by Evan Edsall

Apologies for the archaic way I am sending this message, but it was the only way I could get around interplanetary communication laws. I ask that if you see this, you share it with as many people as you can. As long-winded as it is, I feel my story is important.

“Humanity’s greatest strength is that we adapt.” They’ve been feeding us that line since we were born. I grew tired of adapting a long time ago, but I could never afford to leave Earth. My longest employment cycle was at the processing plant on level 380. It paid me just enough to dream but never enough to act. A small part of me misses the plant. It was taxing mentally, but at least it was easy and I almost never had to wear a mask. The morgue would send us the same old corpses of the elderly, vagrant wash-outs, and the religious looking for a fast-track to salvation. I’d pull the lever at my side, watch as machines pick apart the body for usable material, then the guy down the line would pull his lever, and it’d be carried by the belt into food production. Before I worked at the plant, I used to despise sal junkies; why waste away your life like that? I felt even more disgusted when the president of our cityscraper pushed free sal treatments for the elderly and retired. Growing up, I started to see the world as it was, and became a little more sympathetic.

Looking down at the noxious abyss from my apartment on level 367, knowing that those at the bottom are struggling to breath because they could barely afford strong enough filters. Then I’d look up and yearn for a better life than this. I knew it wouldn’t be feasible with my salary, and I realized many of these junkies were probably in a similar boat. Why spend your one break moping around when you could pop a psychedelic from the convenient store and experience eight months in eight minutes? As for the elderly, and anyone else who booked a salvinorin residence at the hospital, they could live a better life in their head before giving back in the only tangible way they could. What separated me and those junkies was a drive to improve. I was tired of the escapist mentality that was being pushed down our throats. I didn’t want to pretend I wasn’t here; I wanted to be gone.

Venus was always my first pick. To me it represents a new era of humanity. The first successful total-planet terraform. A chance for humanity to start fresh after Earth’s fall, and with 200 years of development, I couldn’t wait to leave. Unfortunately, no amount of yearning would get me there on what the plant had been paying me. I knew if I wanted to get there anytime soon and actually have a life worth living, I had to really strive for it. Abandon my morals. Get my hands dirty. I had to get federal employment. When the local elections rolled around, only one thing mattered: President Vaugn is right, so I voted right. I purchased merchandise from local politicians, I even sold my door to the Vaugn campaign so they could plaster holo-ads all over it. This almost guaranteed a federal opening for me. Sure enough, after my employment cycle ended and I submitted a federal employment request, I was granted right away.

This is my confession, my greatest regret. They made me a federal officer in Sanitation Enforcement. They gave me a full suite of military-grade CBRN gear for the lower levels. For my first two years, my job was to go down there and clean corpses. Most died from filter-failure. The government stopped providing quality filters ages ago, and most living down here can barely afford replacements. The atmosphere down there was grim. They didn’t generate enough income for the government to grant them fake skies, proper air filters, or anything that makes living in a giant-ass tower on a rotting planet bearable. I got good at my job. I was clean, didn’t complain, sucked up to my bosses when possible, and kept to myself when I could. This made me a prime candidate for the more lucrative tasks in government, the opportunities as lucrative as they were vile. This confession is half the reason I’m taking my sweet time with this. I want you to understand why I took these jobs. I couldn’t open with it. If any government official saw these they’d torch every copy they could. They said they wanted to renovate some of the lower levels into a private resort for the upper levelman, a sort of risque spot for them to feel even an iota of the suffering they implant on others. They wanted it done quickly, so they sent me down there. I shut off habitat functions on floors 56, 57, and 58. Within minutes I could hear the wailing and screaming of hundreds. Bodies piling the communal centers and walkways. I didn’t use the maintenance tunnels. I deserved to witness the destruction I caused, and my victims deserved to look upon the coward that killed them. I had become a monster for my own goals, no better than the upper levelman. I essentially was one at that point with how much they paid me. A creature of greed and self-serving.

I had my money and I was done. I got a letter of credit from the bank and left the first chance a shuttle became available. I thought this moment would be triumphant, but as we took off, it was not gravity that tried pushing me down, but the weight of my sins. Looking back at Earth made it all the worse, a blob of sand green with blotches of grey. It looked like sickness itself. I knew, even if Venus was everything I hoped for, I would still live every day bound to Earth. My crimes have tethered me to it.

The journey took a few months. I spent most of my days listening to the AI therapy files Sanitation Enforcement handed me when I was hired. They didn’t help. When we got to Venus I was in awe, paralyzed at the sight before me. It was all the same. Down to the very layout. I thought I would be breathing air, on solid ground, but there I was once again on a cityscrape, the very testament to humanity’s hubris. I didn’t sob. I knew this is what I deserved. I killed all of those people for nothing. I gave up my identity to politics for nothing. All I could think of doing was trying anything to prevent anyone else from doing as I did. I’ve made hundreds of copies. I used most of my wealth to pay off distribution to whoever I can, asking them to silently spread them wherever they go, or give them to anyone looking to get off planet. I even tracked down the shuttle staff before they departed and paid them off. If I was foolish enough to get here through any means necessary surely there will be others.

By the time you’re reading this, I’ll have booked a salvinorin residence at whatever hospital is open. I used to hate people who did that, but I grew sympathy for them, and now I understand. I hope through my mind I’m able to live my final days in a peaceful world of my creation, but I deserve hell. Earth was not the learning opportunity we thought it was. It was. Earth was the Abel to our Cain. Humanity will always adapt, but it will clearly never learn.