Lore Post 2: (Patreon)

Indrid Cold, it was a name he picked up somewhere. He thought it might have been from some late night TV special, but it wasn't all that special. 

The aforementioned man had glazed his eyes over many times staring at the tube, all the fantastic images upon it. It was his life, his meaning to exist. Never would he have thought he'd find something beyond that.

Yet here he stood, screaming at a smaller masked man about cocaine shipments. Screaming in Poland. Screaming, wearing a pair of novelty spectacles, greasy blonde hair dripping onto his face like bacon fat out of a pan. 

He was from the U.K, what parts of that still existed anyhow. They had become an auxiliary for the United States after the incident. No jobs, half the world irradiated, London gone, really some saw it as an improvement. Others just did what any youth with nothing to look forward to do: nothing. 

A cigar hung out of his mouth, half chewed, an LSD auto-release implant beeping in his arm. Long coat, shirt that said "wrath", and all that baby fat from his youth long gone. He was tall now, he had confidence he hadn't earned, and he needed his shipments on time god damn it.

No good, his patch had run dry, and his mouth drier from yelling. Three local thugs entered the room, his palm against his throbbing forehead. The sound of the club's hip music blared. It would cover up the gunshots as the masked man became a statistic.

The body would be carried away, dumped somewhere: they always were. The money flowed well, and the blood flowed better. His operation had been entrusted to him by a man who promised him the world, promised many people that. The difference between him and the religious Poles was he could give that to you on Earth. The difference between that man and the Russians was he could give it to you without starvation. 

Connected in all things, invisible lines of electricity bringing people together from all around the world. One cause, one struggle, one pleasure, one Joy. Not even here in this anomaly of a city where tower blocks made birds humble could these invisible lines be escaped. 

The Communists had tried, setting up committees on anti-terror and the perversion of the youth and blah blah blah.  It hadn't done them much good, they couldn't understand what they were dealing with. They couldn't understand their time was through. 

The Poles did a bit better, armed with zealotry and a hard-won fear of western influence. They had learned their lesson time and time again when they had been turned on by the intelligence agencies of the world. They still couldn't stop it. The forces of Degeneracion Sans Frontiers were borderless, ego-driven; mad dogs of aesthetic and passion need only the right cocktail of tech and pills to be brought so very far from their ideals.

Indrid turned his head from the guards doing their handiwork to a terminal on his desk. A smirk furrowed his brow, it was a call from the jolly fat fuck leader he so adored. He allowed himself to wonder if he'd finally be told what they were doing in this city, if he'd finally be told if they found the source of all joy.