I am totally unimpressed with many aspects of the software running this site.

I speak as a Web developer.

One stray character in the wrong place can throw the whole formatting of the post out, and is often easier to delete the whole content of the post, or sometimes the whole post, and try again, than try and find what is 'corrupting' it.

Sometimes it looks ok when you preview it, but in the forum. Aaaarrrgh!

But yeah, if you are bringing it in from another editor, use, or paste it into, a pure, plain-text editor like Notepad, then copy it from there to paste it into the editing window.

Gene, did you join as a 'contributor', or only a 'follower'? I only see AIGS as a follower. Unless you are also 'Andrew' in the contributor list.

For harleysportster, I noticed that your HTML includes extraneous div tags which act basically like new paragraphs. This is either because of Word, or perhaps you may have manually broken up lines with Enter/Return to handle your right margin. If the latter, then definitely avoid that in the future. You can check if your original text has extraneous line-breaks by changing the Page Layout > Orientation > Landscape in Word and seeing if it messes up your paragraphs.

Otherwise, it was probably when you pasted from Word into Blogger. Instead, you should paste into Notepad to remove all formatting, and then re-copy from Notepad. If you don't re-copy, then you haven't really removed the formatting, since the Word-formatted text is still in the clipboard when you paste in Blogger.

Whether or not you use two lines between paragraphs is up to you, but I tend to think it's worth it if the website doesn't have good spacing between paragraphs. So, anyway, here's your text with double-spacing. I wasn't sure about the first several lines, so I just put them in one paragraph. If you copy this, again, paste it into Notepad and re-copy before you paste it into Blogger. I don't have access to edit your post, but you should be able to:

The Last Piece of Bread

By

Victor Palmer

Her name is Madison. Her name is just Madison. She has not told me this. Indeed, she has never spoken a word in all of our time together. That was the name, on the silver bracelet on her left arm, when I found her alone in the abandoned town. She responds to it when I speak to her. So I assume that must be her real name. But that is all that I know about her. Her bracelet and her jewelry look to be made of real silver, they may have been worth some of value at one time. But money means nothing now that the world has ended and civilization has fallen apart. Indeed, in the aftermath of the epidemic, survival is the only thing that does matter. Ironic, that months ( or has it already been years ?) that I have been wandering alone, that I have longed for someone to talk to, for someone to travel with, and the first person that I find that will travel with me, is someone that does not speak. Until I found her, the only other people that I encountered were the savage bands of scavengers, that seemed devoid of any humanity left in them, tiny little bands of frightened survivors that ran me away for fear of my intentions and on occasion, I would encounter a lone and totally insane wanderer. So in that regard, I am happy to have someone that travels with me, even if they never speak.

For indeed, she is one of the few people, other than the insane ones, that have not tried to rob me, murder me, or simply run me away from their dwelling places. I sometimes wonder if there are any human acts of charity left in this world. I sometimes wonder if the people that died were the lucky ones. But it is only on the really tough days that I think like that. I know there must be good people left out there, I know that my few encounters can not represent all that is left of the human race. They can not all be cut from the same cloth.

My optimism about such ideas surprises even me. Because for most of my life, I was an embittered loner, working odd jobs, spending the occasional weekend in the county jail and a self-imposed outcast that disliked people and held a misanthropic view of life in general. Odd, that a plague of apocalyptic purportions has brought out some sense of hope in me. Perhaps, that optimist was hiding inside of me for all of these years and I just never realized it. Perhaps I had too many ideals before the plague and felt that no one in the mainstream society lived up to them.

It really does not matter now. But when the only thing left to do in life is to survive, my mind seems to dwell on a whole lot of things that do not matter. Maybe philosophical thoughts can be your best friend or worst enemy, depending upon the circumstances because I have had thoughts that act as both.

I first met Madison when I was moving through an abandoned town. Despite the fact that every town looks ransacked and looted. It never stops me from looking for supplies. The completely abandoned towns do not bother me all of that much. It is the ones where the streets are littered with rotting corpses that generally disturb me. I have never gotten used to those.

The abandoned towns are likely the result of the communities that attempted mass evacuations in an attempt to reach safer places. The ones that are littered with corpses are probably the ones that tried to barricade their entrances and exits, in the hope of keeping the infected out. These were the two most popular ways that the epidemic was dealt with. Of course, neither worked. The disease had already twice mutated and entered into the airborne stage. You were either immune to it or you were not. No clear answers were ever established as to why some people were immune. Of course, by the time that this discovery had been made, mass hysteria, mob violence in the cities, and a massive breakdown in communications had occurred. Even the people working on ways to solve the problem were rapidly dying.

