Foreword:
Hey all, Sean here. I recently talked about this idea I had that has been on my mind to a buddy of mine. As someone who has an imagination that runs wild, I constantly think about what the world would be like three thousand years from now. How would our society have kept on going? What about the discovery of intergalactic planetary hosts for human expansion? Are there other beings out there in universe that would have come to pay us a visit? 5023 answers just that in the form of a young boy named Joseph from Queens, NY. I really hope you all will enjoy a (pretty much) non-stop series I'll embark on that will answer the many questions we have about the future of our civilization and how our society will change.
Episode 1: Pilot.
The deep humming sound rumbles through the city walls as a police patroller combs through the narrow streets in the dead of night. "Suspect, show yourself" rumbles from the patrol car speakers as the police patrol car hovers high above the ground looking for what seemed like a rogue suspect on the run. Not sure what that person did or what he was intending to do but I'm pretty used to these occurrences throughout the night. After all, Queens isn't exactly a place you want to be in. Well, at least it wasn't always like this as grandpa would tell us.
Queens was once a beautiful trade town around the 3000s. After all, my family, the Quintons, have had a long legacy in the city. You see, thousands of years ago, Queens was a place where the lower class would linger after the great migration and the creation of the "American Dream" when soldiers would return from the war and move their families out to the suburbs, as they used to call it. Meanwhile, those who could barely make it through their mortgage payments or rent would be left behind.
For hundreds of years, Queens would be a place filled with crime and unrest. Some even said that walking at night in Queens would be something only the mad or vicious would do. That was until George Quinton, a wealthy real estate developer, laid his eyes on the city. Manhattan was already overpopulated and got too cramped for the growing population there. Over time, developers had to turn to neighboring cities to initiate their big projects and George Quinton got a hold of Queens while Steve McKay took over Brooklyn while the rest of Long Island were divided among numerous groups and families.
George was a visionary; he always wanted to develop a modern city that would encapsulate the best of the best from getting too warn out within the hustle and bustle of Manhattan and had the means and needs to move out but stay close to Manhattan where their lives revolved around. Hence, Project Queens began.
For generations, my family has built Queens from a rugged city filled with savages to one that became an affluent address where loan officers wouldn't even take a second look at. However, it wasn't all butterflies and rainbows when the project kicked off - it took a lot of affirmative action and the good ol' saying of "gassing the groundhogs" to really clean the city up.
As generations of our family built Queens to cater the middle to upper class, many big-organization employees, executives, and affluent families started moving in. From the Carters, who were working on their Harlem project to the Rockefellers and even the Trumps! Queens became a one of the most affluent cities to live in around Manhattan.
It remained that way for many generations until Richard Quinton came about 27 generations later and decided to really grow the family empire. The three cities of Brooklyn, Harlem, and Queens developed peacefully over the years as the "bottom-dwellers" continued to be driven further out to smaller cities like Albany and Buffalo. But Richard had better plans - Since there was a limit to how far out they could expand as they got closer and closer to other municipalities that did not stand for their explosive expansion and mass ownership of land, Richard decided that it would make more sense for them to develop vertically.
The vertical expansion continued forever until it was almost impossible for the family firm to maintain the rest of the city below. Because of how the city began to sprout layers upon layers, the original development beneath that George built began to see less sunlight and the city government and lobbyists paid less attention to the bottom-dwellers. The wealthy kept moving up and those who could not afford to move any higher had no choice but remain.
Families didn't always live where they did permanently as the economy saw many revolutions. When times were right, more and more people kept moving upward and more layers had to be built. When there was a recession or an economical crisis, those who were negatively impacted had to move downward or even to Brooklyn where their expansion wasn't as fast when they got tired of competing with Richard's many sons who continued that legacy and their generations after them. In fact, Queens became a very diverse city as Richard's children began expanding with the help of joint ventures with the Chinese and Japanese organizations.
Many generations would pass before I was born. Unlike my cousins, my mother was the one who was the descendant to the Quinton bloodline while my father was of the youngest son to the Brown family of Salt Lake City, Utah which saw an end to their reign when their land were bought out by Launch Pad to be one of their Spaceports. Because my mother wasn't an heir to the Board, she was only entitled to a Chairperson position to the agriculture arm of the organization while her brothers held the presidential seats and ownership of the other companies. We didn't get much access to that pot of gold and eventually, we were stuck on Ground 58.
It's not too shabby, I've got to admit. But my uncles live all the way on the top and I knew the inevitable was going to happen down my bloodline as I was down into an organizational dead end. The cops continue to comb the narrow streets looking for that perpetrator from The Below, I suspect, who decided to try their luck on some middle-class wealth to gain on. I'd bet they'll be incinerated any time now.
As I lay here staring at the ceiling, I know I'm going to need a plan to get out of this dead end journey. I know I can't lay here all my life waiting for the allowances we get from the family organization up top. We can always move away to the family homes located around the world and even the galaxy but what good is it to sit and be spoon-fed like my predecessors when I know I have the knowledge and ability to start my own legacy. The Legacy of Joseph Quinton-Brown.
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Footnote:
Thanks to all of you for reading the first episode of 5023! With Joseph having his dreams and aspirations, I wonder where that would take him. I sure hope he doesn't do anything out of hand! We'll find out along the coming episodes.
Till the next episode!! See yah!
Also, do explore my other content on the website :)