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This is my effort at a science fiction story of a doomed world. I used a diary entry format and I did it a little different using a chat program style which I thought was new and interesting. And it is, only the story is formulaic and predictable, and yet there are still some interesting nuances to it.

[CONNECTING . . .]
    
[CONNECTED TO 186.452.24.31]

[OPEN TRANSMISSION ON MAY 22, 2003]
    
    
[TRANSMITTING]
I cannot talk for long.  Once you know my story, you will understand why.  Its taken me over a month to create this connection with you, at least I think its a month.  Im not really sure, ever since they outlawed any sense of man-made time.  Days and months, gone.  Years too.  But don’t worry.  Ive been keeping count ever since time stopped.  To my best calculations, its currently May 22, 2 I must go.

[TRANSMITTING]
Okay, its now no longer May 22.  The current date to the best of my knowledge is May 25, 2079.  Im not 100% sure of this, but its as close as I can get.  [PAUSE]  In 2074, the righteous American government outlawed the keeping of any sort of time.  Millions of watches were destroyed, crushed to pieces of glass and twisted metal.  I was 15 at the time, but its something Ill never forget.  I was born on May 22, 2059.  Thats why I was transmitting on May 22, it was my 20th birthday and I thought it special to begin this historic event on a day I found important.  Now, according to my calculations, the year where you are should be about 2002 or 2003.  But dont expect a day and a month from me.   Hell, I dont even know if there is anyone reading this transmission at the other end.  For all I know, I could be transmitting to a dead computer screen in an abandoned shack in the middle of empty Nebraska.  Or I could well be transmitting into the most powerful computer in the CIA or FBI, and the very government Im trying to warn you about is reading this transmission as I create it. [PAUSE]  No.  I saw Back to the Future and Bill and Ted on Old-E-TV, so I like to think I know enough about time travel to know how it works.  But then if youre not too bright, you must be wondering what the hell is happening to your computer monitor.  Let me explain. 

[TRANSMITTING]
Almost got caught that time.  Sorry about that, but I cannot even let my parents or siblings find out about what Im doing.  I just cant trust anybody anymore.  [PAUSE}   Youre currently receiving this transmission through a time-traveling machine that I invented.  No, there is no funky flux capacitor, or a red phone.  Its actually kind of funny.  I adapted an AOL Instant Messenger chat program to my PDA and then attached this crappy old keyboard I found.  Thats why I cant use any apostrophes or other forms of punctuation except the period.  Its not that the keys are missing, theyre just not there.  Oh, I also have the comma, but keys like the quotation mark, exclamation point, question mark, and colon . . . its like the keys simply dont exist on this keyboard.  I wonder how old this piece of junk is.  It was probably made and used before I was born, but if thats the case, then maybe at some point in the past they changed, whoever they are, the rules for punctuation and grammar or something.  I wouldnt dare ask my parents, plus they probably wouldnt know anyway.  When they, again that disquieting they, changed whatever the rules had been to what they are now, they would have used that big sweeping device, which just sweeps across the country and rectifies what needs to be rectified, on the neuronal level, and then nobody will remember.  And I certainly cant go to any libraries to check it out, because they dont exist anymore.  Just like Ray Bradbury said, all books were burned and destroyed, except it wasnt done by firemen and they were a helluva lot more thorough in their searches.  It reminds me kind of what the Nazis did to the Jews during WWII.  Oh, I didnt read that in a book, we were force-taught it in class.  [PAUSE]  Wow, Im a dumbass, I havent even told you my name.  Its Marita.  And dont expect a last name, they got rid of those when I was 6.  [PAUSE]  Well, at least now I get the first opportunity to say goodbye and end transmission properly.  So

[TRANSMITTING]
Famous last words, or something to that effect.  A parental attack once again.  Its not that they suspect me or anything, its just that they wonder what Im doing in my room for such extended periods of time.  Constantly.  [PAUSE]  So let me explain how my little toy works.  I wasnt actually intending to make an inter-galactic time-traveling communicator, or whatever you want to call it.  So, in this bright future, we still use PDAs, PCs are on the out, but Macs are still scarily popular.  About a month ago I was just doing my job, taking useful information off computers that were to be destroyed.  I was just checking out the C drive on what appeared to be a teenage boys computer, all the lewd porn pretty much gave it away.  And then I found this file, aolinst.exe, and secretly slapped it onto my PDA.  Thankfully the world has not got quite as privacy violating as George Orwell predicted.  I have my own little cubicle, and theres no camera on me, but there is a supervisor that walks by every half hour.  When I got home I disappeared in my room, much to the chagrin of my parents, and in the semi-darkness, I opened the installation file.  And before I knew it, I had AOL Instant Messenger installed on my PDA, and the chat program automatically tried to connect.  I had no idea what was trying to happen and I just stared at the dialog box, CONNECTING . . ., and on a whim I disconnected my phone line and clicked the end into the back of my PDA.  Mines really old, since were a poor family, and I guess its from a while ago when they still connected phone lines to PDAs.  Nowadays its all infrared.  So I connected the phone line to my PDA  Damn parents

[TRANSMITTING]
Okay, theyve gone out and hopefully theyll be gone for awhile.  Anyway, so the phone line was connected and then the dialog box changed to CONNECTED TO 186.452.24.31 and minimized.  I opened up the chat program where there was a Buddy List, I assumed this was a list of people the teenage boy had been chatting with.  But as I checked out the info on each of these screennames, as I believe they are called, and while most of it was complete jargon to me, I did notice one startling detail.  The dates when each of the Buddies were added were in the year 2003.  I double-clicked on the first name in the Buddy List, MartyMc, and the chat window opened up.  The date on the top of the window said August 4, 2003.  This didnt surprise me much as I just assumed that this was the last recorded date when the PC was operating, but what was kind of strange was that the clock had started and in the days to come I would discover that the days were running along normally.  This wasnt too surprising considering programs usually start and continue working this way.  What was surprising was that all the software that would be on my PDA to measure time and the date no longer existed.  When I got the PDA it was already formatted, so there was no coding on the PDA at all for it to be able to process the passage of time, the days of the week, months of the year.  Of course, having seen this all in writing now, it seems quite possible that thiss all a bunch of hocus pocus and Im really just talking to a complete dead terminal at a complete dead end.  But if thats the case, Im going to continue.  Hopefully, one day, when the world is a better place to live, someone can read and comprehend what life was once like.  And now Im signing off.  Until nexttime.

