I had a lot to say about, well, everything, so a table of contents is included:
Introduction
These stories are available to read free of charge though donations are gladly accepted. New stories and accompanying material are published monthly. All content is licensed under a Creative Commons By-NC-SA. It means you are free to read the stories and even adapt or build upon the materials for noncommercial purposes free of charge. My only requirement is that any adaptation still adheres to the Charter. If you wish to use these stories in a way that will benefit you commercially, licensing for those purposes is possible. Use the contact form and someone will be in touch.
The site is programmed to not allow for copying of the material. If you wish to share something on social media, take a screenshot. I’ve seen enough content stolen from original authors and re-published to take steps to keep it from happening here.
Disclaimer
The stories housed on this website are works of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events in these stories are products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any public agencies, institutions, or historical or public figures mentioned in any of the stories serve as a backdrop to the fictitious characters and their actions, which are wholly imaginary. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or actual events not actively noted by a citation is purely coincidental.
And with that out of the way:
The Name
Cataclysmic events don’t happen in a vacuum; they happen because of the choices each of us makes every day. Those small choices and the consequences that arise are what I call nudges, and while we don’t tend to think of them as consequential, each of them reverberates across not only our existence they impact those around us and those who will come after. The choices we make as ordinary people are what interests me. So these are stories about the nudges.
The Stories
While these stories take place in an alternate universe, the fact remains that the differences between the universe we reside in and the universe the stories are told about are very close and don’t fully diverge until September 18, 2024. Many of the tales published on this website take what has happened before that day to help explain the different choices made by the residents of the habitats. All references to historical reality are captured in citations within a story or commentary. Everything else is pure fiction.
I was alive when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I’ve seen first hand the way the world has changed in that time and the ways it hasn’t. I’ve seen people stand up for equality and justice and those who kowtow to hatred in the quest for power and wealth. It’s significantly impacted me and the stories I’m telling.
A few years ago, I came across an article on the NASA website that pondered why we’ve never found any indication of life on any other planet. How can we be alone in this universe? The article’s premise (for those who chose not to read it) is that any life intelligent enough to meet our current ideas of sentience managed to destroy themselves by causing a mass extinction event before they were able to know enough to be able to either admit or fix the issues they caused.
“This potential explanation is among the most unsettling: that intelligent and technologically advanced beings are likely to ultimately destroy themselves. Along with the creativity, the prowess and the gumption, intelligence brings with it an inherent instinct for unsustainable expansion and unintentional self-destruction.”
I started wondering what would happen if, somehow, some people were able to dodge that particular end.
What if?
What would happen, I thought, if there had been a group of people who had the wherewithal to plan and execute a series of bomb shelters across the world that would hold a remnant of a remnant, no more than a few million people, evenly spread in each small city carved underground and if there was an extinction event, managed to save those people and their descendants?
What if?
What would our civilization be like without the 1/3 of people who would mindlessly follow authority no matter how unhinged the promises were? What if that new civilization had also excluded those who were narcissists, psycho- or socio-paths, demagogues and those who loved power for power’s sake?
What if?
What would a civilization look like that truly believed and treated everyone as having equal worth and value? What would that society be if at least the bottom two levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs were implemented as a matter of policy?
What if?
I want to see what would happen if we could move forward in a way that benefits humanity as a whole, and so I write. Along the way, there are easter eggs, earworms, and content for those with the eyes to see. What will you find?
Stories span from our recent past through thousands of years in our future. They are published in a chaotic fashion, rarely moving through time linearly. They aren’t meant to be read in chronological order, though you can, of course, do so. How you read the stories is entirely up to you. You can read all the stories with a particular character, told by a specific storyteller, or within a collection. It truly is a choose-your-own-adventure.
The Characters
There are two types of characters in these stories: historical and fictional.
Historical characters aren’t really a part of this universe. They are there to give historical accuracy to some of the stories leading up to the Catastrophe. Facts of what they did and said are noted in the citations (commonly called end notes). If I accuse a historical character of something, I’m bringing the receipts.
