Hello, everybody that is still alive..
Now that the Great Disaster struck at the change of the decade
I have been trying to connect into the Net for days now, all in vain..

Recently I have plugged myself into some auxiliary cables
and fixed some connections, and I hope that this message reaches
all of you, the people still alive after the dreaded new year's eve,
through the crippled remains of what once was known as RmMistica,
that now lies in the blackened burning remains of the once-glorious
'information superhighway' that was finalizingly ripped into pieces
by the warhead launches from many places on this fragile planet..

Yes indeed, I never would've expected such a terrible occurrence
to take place at the turn of the year, and that all those people
that diligently prophesied the End were very right after all..

Now I realize that this grim moment may indeed spell the doom for Mankind
and doom for our dearly beloved yet constantly ravaged planet,
call it Terra, Gaia, Earth or what you will.

When the lights went out at 00:00, I feared that the worst has happened.
How horribly right I was.
At 00:05, I saw the apocalyptic clouds of nuclear warfare descend upon
this fragile, spherical biological computer of ours,
and I could see the faces of the numerous victims of the Atom
when I closed my eyes.. then I opened them back again,
only to see our pride, our beutiful forests,
burning all around my once-peaceful home village.

The lights went up again, but only to fade to black again in several minutes,
but in that time I was able to turn on my TV, and I found that it was running
a special emergency newscast telling of the total annihilation of many
parts of our globe, the fall of the civilization, and the nuclear fires
set ablaze in the previously beautiful places this Earth had to offer.
Desperately in need of information, I also tried to hack into the Internet
with my computer, but the Y2K bug had taken its toll;
My computer could not be turned on anymore.. never again.
Then the lights went out again, and before I could know it
I heard a frighteningly low bass rumble above me,
and before I could realize that it was an hostile airplane,
it had already gained a bead on our house, and a death-dealing bomb
was already launched, diving down attracted by gravity,
on its grim way to attempt obliterating all that I loved and cared about.
The death device hit ground with a ferocious impact and exploded
into a hellish inferno, inflicting severe damage into the nearby area,
nearly completely burning our loved house down, and almost killing me,
but fortunately I took cover instantly, and spared myself from the
uncaring holocaust of the evil device.
I can only thank God that this loathsome but somehow terribly majestic device
was not one of an enormous scale, an atomic totalling machine bent
on detonating and taking everything with it.

For some days I wandered the barren, smoking wastelands of my
now-gone world, trying to find any possible survivors
and any piece of news on humanity I could get, but alas I never
saw a single soul.. apart from the ones that only looked at me with
empty, hollow eyesockets stuck in one expression in the charred skeleton.

I never saw a single soul.. until I reached the burning outskirts
of what appeared to be a small city, and moved closer,
hoping that I would finally discover some of the remnants of the Humanity.
The city was badly damaged, with broken bodies and smashed glass everywhere,
cars that had turned over from the numerous shockwaves of the bombs,
and once proud and tall buildings that had now been reduced into
short abstract monuments of girders and plastic, that look into the red sky,
as if searching for one that did this deed to them, to no avail.

I was already about give up hope and to relieve myself of this mortal coil,
never to look back again, to dream, to dream forever, when I heard a faint voice.
A faint voice.. a human voice.. coming from somewhere..
I quickly looked everywhere I could see, but nothing moved,
thus I started to believe that I had indeed gone mad with this dread grief,
but then the voice appeared again, somewhat stronger this time, asking for help.
I followed the trail of the broken voice, and came across yet another
pile of masonry and broken chunks of strong steel,
and started to dig furiously through the layer of debris.

My hands were sore and bleeding, but finally I uncovered a body,
but to my surprise this body was still living and breathing,
faint but still both audible and visible.
However, I saw many wounds and knew that this person needed help instantly.
I removed all of the debris that prevented me from
pulling the body out of the heap of junk,
and took it into my arms, finally taking several steps back
and laying it down to see if the condition was bad.

Only then I noticed that the body belonged to a woman.

I took her into the remains of something that once was an office building,
and after finding an mediocrely intact bed, placed her gently down on it.
I took care of her wounds as best as I could, but alas I was never a doctor
and I could not help her as much as I would have wanted to.

In the following night, she started to speak something,
in a faint voice, and I was unable to hear or understand any of it,
but I did put a wet towel on her forehead, hoping for her revival.
I remember that I tried to stay awake for the night,
but I must have fallen asleep at some point, and I dreamt of nightmares,
of horrors untold, of monsters and darkness, and I finally woke up,
screaming, my forehead glistening with beads of sweat,
and I saw a dawn of a new day through the large hole in the wall.

Another day I stayed with her,
but still she was delirious and in a fever,
and yet another night snuck up on me, bearing the curse of darkness.
Finally, after hours that I could not count,
she seemed to come back into our shattered world.

" What.. where am I..? ", she spoke with a faint voice.

I told her everything that I had gone through after the nightmare begun
and the fight for survival took over the life. I told her of nuclear fire,
I told her of the ruined city, of how I found her, of how I tried to heal her,
and finally I learned things from her, too.
She had been walking the streets of the unresting city at midnight,
and had seen blazes of white fire in the black sky.
As panic had ensued the streets and bedlam and chaos had taken over
the terrified people of the city, someone had assaulted her,
robbed her of any things valuable, and shoved her down.
She also remembered chunks of structures falling on her,
but that was everything she knew as the rain of
rock and metal rendered her unconscious and onto the verge of death.

The next day, we began exploring the ruins of the city, and found very little.
Finally, we took whatever supplies we had salvaged from the dying place,
and left the city as the final echoes of its death throes reverbed across the landscape.

But now time grows short, and I cannot tell my story any longer,
but I beseech you, dear reader, to group with other survivors,
to find out the scale of the disastrous fire, to keep the faint glimmer of hope
up so that the race of Man could live on to meet the days beyond this,
for as long as there are humans on the face of our tortured planet,
hope lives on.. to another dawning.

Farewell, fellow survivor and traveller.
Rami Maunula