just a start...

Dan spilled coffee down the entire front of his shirt because he was watching a dog take a crap on his front lawn while he was drinking.

Charles - substory to Petro...

This is only par... very rough... needs retouching and continuation... the only part I like is the last paragraph :) lol

Charles was homeless. He could call himself "vagrant" or "without home" or some shit like that, but that wasn't Charles. Charles knew where he sat and it was nowhere near where he started. People on the street didn't meet his stare, didn't shake his hand... didn't solicit; even friendliness. They stared... oh how their stares burned through him but they never saw him. They saw every homeless person they had ever seen and they reveled in it.

There was something special about Charles "Chuck". He was homeless in Chicago. What this meant was one of three things. One. He didn't take the free ride to somewhere warm to be the same, or worse. Two. He didn't seek home or "shelter" somewhere warm like a shelter or public walkway... even the subways or buses, bars or strip joints. He seriously had no home. Nothing. Not a drop of warmth all winter long provided by a furnace or fire.

Life was simple. Summer was a time for making money, raising funds for food and starving. Winter (the second of a two-season year) was for staying warm, eating hot food and feeding his dog. Had he thought of eating the dog? Endlessly. If he kills the dog, he gets one full night of sleep next to it's warm innards and then frozen meat to cook for weeks. Months if he had the stomach.

He named his dog "Winter" for the same reason he got the dog. A huge fur impenetrable coat for him and the dog to share meant warmth every night till he shuffled off the mortal canine coil. A huge furball laying with him meant automatic protection from other vagabonds, canine and yuppies.

Winter was a Rhodesian Ridgeback with a touch of Huskie. This dog was big. About the size of a standard German Shepard and the coat of a lab. A deep orange-red and a willingness to bear its teeth at a shrub. Chuck had trained the bastard to eat anything. This dog was survival. And survive it did.

A child laughed at Chuck and he had to hold the dog back. A dog barked at Chuck and Winter slaughtered him. "Shame we can't eat him" Chuck had thought after the kill, not "how will I payback the owner" because it wasn't his fault. The other owner's dog was aggressive and not Winter.

blah blah... then.

Chuck could see in everyone's houses as he and Winter roamed the streets at night. It was just him, his dog and a few cars sharing the road. Everyone else sat inside their warm houses, huddled around the televisions and keeping the lights on in the house. All he could see was waste. Now and then he would see someone was doing laundry and the heat from the dryer was just blowing out the side of the house! He ran to the heat and cuddled in it's warmth only to freeze shortly after when the cold froze the moisture that had gathered on his chest.

...cont...

He fell instantly asleep. Like many people, Cartwright had been shocked to realize that we were at war with unknown forces... sure we didn't have a "totalitarian" government per se, but big government thought we did. They kept their secrets inside the country, and everyone else's outside the country.

Cartwright like most his friends, most of his family, used the television as a pacifier. "When I'm off work, I want to be soothed..." he said to his wife one day as he grabbed a beer and couched. Silvia clutched her newspaper, cringed, and returned to the comics section.

What people like Cartwright and suburban Joe, their family and friends didn't realize... is that their patriotic nature, their "numbness" is what was hurting the nation. Much like the media who decided to hide the fact that we were at war with unknown forces, these people were killing the country from the inside.

(next)

"Patriotic power will end..." Ino listened to his radio blare when he switched it on, accidentally turning the volume up too high. They had to use radios, television was the enemy now. "A new era is coming where our oil exports are more valuable to our country, than every other aspect combined. This is, for our citizens, the most important and rudimentary task. Keep the oil safe, keep us safe." Ino didn't know it now, but that statement would be more important than he could possibly fathom. In a quick decision by Ino's leaders they had not only built up their army ten-fold but had quickly realized why they were so prone to invasion.

The facts of the matter were thus: China had the oil, they found their sources mostly offshore, but the real reserves were already pumped up, placed in manmade dredges and were being tanked to hidden locations twenty-four seven. The discovery had been made about five years prior that they were going to be a world power, by their oil reserves, and they had cheap labor. These two factors combined created a super-power in the energy crisis. China had wise leaders. Those leaders scrupled and scrimped to gain every inch of power they could out of every drop of oil they could. These very same leaders had a great sense of world-awareness. They knew they could build, and they did.

First came the massive rewards. The Chinese government held a massive auction for over fifteen billion "barrels" of crude oil that were already floating on ships, ready to be delivered. They had predicted that the U.S. would outbid everyone, and they were right. After quick delivery, they rewarded their citizens, they rewarded the oil workers, they rewarded themselves. In that order.

Next came the planning. They knew they had to build up a quick way to protect their oil reserves while protecting themselves. The base salary of an army lieutenant skyrocketed. Suddenly, China had a more powerful army than any other country.

And Oil.