I’ve been thinking a lot about my life the last few days. I suppose it’s the circumstances. Even though the Rogues are becoming a little more civil, they still see fit to keep us locked up. And to make matters worse, I turned 40 today. Not that it matters much, but with all that’s happened, idle thoughts can be dangerous.
That’s why I’ve chosen to record today. No, nothing significant has happened since my last recording, but it has occurred to me that I began this project entirely wrong. Sure, I started promptly enough and gave accounts faithfully, but if any future listener doesn’t happen to be my best friend, which is highly unlikely given my profession, they won’t have a clue what’s going on. So I’m going to take a few minutes to recount my past. Bear with me.
First, I never knew my biological parents. I was adopted by Robert and Lucille Carlton. They were brutally conservative Lutherans. Though, bigotry does have its advantages. With the opportunities their social influence provided, coupled with my intelligence, I showed promise early on. Too bad it didn’t last.
I couldn’t help it. I hated that place. So I left for a few months in high school and worked as a bartender in one of the, shall we say, less savory sectors of New Washington. I eventually came home, but nothing had changed. After I coasted through 4 years at George Washington University, Robert and Lucille had aspirations of their only son becoming a lawyer.
So I joined the Air Force instead. I rose quickly through the ranks and worked for six years as an intelligence officer at H-RAF, but was dishonorably discharged for beating a superior officer in his sleep. It wasn’t the first person that had paid dearly for humiliating me. It wasn’t the last, either.
Unwilling to return home to lick my wounds, I moved to Texas, the center of all manufactured goods produced by C.O.R.N. With my military experience and chameleon-like personality, being a successful moneylender was simple. I was at the top of the food chain within 2 years, but, as is my tendency, I overstepped my bounds. This time, it was I who was jumped in my sleep and beaten within an inch of my life. A Street Cleaner found me in front of an ice cream shop the next morning, and I was air-vac’d to Sinai Medical Complex in New Washington. At that point, there was no hiding my shame from my parents, so I returned home for a year.
During that time, I reunited with Erica, a family and childhood friend. Despite my promise of a thorough account, I’m not inclined to reveal the events of our ensuing disastrous relationship. Suffice it to say that the next 3 years included an engagement, a betrayal, a break-up, and a fair amount of law breaking. In the end, I found myself back among the comforting unaccountability of the C.O.R.N. underworld. It seems I’m destined to be a kind among thieves.
By the time the Raptus hit on March 7, 2121, I was the premier recruiter for the Coalition for Organic Resources Nationwide, and I hadn’t talked to my family or Erica in 2-and-a-half years.
Well, this has been fun. There’s nothing like dragging the stinking, rotting corpse of the past back into one’s life. At any rate, I'm tired of broadcasting my ignorance and failures, past or present. Hopefully I'll get a handle on what's happening before it's all over. Maybe I'll have a chance to write some of it down before I'm dead. Either way, I'm not signing on again until I've regained some semblance of control over my life. Happy birthday to me.
