Salvation 2035

Chapter 4 - Imagine Law With No Undercovers

『Naomi』

     Yet another day goes by at Project Salvation. Huh? You don't know what the heck that is? Well, I don't blame you, it is top secret anyways. I can count on you not to snitch, right? Great! I'll get right to it. Project Salvation was first conceived back in the year 2035─ I hadn't been brought in yet, of course. It was created just about as talks about the war were beginning to get the spotlight, just in case the worst-case-scenario occurred. And as we all know, that basically happened. After all those nukes were dropped, layers of smoke and dust formed at high altitudes causing sort of a nuclear winter. To put it simply, crops weren't able to grow well after the attacks. Also, the resulting fallout from said nukes permanently damaged a lot of land.

     Project Salvation was meant to figure out a way to revert the environment back to normal and clear away the fallout. In addition to that, they're also working on something a little higher stakes related to climate change. I don't know too much about it, but it's basically a 'world reset button' to entirely clean the world of bad greenhouse gasses and damage done by pollution. It's not yet finished of course, but for now, we're trying our best to find people from the South that have been wrongfully discriminated against and give them a safe environment to live in. I know all too well what they do to those who they deem are 'different.'

     Where do I fit in in all of this? To be honest, I dunno. How I got to good ol' Norfolk, Ontario is a bit unorthodox, but it's a way to go. Hell, my whole life is a bit unorthodox. I lived pretty normally, in a family that valued our cultural heritage, unlike the rest of the population. It was pretty great. I mean, we were constantly a target for 'mandatory discrimination' because we didn't fit into the concept of the 'ideal citizen.' We seemed too foreign for their liking I suppose. But despite all this, I never once felt that I should conform. I was─ well, am different and own it. I always have, and always will be me no matter what. That's why after they were killed, I took my six-year-old brother and ran. I knew that if the police got a hold of us, we'd be sent to be adopted, would never see each other again, and lose everything we were taught to hold near and dear to our hearts.

     After that, I did some pretty dicey stuff. Before they could investigate our home, I quickly found all the cash we had and used it to survive on. I told my brother to pack a few things and then we'd leave. Luckily, he was pretty smart and knew exactly what was going on, despite just barely starting school. I took the keys to our second car, removed the GPS and drove to wherever the road would take us. After roughing it out for a while, we finally settled in the outskirts of some big city when we were seven and fourteen. I was too busy trying to survive, I guess. We lived safely there for about five years. I took a bunch of odd jobs to make ends meet. Don't worry, it wasn't anything too sketchy─ I just fixed some broken machinery and did the occasional hacking, no biggie. The hacking was literally just helping people recover lost passwords and whatnot. Nothing all that cool. I tried my best to teach my brother my work so that one day he could earn some cash too.

     He had always been so different from me though. The kid was always so grateful and had such a sweet personality despite everything that was thrown his way. He could find beauty in the simplest of moments like rain falling on a street lit with neon signs or whatever.

     Then there's me. I guess I'm pretty rough, to say the least. I'll throw it down with anyone who looks at me the wrong way. Once you're at the top, nobody can push you around. Well, when you have to survive, it's the only choice.

     I wish it were me not him that ended up in prison. I was built for that kind of life, more than he was at least. The moment still replays in my mind. I can see him at age twelve telling me to hide so he can lie that he's the only one in our family left alive so that only he would be taken in. I should have been the one to go. Heaven knows what happened to him. I promised I'd come back for him one day, but it's been about eight years and I still haven't done anything. Pretty shitty, am I right?

     Since taking a car would be too obvious, I had no choice but to run away. I found quicker ways of transportation further in my journey and eventually reached the US-Canada border. Of course, I didn't know that Canada was a thing at that point, I just knew I had to get through a heavily-guarded strip of land. Long story short, they then found me. The people of Project Salvation took me in as a refugee. Apparently, they're a secret to everyone, even their home country, so they had no problems taking me in. So here I am, doing exactly that to help anybody who needs it. Whether it be hacking old computers, phones, or anything that's got a camera and can connect to the internet (which by the way is basically outlawed in America, save the extremely regulated and monitored version the public can use), I can track someone down. To be specific, my job is to track down recently escaped prisoners with relatively nonviolent histories and guide them up to Norfolk.

     So if I─ or we, in this case, can do this, can't the FBI or whatever do the same? Actually, we anticipated they'd try and do that so we created a program that would make it seem like these devices are all turned off and inaccessible. So far nobody has been able to figure it out. But boy, are prison securities tight these days. I can hardly find anyone anymore. Makes my job kind of boring. But sooner or later, it'll happen. If not, then I guess that really blows.