PROLOGUE
At the start I did not think it would amount to much. Surely not the tale of intrigue and violence and revolution which it ultimately became. I began the journals in a state of disillusionment, of defeat, in the vain hopes that some later generation better off than our own might benefit from its chronicling of these dark times. Or at least take pity on us. Nary a dissenting voice is documented, so you will forgive the impersonality of the earliest entries, when the powers that be were at their strongest.
So listen: for they are always listening. See: for they see everything.
Now it is your turn. I have a story to tell you.
-
FLASHJOURNAL ENTRY #1
4.12.2067
7:00 P.M.
The nights seem to last forever. The days are not so long anymore. Work hours are from 10AM to 3PM in Synth City, and everybody works. Then it gets dark and the curfew sirens blare and everybody returns to their district or goes home. The next day they wake up and they do it again. The cheeky refer to it as the grind. The malcontent quietly call it hell.
-
District roaming is restricted to the morningtime for the lower classes, when enforcement is most ubiquitous; after dark leisure time is limited to one's own home and neighborhood. I am not bound by these restrictions. I write this journal from a coffee shop in District C which is popular among the intellectual elite. Because attempts at anonymity are futile (as evidenced by the overwhelming conviction-ostracization rate of Identity Changers), I will tell you who I am as a show of good faith to the benignity of this project:
My name is Daniel Purnell (Regime identification: GNR). I am a Rank II employee of the Department of Accuracy Training and a former member of the Chancellors Council, the Regime's upper governing body for Simfile creation. I still reside in legislative housing (District J, apartment #61) with two other retired Chancellors, but rarely go home except to sleep. My job is to prepare apprentices (and myself when possible) to be contestants for the Games, the semi-annual spectacle which drives the credit economy in Synth City as well as most of its citizens' lives.
Today my work was to evaluate the consequences of implementing the controversial 11-millisecond FLAWLESS timing window for accuracy-based competitions in the Games. These windows would be roughly half the size of the previous standard, greatly increasing the amount skill required to maintain a FLAWLESS-majority score. The project has been the subject of speculation for some time, and today we decided to phase it in slowly: we will use it as a training device at the DoAT and collect data for at least a year before revisiting the measure at the second 2068 Games.
-
Now, as is my custom, I spend most of the interminable night hours at the C-Cafe, drinking gin and trying not to think so much about the grind. I cannot always help it: all I see is those orbs.
red yellow blue yellow red yellow blue yellow red yellow blue yellow red yellow blue yellow red yellow blue yellow
Usually I will have a book with me. Or else a copy of the daily Popodopalis Press, or a handheld game that has nothing to do at all with rhythm or sound or accuracy. It has only occurred to me recently that I can write in these off hours, and I hope that if I do it daily it will act as a sort of purge of all the daily events and struggles and put my mind at rest. I sit at a table by myself with my FlashJournal and my drink in hand. Orchestral music is playing. Near me are two other regulars who do not know me, although I know them well. They are famous in Synth City. They are old men, and old men are exceedingly rare. The first and nearest to me is <Ruscam Hurts> (Regime ID: Rubix), a former several-time Champion of the Games who once faced temporary exile for collusion with the traitor Tasslefoot. After sustaining hand injuries which would disable him permanently from competition, however, Rubix was granted a full pardon and endowed with the new commemorative identification Reincarnate as an emblem of his past successes. Across from Rubix sits an even older man, easily eighty or ninety. He is a relic from the very earliest Games and the one of the original founders of the Chancellors Council. His real name and identification have long been forgotten. Now he is known as Rebirth.
The two men are waxing nostalgic and debating amicably about the current state of the economy and the world of Simfile creation. I cannot help but listen in.
[The following is transcribed via FlashJournal's VerbatiScribe function. Brackets are my own.]
