Oxygen 2043

Chapter 2: After Death Wave

So now, we lived in Peace. Literally.

And we lived in peace too, waging war is literally impossible. And impractical.

It hasn't been a very eventful two decades. Other than stashing all of our oxygen, food and water supply because luckily Peace is self-sustaining and there are farms, water filtration plants and massive, MASSIVE air filtration plants. 

Peace, and other bubble cities are doing okay.

The three of us (me, Emily and Matt) are doing good too. We're all 21 right now. Emily just got hired as a plant biologist at one of the biggest farms. That sounds like she's just working at a farm, but it's super high tech and sophisticated. Not to mention it sustains us. 

Matt works at the biggest air filtration plant in Peace. He's a chemist. He's on the team responsible for separating oxygen from all the harmful toxic gases and smoke also in the atmosphere. 

Me? I work at ISREA like all our parents. With them, actually. ISREA's been trying to make Mars hospitable/able to sustain humans since even before the impact. The process has been accelerated since the impact. We've been saying mars is a plan B for years before the impact yet everyone only takes it seriously after. We've made significant progress, but large-scale inhabitation of Mars will still take a while. We estimate only about 5-7 years though.

Everything's going well. Except, you know, the rising massive oxygen fees, becoming so large it's impossible for families of average income to sustain themselves. Eventually, several families fell behind and after being simply unable to pay after having exhausted every avenue of loans and money they could possibly get their hands on, they were brutally kicked out. The Peace government literally threw families financially unable to pay for their oxygen, out into the toxic and hazardous world.

More and more are falling victim to this injustice everyday. Matt and his team alone, in fact 99% of employees at the air filtration plants can't do anything to right this wrong.

Of everyone who has been kicked out: There are no survivors.

Greed is causing mass death. Not just at Peace, at every dome city all over the world, thousands of families have been kicked out when the massively increased fees couldn't be met. They were killed.  Luckily, with all our parents still working at ISREA and doing well by ourselves, we should be fine. But it's not just us in what's left of planet Earth.

We started cutting corners to donate whatever we had left to charities financing families' oxygen fees. Literally, the charities are saving their lives.

We're doing whatever we can to help. Donating, attending peaceful protests, just doing whatever we can in general. But my calm desk job might be expanding to much more. With a shortage of staff, ISREA needs me to wear quite a few hats. My normal job, working on Mars terraforming rovers (which do a variety of things to make Mars human life-friendly ASAP like conducting fertility tests on the soil, making and releasing oxygen right there, etc), but also new tasks like delivering Mars rover or satellite pieces to be worked on further or launched.  

I might even need to go to space soon. By "soon", I mean in the next few months. It's unlikely, but it's still a very realistic possibility. It's why I started this journal-type thing. Let's face it: there's not 100% chance I survive all this. Driving for days on end with barely enough oxygen to breath on long, abandoned and rocky highways isn't the safest thing ever.

This serves as a kind of record of events too. Someday someone could look at this and help us- or we could help them. Depending on the situation.

 1/02/43 - Sunday

Yesterday was a long day of journaling, jotting down everything in the last 20 years. 

Oh, and just got this letter in the mail.

"For the attention of Adam Aquitis, Apartment B-04, Sunrise Apartments, Peace Domecity

From International Space Research & Exploration Agency, ISREA HQ, Peace Domecity

Mr Aquitis, you are required to carry a shipment of the Juno Mars Satellite Spacecraft (JMSS) from Peace domecity to Joy domecity (480 KM/298 Miles away) by truck. Your trip will begin on 6th February, 2043 and you will arrive at Joy domecity on 8th Feb and return on the 11th. Details will be intimated on Monday, tomorrow."

So, I have literally 5 days before packing up for 2 days until I arrive at Joy, where I stay for 24 hours, and come back. The 480-km long journey is through one of the worst and the most dangerous highways- Mayor's Voyage Highway. It's over a hundred years old, there is no road even left. It's full of crashed vehicles and sharp metal scraps spread literally all over. And it's so bumpy, they're literally inventing better tires which offer more stability. Most recent post-impact vehicles to attempt to go through failed. The dead bodies and vehicle wrecks were just left there. It would be a waste of precious oxygen to retrieve them.

Did I mention it's so dangerous they check that you have wrote your will before you start the journey?

More information tomorrow when I come from work and have a little more info about the trip.