Fictional Characters are just that fictional; any resemblance to someone living or dead is a product of my imagination. If I base a character on someone, it’s done with their knowledge and permission.
All fictional characters have profiles, which are updated as more becomes known about them.
Commentaries
While the stories tell a complete tale, more can be found in the commentaries. They convey reflections of certain characters, mainly that of the protagonist, her partner and the storytellers. The commentaries can give a historical perspective or set the scene regarding how and why a particular story is being told. They might allow a character the chance to reflect on a story and tell something from their perspective. While commentaries do not have to be read, they add more nuance to the overall story arc.
Commentaries are attached and embedded in a story. They are contained in dropdowns which hide them until and unless you wish to reveal and read them.
Explore the commentaries, both introductions and reflections. Back to table of contents
The Glossary
One of the difficulties with a project like this is ensuring everyone has the same explanation for terms. There simply isn’t a way to define terms in each story. So, a glossary has been created, and each item in the glossary will hold all the information available in the published stories. Links are set the first time a term is used in a story.
The Appendices
Some areas need to be fleshed out more or attributed in a way that isn’t feasible when telling a tale. Some people don’t like technical descriptions when reading a story. For those who want more details, the appendices will eventually be where you can revel in the details.
The Storytellers
The protagonist of the story, Alexandra Hanlon, tells the stories through proxies, people who were close to her and with whom she felt safe enough to tell the stories of the past. Since the stories span millennia, there are multiple storytellers, each with their own style. Storytellers tell the tales from their current age and ages past. What she hides from one storyteller may be revealed to a later one.
Explore the Storytellers and the tales they tell. Back to table of contents
Collections
Collections group stories together by concepts, themes or *gasp* actually tell a story in chronological order, well, eventually.
Explore the different stories and how they relate to each other. Back to table of contents
The Website
I’m not a writer, and trying to do justice to a story spread over 50,000 years is beyond my ability. Attempts to wrestle this into a novel failed. I got so caught up in the process that there wasn’t a storyline, and even I got bored. That was the problem; I’m not a good enough writer to structure something like this in a way that worked, no matter how hard I tried.
But the stories kept downloading in my head, out of order, with no particular theme. And I started getting aha moments. That’s why a situation happened. Now I get how this character motivated that story. This is how other stories relate together. And I realized that while these are individual stories, they wrap together to try to tell a tale that is vast and will never totally be realized.
So, I developed the website to organize the chaotic reveal of the stories and give readers a way to immerse themselves. Each story connects to other stories through direct references, themes and characters. As more stories are published, more is revealed. Nudges that weren’t obvious when a story is first read may reveal themselves as part of a collection or after another story, published later, is read.
You’ll notice the website is plain text, and any embellishment is done through color and patterns, with a limited palette. While many might find it boring, I chose to focus on the stories. I’m neither an artist nor a graphic designer, and I’m not willing to throw images up just for the sake of having images.
As mentioned earlier, there are various ways to find your next story which are easily discovered through the menu and footer links. Each story and commentary page has an “Explore Connections” button, which links to every related story, commentary, appendix, glossary and character.
Accessibility
Like my protagonist, most of my day job consists of trying to make corporate websites and applications accessible to those who are disabled and like her, I find it an uphill battle at times. I’ve focused on making this site as accessible as possible to those with a range of physical disabilities as well as those who are neurodivergent.
The website is accessible through a screen reader and is also keyboard accesssible for sighted users. Additionally, I’ve added a focus settings button to each story and commentary page. Depending on the content you are viewing, activating the button will allow you to choose to remove certain distractions on the page.
You can hide the commentary (Introductions and Reflections), glossary links and the links to end notes, as well as the end notes themselves. Focus settings reset on each page load. And for those who use a screen reader, there are benefits for you as well. Removing glossary links and end notes will remove the links within the content itself, allowing you to hear the uninterrupted story.
So read a story without distractions, then reload the page and delve into the minutia of terms and annotations.