Praise The Fallen

April 7th 2053
I was waiting in line for rations today, I saw some people there that I hadn't seen since the last... well I hadn't seen them in quite sometime. We all held each other, became human again for a moment, we were outside of the shell that it seems that everyone still alive has become to handle what we've been through, the explosions, the assassination, and now the police state.

We stood together, relieved and solemn, our numbers were fewer. They seem to be every time we happen to see each other. We had all heard the news of one of the others disappearing in the night, or shot by some itchy trigger fingered patrol. But the reality that we would never see them again never really sets in until a group of us happen to get together. We never really know when that will be but chance seems to smile on us from time to time and we catch up.

I walked home alone on the dusty streets, thinking of the people I once knew, of the times we shared together before it all went to shit. Burnt out cars and broken shops all line the way home. I guess its somewhat comforting to know that these things won't change, they seem to be the only constants. People are no longer constant. They disappear, or as the government would like us to say, "get relocated" in the middle of the night, or die of the plagues and diseases that have been running rampant. Some of them were just in the wrong place or with the wrong people.

Getting home I sat down listening to the sounds of the building, the absence of children screaming or crying gets eerie after a while. You get annoyed by it when its around but you never realize how alien your own apartment can be when the air is still and there are no shouts of laughter from your neighbor's kids. Thy pull them away from their mothers and fathers at the age of six months, seems they've been hauling them off to some government regulated boarding school or something. Brainwashing if you ask me. It does horrid things to the parents, I've witnessed more than one set of parents' corpses being burned after their child has been sent off to "boarding school".

They always tell us that its for our protection, that its for the benefit of the country and the world. Bullshit.