Dear Diary, after a laborious and unnecessarily invasive customs process that lost me a rather expensive penknife, I’ve settled into the Mormon State of Deseret in general and Salt Lake City in specific. I’ve lucked into a rather nice room in a social club on the outside of the “Junkyard”, as it’s called, the air of which has left an indelible impression on my lungs. Speaking of, I can’t help but notice from the equally dirty language on the way in that none of the workers seem satisfied with their lots in life. No surprise, given that their bodies are being exchanged for bread and circuses, as it were, and their injuries are resolved at their own expense only insofar as they return them to work. This place is a powder keg, the wick dampened by staccato drips of water from the Church, Hellstromme, and the backbreaking despair of indentured servitude. Which is exactly why I plan to get out before things come to a head, longarm in tow. The rifle, that is. Not a mechanically lengthened arm. Curse this town for making me clarify that.
-Recovered from a soot-stained page in the diary of an unnamed debt collector, written mid-August, 1877
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