Date: 9.29.2152

To: you, my only friend

Subject: it’s hopeless

hey,

how are you doing?

I guess you must a bit mad at me for not sharing what I found on the servers. It’s not that I don’t trust you. I just don’t want to put you in any kind of danger.

To be honest, if I could get my hands on a drug that would make me permanently forget about what I saw, I’d take it without a second thought. I never asked to be involved in this, and I don’t want to have this responsibility of knowing. I want to continue with my usual life as if nothing ever happened.

I’ve been contemplating what Kevin said to me about being “passive like all the other sheep”.

Maybe he is right. Maybe I am passive, and maybe I live with my eyes closed. But it has been working out for me so far. Besides, nowadays, there is no way to fight the system. The way the last rebellion ended is excellent proof of that. It was just a gigantic waste of time and people’s lives. All it achieved in the end was more control by the government and even more deportations to other planets, or “terraforming missions”, as a politically correct individual would put it. It’s like with quicksand – the less you fight, the slower you drown.

People should have protested when they still had the chance - more or less a hundred years ago. But our ancestors just stood by and watched, some even welcomed the “changes”. And now look where we are – our own atmosphere and climate almost destroyed, an enormous difference between rich and poor, discrimination running rampant to the point where everyone accepts it as something natural and unavoidable, government making all the decisions without voting or any input from the folk but still calling it “democracy”, wars happening everywhere, even in space, and our taxes paying to arm police against us.

Why didn’t our ancestors do anything? Did they realize that they were betraying us?

It is pointless to ask these questions, as it won't change anything.

Our only two options now are either to be a part of the system and thus be a part of the problem or erase ourselves from the system entirely. And this senseless act of bravery would most likely result in death or in fate even worse than that.

Just look at Katja who tried to live a “chip-less” life. Now she’s on Neptune – where there’s no atmosphere, and not even a solid ground to stand on yet. I admire her for trying but in the end, she achieved the same thing as all the other rebels - nothing.

I know what you’re thinking. I shouldn’t be so defeatist. But even if I had any single shred of hope before I went through that data, now I have none left. All I wish is to be left alone and never have to think about it again.

Did I make you sad? I‘m sorry, sometimes I forget I can be a downer.

Here’s a nice distraction for you - an email Harry E. (Mars inhabitant 1246, batch 54) wrote to his wife upon arrival:

Babe,

you won’t believe it! It is crazy here. The worst of it is not even the bland food or the weird gravity which I’m still getting used to (dancing is a serious issue!)

The worst are the people here – most of them don’t even speak English. And the ones who do – I wish they would just shut up. They are loud, obnoxious and everybody has some weird obsession.

This one guy who I share my room with is breeding Martian cockroaches. I’m attaching a picture of this monstrosity! Why would one want to keep such a disgusting pet!? And there is this woman who constantly talks about her bowel movements and how they are different on Mars than they were on Earth. Who cares?

But the one I hate the most is this creepy guy with a sleazy mustache – he just constantly downloads porn, so for the rest of us surfing the net is almost impossible. I had to wait a whole Earth hour for the news site to load! I’m pretty sure this guy is here due to some weird sex crime. Judging from the looks of them, most of these people are.

Can you imagine I will have to spend my ENTIRE life in the company of one thousand assholes?

It’s like hell. Only worse.

I just want to go back home. I miss you so much, and I regret that things worked out this way. Kiss Sally and Jim for me. Tell them Daddy is sending his love from an exciting far-away planet (just don’t tell them I’m being sarcastic when I call it “exciting”).

Harry

P.S. Please send me a Snickers bar with the next care package.

Isn’t Harry sweet? Thankfully for him, I know for a fact that none of the 976 people that are currently occupying Mars have been sent there for a sex crime. Most of the Mars population is just a bunch of petty thieves. What regards their weird hobbies, here Harry is right. For some reason, the Mars crowd is the weirdest of them all. And that’s coming from me.

But the most dangerous criminals - serial killers, rapists, pedophiles, spies, traitors - are sent to Neptune. It’s basically a death penalty, as this planet is only in its first stage of terraforming.

For some reason, the people there fascinate me the most. The spies and traitors - for their bravery and willingness to sacrifice so much for their idea of a perfect society or just for independence.

And others… because it’s difficult to wrap my mind around how they can be so grotesquely evil and human at once. Maybe one day I’ll solve this mystery.

But for now, all that’s left is to observe.

Yours,

Ryan