The Better Place — Sequel to "The Diary of Rain" • Part 1

DISCLAIMER:

This story contains unreliable narrators due to some characters having knowledge gaps.

The story:

I am Malia. I have been living in A Better Place for a while. It's not all it's cracked up to be, but The Orphans are here — And so are the employees.

Not that I'm allowed to care too much. We have our rules. Um...

Where is Rain?

I've been looking for her for days, weeks... I haven't been able to find her. I was gonna help her get a job.

The Better Place — The Diary of Rain • Part 1 piece

4:10

But while I was walking around for ages, I noticed that their press, the Better Press, had been publishing, and I had always wanted to see this place. This place always intrigued me. It always made me really excited, like nothing would stop me from heading to the Better Place. It was just an interesting place, a literal world in a cave underground, a world that could survive the hottest heat wave. Like, if there was a scenario where a bunch of dead people and parasites and etcetera came up from below the ground, and there was a huge heat wave, or even if you got out in the sun, you would pretty much just be fried and baked, legit. The only time you would be safe is at night and indoors, covering up the blinds and stuff like that. We would technically be safe under here. The only issue is that the stuff underground that came up would probably be down here too, so I don't know, but they don't seem to be.

I still will be searching for Rain. I cannot go throughout this life without Rain. She is my bestie, although we had a very strange relationship because of the fact that I was kind of doing whatever I needed to do to survive. I was pretty much just obeying CatNap, and y'all might think, "Well, you were doing what you needed to do to survive," but it's simply not that simple.

If there was someone who couldn't afford food, so they started killing and cannibalizing people, which is pretty stupid because there's a way out—you can simply go and steal the food—if you're going to do something that is considered illegal or a crime or something like that, why commit the worst one when you don't have to?

But if someone were doing that and they said they did it because there was a famine or there wasn't a lot of food, you know, would you still want to be their friend? Would you still want to hang out with them? No. It's not as simple as, "I had to do it to survive." People aren't going to want to stay around someone who is cannibalizing people. I had to bring CatNap dead bodies. He typically hunted for himself, and I preferred that, but if he didn't have the time to, or just didn't want to, even though he does love the hunt personally, I would be the one bringing him the food, and sometimes it wasn't food. It was people.

So even though I felt I had to do it to survive because I was so afraid of disobeying him, I personally understand why our friendship was so strained. I know that people may say, "Why are you mad at me?" or "Why was she mad at me?" which I don't actually see people saying, but why wouldn't she be afraid of me? Why wouldn't she feel uncomfortable hanging out with me?

Like, even if someone is starving, if someone resorts to cannibalism as a result, you're not going to want to hang out with them because they're accountable. You'll give them food, you'll try to do things so they won't be accountable, but you know there's always a risk of harm. It's something that I fully understood that I don't think others will understand.

It's not really a lack of compassion. You can feel compassion for a person in that position; it's just that you don't feel safe, and the act is disturbing. It's not just someone getting their moral bridges up in a bunch. It's literally a deeply ingrained moral belief with good reason behind it.

The Better Place — The Diary of Rain • Part 1 - 2

12:12

I decided that I had an idea. I would go to the Better Press, and I would put out a news report or pitch a story to basically help them find my friend because, essentially speaking, she just went missing and pretty much vanished from my life. As a human on Earth above ground in the city of Michigan, people and news stations eat this kind of thing up.

So I decided that I would head to the Better Press, and I pitched them what was going on. Essentially, I told them a lot of people up top really like this sort of thing. It was something that, growing up in my childhood, got tons of views. Negativity tends to attract people. I also explained that I've been looking for her, and I'm hoping that they can give some kind of information on this whole shindig.

They told me that they would absolutely publish it and that it was true. So, essentially, I was able to get a job here, and not only that, but I wrote my own piece, and I basically explained what happened between us and the Prototype. I first explained that:

"We had gone to the Prototype seeking a new home and a better place away from the rest of the factory. That area is simply unlivable. There's barely any food, and you're not even allowed to leave the building to go grow plants or search for food. That, and I simply did not seem to be able to find soil that could effectively support planting. Maybe if you went to the labs and dug up some of the poppies, but I did not think the Prototype would have allowed that, and I was simply too afraid to do so.

