Fanfic / Year Zero (2016)

Year Zero is a fan work by Another Online Persona, also known on some websites as Patrick_Nicholas, published on his personal Nine Inch Nails-themed forum over five months in 2016, amid the Presidential election season, as a political thriller with some sci-fi elements. The story is for a non-existent TV adaptation of NIN's 2007 Concept Album Year Zero. It takes many liberties with the source materials (the album and the ARG) but maintains the basic premise: In the year 2022, the religious right has taken over the United States government. Drugs are put in water supplies to brainwash people into accepting the government's authority. Calendars are reset to zero to signify America becoming "born again". There have been multiple sightings of a mysterious Eldritch Abomination known only as The Presence, which takes the form of a giant hand.

The plot starts with the President of the United States being assassinated, followed very shortly by his successor being assassinated as well. This elevates Henry Smith, Speaker of the House, to the Presidency. Aided by a televangelist who provides the drugs, President Smith wastes little time enacting a series of harsh laws and sets up the Bureau of Morality to enforce them and manage the everyday lives of US citizens. Stanley K. Johnson, also known as Neil Czerno, has already been preparing for a dystopia to come because he claims to be an expert in mysterious messages from the future and has already started to form a resistance group in response. In 2007, Czerno posed as a substitute teacher to meet Emily Werrington, a teen girl reported to have been driven insane by a recurring dream and sightings of the Presence. At some point amid the 15-year time skip, Czerno was briefly imprisoned, left the country, and returned after changing his name. At the end of 2021, he recruited Chris "Angry Sniper" Connor to the resistance, flying him from Chicago to Dallas before leaving for Los Angeles to fetch the resistance members who were already on board.

As the situation becomes more intense, the resistance has to escape from a Hellhole Prison and meet up with a second resistance group just outside of Chicago. Meanwhile, the corrupt government becomes increasingly more controlling as President Smith and his allies resort to outright terrorism on a large scale to maintain his emergency powers. As America nears its darkest hour, the Presence has now begun to intervene.

Read the story here.

This is pretty much a Dead Fic with unpublished continuations that may appear in Unpublished Works.

• Year Zero Seasons 2-4
• The Last President

WARNING: Spoilers pertaining to the original album and ARG are unmarked.

The fan story provides examples of:

