text: You give credit to the chief, and with it your complete loyalty is reafirmed. He leads you well for the rest of his years, but when he dies a question of successor is raised.
  
  > What about that idea of a King?
  Under the control of the King your nation seeks to expand itself, finding international trade routs and conquering and colonizing left and right.
  
  > long Live the Empire!
  This is a new page
  
  > base internal structure on military relationships
  How do you feel about Gold?
  
  > Lets build the world around it
  You stop at nothing to get more gold. And silver for that matter. Your ships trade vigorously with those around you. Your cities are doing well, growing at a fast rate.
  
  > Monetary system?
  You rely more and more on this money thing, and more and more people move to cities to work. The peasants are pretty fed up with Feudalism and the system of fealty is weakening in the face of mercantilist traders and the like.
  
  Bye bye feudalism. The monarchy can stay though.
  
  In the cities, factories are being built.
  
  You find yourself in need of a labor force to fill these new factories, this strange "industrialization". You look to the peasants, but they do not want to leave their self sufficient lifestyles. Looking closer, you see that they are all reliant on the same communal pastures, the "commons". You think that closing these green spaces could potentially serve you a double purpose. On the one hand, it would free up the peasants to come and labor for you. On the other hand, wool has been in increased demand and this would make space for the lords to increase the size of their personal herds.
  
  > move forward with Enclosure acts
  You move forward with the Enclosure acts. People are now freed from their land! They move in droves to the city to slave away in factories and fuel your industrial revolution. The system you inhabit no longer resembles that of even a year ago, and you wonder what to call it. How to precede, what framework to develop?
  
  > Capitalism
  Your alarm sounds like what you would imagine the bugles of the seven horsemen to sound like- loud, screeching, and demanding death. Rolling over you slam your hand into it (or, more likely these days, scramble your fingers over the surface of your phone until it responds) and roll back over, pulling the blankets tight around your denial of the day. An hour passes in these ten minute increments. Finally, you can push it back no farther. You rise. Perhaps you are a high schooler, staring down another day of classes you don't see the point of with classmates that smell and snicker in the halls. Perhaps you're a college student, pouring yourself a cup of coffee without even thinking about it and wondering what exactly the benefits are of attending that 70+ person Gen Ed lecture on astronomy that takes place in a basement- the professor never answers questions anyway and all the slides are online. Or maybe you're a fully grown adult human and you have to be at a job, a nine to five that pays the bills- you have even been able to save up a little on the side (if you're extremely lucky) and you still haven't given up on those high school era dreams of traveling the world in your twenties. Of course you're in your thirties now but you forgive yourself. Mostly. So you get in your car, or on the bus, or maybe your bicycle if you're broke/conscious/hip like that, and you make your way to that anonymous cement building where you will be spending the rest of your day, and the day after that, and so on until the weekend when you can drink yourself stupid or binge watch netflix or finally cook that thing you saw on facebook- but let's not get ahead. On your commute you pass a movie theater, or a billboard, or maybe the sign is right there on the side of the bus- a new disaster/horror/adventure movie. You know the type. Zombie apocalypse feels a little dated, climate disasters have had their day, war is eternal, and yet the same tropes still seem to sell. (Footnote on x-men apocalypse, the walking dead, etc.) You're excited, you like going to the movies with your friends, and you like apocalypse movies most of all. You have a zombie apocalypse plan (even if it's a bit of a joke) and you and your friends like to spend time discussing the benefits of wiping the system clean. To be very clear though, you think to yourself, you are no bunker freak. You laugh and keep going on with your day, arriving at your place of learning/work and disembarking/parking and making your way in through the front door/parking garage. You make your way to your locker/desk/cubicle, waving good morning to a couple acquaintances. You're settling in, the high schooler savoring those few minutes of friendly banter before the bell, the college student making conversation with their one friend in the class of otherwise complete strangers- half of which don't show on any given day. If you're an office worker you're probably getting or drinking coffee right about now, making your good morning rounds- or maybe hiding. Either way you're talking to someone and they mention the news, something about terrorism, climate change, "How much longer can we keep on like this?" they ask or
  
  "The damn government is running us into the ground."
  
  Or.
  
  You bring up the movie poster you saw on your way there, mention how you almost wish the republican would win the next election, that there would be a third world war, that the sea level would go ahead and rise already. You both know you are exaggerating, but you laugh anyway- "I'm just tired of waiting!"
  
  Class/lecture/work begins and you stare blankly at a teacher/professor/screen/stream of customers for about eight hours, cycling through friends and caffeinated beverages, maybe a smoke break, maybe some lunch and then it's back home.
  
  Maybe the high schoolers mom cooked them dinner, maybe you stopped at a fast food place on the way home. Maybe your favorite thing is cooking for yourself, or maybe your roommate/partner is a cook. Maybe you're stuck with dining hall food. You fuel up, do homework, watch tv, go to sleep.
  
  About six hours later, it's time to dance with the snooze button again. The day goes the same. You see that advert for the movie again. A thought begins to form.
  
  The days go on, the movie isn't supposed to come out till December, it's October, you get used to seeing it and don't really think about it. Dito the news about the war/climate/shootings/election.
  
  But that thought lingers, just under the surface of your mind.
  
  It could be a number of different things that spur it on. Maybe you're thinking about getting in shape and you see someone running and you think about yourself as a child, running used to be fun right? Or you have a professor who says something about history. You begin to wonder. Perhaps, simplest of all, you're just sitting/standing one day, by your locker, on the bus, in your cubicle. And it occurs to you. There will, most likely, be no apocalypse. There is nothing to prepare for. At no point will the slate be wiped clean. Of course, you know this already. It's what separates you from the aforementioned bunker freaks (not to be unkind). But what's new about this thought, is that maybe we are in the apocalypse. Maybe it's here already, maybe it's every day, and maybe it will continue to be everyday until the war on terror eats us up, until our capitalist system with its hungry hungry center digests the world's resources and the working class with it. The sea will not rise in fury, but rather slowly sip at the shore until the cities submerge. Perhaps this realization feels like a sweet release, you're close to retirement and you can go live without fear of explosions until the end of your days. Perhaps it's terrifying- a high schooler realizing you actually have to live in this world, there will be no zombies to free you from the horror of working after school. You let it sink in. If you're of a certain school, your mind jumps to the revolution but you quietly bury the idea in your mind. The workers will not rise, the revolution will not come. The only work to be done will be slow and painful, and most likely anything but cathartic. You are living in the slow apocalypse, and you most likely will for the rest of your days.