27th of April, 1947

Benjamin: It's been quite a while since my last diary – but so much has been going on since then! Rapture isn't much just now, but with our hard work it will soon be a great metropolis – but how? That's the question. Rome wasn't built in a day, after all. And Ryan wants so much!

I'll start by telling you what is here before I tell you what will be. The city will sit on a huge levelled plain, some six miles wide by fourteen miles long. Right now, there's just the turbine station sitting atop the main volcanic vents – that's how we generate electricity you see. Great bubbling jets of superheated water coming up from the earth's crust turn the turbines and hey presto! Electricity! The turbine station was the first thing to be built – next, the desalination plant and the living quarters. These two blocks sit right alongside one another with the bathysphere docks at either end, and let me tell you, it's noisy! The tanks just keep churning all day and night, storing up fresh water in their storage tanks. Some people say they can't sleep because of it, but I don't notice – I've never worked so hard since I was a boy on the family farm! But I digress…

The living quarters aren't as bad as some of the ladies here would have you believe. Sure, it's cramped and a bit smelly, but they're warm and clean too. Every family gets its own little set of rooms, a kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom. They're all connected through a central leisure area – there's not much there though, a few ping pong and snooker tables, some kids toys and some old books that people have brought with them. Every family gets the same rations from the supply submarines that come down here every three days or so – bread, tins of milk powder, baked beans, corned beef and canned fruit for the most part! Plus we get soap, shampoo, toothpaste and washing powder – life isn't luxurious, but it's not bare-bones neither!

There's about six hundred families here right now, from all over the world. There's regular Americans just like us, and English, and German, and Russkies. They make up the majority, but there are others – two Indian families, some Irish, Mexicans, Swedes and so on. I can't say there isn't just a little tension in the air sometimes – let's not forget that the war's only been over a year or so now. Forgiving and forgetting ain't easy for some – particularly among the German and Russian families. There's little doubt that all of them lost somebody in the fighting…

Still, we're a happy bunch in general. We get along. The children get taught by an old Greek schoolteacher called Kosmo Giannopoulos and his assistant Kristjana Leifsdóttir three times a week. They get taught math and science, but nothing like geography or history or anything like that. They're taught English, but they read about Greek myths…I wouldn't exactly say it's a comprehensive education…Roberta comes home and recites the mythology of ancient Greece to us – she's telling us the bedtime stories! Although it's an odd curriculum, it has to be said.

But back to my work. While most of the men here are construction workers, architects and engineers, I'm one of the few guys who work in food production. As head of the food production plants I've been teamed up with Doctor Julie Langford, an esteemed horticulturalist. It was she who set up the oxygenation facility that had been christened Arcadia – ah but I forgot to mention that didn't I! There is so much to talk about down here.

The day after we arrived Dr Langford and I had to put on pressurised suits and walk across the seabed to the huge shed that is now the food production test area. It's such a queer feeling to be walking across the sandy bed of the ocean with waves booming miles above your head. Of course, you can't see the sunlight, so electric cables for lighting have been strung out between the living quarters and the test area. There are shoals of fish darting around and whales swim placidly by overhead.

"Seems we won't be short of a good sardine anyway." I said to Langford over the radio, and she said that while this was true, Andrew Ryan wants to sit down to a good steak with peppercorn sauce the moment he gets down here.

The test area is made up of six huge bays, and when I got there four were being filled with soil and compost ready for planting. The others have concrete floors, bales of straw were being packed into them ready for their animal occupants and they are subdivided into different pens. Overhead, huge sets of bright solar lamps shine while we work. Langford showed me her specimens; potted trees, planters of vegetables and trays of germinating seeds. I had lots of questions for her. How successful is germination in this environment? How do the plants react to the use of desalinated water? Do the yields produced outweigh the costs in growing them? Of course, the oxygenation facility has proved a test case in many respects, but mass production of fruits and vegetables will need further, more rigorous testing.

I worked with her on the four test beds, planting onions, leeks, carrots and potatoes. So far, we have an eighty percent success rate in germination! This is encouraging, but we need to fully maximise yields so that we can feed the families in the living quarters. Looking after the plants is a full time job, but luckily since the animals arrived more helpers have also come down from the surface to aid us.

The animals! It was a grand day when the animals were shipped down here in the submarines last week. One hundred head of cattle, and five hundred chickens all tripping out of the loading bays and running off everywhere. We had to enlist some of the women and older children in helping us herd them into the pens and divide them properly – forty cows for milking, the rest for breeding; and the chickens divided equally, one group for eggs and one group for chicks, along with five bulls and ten roosters.

Once they were settled in we shipped all the children over and allowed them to walk around and look at the animals in their pens. Of course, it has to be understood that the animals are not pets, but it does the kids good to see where their food will come from. For now, we're still receiving supplies until we're sure that we can breed healthy specimens.

All in all, it looks bright for the future of the first eggs and the first steaks produced under the sea. Oops, Barb's calling me for dinner –