• iJournal recording mental images, thoughts, and sensations (First person view) -- 23:56 May 2, 2083: Kevin Matthews
    “Get out! Get out! It’s going to collapse any second!” Deafening sounds of screaming children, earsplitting red sirens from all around, wailing cries from people who have already lost loved ones. “I know you lost your husband, but you’re going to die too, if you don’t get out!” I can’t believe I had to take command for them. It doesn’t seem right, given that GBEP, or Great Britain Emergency Preparations, has hardly helped a living soul on our planet. Byron Crimson, it’s chairman, had been on the news all year because of his incompetence. All of this could have been prevented if he had been doing his job.

    iJournal recording mental images, thoughts, and sensations (First person view) 13:34 January 8, 2083: Byron Crimson
    “O.K. Today, we will be working on earthquake preparations for Britain. How should we begin?” All around the table, businessmen were sitting and chatting, chewing on assorted fruits and breads, not really worried about their task. The tall man at the end of the table had his hands resting in a fist on a black portfolio, and was eating a dragon fruit. His shiny black hair was styled in a way that made you think he was the most important person in the meeting. And he was.
    He pulled a white piece of paper from his black tuxedo and laid it on the table. “I have a proposition,” he began in a sly but commanding tone. “If we cut back on the expense of physical emergency preparations such as safe houses and emergency street phones, we could create a unit for children on how to prepare and ready themselves for emergencies, thus, making it cheaper for us.”
    One man was chewing on a croissant, only caring about keeping his job by contributing to the conversation. He asked, “What about adults? Some people don’t know how to prepare.”
    The other man said, “I suggest an optional class for them, too. That way it won’t be our fault if they are not prepared.” Everyone at the table agreed. “All right, let’s make the cheapest course possible.”

    3:13 May 3, 2083: Kevin Matthews – iJournal
    [Earthquake crash] Everything was a shade of smoky gray, and there was no place to escape. There were five of us trapped in this section of the stairwell. The stairs leading down had been covered in rubble from the time the building started falling, but some sections had small enough holes to crawl through and advance to the next wall of impenetrable debris. It was important to keep moving downstairs so we could get to the bottom of the building, where there was an exit and a restaurant. We were now on the third floor, and there was no way to move forward anymore. The only direction to go is backward, but that lead to nothing but more wreckage.
    “H-hey! I think I see a window!” A short, but round man coughed. I looked up. A gleaming light leaked from the window, raising the hopes of most likely the only five people in the whole building.
    “How big is it?” “Can you see outside?” “Can we get through it?” Many questions flowed through the dim area and optimism was growing like a wild vine. But once a much taller woman peered through the high windowpane, that hope was cut down like a pair of shears.
    “We’re too high up to make it down in one piece. Even if we were on the second floor, the ground around the window is covered.” Curious about the only escape route, I got on a small chair that made it through the quake, and stuck my head out the window. Large pieces of cars were protruding from the ground like stalagmites. Desperate people that had jumped out of the building had been impaled on a couple of these pieces like kebabs.
    I looked back inside at the hopeless people in the room and slouched in the chair. I turned on the radio to listen to the names of the dead. The names that were called each went by painfully, because I was just waiting for a name that I knew. “Timothy Reed, Andrea Fuller, Skylor Hilling, Sarah Hilling, Rahajmel Manthena, Hannah Matthews, Allison Matthews…” The voice stopped short in the middle of the next name when I smashed the radio into the wall. My wife… My daughter… How?! That’s when the aftershock happened.

    23:55 May 2, 2083: Byron Crimson - iJournal
    “We have to get out of here!” A thin man was already at the door. Once it opened, it only took a couple seconds to fill the hall with people, along with panic and confusion. The tall man glanced at the crowd. He was the only one other than the Chief Operations Officer Brown who knew about the emergency jetpack. He quickly pulled the meeting room door back open and slipped inside. COO Brown was already in the room, punching the glass emergency door in a frantic attempt. It busted, and Brown stuck his bloody hand through the door. It returned, without delay, holding a jetpack. Brown glanced over and noticed the other man in the room.
    “Hello, Chief Executive Officer Crimson.”
    “Hello,” he replied in a monotonous tone. “I was hoping to have picked that up myself,” Crimson said, motioning at the jetpack.
    “Well, I’m sorry, but I found it first. And besides, we’ve never been much of friends, now have we?”
    Brown smiled in a devilish way. “Fine. But trust me; I will get that jetpack, even if I have to pry it from your dead hands.” The CEO swiftly pulled a knife from his tuxedo. With cunning accuracy, he punctured Brown’s heart from fifteen yards away. Brown fell to the floor, choking, and no longer grasping the jetpack.
    “I’m going to need this,” said Crimson, as he leaned down and picked up the jetpack. Once it was around his back, he took the knife out of the lifeless body. “And this.”

    12:49 May 3, 2083: Kevin Matthews – iJournal
    It was bad enough to be trapped in a building during an earthquake, but now that the roof was falling on us and there was no escape, there was nothing remaining of the sanity of the four people that were with me. I knew it wasn’t going to be long until that number decreased, but I didn’t want to be one of the subtracted numbers from our party. I separated myself from everything in the room, even people, because there was nothing in the room that I could make out. It seemed like hours, crouching in the fetal position, not knowing what to expect, when in reality, it was only a couple of minutes. We had been used to small aftershocks, but this was the largest one since the actual earthquake. I was exhausted, so this was both extremely terrifying and calming. I guess if I died right here, it wouldn’t be so bad. However, I had one person that I had to make sure was killed first– the person responsible for the death of my family, Byron Crimson.

    4:35 May 3, 2083: Byron Crimson – iJournal
    Flying over the city, you could see nothing but rubble and smoke. The jetpack’s tank was getting low, so it was time to land. There was a tall building that had only fallen half of its height, but you could still tell that anyone in the upper levels would have been killed. They would have to be in the lower levels to still be alive. Crimson landed near the building and took off his jetpack. In the lower level, there was a restaurant. He walked inside.

    4:35 May 3, 2083: Kevin Matthews – iJournal
    The three of us that had survived finally made it to the first floor, just in time, too. We were starving, but we weren’t the only ones here. Across the room, a man was eating a dragon fruit. I knew him right away by the way his eyes pierced your chest like a dagger, and his half smile that made him look happy even though you could tell he never was.
    “Byron Crimson. You killed my family. You ruined my world!” My words made him raise his knife, unsure whether to attack or not. The tall woman, who had lost her husband, grabbed a pole from the ground and screamed, “Die!” She darted forward and thrust the pole like a javelin. Byron ducked, and then threw his knife at the woman. She fell silently to the floor. I took the knife from her and bolted toward the man, blind anger coursing through my veins. I jabbed it into him. A hideous scream emitted from his throat, and he, too, fell. I looked around.
    My job was complete. But then again, it wasn’t. The fact that there could be another Byron Crimson sickened me. But what was there for me to do?