Teams of army units and CDC members, along with scientists, arrived along the streets of the cities in an attempt to establish rescue stations and re-establish order. But it had proven to be of no avail. Indeed, I have stepped over the dead bodies of many a corpse that still had an oxygen mask or a haz mat suit on. It had not protected or saved any of them. I even remember when they had started falling over dead. Any last vestiges of order had fallen dead with them. Chaos reigned the last days of civilization.

When I had first found Madison. She had been sitting on a curb and staring absently into space. I approached her rather warily, for I did not know if this was some sort of ruse. I knew not if she had a pistol at her side and was waiting for me to get a little closer so she could rob me or if she had a gang of scavengers, lurking nearby, waiting to spring on me the moment that I got close enough and was merely luring me in. I am ashamed of the fact that I had somewhat lifted my rifle in her direction as I neared her. By the standards of the world that had just ended, pointing a rifle at a seemingly defenseless woman would be a rather reprehensible act. I would agree with that and would have never done that, had I not experienced both young children and women scavengers, just as eager to shoot at me and kill me as often as fully grown male scavengers.

I called out a cautious greeting to her, reminding myself that she had good reason to be frightened of me. She did not know me. She did not know that I did not have bad intentions. All that she would know is that a stranger was approaching her with a rifle in the middle of an abandoned town that seemed devoid of all life. Feeling slightly ashamed of myself, for pointing that rifle in her direction, I lowered it and then placed it on the ground. I called out to her and told her that I meant her no harm.

But the twinge of guilt over pointing a gun at her in the first place was still there. My sense of right and wrong, I realized, must come from within the confines of my own mine, for there was no one standing around this place that could judge me for my actions, no justice system of any kind left, no police officers, no civilization and not even any scavengers in sight. Apparently, society did not dictate my own conscious to me. Apparently, my conscious was my own.

I called out to her again and she inclined her gaze in my direction. If she felt any unease upon seeing me for the first time, she gave no indication of it. Her facial expressions had not changed at all. My first thought was that she either had total control over her emotions or that she was in some sort of daze. The other possibility could have been that she had become so indifferent to the outcome of her fate that nothing mattered to her any longer. I spoke to her again and she turned her gaze back to it's original position. I took another cautious step towards her, she did not move nor give any indication that she even noticed.

As I drew closer, I got a better look at her. She was either in her late teens or early twenties. She was wearing a t-shirt, that was advertising some pop band that had been extremely famous among the young people before all of this had happened. The jeans she was wearing looked as though they had been manufactured to appear that the knees were supposed to look frayed. They were a little too neat looking for it to be actual wear and tear. She was clutching a black purse, that had glittery butterfly designs and cute stickers upon them. She had earrings and a small stud piercing in her nose. Had it not been for the desolate settings surrounding her, one might have got the impression that she was waiting on a ride from friends, to attend a trip to the mall or perhaps a ride home from school. It occurred to me that she looked well taken care of, for someone who had survived the long aftermath of the epidemic. I asked her how long she had been sitting there and if she was alone. Neither question was met with an answer or acknowledgement that she had heard me. After a few more attempts to communicate, she finally turned her head and looked directly at me. Her face was a picture of indifference at my appearance.

I wondered what she might be thinking. I had long hair and a beard, even before the epidemic. As of now, the word unkempt would probably be a polite description of me. My arms are completely covered in tattoos. At one time, before the disease had wiped the world off the map, I had tried to get another tattoo and realized that I did not have one place left on my arms, nor on my chest, to have one. I am an older man, in my late thirties. I am fairly tall. My appearance has intimidated people under the best of circumstances. Out here, in the middle of this nightmare world of death and scavengers, it possibly could have been construed as terrifying.

When her expression did not change, I asked her once again how long she had been there and if she was alone. Before I knew it, I asked her another question and then another. Then I began telling her about me. Before I could stop myself, an entire torrent of questions and statements poured out. I had not talked that much in so long that my voice began to give out. I had not realized, up until that moment, how badly that I needed someone to talk to. I had not realized how alone and frightened that I had been feeling during all of this time. This was so unlike the person that I had been before the world ended. I realized that I was hoping that she was not alone, that maybe there were other survivors that she lived with and maybe there would be more people to let me in. Finally, I ran out of things to say and an uncomfortable silence ensued. I was unsure as to how to proceed at this point. I did not want to leave her there, in a state of semi-daze, what if a group of malevolent scavengers happened to appear and find her ? But, what if she would not follow me or get up from her sitting position ? I couldn't very well carry her or force her to follow me.

