There Are Some Who Call Me... Tim?

Preface

Long Lines is a short story written by Tim Post. It takes place approximately 130 years in our future, where humans have been blown back to using moon phases for calendars and relying on old vacuum tube technology that wasn't damaged by all of the dirty bombs of the last hundred years.

It follows River, our protagonist, in an adventure as he journeys from node to node of the old North American long-distance microwave telephone relay network through Northern Virginia, Southern Maryland,Middle River, Baltimore, then through Western Maryland, ultimately landing in West Virginia. The author of this story is a former American Tower employee, who worked on de-commissioning and refurbishing Long Lines sites all over Maryland so that local carriers could rent the tower space from AT&T.

Tim explored the shelters, played with the old de-commissioned equipment before it was scrapped, saw the giant microwave horns up close and took in the significance of what was being disassembled — the network that had helped to build the nation; a significant and very unique piece of Americana that set world standards in communications. These achievements were nearly indistinguishable from magic to the world when they were pioneered.

This story has been brewing for twenty years, since Tim first thought of it while in one of these sites. Please, enjoy this work with his sincere gratitude for reading, and please leave feedback anonymously if you have any!

Foreword

Long Lines follows River, an ageing outcast with schizophrenia and a natural distrust for others, as he finds himself needing to confront a growing need to have others around him. Some of him wants a community to protect, some of him wants a community to protect him. The world is very different 160 years into the future, but we've gone backwards in most places, not forward.

History existed mostly digitally, and the dirty bombs erased most of it. No one is sure exactly when the nuclear weapons launched. Economic price and trade wars with advanced disinformation campaigns had raged over a century as countries clamored to be the one on top through all means available to them but mutually-assured destruction, and it had run them ragged. Rather than use nuclear weapons, the focus was on electromagnetic ones that could more efficiently destroy the other side's propaganda machine and electronic infrastructure, and attacks were frequent over an entire century.

Governments lost control when dirty bombs alone couldn't fill the growing blood lust every nation was developing for every other nation, for those that were perceived as keeping them in constant ruins, tatters and rations; for those who were taught that every other nation was out to destroy them, which is all children of the world still have in common.

All that remains is radio infrastructure that's well over a century old, that doesn't require complex microprocessors to operate, and that clans and gangs who have taken power over the land have put back in service to facilitate barter, trade, treaties and gambling.

I feel a real need to write some fiction. Have you ever had a great story inside and just needed to get it out? I've got one that's been brewing for probably twenty years.

I'm calling it Long Lines; it's a post-apocalyptic adventure series that starts in my home state of Maryland! Long Lines is inspired by real AT&T Microwave Relay Sites that I worked on de-commissioning when I was a project manager for American Tower Corporation.

"Long Lines" towers used to connect local phone company branch exchanges to the actual long distance exchanges until the end of the late 90s, and are located in quadrants spaced about 20 miles apart all over North America. Many of them have been rented to wireless carriers, but some remain in service in 2025 for very remote areas, or as backups for emergency phone traffic.

They're every bit as intriguing and creepy as they sound. Most of them looked like an abandoned outpost of some kind inside of the shelter building where the equipment was once running. Most of them still seemed like they could be turned back on if they needed to be, even though everything seemed frozen in the 1960s.

I've been financially insecure most of my life. Those that are born into poverty often return to it, even after finding some success in life. That's because poverty is a way of life that's learned, and like any other way people live, you can always tell when someone's new to it. Disability is what brought me back, but many are finding it later in life for the first time.

I can always tell when someone's poor, and I can always tell when they're relatively new to living on less than what they need. People go through a process that's new to many: the adjustment to living with persistent versions of what are usually temporary emotions, like vigilance from angst.

They usually give themselves away in very humble ways, like needing to approach but not knowing how, or by thinking that they are unique in what's happening to them and subsequently over-sharing.

And then, you get those that sudden poverty most traumatizes: those with fragile but extremely driven egos and implode consciously before they really finish blowing up financially. If you're new to not having what you need, I have some advice - from a feral latchkey 80s kid who snacked on government cheese.

Yeah. Google Government Cheese - it was a ... thing. Still is in some states.

We must do more to stop and prevent the spread of narcissism.

I'm not going to put a single disclaimer in this post about not being a medical doctor. Why? Because I believe narcissism is a big enough threat to our existence that I feel the need to call it out whenever I see it, even if it risks feelings and correctness.

Why? Because malignant narcissists don't get diagnosed and start working on doing better; they deflect, they gas light, they manipulate, they blame-shift, and do everything else that they can to make you responsible for their harmful behavior. But they don't often willingly go get better.

People with unaffected senses of empathy usually apologize and say thank you if harm is pointed out, even if they don't fully agree that they're responsible, even when they're not overly-empathetic. I think we need to culturally embrace pointing out narcissistic behavioral patterns way more often than we currently culturally do.

Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash

Why am I so wound up about it? Because I've been directly harmed too many times by narcissists because of their narcissism. I believe Narcissism directly enables and makes intractable terrible things like pedophilia and more, because very few are able to confront and overcome narcissism enough to admit or even realize that they've hurt and are hurting people.

Narcissism doesn't just incentivize doubling-down on behavior that harms others, narcissism demands doubling-down on harmful behavior, because narcissism has a constant credibility problem in most of its victims' inner-monologues.

I truly am beginning to think narcissism could be what's behind the extremely high re-offending rate that plagues offenders of the more heinous and violent crimes. And, narcissism is more prevalent in culture than ever before. This keeps me up at night, because I'm also all too familiar with how it's acquired.