RUBIX: You old fool, surely you of all people will appreciate my contention that prior to 2030--prior to the Light fucking Chancellors [Light Chancellors is the (originally derogatory) idiomatic name for the People's Chancellors, the lower, much larger Simfile legislation body]--the Games actually had some aspect of fun to them. It was more than just bloodsport back then. There was an artform to making Sims that has quite simply disappeared in recent decades. Whatever happened to finding the feeling of a song? The technicality mandates will spell the death of this city yet, I'd swear by it.
REBIRTH: [Laughs weakly but good-naturedly] Oh, it's not all so bad as you say. Tastes have changed over the years--I made twelve hundred charts personally in my time, and in honesty can't say I understand a bit of what's going on in these modern ones. But that's fine, you see, because these new players do. You are letting your biases get the better of you, <Ruscam>.
RUBIX: Then these new players are morons. [Scoffs] Lottery ticket sales are up and ingenuity is practically outlawed these days. There was a good balance before--when the Department of Education was as well-funded as the Games were. Now you can't get a decent conversation going outside the C. It's all Games this and Games that and pumping more and more worthless money into the system every day. It's fucking depressing is what it is. A fucking travesty.
Such candid discourse is scarce outside of the elite havens like C-Cafe. While I hardly feel at home among such people, I find I tend to surround myself with them as a reminder that not every nook and crevasse of this city is so gloomily cautious. Tomorrow is a big day for the Accuracy Department. My first day of writing has been a tepid success. For now, it is time I got some sleep.
-
FLASHJOURNAL ENTRY #2
5.12.2067
6:15 A.M.
I am intrigued by a book of poems on my shelf. It tells of a colorful time long past. It tells of something or someplace called Seasons, where it does not always get dark at 3PM and the air is not always so brisk. Where leaves on the trees change and fall in beautiful ways, depending on what time of year it is. The book is on the blacklist, but I have had it for as long as I can remember. Were I of lower standing within the Regime my ownership of it would be a bannable offense. Midare says the author, Cosmo Star, was a radical and a hack not worth listening to. He says that he himself could write better poems in minutes. But Midare was something of a radical once too.
-
Midare is one of my two ex-Chancellor apartmentmates. He works with me now in the Department of Accuracy Training. The other is JX. No one sees JX for the most part, as he works in the shady administrative offices and mostly keeps to himself. He is known for having popularized the technicality mandates and for having resigned from the Council in protest when live musical instrumentation was banned from Simfile creation by the Kommisar in 2060. He had nothing to say about the book of poems.
-
FLASHJOUNRAL ENTRY #3
5.12.2067
4:00 P.M.
I was called out of work today to consult for an emergency session of the Council. I was to provide testimony before the Chancellors regarding the history and constitutionality of the use of bombs in official Simfiles. At the palatial, well-guarded congressional building I flashed my Orange Grade identification card and was promptly admitted and guided by two colossal, simple-looking security guards in suits to a chamber reserved for former Chancellors and expert witnesses. We passed two other chambers, the first filled to bursting with commoners who had been waiting for days or weeks for a verdict on their Simfile submissions. They were ragged and hungry and uneducated, babbling nervously but aglow with the hope that they might someday get to see their work featured for a couple minutes in the official Games. The second chamber was far primmer. Ten or twelve busily blinking monitors lined the walls, each with a headphone-wearing digital music composer facing it. They toiled for hours at a time but were well compensated for their work: the songs they composed were the very foundation of Simfile creation and the Games themselves. The Kommisar oversaw them, barking orders as we passed.
After what seemed like miles of corridor we reached the expert witness chamber. I thanked my escorts and went into the small, well-ornamented room to find a smattering of chairs and a screen displaying a live-feed of all the Council's doings. There was only one other person there: a short, bespectacled man who sat enraptured with the television set, commenting on the current testimony under his breath. He had a FlashJournal in front of him and was scribbling vigorously. When the door closed behind me he looked up. "Who are you?" he demanded. I told him who I was, and he was quiet for a while. He seemed very serious.
"Moses Kim," he said at last. "Regime ID Moches. Representative for the People's Chancellors, here to report the Light Chancellors' findings on the use of bombs. How do you do?"
