Money for Brains: Briar

This year, they actually paid me to continue my education. I don't know if the right hand and the left hand are talking at all, but I'll take it all the same.

I think they realize how dire things are getting, and I'm probably one of the brightest students they've ever had - not to boast, of course. It's just, I am a genius. Everything comes easily to me. It's only natural that a place of learning would want to keep me around.

This is a fortunate turn of events, all the same. I'm going to need every penny I can scrounge up to relocate.

Nobody wants to talk about it, but the other day, all the lights went out. The powers that be handed out candles, and that was that. No more electricity - anything that can't be run on batteries can't be used. That includes the brain enhancer, not that I think I could get much more use out of it. It taught me a bit more about interpersonal skills, almost all of my gardening knowledge, and most everything I know about how machines tick. I think I'll be able to put these talents to good use.

Water's being rationed - I'm actually the only person on campus allowed to wash up, and that, I have to keep to a bare minimum. I dry out easily, see. The plant matter - it - I need more water than a human, and as much light as I can manage. I stole about sixteen candles and set them up around my room. It's still not enough, not nearly enough.

I'm afraid. Everyone's afraid. People are whispering more, terrified of everything that's happening. The one thing I've noticed is, despite the devastation, the world desperately craves news. They want to know what's going on in the world, to try and understand - perhaps, to try and prepare.

So the radio still works, even if it's only a cheap, battery-operated one. I can only imagine what the facilities at the news stations are like. Only one station plays music anymore, and with electronica, it's sometimes difficult to distinguish between meaningless static and the actual "music."

I'm not really a fan.

My response to all of this was to start up an exercise plan. I start with high-impact exercises like chin-ups until I physically can't do it anymore, then move to low-impact movements until even that's too much. I bathe after that routine, since the extra effort dries me out even more. Then I get to sleep.

Of course I'm maintaining my grades. I need this degree to be taken seriously as a journalist.

One of the frothing lunatics got loose on the night of the full moon. He was stronger than anyone else on campus, like the moonlight casts some kind of primal spell on the afflicted - or something, anyway.

I'm getting paranoid about magic.

Either way, he injured several students before campus security blasted his brains out, and no one's heard from them since they were taken to the school's medical facilities.

Were they executed as well?

Or are they infected with the same madness that first patient displayed?

I'm starting to think that no power in the world will be able to keep the world in the dark about what's going on for long - with, or without, my help.