Foreword:

Wrote by Coin, age 35. District 11: 110, P.A. *Post Apocalyptic

I was raised in a village of poverty and toxic waste.

Now, I know what you're going to say. I know full well that you suffer too; I've travelled through your lives and worked as one of you… I've cried for your mama on her deathbed, I've wept when your sister was taken away for filching food in the dark. I know what happens to them darling, but it isn't pretty and it isn't merciful, not even one bit. Don't ask me again.

Where grew up from, day to day, I walked through radiation-infected grounds and risked infection. I escaped it; I was made under different circumstances, a different star of fate.

But most of us in my village didn't grow up; though my village was hardy and had grown immune to the wastes on top of our skins, it couldn't enter in our skin, and it did often, little cuts and colds doing us in more than not. Most of us didn't live to see sixty, and more of us were infected as we were born, weak still to radiation. There is a child graveyard, just outside where my village was.

The headstones are gone now, they had to be buried with the child in order to hide. But they occupy the best view in the area still, having all eternity to see it.

But though my village was poor, starving and ill-We were a silent guardian to our country; we also quietly guarded them against the outside, and…From themselves.

In the early days of our production, our founding we killed many men and women from the outside: We made the ground wet with blood and they say that the bodies piled high in the trees, rotting in the sun. The soil around us is red, and they say that is why it is so. We made weapons, unspeakable weapons too terrible to name.

Our government ordered us to give them our creations, our plans of war. For in the early days we were also said to have brilliant minds, sharp and keen like a whetted knife. Brilliant minds co-existed with brave men, willing both to do the work in order to preserve a nation.

So we manufactured. High we built the factories, low and deep we delved for more sources of energy. We mined for coal and for iron and platinum, and built more weapons. The iron turned into steel, the factories churned for weapons, and even the sun we lived under was now used as an energy source.

Our government was cruel even then. We laid waste to any who opposed us. Even in us, the country we were supposed to protect. For they protested. Though there wasn't a way to pass around news in a widespread fashion easily, they managed it. they whispered, they talked. They talked about what we were doing to the outsiders. And they didn't like it, and I can't say I blame them.

Fights broke out.

I'm sure you know what happened next, so I will say it quickly: We shut down the fights, and it wasn't pretty.

My village gained a new name; The Merchants of War they called us, and rightfully so. A terrible title, one that stuck with us even after all fighting had passed and they saddled us with new burdens; turning our factories into energy-makers and becoming the silent guardian of our fought-for peace.

Our government grew colder, stricter. It did not get better for our hardships together, the battles fought. Our country suffered, forced to bloom quickly under pressure. Our towns by the seaside began hauling enormous amounts of fish, the towns in the south began to farm in earnest. We were a country that needed to be fed, though who was actually getting fed, there was only ever one part that always was.

Our government lived in an area that no one visited, but everybody had heard of at least once. They had begun to make jewels, and we occasionally received the proof shipped to us. We needed them still for our technology, for diamonds were of the hardest substance on earth.

The area was known only by one name, and it was "Elysium." We lived in a post-apocalyptic world; no one remembered where that name came from and what it meant. I assume it was from the government themselves: They likely thought it funny, maybe ironic.

Elysium is a name for a place in the afterlife: As we were the sole survivors of a country no one really wanted to remember, we could be a supposed afterlife. Elysium, or The Fields of Elysium is a place of paradise, where heroes and the people who did good in their lives went after their death. Only those who truly deserved it could enter.

But we were not dead, and the people who lived in that place were not righteous.

Once, only once someone was sent to Elysium to beg that we be given a grant to move to a different area of our country, to disperse as we pleased and shut down the factories. That we were poor and ill because of our work, and after every service we had done for them, shouldn't we be given an opportunity in return?

The answer was no. And the answer, ironically was backed up by technology we had given them. We were returned home, unable to live as we pleased and move on from our past, our duties. We were reminded of them accordingly.

We were a warning for the country, a silent sentry. But years passed, dulling those roles a little. Eventually, my own role began. I began, and fought an entirely new war. It was a righteous war, but the costs were great.

My name is Coin. It is the only name I know.