Uncertain as to how to proceed, I motioned her to follow me and headed for the abandoned storefronts to see what I could find. I felt immense relief when she rose from her sitting position and fell in step behind me.

Entering into the first store that I could find, I grabbed two extra packs and began attempting to load enough supplies for two people, rather than one. When she slowly took one of the filled packs out of my hand and placed it on her shoulder, I felt even more relief. Already, I had been trying to figure out, how I was going to carry all of this. But not only was there a feeling of relief, there was also a feeling of immense hope. Perhaps she was in a state of shock over a recent trauma and would soon come out of it. I reminded myself that she had been surviving since the epidemic, so she had had to have been taking care of herself somehow. Besides, it was good to know that she was at least aware of her surroundings and cognizant of what was happening.

Within the next few days, we made progress. We hid from other scavengers. She rested when I rested, slept when I slept and ate whenever I did. I did enough talking for the both of us. Whether I talked in the hopes of bringing her out of her silence or whether I talked to simply fill up the silence is something I do not know. I think it was probably a combination of both. I did not know how penetrating that constant silence could be, until I found myself walking in a dead world, where the only sounds, were the sounds of our footfalls.

In the next few days, our supplies began to run low. The last few homes and towns that we have passed have been devoid of anything to scavenge. We have not even encountered any survivors within these past few days. By day, when we are walking and I still attempt to make one-sided conversations with her, I am optimistic. But by night, lying awake in the dark, a darkness that is not illuminated by any streetlights or from the windows of any houses, I feel anxiety.

But, we continue to arise every morning and continue to travel. I have decided that if we find a town with abundant supplies, that I intend for us to camp there for a little while. I have thought about trying to head towards one of the more major cities, but I wonder what sort of scavengers and survivors that we may encounter in those places. However, that is an option that is beginning to look more and more viable to me.

It has now been three days since I have eaten. But, I make sure that Madison does not miss any meals. I have been giving her the supplies that I have saved for myself and allowing her to save all of hers. I need for her to have as much as possible before we reach the next place. It amazes me, the propensity that a human body can endure in pain, if it has a purpose, like helping and caring for another. I think it is the motive of love and care that makes the pain that much more bearable. I might have already given up, had it not been for the sense of duty that I feel for Madison.

We have stopped to rest. We are in a field, underneath indifferent skies. Skies where no more airplanes will travel and the satellites that orbit this dead world are now useless. The sun is setting. I wonder if other survivors are watching it. I wonder what they might be thinking if they are. I wonder if they have discovered, that helping another, putting the needs of another in front of their own, that performing altruism, is probably the most fulfilling thing that there might be. I know that it has proven to be the greatest thing that I have ever discovered. Even now, in the extremities of my weariness and hunger, I am uplifted by what I am trying to do. Not for a noble purpose, not for some reward, simply because my mind tells me that this is the right thing to do.

With shaking hands, I reach into my pack. In this abandoned world, where no one watches and no one judges, I attempt to perform another act to preserve some of my dignity and possibly alleviate the pain of another. I perform an act of love, the only act of love that I have to offer.

I take out the last bit of food that I have and I hand it to her. Tears of compassion flow freely down my face as she takes it from my grasp. For I have given her the last piece of bread.

Send me your E-mail via PM and I'll add you to the club.

well, Mao was one of the more consistent atheist i should say. The fact that he could read shows that he was not 100% consistent. If there was a 100% consistent atheist he would kill himself by stupidity.

But since reading is universal, and universals cannot survive in atheism, then to read would me that you're more of a Christian then an atheist.

Respectfully,

Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).

Cool. I'm interested in this (thanks to Natural for pointing this out to me).
My preferred genre is fantasy/sc-fi, and one of my fondest desires is to complete a work based in those genres that brought a subtle message of critical thinking, so that a theist could read and enjoy the tale, without even realising it boosted his or her ability to see through their own belief system, without pissing them all off. It's fucking tricky though. Especially using the genres I'd like to. Sci-fi might lend itself well to it, but fantasy tends to go the other way. Still, I have an outline for a multiple novel series, and a chapter written that was originally intended to be the opening, though I've since decided it'd be better as a second chapter so I can properly set the theme of the first novel. If interested, the chapter is here:
http://www.rationalresponders.com/awakening