• Action Girl: Emily is involved of the destruction of the Parepin facility in Los Angeles, has repeatedly shown to be capable of saving herself, and is the only resistance member involved in the termination of the drug company Cedocore, effectively cutting off the source of Parepin.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Angry Sniper more openly condoned violence in the ARG and committed acts of terrorism by bombing a baseball game. Although he is still an Anti-Hero here, his interest in violence is toned down, and he has a few acts of kindness here and there, such as when he uses his gun to save a woman on the street from her crazy boyfriend. Good Is Not Nice still applies to him toward almost anyone who isn't Emily, though. This is mainly due to an anarchist terrorist being hard to sell as one of the main heroes, even with Black-and-Grey Morality involved.
  • The Presence more actively aids the resistance as its threat to end the world expands to it seeing President Smith as an ugly symptom of a world that appears beyond saving.
• Adaptational Late Appearance: The baseball incident is handled differently. In the ARG, this happened in February, with the implication that global warming made Chicago warm enough for baseball to be played there in the middle of winter. As this story stretches Year Zero to cover the whole year, the baseball game is moved to the time in which the World Series usually happens, several months after the resistance members had escaped from prison in February.
• Adaptational Self-Defense: The incident at the baseball game again. In the ARG, Angry Sniper kills a corrupt official seemingly unprovoked. In this story, that person was someone he already knew was planning to kill him.
• The Aggressive Drug Dealer: Reconstructed with Billy Hopkins, The Man Behind the Man to Pastor Green and his drug plot. As the CEO of the drug company Cedocore, Hopkins gets to make a lot of money from his dealings while still taking sadistic pleasure in torturing and experimenting on people with his drugs and synthetic diseases.
• Alternate History: It’s not elaborated upon, but the events leading up to Year Zero rely on things being different after the release of the NIN album, including every President after Bush. The unnamed President at the beginning is implied to be a stand-in for Obama, who was on his way out at the time the story was written.
• Arc Words: "Wake up and give a shit!"
• Artistic License – Politics: It would take a lot of industrial-strength Parepin for President Smith to succeed at a lot of what he manages to do, including terminating the separation of church and state. It’s handwaved by Congress having been brainwashed, but there are still a lot of state legislatures and judges that would fight him on many issues.
• Ascended Extra: Pastor Green was mentioned in passing on the Church of Plano website in the ARG, but is the Big Bad in this fan story.
• Baseball Episode: "Meet Your Master" is a plot-relevant one that is one of the only adaptations of any specific storyline in the ARG, albeit with some pragmatic changes.
• Battle Couple: Chris and Emily.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: President Smith and Pastor Green are co-conspirators. Smith is the more powerful half, but Green outlives him by a whole episode.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Fletcher considers himself Dragon-in-Chief, but, despite being one of the more competent and most vile antagonists, he is still seemingly incapable of simply shooting Chris and Emily on the spot. This gets him shot dead by Chris at the baseball game.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Even Chris and Emily are aware that the things they do against the government would make them villains in most other stories, but this particular government is not just corrupt but violently oppressive on an extreme scale.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Fletcher and Hopkins, in contrast to Knight Templar characters Smith and Green.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Mainly from Chris, but other characters contribute to it as well.
• Christmas Episode: The first half of "Zero-Sum" is of the Merry Christmas in Gotham variant.
• Church Militant: The militarized vigilante group known as the Civil Patrol is backed by the Church of Plano.
• Corrupt Church: The Church of Plano is where fundamentalists become bigoted extremists.
• Deadpan Snarker: Mainly Chris and, to a lesser extent, Emily.
• Decoy Protagonist: The Obama expy at the beginning is set up as the protagonist, only to be assassinated before the resistance is even introduced.
• Deus ex Machina: The Presence has repeatedly bailed out the resistance in situations they could not easily resolve themselves, including reverting Chris to normal after being seemingly killed in a Hulking Out moment and sparing Emily after she blew up the Parepin.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Pastor Green was originally referred to as "Reverend Green". Chris was also initially intended to be white but only mentioned it once before Hypothetical Casting made him the Latino Oscar Isaac. Chris' ethnicity was never mentioned again. The Decoy Protagonist is also briefly abducted by aliens who never return.
• Flanderization: President Smith starts out as a standard right-wing politician who took extreme measures to make a "born again" America but just happened to take a few cues from Donald Trump, who was a candidate at the time the story was written. The seventh "episode" shows him having evolved into an outright Trumplica.
• Flat Character: Most, if not all, of the characters have little to no personality or character development. Most of the core OSR team - beyond Chris, Emily, and Stan/Czerno - are mainly there so the main resistance group doesn't appear too empty. Lampshaded in "Zero-Sum" when Chris admitted that he's not even sure if he's changed at all.
• The Fundamentalist: Pastor Green is highly dogmatic in enforcing his brand of Christianity, helping make America "born again" as part of a plan to have it enshrined in the constitution.
• Gender Flip: Gil was a man in the ARG. Laurel was pregnant with his baby.
• Gratuitous Spanish: Emily shouts "Adios Puta Madres"^translation  “Goodbye Motherfuckers” in a gratuitous name-drop of a Ministry live album as she makes a Train Escape after the Parepain facility in Los Angeles is destroyed.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Hopkins only appears in one "episode" but is the benefactor that fuels the villains’ plans.
• Hate Sink: Pretty much all the villains:
  • Pastor Green is an extreme fundamentalist that rejects anything that contradicts what the Bible says, including the Presence when it’s in his face.
