Oxygen 2043

Chapter 3: Before The Journey

2/02/43 - Monday

So. I'm back from work. No more details, they practically repeated the letter.

Anyway, Matt and Emily were reading this journal and had some ideas. For instance, they immediately mentioned the 20 years weren't "eventless". They wanted me to write about how I ended up at ISREA, how we grew up together, etc.

So I'm going to go back and journal down major events in those 20 years to (hopefully) take my mind off of the journey.

So, after Death Wave ended, we still kind of had no idea. Me, Matt and Emily were 1 or so.

We grew up in Peace domecity. 

All our parents had been close friends since they all started their careers at ISREA, when they were our age. We were born after a few years. When PARM was destined to fail, all our families decided to escape to Australia, together.

We had relatively normal childhoods. Or at least normal enough for the first generation to grow up in massive bubbles. Me, Emily and Matt went to school together (where we became pretty close), then college. We graduated in Aeronautical Engineering & Physics, Agricultural Biology and Oxychemistry respectively.

Oxychemistry popped up as a new field of study specifically to study and extract oxygen. 

Our 3 families were very close. Our parents were best friends, we were best friends, we were neighbours, me and all our parents are colleagues. 

I decided I wanted to study to get a job at ISREA so I could fix what they were doing wrong: ignoring massive stuff, then regretting it. I've always been very interested in space and Mars, specifically. With two parents also working at ISREA, I saw the office a lot, I knew what they were working on, the house was always filled with books about Mars and astronomy, and also with equipment like telescopes everywhere, so my environment obviously kindled what interest I had in this. I took the chance to go to every single seminar or program ISREA had. To this day, it still does basic coaching sessions for interested kids/kids of employees. I now work as a chief scientist, but, as mentioned before, will need to wear quite a few hats from now on.

I'll always remember my dad, Michael Aquitis, asking me "Why do you want to work for the same organization that failed humanity and us twice?". He was and is still working at ISREA.

I replied I wanted to, because it's the people that failed. Not ISREA. And when dad became the chief scientist supervisor, I knew those issues would never arise again.

Next, Emily. Emily always had a certain curiosity towards plants. After school, she'd play with me and Matt for an hour or so and then go to some farming industrial areas where she asked anybody she could find about everything there. Among all the jobs, (maintaining the machines which planted and nurtured plants, agricultural engineering which was building the machines and improving them, etc) agricultural biology stood out to her the most. She knew she wanted to work on this and was very determined. When we were literally 9 or 10, she was spending most of her free time conversating with agricultural biologists at the various farms, so much so that she knew all the employees at the many huge farms (200 or more) by a first-name basis. She knew what she had to do early on, and she did it.

Matt didn't always gravitate towards chemistry specifically. He, like all of us, wanted to do something to ease up the oxygen problem a little.

But Oxychemistry wasn't a profession, or even an accepted branch of study. It didn't have its own degrees or programs. It was barely open to the public. Those who were working on it were handpicked former chemists from various branches of chemistry. However, when we were 15 or so, the government realised they'd need to educate the new generation right now, if they wanted to recruit them. Soon as it was open, Matt jumped at every program and opportunity he saw. Not surprising he's the lead scientist at the biggest air filtration plant in Peace.

I think that's enough journaling for today. I've burned enough time and need to go to bed. I'll write more tomorrow.