Midgar Legacy
Benjamin Forsberg
papabearbjf@hotmail.com

The dilapidated, pizza-like behemoth structure lay broken, twisted and unrecognizable. Only a few days before it had stood a monument to progress. But it was also a monument to the dirty deals, the underhanded conniving and cut-throat business that had come to drive that progress. Businessmen became elitists, the middle-class became the hoity-toity upper crust simply because they were occasionally seen by the poor. The poor struggled and either made their way up to the middle-class long after they could appreciate it, or failed to climb even the bottom rung of that ladder. Of those whose cunning wasn't sufficient to boost them up the ladder through legitimate means, there were those that simply gave up; those who bitterly accepted their fate; and those whose resentment forced them to action. Ironically, it was mostly the latter that made it out of the city alive, their paranoia and greed having prepared them mentally and emotionally for all such catastrophes. The elite, upper and middle classes, not having access to the easy exits the bottom of the city provided, were largely slaughtered by the forces of nature and existence that ravaged their homes. Sadly, as the intense joy of having the upper classes gone as they had always wanted passed, they were left with the sorry realization that they had depended on those upper classes for their scraps and throw-away treasures.

With the passage of years came the overgrowth. Nature was taking pains to hide the mistakes of the past. No one lived there. It was too dangerous. Only teenagers, cell-phones in hand, would dare to come close to it. It was a place of legend, intrigue, the subject of caustic humor and, strangely, after the long passage of years, feared. In death it merely emulated its life.