Taken

1

Dear Diary:
Hi, my name is Margret, I am 18 years old and I live in Middlestone Lozem. I live in a small shabby wood hut off a side street in the small country town. My parents don't earn much. Neither do many people these days, poverty has been sweeping the nation since before I was born. 

When my dad was born, he says there was the first ever empress was still alive, people call her the cloud lady, because no one knew too much about her, only that everyone liked her and that she tried to help the poor. Alas, after she died the world stared to spiral into a pit of poverty. But now days it's not that unusual, so you start to get used to it. 

My mum works 2 times a week cleaning wine bottles at the Lawrence hotel but I heard she might be losing her job soon because they are buying a robot to do her job and the robot is more efficient for they don't need to have a brake or be paid. My dad fixes the garbage departicliser when it breaks down (and that isn't very often). 

But who am I kidding even if my mum and dad only get 5 upgrade points a week its better than nothing. Am I right? I mean look at me (but not really, I'm not much of a looker.) I haven't been "degraded" yet so I guess that's something right? 

Oh silly me I haven't told you about upgrade points yet, it must have just slipped my mind. Well basically upgrade points are what we replaced money with after the great colonel uproar but that is a whole other story that I will tell you about another time but anyway getting back on track, when you work you get paid with upgrade points which are stored in your family trust. Whenever you want to buy something you go to your in home BYOR (buy you own requirements) and type in the pin number for your family trust and select how you would like to upgrade your home weather it is to upgrade your fridge so it is fully stocked or upgrade your home so it has two stories or even to stop the roof from leaking. 

When I found out about it I thought it was so cool but the comicalness eventually wears off, especially when you find out like I did that bills will automatically pay themselves and what's even worse, when you can't afford to pay your bills your house will start to be degraded starting with you most recent purchases. It's practically your friendly in home repo man. 

Even last month, I woke up in the middle of the night shivering just as the bills finished being payed my brand new blanket that I saved up for was degraded.  

What's even worse is if you run out of upgrades to be degraded the first born child disappears in the middle of the night and no one knows where they go, not even the parents, they're just there one minuet and gone the next. Poof, like magic, me and my friends call it being "taken". 

We only know one person that might have been "taken" we never really knew his name only that he was really unlucky. All we know for sure is his family lived in a small tin shed and were really poor, he was at school one day and gone the next. He was never seen again.