Sunday, June 29, 2014

Doctor Lily Kwan - Personal Log #2

It's actually a lovely day today. If I crane my head so I can stare up, above even the top floor of the Tower, the sky is blue. So pretty. It's only when you look down that you see the ugliness, the smog masking the endless conurbation that is the North East. From this high, I can see a big brown blob in the far distance. Guess it's the sludgy remains of the Lakes.

I know how lucky I am. I KNOW! I've been given everything Father's filthy money can buy - good food, clean air, a rigorous scientific education. On the other hand, truisms are called that for a reason. This one's a humdinger: There's a price, there's always a price

Not sure how much longer I can go on paying it.

Friday, June 27, 2014

Corporal Sienna Jade-4

Uh...when I was told I could stay in the Army this was not what I expected. I have to join the Earth Ship program going to freaking Solitaire. A planet in the middle of fuck-knows-where a year away from Earth traveling at who-knows how fast assuming we don’t die in space. Maybe I should get out. I have a week to decide.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Chief Rita Songworth - 3

So after months of living like dogs, my parents tell me they want me to apply for a position on one of the air carriers that are headed to a new world. Solitaire. It sounds so exotic and wonderful, but I'm betting it'll be hardcore living and nothing as beautiful as Earth once was. I argued that I wanted to stay with them, but we all know if chem-lung doesn't get us all--sooner rather than later--then starvation or even murder at the hands of once respectable people turned desperate, just might. I'm still fit and healthy, and being a soldier just might be the one guarantee that sees me taken away from the nightmare that is my life. But leaving behind my parents...my heart aches just at the thought. Guess I'd better not count my chickens before they hatch. I mightn't even be accepted into the ranks of those lucky enough to go.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Alex Tariel-4

Simms took his life rather leave his wife and kids in medical debt. We did a collection at work to pay for the funeral. We build the damn towers but can't get inside. We risk our lives and breathe in the polluted air while the rich sit inside. It’s not right…but without a better education, the kind that the rich kids get there’s nothing else to do. Trapped. I will never have kids and bring them into this mess.

Monday, June 23, 2014

Doctor Lily Kwan - Personal Log #1

Keeping this log constitutes a risk, but it's a pretty conservative one, I think - and oh, God, I need to express myself somehow! I've triple encrypted everything, hidden it in a tiny corner of one of Father's servers. His IT guys might be good, but I'm better. Have been since I was a kid. Anyway, it's worth it. If I can't lay my thoughts out in a logical order I really think I might go mad.

Without Mama, it's been so much harder to maintain my balance with Father, to be who I really am. It's only four months since she died and I know she had a good end, as comfortable as Father's physicians could make her. They were so incredibly scared, all of them. Well, who wouldn't be, with the bodyguards watching every procedure, their faces like stone?

Eighty stories up in the Kwan Family Tower, everything's pain free. If Mama had been down there, in the sprawling slums, she would have died by inches, screaming. I wonder if I'd have had the guts to put her out of her misery? People do that these days. They call it mercy and the authorities - such as they are - turn a blind eye.

Up here, it's all so damn clean, so quiet, so calm. I hate it.

No, I HATE it!

Friday, June 20, 2014

Corporal Sienna Jade-3

So I’m allowed to stay in—yay—another five years of a guaranteed pay check and food. Seriously that’s the only reason why anyone would do it. No...I take that back I do like being in the Army and I love that I have gotten a bit of travel in even if it was just to blow shit up. Getting involved with an officer while deployed in China was dumb. I accept that. But him losing the plot because I re-enlisted for another 5 years instead of becoming his mistress is on him. I still have the bruises on my neck. I hope he gets a butt ugly scar on his eyebrow—nah he parents will probably pay for plastic surgery.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Tristan MacFallan - 2

My wife told me she was pregnant today. Not because we'd ever in a million years have been able to afford a test in a hospital, but because her reliable period was seven weeks overdue and her nausea she'd been suffering from is apparently morning sickness. At first I was almost as ill. Another mouth to feed. Another person to look after. One more human being to be subjected to an Earth no one should be part of. But the selfish part of me is starting to obsess over the little unborn child who will be a part of me and my wife.

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Alex Tariel-3

Simms fell today. Safety equipment is out of date and the company wouldn’t fix it. Now they won’t pay Simms medicals either. Typical. What are going to do? refuse to go up? There's plenty of others who'd be willing to take the risk. Do the wealthy realise how much blood goes into their towers? I doubt it. They're so insulated from the real world. I hear it's possible to spend your entire life in one from birth to death and never once have to breath unfiltered air.

Monday, June 16, 2014

Chief Rita Songworth - 2

As if this day couldn't get any worse, we finally get the storm we've been praying for only to have the pummeling rain wash away the topsoil along with all the vegetable seedlings we'd been coaxing into life. The same vegetable seedlings that cost my father his last jacket--literally the clothes off his back. Worse still, we don't have a house to call our own anymore and have been living in an old ramshackle shed that barely keeps out the weather. We can't keep on going like this.

Friday, June 13, 2014

Corporal Sienna Jade-2

Okay calmer today. Still livid and if I see Lieutenant Zane again I will kick him in the nuts so hard he’ll be wearing them for earrings. No, better not otherwise I will be kicked out. That’s not going to happen apparently but I don’t get to walk away from this even though it was self-defence. I should have known it was too good to be true, moneyed officers are not interested in women from the slums except for one reason.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Tristan MacFallan - 1

I sat outside the air-cleansed towers today, painting the buildings for one of the greedy elite who live inside them, safe from the ugliness that have overtaken the real world. While so many starved people shuffle past, casting me disgusted looks, I realize I've never hated one of my paintings more. Except this one piece of art will guarantee clean drinking water for a week and enough vegetables to keep my family fed for a month.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Alex Tariel-2

Well those of us with half a brain had suspected for years that it was only a matter of time until the governments wanted to settle Solitaire. I thought it was years away, but apparently not. Six months we’re being told until the three ships will be ready. No doubt they will be filled with the rich who are sick of the smog spoiling their views. the rest of us will just keep on going using crappy masks and knowing it's only a matter of time until we get chem-lung.

Monday, June 9, 2014

Chief Rita Songworth - 1

My parents had no choice but to give up their real estate business months ago, but we clung onto our own home for as long as we could before we had to flee. We're thankful now that we've still got each other. The looting is getting out of control. No one is safe. I can't see that Earth will come back from the brink now. Greed and politics rule this world over harmony and preservation of the planet.

Friday, June 6, 2014

Corporal Sienna Jade-1

I just can’t even put into words the anger right now. He assaulted me and yet I am the one being branded a trouble maker. It just goes to show that if you have money and connections anything can be swept under the rug. FFS. If I get booted out of the Army because of him...I just...grrrr. I still have the bruises on my neck but that's not enough evidence.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Alex Tariel-1

Water shortage, again. News is full of the Unity Research Base, again. The billions of dollars that have been put into reaching that planet and then setting up a base is staggering. Might have been better if they’d spent it on fixing up the place where everyone lives.