So This Is the Future...
16 Dec 2019BNSF1995
The following log was created on December 25, 3301My name is Tim Johnson AKA Cmdr BNSF1995. I guess I'm what you might call a "fish out of water". Why? Because I'm technically 1,306 years old now. Same with my girlfriend, Suki Honda, a Japanese-American immigrant with dual citizenship.
Okay, well, USED to have dual citizenship, since apparently neither the USA nor Japan exist anymore. You see, it all started back in the year 2019. It looked like nuclear war with Russia was imminent after President Trump was impeached and it was discovered Russia had directly hacked the election by swapping his and Clinton's votes. Now Trump had been thrown out of office, the USA was descending into civil war, and President Pence was taking a zero-tolerance approach with Putin. The media was saying the same thing: the nukes could fly any moment. Even the DEFCON Warning System, a private enterprise analyzing global nuclear threats, had gone to DEFCON 1 for the first time.
Besides the death of my grandpa earlier that year, that was the single-most stressful period of my life. I don't know what I would've done without Suki.
A few days before Thanksgiving, me and Suki were randomly selected by a previously-classified UN agency called the Human Preservation League, which sought to preserve "breeding pairs" to repopulate the Earth after a nuclear war. To accomplish this, these pairs would be cryogenically-frozen in pods, like in Futurama. Me and Suki said our farewells to our families (I actually stress-vomited having to separate from my mom, since I have Asperger's Syndrome and don't respond well to change).
What was 1,282 years on the outside felt like a matter of seconds to me. Cryogenics really do work, it seems. When I thawed, I awoke to see some men in labcoats looking at me. They didn't look anything like the scientists who put me in here. Upon being released, they welcomed me to the future; I sarcastically responded "no shit, Sherlock", and asked how bad the war was. They gave me worried looks, as if unsure what to tell me. Finally, a man named Edmund Mahon entered the room to look me over, marveling at a human from the 21st century. While he was doing that, I looked back at my pod, and saw a second pod next to mine. Rushing over to it, I looked inside to see Suki sleeping peacefully. I barked at the scientists to open the pod, and they did so without hesitation. Upon her release, there was much hugging and kissing between us. After this reunion, I asked Mahon what year it was, and he responded, with some visible hesitation, that it was the year 3301. I looked at him, then Suki.
And we broke down in tears. Everyone we knew and loved was long dead by now, having probably decomposed to nothing. After, I think, a good half hour of crying, I mustered enough willpower to ask where we are. Mahon answered "Asellus 3A".
Was that some kind of research facility? What state and/or country were we in? These were the questions I asked. Mahon responded, again with some visible hesitation, that Asellus 3A was a moon in another star system lightyears away from Earth. He went on to say that the war me and Suki were frozen to ride out never happened; apparently, the Second Cold War stagnated until Joe Biden was inaugurated, at which point he successfully de-escalated the whole thing. Then we learned World War III did happen, in 2044, only the United States never took any hits because Biden had revived Reagan's old Strategic Defense Initiative and created a laser grid that successfully intercepted every ICBM launched at it from Russia, China, and Iran (North Korea still didn't have any missiles capable of reaching the Continental United States, so they settled for hitting Guam instead, or at least tried to, because the one missile they launched at Guam failed).
After being given new clothes to fit in, we were introduced to a whole new world. Everywhere we looked were holograms, spaceships, and other things that boggled our comparatively-primitive minds. I soon knew what had to be done: get back to Earth. We then learned that was impossible to do, as only Petty Officers in the Federal Navy had access to Sol, and we were in a system belonging to a galactic superpower called the Alliance. It was here we learned of the three superpowers: Federation, Empire, and Alliance. After thoroughly reading about all three, me and Suki decided the Federation was the right fit for us for one reason: even though Mahon went on about how corrupt and greedy the Federation was, I told him it sounded just like the United States we knew, while the Empire sounded like evil incarnate (you sell yourself into slavery to pay off debts?! WHAT KIND OF LIFE IS THAT?!), and the Alliance...all I could see were a bunch of neutrals. What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
Mahon wasn't too happy when I said that to his face, but at the same time, he didn't want to start a galactic incident by killing the people who could teach the people of the 34th Century about life in the 21st Century. So, he just...left. After that, Suki and I went to the Pilots' Federation office, where I got registered. When asked for a callsign, I chose BNSF1995, my old username on...well, everything. After registering, I was given a Remlok suit, a Sidewinder Mk1, and 1,000 credits. I requested a two-seater so Suki could come with me, and they were more than happy to oblige.
As I write this, I sit in the cockpit of my Sidewinder, Suki right behind me. A bit cramped, but we're together, and that's all that matters. We've loaded up goods for a run to Eranin, our first trade run. After that...I don't know what to do.
For the first time, I'm my own man, and I have no idea what to do. Getting to Sol is priority one, of course, then after that, who knows.
After all, it's a huge galaxy out there...