Entry_002

Entry_002

I finally had that catch up with Marc today. We went down to our usual haunt, a nice Yellow rank coffee house about halfway between my place and his. It's about an hour and a half from here by track and it's on the way to a large financial section so the track cart can be a little crowded if you time it wrong. It's worth sitting through the commuters, though. The coffee house, whilst not much to look at from the cart, is open air!! It's based round a large, square courtyard with the chairs and tables right out in the middle in the open. It's in a nice little upground territory that enjoys warm, humid summers and beautiful, snowy winters. You'll have to forgive me for not sharing the location. An open air facility is rare in Yellow sections as it is. In the summer, you need to book a week in advance to get in so the many regulars like to keep it as secret as possible. For the purposes of this blog, I'll call my little haven "Alf's" (Gettit? alfRESCOE?! Har har!)

I was surprised at Marc; he made absolutely no mention of his new rank and we just had a nice chat. Unfortunately, our time was cut short. We'd only been there for around an hour when the drill sirens went off and we were herded onto the next track cart. The Sirens seem to go off a lot at Alf's. I asked one of the Reds who works there once, but they just said that it was standard drills like any other district. We used to think they set them off on purpose, especially in the summer. It's a great way to turn over the punters. Especially when you've got a queue of two hundred waiting to come back in. Seems a bit pointless in winter when the place isn't even at three-quarters capacity, though! Maybe I'm being paranoid. Maybe it's just that we spend most of our time there so we always get the bad luck!

I said bye to Marc and then dropped over to the office. Managed to claim i was on "Official Government Business" and catch the fast track which only took around an hour instead of three! Did I mention I love the perks of my new job?! I was set to work from home today but my new Team Leader, Camilla, said that I could come and watch one of the shipments coming in from The Badlands. I managed to do all my work on the various track journeys so it all worked out pretty nicely.

Upground of my office is a desert territory. The vehicles come right in to a large, hangar like depot on the top floor of the building. There are catwalks that run around 30 feet above the hangar floor from which employees can view the goings-on on the deck below. One of the walls of the cavernous room has four large doors that roll up to let the vehicles in and out. I'd previously only seen video surveillance footage of this area and it was absolutely breathtaking to see it with my own eyes.

Everthing was quiet when we first arrived and Camilla showed me around, pointing out various people and things. One of the large trucks was in a bay being refuelled, and there were a few Reds and Oranges running around performing maintenance, replacing the tyres, etc.

I was just beginning to get used to the huge space when, without any warning, an alarm starting buzzing, and one of the colossal hangar doors started to open. It was like someone had opened an oven and I had to cover my eyes from the heat and the light that were pouring in through the opening. It took me a minute to catch my breath and for my eyes to adjust. Camilla saw that I was looking a little dazed and started to laugh.

"Gets everyone first time", she shouted above the roar. Great! So why not give people a little heads-up?!

Looking down from the catwalk, I could see another one of the trucks easing in through the doorway. More Reds and Oranges were rushing around and barking orders to each other and to the truck crew. There was a hot draft and dust blowing through the whole huge space.

As soon as it had started, the whirlwind stopped. The hangar doors shut quickly, cutting out the wind, dust, heat and light and the huge truck cut power to the engines. The only sounds were the shouts from the workers down on the floor. Their voices echoed around the cavern and distorted so I couldn't hear their exact words.

The driver of the truck stepped down from the cab and opened a hatch toward the back of the vehicle. A total of four Badlanders stepped out and huddle together. I wanted to stay and watch what would happen next, but Camilla said we had to get back to work.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I visited a few other areas of the building that I'd not seen before. We actually have an Oxygen farm that I didn't know of. A large glass dome near the top of the building that houses probably twenty or thirty small trees. It's odd to think that the only clue to anyone on the upgorund of the vast underground government complex hidden under the sands is a large glass dome and a big metal door built into the side of a dune.

I'm on the track cart at the moment heading home. I was let to go home an hour early so the cart is empty. Alf's was on the news feed a moment ago. Apparently it has been closed all day because of a glitch in one of the theft detectors. Marc's voice is ringing in my head: "Shoddy Yellow Rank engineering!" Haha. Bless him, he does make me laugh.