-
At the start I did not think it would amount to much. Surely not the tale of intrigue and violence and revolution which it ultimately became. I began the journals in a state of disillusionment, of defeat, in the vain hopes that some later generation better off than our own might benefit from its chronicling of these dark times. Or at least take pity on us. Nary a dissenting voice is documented, so you will forgive the impersonality of the earliest entries, when the powers that be were at their strongest.
So listen: for they are always listening. See: for they see everything.
Now it is your turn. I have a story to tell you.
-
FLASHJOURNAL ENTRY #1
4.12.2067
7:00 P.M.
The nights seem to last forever. The days are not so long anymore. Work hours are from 10AM to 3PM in Synth City, and everybody works. Then it gets dark and the curfew sirens blare and everybody returns to their district or goes home. The next day they wake up and they do it again. The cheeky refer to it as the grind. The malcontent quietly call it hell.
-
District roaming is restricted to the morningtime for the lower classes, when enforcement is most ubiquitous; after dark leisure time is limited to one's own home and neighborhood. I am not bound by these restrictions. I write this journal from a coffee shop in District C which is popular among the intellectual elite. Because attempts at anonymity are futile (as evidenced by the overwhelming conviction-ostracization rate of Identity Changers), I will tell you who I am as a show of good faith to the benignity of this project:
My name is Daniel Purnell (Regime identification: GNR). I am a Rank II employee of the Department of Accuracy Training and a former member of the Chancellors Council, the Regime's upper governing body for Simfile creation. I still reside in legislative housing (District J, apartment #61) with two other retired Chancellors, but rarely go home except to sleep. My job is to prepare apprentices (and myself when possible) to be contestants for the Games, the semi-annual spectacle which drives the credit economy in Synth City as well as most of its citizens' lives.
Today my work was to evaluate the consequences of implementing the controversial 11-millisecond FLAWLESS timing window for accuracy-based competitions in the Games. These windows would be roughly half the size of the previous standard, greatly increasing the amount skill required to maintain a FLAWLESS-majority score. The project has been the subject of speculation for some time, and today we decided to phase it in slowly: we will use it as a training device at the DoAT and collect data for at least a year before revisiting the measure at the second 2068 Games.
-
Now, as is my custom, I spend most of the interminable night hours at the C-Cafe, drinking gin and trying not to think so much about the grind. I cannot always help it: all I see is those orbs.
red yellow blue yellow red yellow blue yellow red yellow blue yellow red yellow blue yellow red yellow blue yellow
Usually I will have a book with me. Or else a copy of the daily Popodopalis Press, or a handheld game that has nothing to do at all with rhythm or sound or accuracy. It has only occurred to me recently that I can write in these off hours, and I hope that if I do it daily it will act as a sort of purge of all the daily events and struggles and put my mind at rest. I sit at a table by myself with my FlashJournal and my drink in hand. Orchestral music is playing. Near me are two other regulars who do not know me, although I know them well. They are famous in Synth City. They are old men, and old men are exceedingly rare. The first and nearest to me is <Ruscam Hurts> (Regime ID: Rubix), a former several-time Champion of the Games who once faced temporary exile for collusion with the traitor Tasslefoot. After sustaining hand injuries which would disable him permanently from competition, however, Rubix was granted a full pardon and endowed with the new commemorative identification Reincarnate as an emblem of his past successes. Across from Rubix sits an even older man, easily eighty or ninety. He is a relic from the very earliest Games and the one of the original founders of the Chancellors Council. His real name and identification have long been forgotten. Now he is known as Rebirth.
The two men are waxing nostalgic and debating amicably about the current state of the economy and the world of Simfile creation. I cannot help but listen in.
[The following is transcribed via FlashJournal's VerbatiScribe function. Brackets are my own.]
