Guardian Martius Walker, June 23rd, 2805
Seven hundred years. It's been seven hundred years since most of them left. Since we finally did it. Turned the planet into a giant toxic ball of waste and garbage. Since the corporate planet-wide government figured that sending everyone into space was the best way for humanity to survive.
Some of us disagreed. Some of us stayed behind. We migrated from all over the world to a few continents on the Eastern side of the planet, and from there, we moved to what used to be Australia. Was one of the relatively cleanest places, so the story goes, cause it was still somehow packed with enough incredibly dangerous animals that no-one wanted to use it as a dumping ground, whatever the hazard pay.
We lived there for a while, scraping out an existence, plumbing the depths of nearby continents when what was left started running out. We had colonies, for lack of a better term, in Africa, Russia, China, and we were pushing into Europe from the Middle East.
That was about three hundred years ago. That's around the time when everything went wrong. When the Drocal came.
We never learned exactly where they came from. All we know for sure is that they came across our planet and decided to take it for themselves. Maybe there were still some resources buried beneath the ground they could have used; maybe to them, Earth was a good fixer-upper and they needed a place to stay. We didn't know why when they attacked us, and we still don't. What we do know is that we went to war with them. And we lost our half of the planet in the process.
We won, in the end. Captured one of their ships, flew it into the middle of their fleet and blew the ship's jump core. We didn't get them all; a lot of the soldiers that were down here when we made our ship-bomb play are still here. Fewer in numbers, of course, but they're still on the planet. We fought them off for about ten years after we won while we put together a way to get out of the plasma haze most of the Eastern side of the world had been reduced to by the time all of the bombing and shooting was over.
We made it to what used to be America's East Coast about a hundred years ago. We've only managed to set up one major settlement in the time since we landed. One settlement, a few miles of land, barely half a million people. We used to have almost thirty cities, over half a billion people. That's what the Drocal took from us. They also hung onto our coattails somewhat. Most of them are still on the Eastern half, with the utter wasteland they helped add to. Some of them followed us. That's why people like me exist.
I'm a Guardian. I protect and serve the last populated non-Drocal settlement on planet Earth. I defend its borders, scavenge and explore the places around us as needed for supplies and potential sites for expansion. It's my job, and the job of a few hundred men and women, to protect what remains and make sure it has something to build a future with.
Not a future for humanity. Not quite. I think I ought to clarify that. Turns out that seven hundred years with a vastly reduced gene pool and a toxic, garbage-covered planet send evolution into overdrive. Well, overdrive might be the wrong word. If it were in overdrive, we'd probably have lizard heads or something crazy like that. That's not to say we haven't changed from what we were. Because we certainly have. We're tougher and stronger by a margin, and on average live a few decades longer than what we assume the human standards are. Or were. Also, turns out breathing through an air filter and spending most of your life in an environmentally sealed suit for centuries does wonders for the circulatory system. Who knew? There's also a slight issue of appearance. Most of us are either incredibly pale or grey-skinned, with a few who have more human-looking tones that are just a bit tinted one way or the other. We've become something that isn't quite human anymore, but it's not so different that we're something totally new. We're more like a sub-species, I guess.
Guardians work in small groups, called Fire Teams. The largest Team is ten Guardians, Fire Team Fifty. I lead Fire Team Nine, commanding two other Guardians. Luco and Kahlee. We get our…
Man. I just stopped and read what I've written. It's like some opening expository monologue in a story. A lot of my journal entries are like that, actually. I need to stop doing that.