Journal entry number 6437. Month is July…I think. Date is…hell I don’t know. Tuesday…yeah Tuesday. Year 2579, My life is chaotic still. I’ve survived another call up to the Arena. No thanks to the damn fool who they put in my cell. Some kid named Jack Bulkins.

He is a tall son of a bitch I’ll give him that. But here size gets you marked. He been around for a week and survived the Arena. Thanks to yours truly, I kept him from getting beat in by Dinkerman on his first day. Mostly because I didn’t want my cell covered in blood. He looks like a bleeder to me.

Ever since I convinced Dinkermen from smashing his face in the kid been hanging around me like a hang nail yo. He’s just as annoying too. Clumsy bastard he damn near broke my video journal last time he used it. All he did was whine about being railroaded by the justice system.

News flash kid life ain’t fair. See me I was rounded up for human smuggling. Sure it sounds bad but I wasn’t your regular smuggler. I didn’t beat people or rape anyone while I was transporting them from A to B. I’m a kind soul at heart really besides you get more business if your kind to them and that ment more credits.

See I had the whole smuggling business down to a fine art. I only grab the people that had the cash in hand. Took care of them even gave them food and water as we tracked the desserts of Texas to the golden country of Mexico.

Oh yeah things changed people now flock from America to Mexico in droves. Since the three of the most biggest Corporations bought out the USA back in the big dip of 2050 life in America been shit. The rich get richer and deader quick. While the poor get stuck with a long life of struggle and sickness.

Anyways the rich payed me to smuggle them out of the crap hole of America to Mexico. At least there you get a fighting chance. Well sort of if you have credit to spend you can make it anywhere except America that is.

See I had a plan reach my goal of 50,000 credit and retire. It be a long time since I get to retire seeing as I only charge 300 credit a trip. I eventually made it though. Only I got caught up by some Mexican border patrol. I was handed over to the justice system along with my passengers. Justice used lightly of course.

You get enough parking tickets and you get sent to the Arena. It’s all in the name of profit. I understand I’m a business man myself so naturally I didn’t fight it when the judge sentenced me to the Arena. Hell I get payed more credit to kill people then what I was making outside the Arena.

***

“Hey Charlie I’m going to the credit hall ok?” I told him while I tried to leave the cell. He was busy using the video journal anyways. He taught me a lot about life in the Arena. He told me gangs here don’t matter seeing as you might be paired up with a rival banger in the pit.

The pit that’s what the main stage of the Arena is called. See the Arena is three different areas. You have the habitable zones that’s where we are all packed into in small cells. It’s no picnic here while gangs aren’t respected in the pit here in the habitable zone it does.

Then you have the credit hall. A huge guarded weapon and armor market. You can get all kinds of perks there too if you have the credit. You can’t really get your weapon or body armor and take them back to the habitable zones for obvious reasons. They just mark down what you bought with your credits and give you your equipment once your in the lift to the pit.

I was going to get a new gun and trade in my 22 handgun. The piece of shit jammed on me last time I was up on the Arena. Nearly got me and Charlie killed. I’m not going to let that happen again. Hopefully I can get a sub gun or something that won’t jam on me.

Oh yeah the third area is the spector. No one knows what’s going on in spector area you just know you don’t want to go there. Everyone who gets called to spector never comes back. Sure you have your regular gossip and rumors about that place.

My favorite one is that spector is where the mega rich live running the whole damn Arena living in the lap of luxury. My not so favorite one is that’s it’s a experimental hospital where they turn you into horrible disfigured mutants. Survivors of the gauntlet said they seen them hordes of roving mutated freaks chasing you down and eating you alive.

Of course that’s a lie. I seen the Arena plenty of times and never once was a mutant ever on screen. You do get to see cannibalistic starving people hunt and kill prisoners but that’s just part of the pit. The way survivors discribe hidden areas of the gauntlet that’s never shown on the tv show…I just know I don’t want to find out.

“Hey shorty!” Jerome called out for me. “Hey Jerome what’s up?” I asked him. Jerome is the only other person I seen so far that’s just as tall as me so he likes to give me nicknames sometimes.