-- Diary Entry of Rodney Gibbs, Quebecois NT Manager : Day 3895 in Gotham -
Sixty nine years, survive or die. That's how my imprisonment term is going to be. I've lived in Terra Henrius for last decade, and so are only few. But I'm also destined to work here for sixty nine more years, and so are good number of 1.5 million prisoners in Terra Henrius. When many prisoners enter this penal colony, they get overwhelmed with the ruins and ashes generated from nuclear bombing of Gotham just 3 years ago, I don't. Their eyes crouch with fear, mine burn with temptation and excitement. I've tasted success, enrichment, despair and almost anything for my time in Terra Henrius to be just described as wasteful. I've been around for the mass execution of Karinesville Neonazis and Quebecois-supremacists just four years ago, back when Gotham was still intact as a city. Of the 200,000 who were present on Lil Wayne Enterprise Arena to watch four hundred people executed and their bodies taken to local food shelter. I'm sure most did not live the accidental bombing that struck us three years later, if they did not perish beforehand. We were in excitement that day. And the civil war that emerged from the ashes of just-nuked Gotham. And I remember the Anglatian prisoners, just off their own civil war, being sent to live here and create their own factions. Scary soldiers they were, and the way they quickly rearmed and resupplied themselves....I still remember just escaping from their grip on me. What better way to live your jail term through after a drug cartel deal gone wrong.
Might be a long time, those sixty nine years, so I have to survive or die. That's what it is. The day begins at our barracks, located at a subway station 50m underground from where we stand. Trains used to run back when Gotham was Magnaeus and the tiles were clean and fancy. Now they are all dark, damp and of course, there are no more publicly-run trains in Gotham.
You wake up at 5 and your lover six a.m. You prepare the breakfast in bed for him. It's not going to be a particularly tasty meal, just some vegetables and some rice drawn from local paddy fields, but it is its intention that can't get clearer: we eat to survive, not to enjoy our lives. No surprise to any of us really. This is Gotham you're speaking of, and this shithole is where we live to 35 and die. So, may as well do the best and accept it as you go.
A few hours pass. I am now in a middle of 35th Avenue, looking to find a stranger to rob. When you're in a city of 1 million people, all broke and famished, you kinda have to think like one person you see on streets, you have to rob him or her. It doesn't matter whether you are full or not; if your stomach's full, you still need to kill one for your next meal. It's not about why, but about what one may have that can benefit me. Sure it feels wrong but who cares.
Oh, how I would love to have some comrades lost back from their graves. Give me just three who were lost in the war, and I can guarantee five of us would do to establish some sort of power in this city ruled by anarchism. It would be lot easier and painless if I could just fire the first rounds of ammunition, knowing very well how the others will just sweep the grounds and take whatever we could find. A cock bottle, marijuana joint, blue pills, choc-chip cookies, whatever I could find. It would also be great to have some kids with us right now because humans have their necessary equipment down low for reproduction purposes, so that a small army of us could remain. Maybe some supplies drop from an airplane passing by....
...wait, what am I thinking? Present is different than what I wish to see and experience in this land of no rules. I wish our turf's bigger than what two of us could hold, but that would probably get us killed by a stronger power. Reproduction happens in this place all the time, but there is not much people could do to make sure that the little children survive and not end up like Κρόνος' first five children. There are water and food supplies, but only enough for its one million inhabitants to fight themselves over it. And all the comrades I gather, they do not last past a couple of years. Some are executed because they were on death row for five years (Quebecois law mandates execution of criminals with death sentence after 5 years), while others either perished during the Nuclear Friday of 2028 or did not overcome the terrain and human condition. Heck, the current lover of mine may not last long either, and he's been with me for a year. Life is harsh, but what else can you do about it?
Few hours later, I finish hunting I come back to the агитпу́нкт and smell pleasant smelling meat in pot your comrade carries. On most other days I would not feel like eating anything, especially when you I to go to sleep in an hour for a dawn operation to hunt for more food, but who cares? I did enough work today hunting down a truck killer for my lover to cook some soup on our breakfast in bed, so perhaps a meat soup is needed to bring my stamina back before I go to bed. Once the soup is ready, lover pours the substance and passes me the bowl, to which I gladly respond with slurping sounds. It takes me a few seconds to realise the soup is not pork, beef, lamb nor even kangaroo. A meat the lowest in quality, not even that of a properly-cleaned human, but a child rapist whose body was stripped on our operation three weeks ago. Been out in warzone for long, I probably forgot that him and I, upon capture, left him to roam and be tortured like a pig in basement before meeting the deserving end.
Well, I've had my meal. Would you like to have some?
