Veltmeria
07-01-2006, 12:09
OOC: I’ve decided to start my nation again, so to speak, and this thread is just establishing what kind it’s going to be. Feedback here would be welcomed.
IC: Jokev Dubrachov woke suddenly as the alarm clock broke through the silence and stumbled out of bed. It was 6.30am in Hashnikova, a small city to the south of the capital, Vlaslovakosh, and the sun was starting to rise in the horizon, lightening the sky to a peaceful light blue. He violently shut the alarm off and grumbled as his back throbbed with pain. His bed was thirty years old, stiff and lumpy but it was all they could afford – with three children and a low-paying job they had no money for luxuries.
He lurched around the bed and out of the room; the first thing he noticed was a bitter chill biting at his body. Again, he had no money to obtain Central Heating and the windowsills were ancient, cracked and fragile bringing in great amounts of cold air. The kitchen was his first destination. It was a drab affair – brown, damp wallpaper daubed up on the wall, a featureless table to his front against the wall with an old metal radio on top, uneven shelves and pantries hanging loosely on the wall with its pain slowly peeling off, a set of old, almost-identical machine to his left; a fridge, freezer and an oven. A barely-functioning microwave lay on top of the worktop above the machines and in the middle a rusted sink lay with several stinking, unwashed plates piled in.
He moved over to the radio and gently twisted the knob to turn it on and raise the volume. A pleasant female voice rose, reading out the first news of the day.
“Good morning Workers! It is April the third, nineteen ninety-two on a fine sunny morning! The news today: our beloved leader, President of the Republic Hosekov Vlagishimoshov, announced in a late-night statement that agriculture output in the first quarter surpassed predicted levels by four million tonnes, meaning total levels of agriculture in the first quarter of this year is at a record-breaking forty six million tonnes! Let us give thanks to our great Leader for this bountiful harvest, a sign of rich development that will lead us to prosperity!”
Peering into his bare pantry, he assumed again that the figures were a total lie. Apart from a stale loaf of plate, a few plates, a bag of carrots and several insects, the real figure probably wasn’t even half that. He grabbed the loaf and tore a large chunk from it, putting it on a dirty, cracked plate and picking up a glass stained with the hundred drinks before it. He made his way to the tap and put the glass under it, twisting the tap. The pipes groaned and struggled, but nothing was produced. He sighed, realising he would have to eat his breakfast dry and proceeded to the table, placing the plate in front of him, sitting down and taking large bites as patriotic music serenaded him from the radio.
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Closing the door behind him, wearing a stiff and uncomfortable dark blue overall and clutching a fading red toolbox he heaved himself down the five floors of the apartment block and left, using the double front door; a depressing affair consisting of a large piece of cardboard taped to one side and a battered and limp though rather ornate door hanging off its hinges. Jokev looked up at his apartment building – an exactly rectangular brown brick building, with thirty exactly rectangular windows placed between each other equally. Looking around him he saw ten identical shabby buildings placed equally away from each other. Nevertheless, he briskly made his way across the cracked, weed-infested pavement to a bus stop not far away with thirty other people standing and sitting – some wearing the same blue overalls, some wearing red overalls, some wearing standard ComPar apparatchik suits. No one said a word to each other from then until the dilapidated white and red nineteen-fifties era bus pulled up and everyone made a quiet, orderly queue in front of the doors. The only words spoken being a monotonous and bored Thank You as each man showed their pass and proceeded to the back of the bus taking the seat of the person next to them. The last man took the last seat, the doors struggled shut and the bus took off, spewing large amounts of black exhaust and smoke as it did so.
Jokev had a window seat and peered out of the glass next to him to the flat, brown and green depressing scenery and, in the distance, the large glass skyscrapers bursting proudly into the sky and through the clouds displayed in brilliant light – government bureaus, offices and ministries all being filled by Class 1 ComPar Government Employees. It was the capital, Vlaslovakosh. The very best lived and worked there. He had heard all kinds of rumours – tight security bound up the city before the thick walls collapsed into a decadent, intense world of opulent luxury. He knew had no chance of entering this walled city of elegance – his parents were capitalists, involved in the 1974 Uprising against the old President, Hosekov Vlagishimoshov’s father. After the Uprising was clamped down, his parents were seized by the Secret Police and he was put into a Collective Orphanage for Mentally Ill Children of the Republic – basically a holding ground for the children of dissidents where they were pumped with Pro-ComPar propaganda so they could never rebel like their parents did. The city gradually slid out of his field of vision as the bus continued on its slow steady journey to the furnace.
