I am beginning this journal for posterity’s sake, in the hope that a future generation may one moon lay eyes upon this document and learn from the mistakes that have led to this conflict… what has escalated into man’s most perilous ultimatum.

I sit putting ink to paper huddled in a modest tent, located inside a large manmade bunker some three hundred cubits below the ground. These are the first few moments of uninterrupted rest I have been allowed since we entered the bunker those fifteen or so moons ago. I need badly to sleep, but my sense of duty urges me first to begin this chronicle of the most unlikely series of events, which have driven me down into this dismal underground prison.

It is the turn 2099, though of the precise moon I cannot, at this time, be entirely certain. It was still the warm season when we descended into the bunker…

I am keeping this account also as a record for myself, certainly, for writing has always helped me to keep a clear and balanced mind in the face of chaos. For as long as I can remember, writing has served me as a useful tool for demystifying the world around me, and for finding perspective in circumstances that would otherwise remain shrouded in a fog of confusion. Since my childhood, keeping journals and expressing myself through the written word have helped me to deal with the everymoon struggles of my life on the outside. It pains me to think of it, but there are so few, if any, writers or artists of any kind left. In the Metropolis, the arts died a long time ago. Among the outsiders, few are literate. After the revolution, very few outsiders possessed the will to study or contemplate anything, and even fewer the resources or time. Writing, and by extension reading, are impractical, and so nearly dead pursuits. Impracticality is a bitter sin in our bleak world, and the false god perched above us punishes no trespass as vengefully or mercilessly.

But now, I am getting away from myself…

I keep this record to commemorate all of us in the colony, with the greatest hope that this document will make it into the welcoming hands of a future generation. I cannot help but feel that my own immutable instinct for survival is now one with all of humankind, and my only wish henceforth is that God or the great unknown grant us humble men and women the power to overcome our seemingly imminent peril.

There is so much to tell, and likely very little time. My eyelids droop as I sit here writing. Nevertheless, I must recall the great pain- an easy enough errand, as that pain remains so readily at hand. I must relate how mankind came to this most delirious state. I will do my best to remain impartial, though it will be difficult in these oppressive conditions. Desperation tends to bring into plain sight the deepest biases in mortal men, and I wholly admit that I am desperate, and little more than mortal.

We have very meager means at our disposal ever since we were forced to take refuge underground. However, the use of ink and paper does not bother me. In fact, it has always been my preferred method of writing, even over the convenience of my father’s typewriter. I view the ink and paper as a defiance of the machines, and as proof that a man can still find his way with minimal technology to aid him. The defiance of technology fuels me, and in fact fuels all of us down here in the bunker. Our shared defiance of technology connects us more profoundly with our brothers and sisters of unenhanced flesh and bone.

At this very moment, I find myself so very much entangled in the thick of things. Finding the detachment required to tell a didactic, or even coherent tale, in these circumstances which link my fate to the outcome of that supposed tale, will be near impossible. My reader will forgive me if my explanations are slightly jumbled. These are convoluted times, and hardly any of us know what we are anymore.

So many of us lacked the foresight to anticipate the danger before it materialized! In hindsight, I see that we were foolish, and nearsighted. But then, history has always found a way of revealing, only in retrospect, the obvious trajectory of man. The older members of the colony, those who lived through the technological revolution, insist that it never seemed a pressing issue until it was much too late. The outside has always had little power over the inner workings of the Metropolis. Our isolation all but ensured our ignorance, and our submission.

I did not have a chance to do any writing before this moment- there were many things that needed to be done in order to get the bunker up and running. Life underground is no trifle, especially for a mass of one thousand people. There were organizational issues, certainly, and then there were the unforeseeable realities of bringing a work force of one thousand people below the ground. One realizes very quickly the subtle beauty of all that is taken for granted as one recollects the glow of the sun, no longer able to draw its life-giving warmth. Even now, as I think it over, our mission seems insanely improbable, if not impossible.

I suppose I should introduce myself…

My given name is Beall. I am a man of twenty-four turns, of average height, and of strong build. I was born on one of the farms of the colony by the bay to loving parents. I lived a simple life on that farm, one that relied on my father teaching me the moon-to-moon routine of a livestock breeder, and disciplining me with the required work ethic of an outsider. My parents were some of the few literate people in our little settlement. Before the technological revolution, my parents had lived happily inside the Metropolis. My father had been a researcher, and my mother a painter. This, of course, was all long before I was born.

The ‘technological revolution’ (I borrow the term from my father) began in 2061, the turn that Poplar Corp. launched its Intelliware system. Though at first a seemingly innocuous new gadget, the Intelliware system would prove the catalyst that propelled the revolution. Within a mere turn of Intelliware’s release, the exodus of the non-User had already begun.

In 2061, my parents and a very tenuous freethinking global minority refused outright to incorporate Poplar Corp.’s Intelliware technology into their bodies. This decision eventually drove my parents, and all of those who refused to incorporate, out of the Metropolis for good. My father and mother, like all those who chose to leave, left the Metropolis with only as much as they could carry. Their homes, and most of their material possessions were necessarily left behind. My parents did, however, manage to leave the Metropolis with a modest trove of books, art works, and musical recordings. For this reason, I was born on the only farm in the colony by the bay equipped with a meager library. In my free time, after the moon’s necessary work had been completed, my father taught me to read. My mother sat me on her lap, and together we listened to virtuoso performances of her favorite classical composers. This early exposure to the great works of man and woman inspired me, and imbued me with an insatiable zeal to consume any and all cultural documents I could get my hands on. Though of course, hardly any remained in the world after Poplar Corp.

As a child, I constantly craved new ideas. I read everything I could. For these reasons, I am perhaps not as simple-minded as many of the other outsiders are. It pains me to speak that way of my brothers and sisters, but the truth is that the people of the colony by the bay lived difficult, and laborious lives. I doubt very much that they bothered themselves with the grand metaphysical questions that have always obscured the true nature of existence, and man’s true purpose.

My father’s library was small enough that by my twenty-first turn, I had managed to read all of the fifty or so books he had smuggled out of the Metropolis during the exodus. It wasn’t much; certainly nothing like the old libraries he spoke of, with walls and walls lined with books in the old time before Poplar Corp. I would often dream of those libraries, and the infinite stores of human knowledge and emotion bound in their leather volumes. Nevertheless, my father’s enthusiasm for the books he did manage to smuggle was enough to open my mind to the boundless realm of knowledge, and eventually, to the true possibility of change.

I only mention this to explain that I am an anomaly. I have not met another outsider in the colony by the bay who takes interest in these sorts of things. I cannot speak for the outsiders in other settlements, but then the world beyond the Metropolis is mostly scattered, and beyond our reach. The only outsiders I knew were those in our own humble colony by the bay, and they were much too simple and stubborn to see the possibility for change. Most were incapable of thinking beyond themselves. Their simple views bred apathy, and this apathy allowed for their exploitation. I always wondered at the lack of resistance in the early moons of Poplar Corp., before it became the monolithic entity it is now. I do not entirely blame them, though, for I know that the people of the colony by the bay are laborers, not thinkers. And though I may fancy myself a thinker, I am by necessity a laborer just like they are. We are bound by our work. We work to survive.

Everyone in the settlement had a role, which they executed carefully for the well being of the entire community. All of the farmers were dependent on the abundance of the harvest, which was a collective effort, and so we helped one another in the name of the greater good. We had no choice but to pool our resources and know-how to get along. No one worked for him or herself alone. Times were too difficult for that. Our only chance of survival was to work together.