This should be a short story based on the Novoyuuparosk world. I wonder if I can finish this to any extent...

Draft space

Novoyuuparosk is in a world where a good world war 3 (*) destroyed some of the human civilisation. Some is left of course.

Besa Maltock - mechanic. drives a mobile workshop around the scorched lands and does repairs. music fan. ultimate goal is to track down the legendary Novoyuuparosk Radio but that's never the top priority. have quit drinking.

Karja Kivistö - hedonist electrician that is a collector and fan of pulp novels and equivalents. doesn't care about having grande goals in life because there isn't any worth having. drinks a lot.

(*) There's probably no worldwide 'world war 3'. Just a frustratingly persistent series of regional wars.

Plot

Maltock had been coming across the mysterious yet decent Yuuparosk Radio.

Prelude

For the 27 years of my life I've been hearing people say that the world was massively different some 30 years ago. I don't really have a strong opinion on this and the reason should be apparent. I'm no more than 27.

What I can say for myself and probably also Karja, who is sharing the caravan with me, is that what we are having is sufficient, but barely so. Karja's got a bit more of life than I do, but that doesn't extend beyond a year. So I reckon she doesn't know ancient life either.

Ancient life alright. The clock display on the combo unit shows a 7:14. I turn on the 'passive' radio receiver of the same unit to see if there's anything to catch in the air.

Statics for most frequencies. But not all. Around the 88 MHz mark there is some faint sound that's definitely not radio statics nor noise. Very noisy though. It's some way beyond meaningful human language but resembles that more than your random signal. Karja would phrase this better than I do because she's the eletrician. Electricians are supposed to master everything electric, aren't they?

Finally after some more hopeful turns on the knob, the sound becomes voices. Someone is saying in Japanese, then probably Russian, then English. I can make out the English.

Says it's 'Yuuparosk Radio'. I don't think I've come across that before, it's new.

Prelude, 2

Einstein was right, or was he wrong, perhaps at the same time, about his argument that World War 4 would be fought with stones and sticks or stuff like that.

Honestly, I don't see us humans fighting no world wars anymore. The kind that over 50% of the world take part in. On the other hand we are living in a world fucking at war all the time.

It's been some years since media - that we have access to, mind you - started labelling what was going on in the world as 'World War 3'. But the whole franchise does not resemble the previous two editions.

Strangely enough, when I read back into the history, there wasn't really a moment long enough that we weren't having any sort of war. What is being called World War 3 is probably a more volatile and violent development in that... post-war tradition, to put it sarcastically.

And that is probably why me, theoretically a Welsh, and Karja, a bona-fide Finn, ended up here in the island of Hokkaido. Well, some claim otherwise, but most of the guys living on the island does not care about that. Or they just don't show

Britain got bombed, Southern Finland as well. My plan was to relocate to Sakhalin up north, but things happened so I ended up here. Karja has her story as well but she hadn't told me about it yet. Not that I'm a lot interested in that.

Something about techocalypse

Time ago there was said to be a satellite system that tells you where you are on Earth. Well it was probabaly more than ONE system. But what's important now it that there is less than one system left.

I'm not good at nerdy tech speak but as far as I understand from what Karja told me, multiple times, some of those satellites are still up and working like they should. But it's not full-time no more. So the chances of getting bad signal or totally false positions are higher than ideal.

And I've had that a couple of times. The truck has a satnav which was most recently updated 2 years, 7 months and 13 days ago. And aside from not showing the latest infrastructure collapses, it sometimes thinks we're in Argentina. I might like to be there, though.

Something about Japanese

(Author's note to self: Karja speaks a little Japanese, but she would act like she speaks little Japanese because that's easier for everyone)

'...Fine, you want us to look at your [insert fake computer brand here]? Not working? What's the...'

I managed to work out what the guy want from us, and am doing the double confirm in Japanese, and Karja shouted silently from her bunk.

'Tell him to fuck off, [fake computer brand] are a pain to fix. And [fake computer brand] owners are all nutters that want their computers fixed rather than replaced. And these things are designed to be replaced not fixed.'

Of course that's in English. It's a matter of fact that 99.7% of ethnic Japanese dwellers here can't speak English, so when we don't want to be understood we would use English intentionally. Other times we just use English unintentionally. I processed Karja's comments quickly and I turn to reply.

'Right, I get it, but I don't speak Japanese that colourfully. Should I improvise?'

'That's your call.'

My call it seems. So I return to the guy with his probably fully functional computer and said, in Japanese:

'Sorry, she thinks she's not an expert on these devices.'