Earth's Food Packaging Company

Welcome to the Company

Forward:

This story takes place in a Sci-fi world, where a lot of things can happen. Some things will be similiar to our current world, while other's, not so much. It's written in almost a Diary style, but in a message to your parents style. Each paragraph could be within hours, days, weeks, months or years. But they are written in "Entry" points, almost like a diary entry. Each Entry point, is what a person would send to a loved one while away, either through standard mail, or e-mail. Just keep in mind, each Entry, could be a month's worth of info, or a day's worth. An entry could be written every month, or every year. The info within the Entry will generally tell you the timescale. Now since it's written this way, precise details won't be given, use your imagination to determine what something looks like or might sound like. I hope you enjoy the story.

Backstory:

So here's a little backstory. My name is Tanner, and I'm from a planet that is mostly used for growing crops and livestock. So I grew up on a farm my whole life, since we raised livestock.I'm currently 23 as of writing this, and I just did something big: I'm finally leaving my planet for a job. And not just any job-the job I've wanted since I was a kid. So as far back as I can remember, I remember groups of people coming to our farm to buy livestock from us. And what scared me at first was that most of them were wearing armor and carrying guns. But as my parents explained to me, they are the people who protect the person buying our livestock. And as a child, I didn't know about other planets yet or how some were dangerous, but as I got older, I found out they were called mercenaries.And over the years, I got to know them more, mainly because they were always the same ones. And that's only because the person buying our livestock was a man who worked for a company called Earth's Food Packaging Company. And yes, I know what you're thinking: What's Earth? Apparently, Earth is the first planet that humans came from. And over the last few thousand years, humans have spread to a lot of planets, mainly because of resources. And it probably didn't help that using up all the resources and the constant wars on Earth kind of killed the planet. Oh, and as a as a side note, I found out another name for Earth is Terra.Anyway, I never really talked to the man who bought our livestock, since he was always talking to my parents. But I got to know the mercenaries'. I found out that since they worked for the company as well, they got free housing and food, and the company even supplied them with their armor and weapons. Most of them said they came from planets, where there were always wars and people starving. So being able to get all the food you can eat and a place to live made their choice easy. And even though they wore armor and had guns, they were always nice to me. While the buyer talked with my parents, they would tell me stories of where they'd been and what they'd seen. It was awesome. I wanted to see what they saw.So back to now, I wanted to join the company at 18, but my parents still needed help on the farm. So I did that; my dad even taught me how to shoot a little. But at 23, I asked the same Mercenary's if they could help me get into the company. And you know what they told me-I was in luck. The company was going to be opening a new factory on a planet not too far from here, and because of that, they had four spots open. So I had them send the company my information, and a week later, a ship came to take me to see if I qualified. And let me tell you, the shooting lessons with my dad really paid off. And yes, before you ask, my parents didn't want me to take this job. They wanted me to take over the family farm, find a wife, yada yada yada. But that's boring.So now, I leave in a week to go do some courses to teach me about the rules of my job and what I could expect. Wish me luck! I can't wait!

Entry #1I'm currently on a ship on my way to the Factory, and man were those courses boring. But I did found out some new info. I knew about protecting the person who does the buying selling so on and so forth. But what I didn't know is that, I won't be allowed in most parts of the factory because it's all ran by robots. Freakin' Robots! The only time i'm allowed inside is when their is an emergency or something like that. But surrounding the factory is houses where people like me live. They also said the only robots i'd probably see are the Medic Robots, they are there to make sure we are at peek health.Another thing I learned, that if a transport nearby is attacked, we might be called in as backup to help secure the shipment. I was like wow, as first. But then they told me they buy and sell goods with local towns and farmers. So the shipments are never very large, so dont expect to fight a huge battle over some food. When I asked what kinds of goods do we buy and sell overall. They told me, they buy Steel, Livestock and Crop's mainly. And they sell packaged food meals that can last years without going bad. So towns and farmers don't have to worry about thier food rotting too soon. When I asked how that was possible, they just handed me a package, it was heavy and was made when I was 13. So I opened up this 10 year old package, and there was so many different things in there, but I went for the pasta based item first. Besides it being room temperture, it wasn't bad. And it was 10 years old! They mainly sell these to military's everywhere since it doesn't rot unless opened. But struggling planets have been known to buy them to help feed thier people. They said that each "Meal" is about 24 pounds of Fruits and Vegetables and 24 pounds of Meat. And the price they sell them for depends on the planet. Some Planets have more gold and silver while others have less. So if it's a planet with alot of gold and silver, they would sell for like 100lbs worth of silver, or 10lbs of gold. But since i'm not going to be the person buying and selling, I didn't need to worry about the pricing.So yea, this company makes money selling food that almost never rots, how amazing is that. Also found out, that besides free food, housing etc., we do also get payed. They pay us in silver and gold, pay depends on how well the factory does. And since we don't need money, the company holds on to it, until we decide to Leave, Retire and Die. This makes more sense, because when I was younger, I remember a story of one of the Mercenaries dying and his wife received around 100 lbs of gold. On my planet 100 lbs of gold could buy 10 farms the size of my families, animals included.
Entry #2