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The bus ground to a halt suddenly, causing everyone inside to jolt forward suddenly. Everyone slowly rose from their seats and stepped off the bus, one at a time from front to back, and lurched forward into the main door of the Hashnikova Blast Furnace Number Five. The workers stumbled inside the long entrance corridor, stamping themselves in and heading for their respective sector. Jokev’s was Sector Ten, most notorious for its horrendous safety record. He couldn’t remember a day in the past when a worker didn’t die in a painful way.
Jokev’s job was as a crane operator. His crane scooped molten steel out of their vats and into moulds that would create all types of things – cutlery, vehicles, trinkets, et cetera. The first hours were dull and uneventful with Jokev moving the crane, scooping up molten metal, pouring it into moulds, repeating this action many times without deviation. The continual movement strained the chains holding the metal bucket. He had no warning as the left chain snapped, pouring the molten contents onto the hapless inspector below. His screams of pain pierced the entire building but no one could do anything as the pool of liquid widened and the screams quickly died down. There would be nothing left. He sighed defeated at the thought of an innocent man dying essentially by his hands and sunk into the steering wheel, putting his head into his heads.
Eventually, the molten mess was cleared up, the crane was repaired and the day continued as normal, this time anyone below being careful to avoid the bucket at any cost. After a fourty-five minute lunch break in a crowded, stinking room and nine hours and fifteen minutes of work, an alarm blared ending work for the day. Everyone stopped what they were doing no matter what it was and begun to close down the machinery. Everyone gradually streamed out of the building and onto the buses outside ready to take them back to their homes. The Supervisor of the plant, the last one out, shut off the lights of the building and took the last seat of the last bus. The working day ended as fast as it began.
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Jokev clambered off the bus at his stop and walked quickly to his apartment block. It was now 6.00pm and the sun had just about disappeared, dim light from the decrepit streetlights barely gave the street enough light to see, but he knew from memory which apartment block he lived in. He rushed through the limp door, quickly made his way up the stairs and into his apartment.
Inside, the entrance had no light. The only lit room was the Living Room, where his three children was playing and his wife had just finished preparing dinner – a solumn thing of a small slab of some meat of some kind and the carrots, with a slice of stale bread and a glass of water, assuming that they had finally got the pipes to work. He sat at the foot of the table, with his wife facing him and their children to the side and quietly, without complaint, ate the only hot meal they would get a day. They knew they were lucky. Most families in this apartment had nothing to eat and his family was often threatened or attacked because of their comparative success. They discussed their day amongst each other and spent the rest of the evening sat down in front of the radio, listening to news reports of ‘unbridled success in the path of the Five Year Plan’ and huge amounts of steel, coal and grain being produced in the ‘grand pursuit of the Worker’s State’. His spouse and children listened bright-eyed and happily to the marvellous news of their success, but Jokev quietly and to himself dismissed the information. He knew what the government had done to him and he knew all these ‘great quantities of production’ would only go to the ‘golden cities’ of Vlaslovakosh and other places where only foreigners go.
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Jokev lay in bed, eyes awake, unable to go to sleep. It was probably 2.00am; his watch said it was, but the thing slowed down or sped up on a whim and was slightly unreliable at best. A thumping noise not far away punctured the darkness, followed by screaming and large amounts of movement, quiet at first, before getting louder and quietening down. Shortly afterwards, a group of cars outside sprang into life and rushed down the street into the darkness. “Another pour soul dragged away by the Correctional Force.” He thought to himself, but he didn’t dwell on these thoughts. It wasn’t right to worry about dead men. It wasn’t natural.
