Report of Satine: On Saturday evening, of 9th October 2121, myself and three of my fellow citizens of the borderlands of Metropolis (collectively know as Team Van’ity Unicorns; METthodius, ROPata, Olaide and LISsa) arrived at the Royal Gunpowder Mills, Waltham Abbey.
Why?
The reason: it is 100 years since space travel began, and those who could do so, left this troubled world by paying for space travel to the far superior off-world colonies. In the volatile land of the “UK” that was left behind. The tensions were further triggered by the now far distant disaster of Brexit, fracturing the Kingdom into shards; frustrated, violent, and suspicious shards, whilst the economy was plunged into a bottomless black hole which the "UK" never recovered from. The “UK” no longer exists, the countries within it now operate independently with hard borders (particularly in the north, where an actual wall from hard cold stone has been reconstructed), which are zealously enforced. Where London used to sit, Metropolis now stands; an independent military state. No one leaves, no one enters, and its borders aggressively push outwards into the neighbouring state of Anglia. The Metropolis Government sought to control its people through suppressing their thoughts and free will, via the enforced vaccination programme, G23. The vaccine was not effective in all citizens, and these “sense offenders” go about their business pretending to be under the influence, but thinking independently. Some escaped to Anglia. That is our dream too, to escape. We live in the borderlands of Metropolis, living under the same rules as the military state, but without many of the privileges. The worst of both worlds. We seek to end this suppression. We responded to a contact from R.U.N, the Resistance Underground Network.
The mission: the 9th of October 2121 was the date set 2 years ago for the mission; a planned insertion of a volunteer force, into central Metropolis.
The aim: to collect intelligence, specifically geo locations on key buildings in Metropolis, and information on the Maschinemensch programme (the robot programme).
That is why we are here.
On arrival at base, we were assigned new identities and given ID cards (Idrisa Marshall, Erebus White, Tararus Escott, Satine Lomax).
We were assigned our primary mission for 02:00 (to be in a specific location in central Metropolis), and told to meet our contact at 01:36, plus we must be at the exit location by 07:00 at the latest, in order to be on the last bus out of Metropolis. We met senior members of R.U.N at base, and learnt information for additional missions along the way. Through the official communications channels, we may also get more missions during the night.
We spoke to Maria, the Leader of R.U.N. and learned of her story, which added fuel to our fire that we must be successful in completing our mission.
The briefing was cut short by an enemy infiltrating our ranks, and we all vacated the building before the necessary destruction was implemented in the gunpowder mills.
Thus, equipped with so much information that one might say we seemed slightly confused, at 20:50 Team Van’ity Unicorn set off, complete with some basic tech in the form of “What 3 Words” (which was probably quite sophisticated in 2021) where we loaded the location of our missions. We began with around 8 miles down the River Lea towards the Metropolis; we could soon see its red, regulated, lighting gleaming in the distance, from the darkness of the water ways which we stealthily progressed along.
We had to be careful of the state Eyes who could track our movements (via our geo-tags which all Metropolis citizens must wear), and intercept us at any point. We could sometimes see their location on the tracking app, but such was the devious nature of the Metropolis Government, their actions were often concealed, and their location would drop off. If the Eyes found us, we needed a convincing back story as to why we were out in Metropolis after the curfew, to get them off our back. To calm our nerves, we practised our back story on the the way down the river, which provided some handy evidence (our house boat had been pillaged by the resistance and we were on the run, as loyal citizens of Metropolis - as proven by our themed manicures - seeking safety).
With the relentless worry of yet another story to remember under pressure, the strain was beginning to show for certain members of our team, and our nerves were constantly frayed by the signs up all around the borderlands.
Despite this challenging situation, we were able to complete our first mission, finding the location of one of 5 "Bio-Factories" . To complete a mission, we had to take photo evidence, and wait in location for 30 seconds, to allow the R.U.N trackers to collect our location.
....before we became anxious of the ever presence of the Eyes, and took some backs streets down towards our next location, the Armoury. There was almost a situation here, when a crowd of Metropolis citizens, known as "The Beefeaters" were gathered outside the gates, waiting for a guard to let them back inside. They seemed very jolly, and we wondered, had they been a part of the breakout activities taking place just a couple of miles away? We hid around the corner until they were safely locked inside, and then collected our intel.
Then, it was time to meet our contact, at 01:36. The location was over the river - Embankment. Happily (as by now some additional stimulation was required), we discovered that iced coffee is still readily available in Metropolis, and can be purchased with only mild interrogation from the shop owners. As we had a short pause before our contact meeting (so as to avoid attracting attention to the Eyes), we successfully navigated a Metropolis shop to stock up on said stimulation. Our contact, Kyle, seemed a bit shifty, but after showing him our ID and evidence of our missions, he gave us the locations of some more missions, plus a fortune cookie, which revealed our final exit location.
We made it through Metropolis! Collected some bonus missions, and completed 34.5 miles, plus, and most importantly, we avoided the Eyes.
Note (by Amy): I just read that through. I do, 100%, sound like I've lost my mind, even more so than before. I'm still not entirely sure what happened last night, it may even have been a dream. The only thing I am sure of that that it was beyond brilliant, and a totally new idea in ultramarathons! Thanks so much Beyond Marathon and Cockbain Events. That must have taken so much to organise! Everything that was going on all night, updating, changing, all the time - epic! And the actors were so fabulous - I was genuinely so nervous at the start, it felt real and surreal in equal measures, which I think is a fabulous balance. Such an adventure, and hoping there will be more! Team Van'ity Unicorn - as always, love you guys and being in a team with you! Remember - there's no I in Team, but there is an I in Win. And Eyes all around. Till the next time.....
P.S. Thanks Tararus, Erebus, Rachel Gould and Satine for the photos.
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