June 12th, 1886

I can still remember the days of green and warmth,  when great ships sailed across the ocean blue and mighty cities rose above the skyline.  Those days have long since past.  There is no more green or warmth, the great ships have nowhere to sail, and all of the world’s cities have been all but abandoned.  Now there is only white and cold, and there will only ever be white and cold.  What we do here is not for us, but for the future generations of people who will come long after the cold has taken us.  That doesn’t make this decision any harder than it already is.  How can I decide between humanity’s future and the fate of hundreds?

I remember the day we left, we came here from London, our Captain told us that this would be a one way mission, that we would die in order to secure humanity’s future.  30 of us volunteered for this assignment.  Our mission was simple: build a self-sustaining city that would preserve the seedling arks that safeguarded humanity’s future until the cold finally subsides and the warmth returns to this world.  When we first arrived here we were full of hope, we gathered the resources that the builders had left behind, and we constructed our city.  We built buildings and machines that were powered by the generator, ones that could work until they finally broke down.  The machines would mine the precious coal needed to fuel the generator and build new machines to replace themselves when they finally broke down.  Our city had become truly self-sufficient and with that in mind we could die peacefully knowing that we preserved the future or at least that was how it was supposed to go.  Things were going great until the man came, a mysterious stranger from a neighboring city.

He spoke of the city of New Manchester, how he left his city in search of help.  His city and his people were dying, without help hundreds would die.  He came here to ask us for help, for we were the only ones who could.  Our city may be self-sufficient but its resources are not unlimited.  If we send aid to them then we leave our city at risk.  With the great storm approaching we are running out of time to stockpile resources and if we send some of those resources to their aid we won’t have enough to last through the great storm and the arks will perish.  That is my dilemma.  Should I sacrifice humanity’s future to save a city of hundreds or should I sacrifice hundreds to save humanity’s future? That is the choice that I have to make.

– From the journal of James Kinwood, Commander of the Arks outpost