[TRANSMITTING]
I cannot talk for long, but I just wanted to let you in on a little joke.  And since Im the only one who fully gets this joke, its great that I can finally share it with someone . . . or something.  So, the deal is that Ive created, hopefully, a time-travel chat program by using AOL.  Or AOL Time Warner as they are known, the largest corporation currently in the world.  And this is the corporation thats basically controlling the government in this day and age.  No one ever admits to any of this.  If they did theyd be killed instantly.  But absolutely everyone knows whats going on, how AOL Time Warner pretty much makes the decisions on every issue that comes up, as well as any changes they want to make.  For their benefit of course.  And now Ive made this invention, originally created by the very corporation that is currently running this planet, and this invention may, just may, cause the very undoing of this uni-coporation-controlled world.  But I dont hold very high hopes.  I still have no idea if this machine really works or not, or whether there is someone reading this at the other end.  I must go.

[TRANSMITTING]
Ive finally got the damn ENTER key fixed, a small respite in this pathetic excuse for a keyboard missing vital forms of punctuation.

Im angry.

My whole family is getting suspicious of me and the long periods of time Ive been spending in my room.  I guess even in this day and age I cant work at something I love, but instead should be out looking pretty and delectable for the boys.  Values never change.  Let me let you people of the past in on something about the future, especially if there are women reading this.  Women are still being oppressed and suppressed everywhere.  Things never friggin change.  At least things changed somewhat for the better when they outlawed religion.  And if youre a religious fanatic or whatever, sux for you don’t it.  Im going.

[TRANSMITTING]
Im sorry I got angry last time.  I hate having what little privacy I have invaded by the very people who brought me into this accursed world and are supposed to love me.
    
Now everytime I leave my room I have to bring the keyboard and link-up cable wherever I go.  Take note.  You just cant trust anyone in this world anymore.  I dont know how things are in your time, but they must be better than they are in this messed up world.
    
Religion became extinct.  Im not sure when, but it was long before I was born.  I know a little bit of how and why though.  Every year, they said, approximately 5 to 10 new religions would develop, as well as 2 to 4 new denominations of the Christian religion.  I dont know what this religion was like, but I got the idea that around the turn of the millennium it began to pretty much take over the world.  At the same time there was also a vital shrinking in the gap between church and state, which hadnt been seen since the days of what they called the Lost Empires.
    
Hah.  You, whoever you or it may be, are probably wondering how and where Im getting my information.  Especially since there are no books of knowledge in this derelict future.  In my job I read over histories of the past, and while others in my line of work read over, save or delete, and forget, I make sure I remember everything.
    
Though I still dont know what the Lost Empires is.  Is it one city or more, one civilization or many?  I may never know.  What I do know, under the delightful assurance of AOL Time Warner, is that they outlawed religion, and now everyone is free to believe whatever they damn well want, they just cant confer with anyone else about it.  And the government has released its own religious dogma which they say everyone should follow, because it is the truth.

The dogma is that aliens came to Earth, left something, and that is how humans came into existence.  When you grow too old, you eventually die, its inevitable.  Then youre either buried or burned to ashes and dust.  And thats it.  Not glorious afterlife in Heaven, Hell or Elysium, whatever those are.  Just the end and thats it.

My belief is completely different, not so much about the beginning, but the end.  I dont know how human beings were formed and why, it may well be aliens.  But the ending I believe is different.  The universe and every single atom are composed of energy.  And the law of the conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be transformed.  The body is composed of an enormous amount of energy, and when we die that energy is simply absorbed into the ground by decomposition creatures, or maybe it rises and dissipates in the air.

And thats the one good thing remaining with the government.  Theres still free speech.  And thiss still a free country.  A small, minute respite in this doomed future.

[TRANSMITTING]
The worst has happened.  Tension between the United States of North America and Chinasia.  War seems imminent.  Countries are siding, just as they did during what they called the War To End All Wars.  Who knows how it will end and wholl win this time.
    
If war does break out, which could happen any day now, it will be war that has been feared for a long time.  Who knows how it will end?  And if anyone can survive.  At last count, the world had enough nuclear weapons to destroy all life on earth 20 times over.  I guess if war does break out, this will really be the War To End All Wars.

[TRANSMITTING]
Fighting has begun.  Missiles have been released and detonated.  Death has already happened.  The children are now at play, and they are very angry at each other.  Who knows who fired first?  I must go now to hide with my family.
    
I dont know if well survive.  All I can say is that we are justly doomed.  This may be my last transmission.

[TRANSMITTING]
We are all dying now.  It wasnt the blast but the fallout.  The skin is just falling and shedding from our bones.  And I feel Death approaching like an old friend that I never acknowledged.  This is my last transmission.  I dont know how long  [PAUSE]  I can keep writing.  U must stp this.  Sav the wrld.  Is up t u.  God
    
[END TRANSMISSION ON JULY 4, 2003]

[CONNECTING . . .]
[CONNECTED TO 186.452.24.31]
[OPEN TRANSMISSION ON MAY 22, 2004]
    
[TRANSMITTING]
Is there anyone there?