  • President Smith is a Trumplica who acts as if all of his actions are justified, including outright genocide.
  • Fletcher is probably the single most Politically Incorrect Villain in a story where pretty much every villain is a Politically Incorrect Villain.
  • Michael Smith is there just so Chris and Emily can have an antagonist in the finale.
• Hellhole Prison: The prison staff in Guam is very sadistic towards their prisoners, especially the ones in solitary confinement.
• Hiding Behind Religion: Smith uses Christianity to justify his actions. Fletcher only went to church because the church in question pandered to his extreme bigotry.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Relatively early on, Pastor Green refutes a claim that he is not a "true" Christian by claiming that he has accepted Jesus as his savior, making him technically a Christian.
• Mandatory Line: "My Violent Heart" has a scene where five of the six OSR members (excluding Colin, who had his line earlier) returning to Chris and Emily to explain to the two what the audience already knows, in addition to telling them that they have to leave the Chicago area after losing their allies, just so everyone can have something to say.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: The common man in the street is brainwashed into adopting this mentality, which makes Chris lash out at him.
  Man on street: "The government knows best. If they believe what they did was the right thing to do, who am I to argue?"
  Chris: "Who are you? Who the fuck are you to argue? Who the FUCK are you NOT to argue? Think for your fucking self! You have a voice; you decide what the fuck is right and what the fuck is wrong! Don’t just assume the ones in power know what the fuck they’re talking about! Wake the fuck up and give a shit"
• Named by the Adaptation: Chris "Angry Sniper" Connor was Only Known by Their Nickname in the ARG.
• No Name Given: The Decoy Protagonist is unnamed to keep the audience from getting too attached to him.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: President Smith claims he wants to win the war on terror but withholds the knowledge that his enemies surrendered so he can maintain emergency powers to control his people, kill anyone who is not in line with his bigotry, and force everyone to follow his extreme version of Christianity.
• One-Hour Work Week: Angry Sniper only uses a sniper rifle on three occasions, the first being in the sixth "episode", and only uses a gun a handful of other times.
• Original Character: The majority of the characters, including major characters like Emily and President Smith.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Pretty much all of them, but Fletcher stands out. He openly encourages genocide and has been referred to as a “Nazi in all but name”.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: The album’s lyrics are mostly character monologues, and the ARG is hard to translate into another medium. Year Zero lasts almost the whole year, as opposed to a mere six weeks, so there can be more time to flesh out a meaningful conflict. Angry Sniper gets Adaptational Heroism because an anarchist terrorist would be hard to sell as even an anti-hero, is given a proper name for convenience's sake, and is a member of the main resistance group to reduce the number of plotlines going on at the same time. Microchips are only proposed as a backup plan near the end because the antagonists would otherwise have too much of an advantage over the resistance. Internet usage is far less prominent due to this story being intended for a medium where more physical action is expected. The album was based on the Bush administration and The War on Terror, but this story is more about the alt-right and evangelical politics (though the war on terror was still going on) to keep up with more current issues at the time.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Fletcher refuses to publicly condemn Angry Sniper of La Résistance over the Wrigley Field incident because it would make the public think the government was doing something wrong. The resistance had already been charged with several crimes and had escaped from prison several months earlier, so the government adding new charges would draw too much attention to themselves.
• Prison Episode: Two of them. "Me, I’m Not" sees the Open Source Resistance members shipped off to a Hellhole Prison in Guam after a show trial. Czerno is sent to death row, Lori is ordered to be tortured to death by Fletcher for being trans, Colin is forced to carry bricks under the hot sun to a station where the government will ship the bricks to the US-Mexico border to build a wall, Jason is waterboarded and microchipped, and Emily was also set to be waterboarded while being interrogated. Emily escapes and contacts another known resistance group to help the rest of the team escape. "The Great Destroyer" sees the last known active resistance members voluntarily return to Guam to rescue their detained allies, saving Gil and Laurel but failing to save Phil and Jessie.
• Psycho Serum: A single Red Pill can turn one into an uncontrollable rage monster. Chris is force-fed seven while awaiting "trial" and suffers from extreme side effects that only the Presence could fix.
• Sequel Hook: After the Presence ends the world, Chris abruptly wakes up on a department store floor with no idea how he got there. To Be Continued.
• Series Continuity Error: Despite the government covering up the resistance's involvement in the Wrigley Field incident, a judge somehow knew and tried to use it against Chris.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Czerno was due to be executed around February 4 like he was in the ARG, but Angry Sniper intervened after the remaining prisoners in the resistance made their escape.
• Team Member in the Adaptation: Angry Sniper acted alone in the ARG.
• Trumplica: President Smith has grown into one by "Capital G", with him trying to get Mexico to pay for his wall and Gil claiming his hair to be a bad wig.
• Villainous Breakdown: President does not handle defeat well, but he really loses it when his crimes are exposed. He freaks out in denial, rips his wig off, is completely unfazed by his wife committing suicide, and personally holds Emily at gunpoint as he threatens to microchip his "subversive" enemies. The last of these gets him assassinated.
• Writer on Board: The story made little effort to hide the writer’s political views at the time, which drive the plot.
• Year Zero: Calendars are reset to "0 BA" to signify a year of "cleansing" before unveiling a new constitution for a "born again" America.