He slowly turned to his turn, great pain stinging his back as he did so. He groaned and then relaxed. The next four and a half hours were the only peace he was going to get all day. He closed his eyes and sleep followed not shortly after.
IC: Jokev Dubrachov woke suddenly as the alarm clock broke through the silence and stumbled out of bed. It was 6.30am in Hashnikova, a small city to the south of the capital, Vlaslovakosh, and the sun was starting to rise in the horizon, lightening the sky to a peaceful light blue. He violently shut the alarm off and grumbled as his back throbbed with pain. His bed was thirty years old, stiff and lumpy but it was all they could afford – with three children and a low-paying job they had no money for luxuries.
He lurched around the bed and out of the room; the first thing he noticed was a bitter chill biting at his body. Again, he had no money to obtain Central Heating and the windowsills were ancient, cracked and fragile bringing in great amounts of cold air. The kitchen was his first destination. It was a drab affair – brown, damp wallpaper daubed up on the wall, a featureless table to his front against the wall with an old metal radio on top, uneven shelves and pantries hanging loosely on the wall with its pain slowly peeling off, a set of old, almost-identical machine to his left; a fridge, freezer and an oven. A barely-functioning microwave lay on top of the worktop above the machines and in the middle a rusted sink lay with several stinking, unwashed plates piled in.
He moved over to the radio and gently twisted the knob to turn it on and raise the volume. A pleasant female voice rose, reading out the first news of the day.
“Good morning Workers! It is April the third, nineteen ninety-two on a fine sunny morning! The news today: our beloved leader, President of the Republic Hosekov Vlagishimoshov, announced in a late-night statement that agriculture output in the first quarter surpassed predicted levels by four million tonnes, meaning total levels of agriculture in the first quarter of this year is at a record-breaking forty six million tonnes! Let us give thanks to our great Leader for this bountiful harvest, a sign of rich development that will lead us to prosperity!”
Peering into his bare pantry, he assumed again that the figures were a total lie. Apart from a stale loaf of plate, a few plates, a bag of carrots and several insects, the real figure probably wasn’t even half that. He grabbed the loaf and tore a large chunk from it, putting it on a dirty, cracked plate and picking up a glass stained with the hundred drinks before it. He made his way to the tap and put the glass under it, twisting the tap. The pipes groaned and struggled, but nothing was produced. He sighed, realising he would have to eat his breakfast dry and proceeded to the table, placing the plate in front of him, sitting down and taking large bites as patriotic music serenaded him from the radio.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Closing the door behind him, wearing a stiff and uncomfortable dark blue overall and clutching a fading red toolbox he heaved himself down the five floors of the apartment block and left, using the double front door; a depressing affair consisting of a large piece of cardboard taped to one side and a battered and limp though rather ornate door hanging off its hinges. Jokev looked up at his apartment building – an exactly rectangular brown brick building, with thirty exactly rectangular windows placed between each other equally. Looking around him he saw ten identical shabby buildings placed equally away from each other. Nevertheless, he briskly made his way across the cracked, weed-infested pavement to a bus stop not far away with thirty other people standing and sitting – some wearing the same blue overalls, some wearing red overalls, some wearing standard ComPar apparatchik suits. No one said a word to each other from then until the dilapidated white and red nineteen-fifties era bus pulled up and everyone made a quiet, orderly queue in front of the doors. The only words spoken being a monotonous and bored Thank You as each man showed their pass and proceeded to the back of the bus taking the seat of the person next to them. The last man took the last seat, the doors struggled shut and the bus took off, spewing large amounts of black exhaust and smoke as it did so.
