DAY 803 - MAY 20, 2013
Pro-Assad hacker group, the Syrian Electronic Army, breaks into the Associated Press Twitter account and tweets about a bomb detonating in the White House, causing a stock market free fall to the tune of $136 billion. Internet videos emerge depicting a Syrian rebel commander eating the lung of a dead government soldier. The cannibalism stunt is used by anti-war advocates around the world as justification to avoid arming the Syrian opposition. France and England believe they have proof that Assad has used chemical weapons on his own people. Israel uses this information as the catalyst to perpetrate a second bombing inside Syria, this time on Bashar Al Assad's most advanced weapons facility, which many think is used to manufacture biological weapons. Two car bombs go off across the Turkish border while the Syrian government commits massacres in Baniyas and Al Bayda, calling it an act of sectarian cleansing. The UN puts the death toll at 80,000 since the start of the conflict, as 4.5 million people are internally displaced within Syria's borders and one million refugees are displaced outside.
The road from Hama to Homs isn't particularly long, only about 30 miles, but it is one of the most dangerous in Syria. You nearly escape an aerial bombardment on your way, and this time you are without the MANPADs for protection. You read about the on-going struggle in Al Qusayr and notice that most of the rebel brigades are made up of jihadists. Al Qusayr is a regime stronghold but you hear Salim Idris, general of the FSA, say that government forces will be massacred if they try to keep the town. After two full days of battle both sides have incurred heavy casualties and you are glad to have avoided that death trap. You are glad until you are caught in the crossfire by a stray bullet as you try to scamper across one of the Homs's derelict streets. You aren't wearing your flak jacket and the high velocity round enters and exits your torso in an instant. You lie on the pavement, next to trash and spent bullets waiting for what seems like forever before you finally bleed out and become just another corpse in the aftermath of a revolution gone awry.
You have been killed.