RUBIX: You old fool, surely you of all people will appreciate my contention that prior to 2030--prior to the Light fucking Chancellors [Light Chancellors is the (originally derogatory) idiomatic name for the People's Chancellors, the lower, much larger Simfile legislation body]--the Games actually had some aspect of fun to them. It was more than just bloodsport back then. There was an artform to making Sims that has quite simply disappeared in recent decades. Whatever happened to finding the feeling of a song? The technicality mandates will spell the death of this city yet, I'd swear by it.
REBIRTH: [Laughs weakly but good-naturedly] Oh, it's not all so bad as you say. Tastes have changed over the years--I made twelve hundred charts personally in my time, and in honesty can't say I understand a bit of what's going on in these modern ones. But that's fine, you see, because these new players do. You are letting your biases get the better of you, <Ruscam>.
RUBIX: Then these new players are morons. [Scoffs] Lottery ticket sales are up and ingenuity is practically outlawed these days. There was a good balance before--when the Department of Education was as well-funded as the Games were. Now you can't get a decent conversation going outside the C. It's all Games this and Games that and pumping more and more worthless money into the system every day. It's fucking depressing is what it is. A fucking travesty.
Such candid discourse is scarce outside of the elite havens like C-Cafe. While I hardly feel at home among such people, I find I tend to surround myself with them as a reminder that not every nook and crevasse of this city is so gloomily cautious. Tomorrow is a big day for the Accuracy Department. My first day of writing has been a tepid success. For now, it is time I got some sleep.
-
FLASHJOURNAL ENTRY #2
5.12.2067
6:15 A.M.
I am intrigued by a book of poems on my shelf. It tells of a colorful time long past. It tells of something or someplace called Seasons, where it does not always get dark at 3PM and the air is not always so brisk. Where leaves on the trees change and fall in beautiful ways, depending on what time of year it is. The book is on the blacklist, but I have had it for as long as I can remember. Were I of lower standing within the Regime my ownership of it would be a bannable offense. Midare says the author, Cosmo Star, was a radical and a hack not worth listening to. He says that he himself could write better poems in minutes. But Midare was something of a radical once too.
-
Midare is one of my two ex-Chancellor apartmentmates. He works with me now in the Department of Accuracy Training. The other is JX. No one sees JX for the most part, as he works in the shady administrative offices and mostly keeps to himself. He is known for having popularized the technicality mandates and for having resigned from the Council in protest when live musical instrumentation was banned from Simfile creation by the Kommisar in 2060. He had nothing to say about the book of poems.
-
FLASHJOUNRAL ENTRY #3
5.12.2067
4:00 P.M.
I was called out of work today to consult for an emergency session of the Council. I was to provide testimony before the Chancellors regarding the history and constitutionality of the use of bombs in official Simfiles. At the palatial, well-guarded congressional building I flashed my Orange Grade identification card and was promptly admitted and guided by two colossal, simple-looking security guards in suits to a chamber reserved for former Chancellors and expert witnesses. We passed two other chambers, the first filled to bursting with commoners who had been waiting for days or weeks for a verdict on their Simfile submissions. They were ragged and hungry and uneducated, babbling nervously but aglow with the hope that they might someday get to see their work featured for a couple minutes in the official Games. The second chamber was far primmer. Ten or twelve busily blinking monitors lined the walls, each with a headphone-wearing digital music composer facing it. They toiled for hours at a time but were well compensated for their work: the songs they composed were the very foundation of Simfile creation and the Games themselves. The Kommisar oversaw them, barking orders as we passed.
After what seemed like miles of corridor we reached the expert witness chamber. I thanked my escorts and went into the small, well-ornamented room to find a smattering of chairs and a screen displaying a live-feed of all the Council's doings. There was only one other person there: a short, bespectacled man who sat enraptured with the television set, commenting on the current testimony under his breath. He had a FlashJournal in front of him and was scribbling vigorously. When the door closed behind me he looked up. "Who are you?" he demanded. I told him who I was, and he was quiet for a while. He seemed very serious.
"Moses Kim," he said at last. "Regime ID Moches. Representative for the People's Chancellors, here to report the Light Chancellors' findings on the use of bombs. How do you do?"
-
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