Jokev had a window seat and peered out of the glass next to him to the flat, brown and green depressing scenery and, in the distance, the large glass skyscrapers bursting proudly into the sky and through the clouds displayed in brilliant light – government bureaus, offices and ministries all being filled by Class 1 ComPar Government Employees. It was the capital, Vlaslovakosh. The very best lived and worked there. He had heard all kinds of rumours – tight security bound up the city before the thick walls collapsed into a decadent, intense world of opulent luxury. He knew had no chance of entering this walled city of elegance – his parents were capitalists, involved in the 1974 Uprising against the old President, Hosekov Vlagishimoshov’s father. After the Uprising was clamped down, his parents were seized by the Secret Police and he was put into a Collective Orphanage for Mentally Ill Children of the Republic – basically a holding ground for the children of dissidents where they were pumped with Pro-ComPar propaganda so they could never rebel like their parents did. The city gradually slid out of his field of vision as the bus continued on its slow steady journey to the furnace.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The bus ground to a halt suddenly, causing everyone inside to jolt forward suddenly. Everyone slowly rose from their seats and stepped off the bus, one at a time from front to back, and lurched forward into the main door of the Hashnikova Blast Furnace Number Five. The workers stumbled inside the long entrance corridor, stamping themselves in and heading for their respective sector. Jokev’s was Sector Ten, most notorious for its horrendous safety record. He couldn’t remember a day in the past when a worker didn’t die in a painful way.
Jokev’s job was as a crane operator. His crane scooped molten steel out of their vats and into moulds that would create all types of things – cutlery, vehicles, trinkets, et cetera. The first hours were dull and uneventful with Jokev moving the crane, scooping up molten metal, pouring it into moulds, repeating this action many times without deviation. The continual movement strained the chains holding the metal bucket. He had no warning as the left chain snapped, pouring the molten contents onto the hapless inspector below. His screams of pain pierced the entire building but no one could do anything as the pool of liquid widened and the screams quickly died down. There would be nothing left. He sighed defeated at the thought of an innocent man dying essentially by his hands and sunk into the steering wheel, putting his head into his heads.
Eventually, the molten mess was cleared up, the crane was repaired and the day continued as normal, this time anyone below being careful to avoid the bucket at any cost. After a fourty-five minute lunch break in a crowded, stinking room and nine hours and fifteen minutes of work, an alarm blared ending work for the day. Everyone stopped what they were doing no matter what it was and begun to close down the machinery. Everyone gradually streamed out of the building and onto the buses outside ready to take them back to their homes. The Supervisor of the plant, the last one out, shut off the lights of the building and took the last seat of the last bus. The working day ended as fast as it began.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jokev clambered off the bus at his stop and walked quickly to his apartment block. It was now 6.00pm and the sun had just about disappeared, dim light from the decrepit streetlights barely gave the street enough light to see, but he knew from memory which apartment block he lived in. He rushed through the limp door, quickly made his way up the stairs and into his apartment.
Inside, the entrance had no light. The only lit room was the Living Room, where his three children was playing and his wife had just finished preparing dinner – a solumn thing of a small slab of some meat of some kind and the carrots, with a slice of stale bread and a glass of water, assuming that they had finally got the pipes to work. He sat at the foot of the table, with his wife facing him and their children to the side and quietly, without complaint, ate the only hot meal they would get a day. They knew they were lucky. Most families in this apartment had nothing to eat and his family was often threatened or attacked because of their comparative success. They discussed their day amongst each other and spent the rest of the evening sat down in front of the radio, listening to news reports of ‘unbridled success in the path of the Five Year Plan’ and huge amounts of steel, coal and grain being produced in the ‘grand pursuit of the Worker’s State’. His spouse and children listened bright-eyed and happily to the marvellous news of their success, but Jokev quietly and to himself dismissed the information. He knew what the government had done to him and he knew all these ‘great quantities of production’ would only go to the ‘golden cities’ of Vlaslovakosh and other places where only foreigners go.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jokev lay in bed, eyes awake, unable to go to sleep. It was probably 2.00am; his watch said it was, but the thing slowed down or sped up on a whim and was slightly unreliable at best. A thumping noise not far away punctured the darkness, followed by screaming and large amounts of movement, quiet at first, before getting louder and quietening down. Shortly afterwards, a group of cars outside sprang into life and rushed down the street into the darkness. “Another pour soul dragged away by the Correctional Force.” He thought to himself, but he didn’t dwell on these thoughts. It wasn’t right to worry about dead men. It wasn’t natural.
He slowly turned to his turn, great pain stinging his back as he did so. He groaned and then relaxed. The next four and a half hours were the only peace he was going to get all day. He closed his eyes and sleep followed not shortly after.