We have an entry from
Mississippabama
Part 1:
After the war, radioactivity blanketed The Republic of Coastal Texas. In an estuary north of Corpus Christi, Norman the Turtle emerged from his cave. Also, The Republic of Coastal Texas had not joined a faction, radiation drifted over the borders from neighboring states, contaminating the swamp in which Norman now lived. Norman had hid in the limestone cave throughout the nuclear apocalypse, for he knew that limestone is an effective radiation shield, but he had to go out soon--or else he would die of dehydration.
The water, contaminated with radiation, nonetheless felt cool and fresh to Norman's throat. He spent the day wandering around the swamp, drinking water, eating swamp grass, and looking for other survivors. When he could not find any, and it began to get dark, he returned to his cave, planning to do the same thing tomorrow and hoping that he'd have better luck than.
Norman woke up in the middle of the night feeling nauseated and sick, an effect of the radiation poisoning. His throat felt swollen, but he nonetheless managed to vomit out some radioactive swamp grass. He stumbled outside, hoping that the fresh air would cure him. It did not.
Day after day, Norman's condition deteriorated as more and more mutations developed. Norman developed multiple cancers, an immunodeficiency, jaundice, and more. He was too weak to walk any farther from the cave than the edge of the swamp, he could not swim, and his days were numbered.
Part 2
Norman's condition became more hopeless by the day. A tumor in his throat made eating and drinking all but impossible, and Norman's dizzy spells increased in length, severity, and number by the hour. He had given up searching for his family, not just out of lack of ability, but out of lack of hope.
"They must have been spent away to sea and drowned," thought Norman, "in the tsunami, or was it the storm surge from the hurricane?" The wave had pushed Norman back into the cave, where his head was smashed against rock, giving him a concussion. His family however, mere feet from the relative safety of the cave, were swept away in a torrent of water to who-knows-where?
On...Was it the ninth morning since Norman first exited the cave, he couldn't remember...Norman half-staggered, half-stumbled out to the swamp to drink as much water as he possibly could through his nearly-closed throat. He had difficulty breathing, and sometimes, he would wake up in the middle of the night, gasping for air. Norman could barely drink any water before entering a choking fit, and he passed out.
--End of Part Two--
In Norman's dream, he was flying through clouds. Afraid to look back for fear that it might cause him to plummet, he kept flying straight ahead until he saw a platform in the sky. Before he had realized that he had conscious control over his path, he was gently landing on the smooth light gray landing pad, his legs running faster than he thought turtly possible before gradually slowing down to walking, then a resting position. He looked to the right behind him and saw that he had flaps of skin connecting his tail to his hind legs to his front legs, allowing him to glide and fly if he put enough effort.
While Norman was enjoying the view, he heard a soft flutter, followed by a barely audible clip-clop, coming from the other side of the floating platform. Walking around to look, Norman saw a midnight black unicorn with an ice blue horn lying down for a rest. Once refreshed, the unicorn started running across the platform. As it did so, two wings, one on each side, so similar in color and tightly pressed to the unicorn's torso that Norman had not noticed them previously, unfurled, revealing the unicorn to be a horned pegasus and sending him into the air.
Norman turned around again and saw his wife with their six children, all perfectly healthy, with the flags of skin connected to their legs, and cyborgs, walk from an open doorway. "Norman Turtle, you're next," rang on the loudspeaker. Norman walked to the doorway, stepped inside, and was consumed by black.
"This is what the future will be like," was the message that the human-tripod hybrid (It's explained on the top of page 199 in the Knowhere RMB.) sent telepathically to Norman. Because the hybrid had already left, Norman did not know the origin of his voice. However, he noticed that he no longer had difficulty breathing, ringing in his ears, or pain emanating from over half of his body. In fact, he felt great. Although Norman did not know the source of his recovery, the DNA injection that the hybrid gave him when Norman was minutes from death was working beautifully. In ten or so more minutes, the harmful genetic mutations (like those that cause genetic diseases like cancer, sickle-cell anemia, and Tay-Sach's disease) would have been completely cleared from Norman's cellular nuclei, replaced with healthy genotopes. But Norman did not know this; all he knew was that he could search for his family again.
--End of Part Three--