My daughter, Mary Rosalind Valentine, is getting her first professional RPG writing credit for After the War by Genesis of Legend Publishing! Here’s a preview of the fiction she wrote for them. Now on Kickstarter!
Interview with Alex Lunnett
Recorded by Mary Rosalind Valentine, Nova Chicago
Where are you from?
Portrait by Claudia Cangini
I grew up on Earth, from a disintegrating family that lived just outside of Chicago. It wasn’t always this way. I remember a time when we were happy as a family, and even our frequent political debates were good-spirited. My parents were as paranoid as they get, though, and I was lucky they let me go to the ‘indoctrinating’ public school. Our family fell apart in last few years before the war, as love gave way to hate and to anger. Then, the war took what was left of my family and tore it to shreds.
How did you experience the war?
I started losing my patience with my parents as I became more independent and began to value trust. My dad trusted no one and always ranted about how the government was colluding with the aliens. He even built his own receiving equipment to listen in on transmissions to Earth and lost his job for his troubles. I think the first rational thing my mother did was leaving him in the night. But she didn’t take me. I think she suspected me too.
In my last few days at home, my dad changed. His crazed ranting, now more frequent, was punctuated by strange humming. Only two or three notes here and there, but he had never done it before, and the tune was strange, intriguing, and otherworldly. I read enough on the feeds to put two and two together about what he was picking up on his receivers.
A day or two later, warnings and evacuation orders were sent out. I was in my room blasting music on noise-canceling headphones and trying to figure out what to do. I wasn’t sure if my dad would be willing to leave, but he approached me first with a creepy smile on his face. We went to the closest evacuation point together and I was on edge the entire time. It was so unlike him to follow the government’s directions that I knew The Song had him. I didn’t dare ditch my headphones. I’d noticed that he seemed to change when he got away from the receivers so I tried taking the headphones off, but he hummed another note or two and I jammed them back on. The Song was already in his head. During the boarding process, I made sure to get jostled away from him. I couldn’t be around him anymore. He tried to stay near me, but we boarded different evacuation shuttles. Now I’m here, on Polvo, finally my own person. It’s a feeling I’ve been missing for years.
What are you doing now?
There are so many organizations that want Polvo to be another insignificant pawn for their empires. But we can build a new civilization where autonomy and cooperation are not mutually exclusive. Us refugees are more than Dirt. I’m trying to organize a regional council of leaders as a framework of a future government, so we can start building ourselves up. If we let someone else do it for us, they control us. If they lure us in and we give our autonomy over, how are they any better than The Song? I am trying to lead and organize the people so we can build our own foundation for the rise of a new civilization.
Alex Lunett
Alliances are better than subjugation.
Self-governance is a human right.
Origin: Terran, Political Community
War Story: Aftermath, Rendered Aid
Profession: Leader, Community Organizer
