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Posted by PSTU3 on April 2nd, 2114
These journal entries come to us from a young man who asked to remain anonymous. He has allowed us to identify him as a 24-year old man from Eugene, Oregon. Here at PSTU3, we feel it is important that the world hear stories of what life is like here in the city and around the world. - Editor
January 13th, 2114
Things are getting worse every day. I’ve been all over Portland in the last week and I can tell you from where I’m standing, it’s not getting any better. Hell, just yesterday I saw a mob tearing apart a man they thought was hoarding food. The day before that I sat under the Burnside bridge and watched folks roast stray dogs and cats over an open burn barrel. They could barely stop themselves from tearing into the meat before it was fully cooked. I hope they all get worms. I wonder if they’ll bring some dogs with them into the dome. Seems a shame to lose man’s best friend along with everything else.
February 3rd, 2114
Been walking from one end of this town to the other for over two weeks. I’ve been in camps where folks share their canned meals around a campfire and in others where a few eat like kings and the rest are made to fight like animals over scraps. And all the while the dome goes up in the city center like some ancient monolith come to our time; polymer and steel and concrete. I hear the lottery winners are being selected. Some stroke of luck has been picking out the scientists and construction workers and the tech savvy. Or perhaps just good old-fashioned corruption. Forget about the fools working at all-night convenience stores, they’re the last ones to get a ticket to survive what’s coming. I’m going to end up riding this out with the rest of the poor bastards who never amounted to much. Makes me think I should have finished school. Maybe I’d be living the high life behind those walls as they go up. Looking out over this dead city and the walking dead left behind.
February 7th, 2114
What we’re facing is extinction, pure and simple. The world is collapsing around us. I’ve seen tens of thousands pour into Portland in the last few months. Souls looking for a way out. For an escape from the fire that’s coming to burn this world to ash. Already the temperatures are skyrocketing and the air is getting bad. Going stale and dank and making folks cough and gasp when the wind is right. Guess the scientists said this was going to happen. But who ever listened to them anyway? I, for one, hope some of them fry for this. Why didn’t they save the world when they had the chance? Maybe they never could. Like some oracle huffing fumes, all they could do was give us predictions. It would have taken leadership and guts and straight cojones to fix what they’d said was going to happen all along.
February 28th, 2114
Been walking so long, I don’t even have know home anymore. Left Eugene three months ago when I realized what was happening, that the world wasn’t going to fix itself. The lottery was already in full swing and my friends were talking about heading north to get a chance at living in the dome come Enclosure. Eugene had its own dome plan but by the third time the funding fell through, folks around there didn’t think there was much of a chance it would ever happen in time. If my friends had quit smoking ditch weed and drinking the last of the bathtub Etoh they were making with government rations, they might have come with me. As it was, I sobered up enough to grab one of the last Greyhounds to Portland before the bus system collapsed. Maybe I should have stayed home and smoked and drank myself into oblivion. Might have been better than watching humanity turn into a sick, starving animal in front of me.
March 5th, 2114
Learned that I’ve got to take care of myself. Was just barely off the bus when some bastards tried to rob me. Turns out those karate classes I took helped me more than I’d realized. Wasn’t much use for them in Eugene, what with all the pseudo-hippies and weed-vaporizers. But when those four guys jumped me in the street just off Broadway, I really tore them up. Think I even broke an arm or two. Sometimes I feel bad about it, self-defense or no. But then, when I’m eating a can of lukewarm beans that I hauled up here from down home while folks around me are fighting over rat carcasses, I don’t feel so bad anymore. A man has to do what he can to survive. Even if the clock is just ticking down. Hell, especially if the clock is ticking. It satisfies something inside, like spitting in Death’s face.
March 8th, 2114
Hearing crazy rumors as I wander. Without real news or information from trusted sources, all we have is what folks pass on to one another. Guess the news conglomerates are still reporting but they seem off somehow, not quite jiving with what’s happening on the ground. Sometimes they just rerun the same weather reports over and over again. Sometimes the anchor just laughs disturbingly for a while till the screen goes black. I stopped watching when that poor woman committed suicide on-air. They tried to cover it up but folks remember how she finished a report about food rations, told everyone that she’d been ordered to lie about it, and that the government was complicit in routing food stores to corporate dome construction sites. Then she put a gun in her mouth. The broadcasts went dark for a while after that. I haven’t risked watching the news since. Too depressing.
March 12th, 2114
Rumor has it Russia started nearly completed their mega-dome over Stalingrad. Then the People’s Red Army - some fanatic group that was still trying to uphold old Communist ideals - stormed it and tried to take it over for the “people.” The last images of Stalingrad were of a mushroom cloud when Russia’s military leaders decided that no dome was better than a dome full of fanatics. Saved Stalingrad from the Germans all those years ago just to lose it to their own folly.
March 20th, 2114
Was sitting at a campfire in the Hawthorne district when someone told the story of how China had recalled the army from Tibet to put out the proverbial fires back home. Neo-Buddhists - those few that survived the purges of 2060 - had risen up and were taking advantage of the power vacuum to bolster their ranks. Word had it they had seized Chinese technology left behind by the army and were working on their own dome over Katmandu. Whether it would become their Shangri-La or some new-age Naraka was up for debate.
March 22nd, 2114
Another night - this time under the St. Johns bridge - a fellow told me about how India and Pakistan had finally called a truce on throwing nukes at each other. But that hackers on both ends were fighting an underground war to try and keep the other from being the first to Enclosure. Turns out a million man army looks good on paper but when 80% of your crop production has been decimated, you tend to turn to cheaper and less calorie-burning ways of engaging in warfare. Word is India had the advantage but Pakistan was pulling in favors from China and Russia to help them in their cyber war with India. The bets were still out as far as folks around the burn barrel were concerned. I guess gossiping about a war half a world away was better than thinking about what was happening right in front of us. I bet those hackers don’t have to buy a lottery ticket. They probably are going to get a straight invitation to whatever dome is closest to them. Makes me a bit jealous to be honest. And makes me wish I’d figured out how to make a computer work.
March 28th, 2114
Tried to get near the construction site today - over where they are building the dome - just to see how far along they were. Was barely within ten blocks when I was stopped by Metro security. They frisked me and asked me a bunch of questions. One of the bastards even went through my backpack while the others bullied me. He didn’t say anything to his comrades but I saw him quickly pocket a protein bar I had in there. I wisely didn’t call attention to it or I probably would be face down in the gutter with a bullet in the back of my head right about now. I got out of there as soon as he called the all-clear and they let me go. I kicked myself for risking it just for a look. That protein bar was two or three days worth of food right there. I hope that bastard who took it chokes on it. They were all wearing air purifiers...wonder where I can get one of those?
Anons journal ends here but we'll keep you apprised of any updates - Editor
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