Home is Where the Heart Glows

Part 1: Captain’s Log

My name is Greggory Gifford. For nearly a decade I have been captain of our journey through the inner solar system to evaluate the progress of Earth’s colonies on Mars, its moons, and our moon. The mission was successful as the harvest exceeded all expectations. Prior to departure, I submitted a request to schedule a return voyage to all locations to prepare for the next season. I am still awaiting a reply from base command. This has left me puzzled. I hope the Global Union has not forgotten us after being away for so long. Our homecoming vessel was launched about three months ago, so I am curious if my message failed to maintain its coordinates.

My thoughts cannot stop returning to the origin of this journey. I used to think space travel was just a silly dream of mine. Something to fantasize about while drifting to sleep after a long day of studying or working in the lab. Prior to the launch of the “Terrestrial Farming Project,” my expertise was biomechanics. I envisioned a society that could better understand itself. For centuries, the only thing holding back the people of earth were themselves. Our minor differences caused us to wage war on each other, in hopes of conquering the other’s land and claiming it as our own. A severely primitive notion. Then, my father gathered the world’s most powerful leaders and outlined his plans for terraforming other celestial bodies to aid not just individual countries, but the entire planet. He quite literally believed that he had solved world hunger. My father, Grant Gifford, would lead the “Lunar Farming Project,” a precedent to my current voyage which expanded upon his work. Controlled conditions could yield a harvest up to ten times larger than the average one on earth. The leaders of the nations that hired my father agreed that with outside resources now available, the desire to fight with one another was primitive and must be abolished immediately.

Growing up with my father away so often was challenging, but the work he was doing greatly improved life for everyone. Under the newly established Global Union, the resources from formerly individual nations were now shared. Schools had access to the best minds working collectively, rather than competitively. The curriculum encouraged freedom to explore technologies and ideas that were once thought of as science-fiction.

At a young age, I experienced what life was like prior to this accelerated group work. Crime would run rampant in cities around the world. Deviant activities were not common for that era, but compared to the world my father helped evolve, these acts were an epidemic. However, every couple of weeks the news would publish a story about someone that had grown tired of working in the Gifford distribution factories and would rob their boss, or steal their transport, or even force themselves onto their wife. All of these were primitive behaviors coming through their carnal desires.

While at school, I contemplated how such behaviors could be mitigated. I felt that if we could read what someone’s intentions are before engaging with them, then we could anticipate what their actions will be. I then thought a little deeper on this concept and concluded that if we knew that our intentions were open for everyone around us to see, then we would not dare commit horrible acts such as theft, cheating, and murder. That night I began research on what I would call “The Opaque Heart Project.” With a team of researchers, we studied the chemical activity involved in bioluminescent animals, and discovered a way to connect one’s thoughts to an external interface that would illuminate a certain color depending on how those thoughts reflected upon the individual looking at the interface. For example, if my friend approached me and observed my interface, it would emit a green light that only they could see. On the other hand, if someone approached me and I felt a carnal desire arising to take advantage of them in some way, then my interface would emit a red light. My team came up with the idea to design the interface in the shape of a heart because it is worn around the neck and rests on the individual’s chest. I had no preference, but a heart-shaped locket seemed beautifully brilliant.

My next move was to propose our research findings to the Global Union directors. Like their reaction to my father’s proposal, they felt that this would be the step that guides Earth toward being a pure utopia. The Global Union awarded my team a grant to expand on my father’s research while they produce what they called “The Open-Heart Project.” A slightly less sophisticated title than mine, but one that everyone could understand without much explanation. I was eager to see how my work would impact the world, but I was more eager to see my father, who had been on the Moon for several years monitoring his work. Unfortunately, our expeditions require strenuous effort from our bodies to survive such unnatural circumstances, and my father had passed away just a few months after my arrival to the Moon colony. I miss him greatly. He used to tell me that the greatest joy from his travels was the first time seeing the Earth since departing, because it was only a matter of time before he could hold me in his arms.

Seeing the Earth now as I finish this log produces an unfamiliar feeling, one far different than what my father experienced. The blue seas, the green fields, the white clouds. They seem to have blended to form a brown dust like that on Mars, prior to terraforming the planet of course. I fear our coordinates are incorrect and our craft has arrived at an unknown region of space. Where is that utopia the Global Union promised? I feel uneasy holding my locket against my chest. What have I returned to?