As a result, the Better Place would not only have offered far more safety for me and Rain, but also far more opportunities for getting food and water. So I would leave a den of cannibals and stuff like that, and a den of severely unstable individuals, let's just put it that way, and I would have entered a much more stable, livable area. So when we came here, we were 100% sure that everything would be fine and everything would get much better. We were fitted with an apartment and such, and this was ideal. I did like having the ability to access an apartment area, and we had beds, everything we needed, and things felt normal. It felt very similar to before and during Playcare, at least before Playcare, because you have a lot of things in here. We have a TV, we have newspapers, stuff that would be very useful for trying to simulate a very commonplace life above ground.

So one day, I think we had to go to a vigil for—I don't think it was Melody, I think it was Melanie—and a vigil for Teresa because we didn't know where Teresa was. We didn't know what happened to them. All we knew was that something went down, but we were never informed. When we found out they were dead, having known Teresa and Melanie, we were grieved. But suddenly, something happened during the vigil. We were told that Teresa and Melanie were rebels, and we were confused because this wasn't what we had been presented with. We were not initially aware of such behavior, legit.

Like, there were—I don't want to besmirch the name of the Prototype, so there are, like, because I can't say certain things because it gives a bad impression.

When things weren't—like, it wasn't necessarily the Prototype. It was another person, whom I cannot name, who was extremely dangerous. But essentially, I think it was either Teresa or Melanie—I can't remember which—but one of them was very religious and, as a result, would hide her religion. I think it was Christianity, which, yeah, it was, and she was essentially doing this because no one wants to be a martyr. So there were times where certain things would have been hidden from other individuals.

I'm only disclosing this because technically she's dead. I don't want to give people the impression that I've just put someone's life at extreme risk and danger. She is currently dead, so this should not lead to any issues. As a result, I do feel comfortable explaining the very complex situation that occurred.

I'm sorry. Regardless, if you see a woman that looks like this, because I do have pictures of her before and after the Hour of Joy, the before photo shouldn't really matter, but you can take a photo of this and try to show it to her to see if she recognizes the face, if this is her face. We're going to show a photo up top over here of what she used to look like before the Hour of Joy, and this is her after the Hour of Joy. She was supposed to be a Bunzo Bunny, but there were some issues with production, and she was also supposed to be a different type of Bunzo Bunny, a female version, a limited-edition set.

Bunsy, basically. She was a Bunsy.

Again, her name is—one really good identifier is that she has a very specific build, and essentially, she does have memories of before she was turned into what would appear to be a toy. I don't really like to use that terminology, as that can be offensive, as we are all humans, we are all people here. I'm not saying that you have to be a human to be a person, but we are all people. However, the name she was born with, her birth name, is Rain."

After I had said all of that during the news segment, something strange had happened. During the news segment, while we were live on air and while I was writing it down as well, because I was reading my written script and the script was also written for publication, I found that one of the staff members said, "Hey, there's something that has come up, but we have to tell you later. We don't have all the details."

This is because, in many cases, they sometimes talk things over with the Prototype because the Prototype often controls what news gets out there and what doesn't get out there.

However, while I was on air live, someone had literally interrupted the actual live feed. So people—I heard afterward—were taking photos of the before picture and after picture so that they could show it around. They were literally taking pictures with cameras and stuff, and someone comes over and they're like, "Hey, we found Rain."

And I'm like, "Really? Where?"

So, in the middle of the live feed, I'm excited, I'm exuberant, I'm getting up, and I'm trying to see, you know, "What happened? What went down?"

And what they tell me is, "She's getting married to the Prototype, so she's not actually missing. The Prototype took her to his home, his mansion, his castle, and he is essentially marrying her."

To Be Continued...

Thank you for your time,

Treasure Jackson.