More merry news from me soon. Thank you to Ben who wrote to me on here and has kindly volunteered to walk me through TaxShare tonight! He also works for another Intake office in a different territory! Small world, eh?

See you soon, readers!

-Sophie

Entry_001

Hello! So, I got so used to keeping a regular account of my day to day activities for my last patriot exam so I figured I may as well carry on. Gives me something to write about on my long track journeys, I guess.

I woke up this morning to a horrible intermittent screeching noise. It took me a minute to figure out what it was. I stumbled into the kitchen, thinking it might be the microwave or something. It wasn't until I saw the strange light that I realised what it was. Turns out that the Enviro-Screens on my windows had changed from my usual choice of serene mountain peaks to a very pretty, but very noisy seaside town. The noise was some gulls flying past! I know that kinda thing looks very nice and all...but seriously?! The noise?! Ugh. Well, I guess...whatever floats your froth!

I assumed that the mishap was something to do with the software glitch that had put my front door iris scanner on the fritz so I called the Red Labour Distro Team and let them know. They said it was quite a common problem (never heard of it happening before. Anyone??) and that it was an easy fix, so the Red they were sending out could deal with both problems.

To be honest, I relished the excuse of having to stay in most of the day and wait for the Red. I was supposed to be meeting up with Marc, but he's just passed up to a White Ranking and I didn't wanna spend an hour and a half on the track just to be told how Yellow Rank coffee houses didn't quite match up to the ones in the White zones. Marc's the nicest guy in the world, but he loves to lord it up at any opportunity. I don't think he really means it, he's just overly proud I guess. I think he forgets, sometimes, that we practically grew up together!

Anyway, the Red arrived at around midday and started work on the console near the door. I could tell from his accent that he must have come from The Badlands originally. It's kinda spooky really; knowing that he'll never rank up past Red. He'll always just being doing the same thing. Makes you wonder if there's any kind of resentment for those who have come from The Badlands. I mean, they've been saved, in effect, but then that's as far as they go. They're pulled from that awful place...and BAM, that's them for the rest of their lives.

The Red (Shibu, according to the receipt that got sent through just now) told me it'd take him a while, maybe an hour or two, so I dug out my headset and logged onto TaxShare. I'd not been on since before I went away for my last set of exams so it took me a while to figure out all the changes. It's nice now that they've lowered the threshold so that you can siphon of a greater percentage of your tax to projects of your choice, but BOY is the interface confusing now! I shared out varying amounts to the Track Improvement Program (Har har!), Badland Intake Initiative and a new local scheme aiming to open up a new Yellow Rank media and leisure complex in an area not far from me. It'd mean less travel for me, but then I'm not sure how long it'll be before I rank up to White...so I might remove sponsoring next month. I usually do smaller sponsorships for a greater number of schemes, but it'd taken me almost half an hour to get that far...so I thought I'd call it a day.

Having conquered my first little challenge, I logged onto the chat servers. Mum was online again but was busy...again. I guess she's just enjoying the sunshine so much! I left her a short message telling her that I hoped she was ok and that I still think I should have sneaked into her suitcase! Lol. Just as I was about to log off, Marc's avatar tapped mine on the shoulder and started yapping about how disappointed he was that I hadn't gone to meet him. "Typical shoddy Yellow Rank housing...Blah blah blah". I was about to reply, when I got a tap on my REAL shoulder that made me jump right out of my seat! It was Shibu. He'd fixed the problems with my Scanner and Enviro-Screens. He realised that he'd scared me and started mumbling an apology. He went scarlet with embarrassment, bless him. I offered him a cup of coffee, but he just mumbled some more and quickly showed himself out.

I spent the rest of the day preparing to go back to work tomorrow. I have a large report due and I'll have to go in half an hour early. Sigh! The trials of going up a rank!

Anyway, that's enough for now.

Oh! If anyone wants to run through the new TaxShare interface with me, that'd be greatly appreciated, just leave a comment below and your network link. I'm generally logged in around 7-9pm.

-Sophie