Part 2: Day 2187

I mark this day into my old-fashioned paper calendar. I have had to reuse it for six years now. I’m sure it isn’t even Thursday, but that’s the day of the week that day 2187 falls on today. I can still remember the days when my device would greet me in the morning and tell me what day it is, what weather I can expect, and what activities were planned to attend. The coffee I drink now is bitter and boring. Almost certainly stale as well. Nothing like the espresso brewed in my kitchen so long ago at the press of a button. I would say I miss the flavor, but the world lost its taste for flavor the day the Global Union launched the Open-Heart Project.

My name is Jake Thompson, and I’ve been collecting for 2187 days now. Each day that I collect makes me feel more guilty than the previous day, but it is what I must do to survive. In my previous life I was a detective working under one of the Capitol districts of the Global Union. The pay was modest enough to start my mornings with an espresso, but that isn’t what I went into the business for. My passion was putting those that tried to cheat their way through society under the boot of justice. Nothing made me feel any more useful than knowing I made my town a little safer every day. Now if I want to continue living, I must strike fear into the hearts of my neighbors and threaten anyone that enters our village.

The Open-Heart Project was doomed from the start. Although I work for the Union, I still understand that those at the top got there because they are a bunch of backstabbers that only want what’s best for themselves. As smart as the scientists were all those years ago, they couldn’t sniff out those bastards’ true intentions if it spit at their feet. All that mattered to the scientists was for the Union to fund their research. They got their money and left the people of Earth to submit to the will of the Union.

You see, the Global Union couldn’t give a damn if those lockets lit up green, red, or rainbow. All they cared about was how much fatter their bank accounts got when people bought their cheap-ass lockets. The Union had those scientists tricked into thinking their research was really going toward the betterment of mankind. Instead of seeing the true results of their work, the Union kept giving the scientists more tasks to take their attention away from the destruction being created.

While the Giffords were flying around in space, the Global Union directors had taken the technology they invented and kept it for themselves. After they were able to tell which business partners would remain loyal to the Union in exchange for special funding, they launched the Open-Heart Project. But it wasn’t the project that Greg Gifford proposed. Rather than producing billions of those priceless lockets for everyone on Earth, they designed fraudulent replicas that lacked the biotechnology Gifford had discovered. The elite directors of the Global Union had withheld the ability to read people’s intent from the masses. Maybe Gifford was right. Maybe if everybody knew what everyone’s intentions were then people would begin to be forced to resist deviant behavior. Maybe if the Union had chosen to produce the real lockets, then I could’ve retired due to crime coming to a screeching halt.

Instead, in six months-time two-thirds of the police officers responding to crimes were wiped out. The faulty lockets gave my brothers in arms a false sense of hope when arriving at a scene. They’d see that green light glowing from someone’s chest and turn around. Next thing they knew, some thug would end up stabbing them in the back or shooting their god damned head off. My wife figured out she couldn’t walk down the street anymore because she couldn’t trust another green light since the last one she saw ended up pinning her to the side of a transport and…those fucking savages.

The Union thought they were just turning a large profit, but they had set up the population to fail by making them think they could trust one another. When caution is dismissed, cruel and dangerous characters will rise to the occasion to take advantage of one’s ignorance.

After those six months, an investigation was opened by a small crew in my district. We interrogated the manufacturers and followed the money to see that anyone benefitting from this chaos was being paid off by the Union. Once we broke the story to the press, pure anarchy ensued. People whose friends had been killed, or family members had been sexually assaulted, stormed the Union Capitols collectively. Their goal was to leave the Capitol with the locket of each director stationed there. With so many infuriated people, and such a minority of elites, the masses succeeded. That day, 2187 days ago, collecting began. To collect a locket means to have killed someone that wore a functioning locket, a high honor met with respect today. With so many people being taken advantage of, our society has shriveled into a shell of its former self. Those that are left must look out for themselves or join a gang of collectors. My gang has been protecting our village for over 2000 days, but each day grows more difficult as we constantly wonder if one of us might stab another in the back, like those selfish directors did all those years ago.

It has been months since anyone in our gang has added to our collections. But we look to the skies as the brown clouds begin to divide, and a craft comes down to land. I can make out a name on the side of it. It says, “Gifford Industries.” It appears that Greg Gifford is about to remember that home is where the heart glows.