Dark World : Logan’s Journal Entry 3

“Logan’s Journal“ is a series of in-character journal entries that serves as bonus material for the Dark World series.

These entries are written from the point of view of Logan, a character referenced by Dark World’s main protagonist Ruby R-1042 as her deceased grandfather. These entries take place 52 years before the Dark World series begins when Logan is a young teen of fourteen, only a few years after an alien invasion decimates the surface of our planet forcing the survivors to live in a large underground bunker known as The Complex.

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September 14, 2026

           There was a HUGE blow from the government today. They made the official announcement; the surface is unlivable. We’re never going to be able to leave The Complex, and I don’t have a clue how I’m supposed to be even remotely okay with that. Everything that’s helped me get through these years down here is down the drain. I have NOTHING. I’m just a useless kid sardined in a room with a bunch of other orphans, and all we’ve done is try to survive from day to day and pass the time until we could go back up. We’ve been waiting to find out if friends and family survived. I’ve been waiting to eat Taco Bell again. I would cut off my left arm in exchange for a crunch wrap!

             I’ve been waiting to see if it was just the oceans the aliens took, or if they stole all of the lakes, too. I hoped it was just the oceans because I wanted to go back to Lake Superior and say goodbye to my dad. I wanted to tell him I’m sorry for not looking back when he told me to swim to shore. I wanted to let him know that I hate myself for letting him drown. Most of all, I wanted to tell him that I miss him.

            The stuff they told us about the surface is so whacked. I guess the magnetism from the space ships or whatever screwed up the planet’s rate of rotation, and it’s basically nighttime above our heads for 100 years or something like that because what once took a day for us (24 hours for the earth to do a complete 180 degree turn) now takes a really, really long time.  That means the temperatures above us are way too cold for survival, and the other side of the planet is all fire and lava because it’s facing the sun. Everything’s burned away, probably even Australia. I liked Australia, I went there with my dad once when I was eight. We saw kangaroos and huge spiders and all sorts of cool, crazy animals, and now it’s probably gone. I wonder if any Australian people survived, but I don’t see how they could have.

            I’ll never eat McDonald’s, or Pizza Hut again. I’ll never have a pet again. I’ll never climb a tree. Damn. Even before the announcement, I figured that everything I was used to was gone forever, but it’s different now. I figured maybe when we went back up to the surface we could salvage a lot of things, like Taco Bell. We could get those up and running again! They’d do really well because everyone would eat so many tacos. And pizza!! I’d give anything if I could order delivery down here. I gotta stop writing about food, I’m so hungry that I feel sick, and knowing I’ll never have tacos or pizza again is really ticking me off.

            Penelope says we’ll have to start making and growing our own food now because our stockpiled rations are pretty much gone. I thought that was obvious with us orphans only being allowed to eat once every other day. It hurts my butt to sit down because I’m so bony now. It’s weird because everyone picked on fat people before the invasion, but now if anyone has chunk, the rest of us are so jealous. Chunk means that person is lucky because they are obviously eating more often than we are.

            I guess I really can’t get out of my “future” in construction now. If we’re stuck down here for the rest of our lives, we’re going to have to expand this crappy place. 

            I know this is the kind of thing a chick would say, but sometimes I wish I’d died with my dad. Being stuck down here, forever, isn’t really living anyway.

-Logan
Orphan 018, Division Rhode Island

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