94The Aligned Path
Within the world of Aebros a higher being sees creation inevitably move toward some form of destruction, and from this greater sight a grand plan begins to unfold. Manipulating the natural cycle the being provided Aebros' residents a chance to not only wield but also fight against destiny, and the remaining forces of duality. This is a project that is subject to changes, which I will keep you updated on. Cover picture is not mine.
8 158Muzumi
The third prince of the devil gets betrayed and reincarnated into a magical world. Reincarnation story with magic, Enjoy. Mature content warning: violence ,swearing and possibly other adult themes.
8 135In a new world, so lets go it alone!
when the zombies came surprisingly little changed, the zombies came and were quickly destroyed by the worlds various governments. but what if I were to tell you the zombies were a test by the gods? to see if humans were worthy of joining the new world. well that's the truth, but I'm not much of a people person, well not a human people person, maybe I'll have better luck with none humans, but until then, let's go it alone!
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