The Second Great Pessimist

INTRO

The world is beautiful.  And with my own two eyes, I have seen the natural beauty of the earth countless times since my birth.  The blanketed, speckled sky the mountains that touch even the highest of clouds.

The earth is beautiful.  And I truly believe that.

Unfortunately, how stunning the earth is is entirely lost in the eyes of the average person.  To witness a beauty, even just once, is to become accustomed to it.  And, as the population of this beautiful earth dwindles, it saddens me to say that no longer will humankind have the luxury of seeing such beauty.

Mankind is set to die alongside the mess that they created.  We killed our home, and now our home will kill us. 

~~

I slammed the cover of the ancient journal.  It once belonged to a great pessimist,  a man that ties into my familial bloodline in a way that I don't quite understand.  My father has explained his position in my ancestry countless times, but I can't quit grasp it  Genealogy isn't a programmed skill set of mine, but that doesn't cease my fascination by it. 

The journal entry was written a little over 350 years ago.  And he was right.  Humans are obsessively toxic people who managed to destroy a planet simply through their excessive toxicity.

The death of the earth didn't kill everybody right away. Rather it killed various things that eventually killed off plants and animals.  The things that humans rely on to survive.  The loss of plants and trees led to the continual deprecation of oxygen.  This, combined with the death of trees and plants killed livestock.  

My ancestor, the author of the pessimistic journal, documented the days until his death quite eloquently.

Except the death of the earth is not what killed the old man.  Rather, he lived many years past "the end of the world."  This is due to the technology created by Phillip O'Brien that was designed to keep the human race living until the earth could cure itself of the lethal poison slowly ending its life.

Phillip O'Brien truly was brilliant, I must admit.  He took what he could and safely dug into the earth, creating a safe haven for the remainder of the humans.  We rely on technology originated by  our founder to survive even now 350 years later.

Phillip called it Haven.

Haven was the lifelong work of O'Brien.  He was a scientist, an engineer.  A genius.  If anybody deserves such a title, admittedly it should belong to him.

Haven is massive.  Overall, more than 10,000 people live in a sector.  There are 7 sectors.  The Elite sector consists of the most beautiful homes, and it houses, as you likely guessed, the elite of Haven.  The lawmakers, the President.  Anyone of power can be found in the Elite sector.  

Next is the mid-upper sector.  These people are filthy rich, with old money usually.  These people are your investors, your CEO's.  

The last important sector is the low-upper sector.  This is usually just your entertainers.  This sector has a lot of shopping districts, and that's why it's the only reason you'll see those from the upper sectors intermingled with those from the lower.  Low-upper is for celebrities and shopping.  In no other case will an elite of any of the upper circles speak with or be in the same general vicinity as those who are lower than them.

I personally live in the upper-mid sector.  It's a large "L" shaped sector, filled almost entirely with businessmen and a few doctors and scholars.

My father, Briar Haught, is the head physician of Haven.  Technically, we should be living in the upper sector.  Possibly even elite.  But, when my mother learned she was pregnant with me, she decided she'd prefer a more quaint life in a different area.

And naturally my father complied.  As you do when dealing with a pregnant woman.  So, they packed up and moved, and seven months later, mother gave birth to a tiny baby boy.  Me.

My name is Kenji.  But you may call me the second great pessimist.