The Lucky Ones
5 March 2072
Dear Stranger,
The world is in disarray,
and I write this to you, someone in the future. By the time you have read this,
I’ll be gone, and fate will decide the outcome. I wrote this letter to warn you,
I may be hopeless but maybe hope will come for you in the future. The Chinese
occupy Australia and with it the whole pacific. Rumors are that the Chinese
regime has lost contact with their close ally, Russia. China tells us that
America and NATO have fallen and the Australian people are losing hope, I can
see it in their eyes. Canberra is the last city standing in Australia. The
Chinese use ships to supply food here. They assigned us to jobs; some of us
got jobs in the government and many more were not so lucky. If you were lucky,
they assigned you a job in their government, but most Australians were assigned
to work labor, in factories and were housed with multiple people. Food is
rationed for the radiated, but excludes the people who live in the inner city. I
am one of the “lucky ones”, I work as a translator for the Chinese Communist
Party, essentially translating news. The Australian people have turned on each
other, they spy for the Chinese regime, and in return, they are awarded food.
Every day I walk out of my
apartment and I am hit with a smell of tainted air. It smells like chemicals
but as you get to the outskirts of the inner city, the scent becomes stronger,
almost overwhelming. I think to myself if it is the radiation from the bombs,
are we safe like the Chinese say? I hear the people that live on the outskirts
of Canberra are contaminated. The Chinese placed a border around the inner city
and don’t allow the radiated in and people who live in the inner city are not
allowed out either. I’ve seen the people who live out there, they’re treated
like animals. The Chinese give them barely any food, some are beaten, and
others are taken and disappear. The Soldiers out there wear gas masks and
hazmat suits. The taken are put in a truck and driven outside of Canberra. All
there is outside of Canberra is nuclear fallout, and the trucks return empty. But
still, no one thinks much of it. The streets are filled with the distant sounds
of clanking steel, while people walk silently past each other. Cars are only
used by the military and are seen driving on the roads at all hours of the day.
Every day is gloomy, people look depressed, and the Chinese men laugh and
smile.
Before all this, Australian
cities had been flattened by nuclear bombs. The only city which was not
affected was Canberra. Straight after China invaded us, we had lost our army
and only a handful of soldiers guarded Canberra. So, China took our capital
fast and easily as the guards surrendered. The Australian people who chose that
they were against Chinese occupation had packed and left Canberra. I imagine
they are dead now. The people that stayed are used for labor. People had hoped
that America survived or at least Europe, that they would come to save us and
destroy China, but hope is slowly fading, people have just started to accept the
fact that the Chinese will be here for a long time.
Propaganda litters the
streets of Canberra, recent posters which were mass-produced and put up
everywhere possible, showed two soldiers one Chinese and the other Australian
looking up and saluting at a statue of Xi Jinping a former leader of China.
There is also a concrete statue of the leader in a park, where people go to pray
and leave gifts, I don’t see why they pray for him. People say that he was the
one to “save us” but he was one of the people that hid away whilst the west and
Europe were being obliterated by nuclear weapons.
I’ve overheard Chinese
officials talk about small pockets of resistance popping up in the countries
occupied by the Chinese, although they said that they were disorganized and not
a threat to the Chinese regime. But if the resistance could make a network, communicating
with others, there could be a chance of hope. I’ll try to spread the word, but
it is hard to find trusted people who will not sell you out to the Chinese. This
may be my last letter, although I am just one man, there are many more, and if
the world is still the way it is, there is still time. Hope is never lost, not
with people who still believe in freedom.
For the future,
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