Pandora Tainted

""So, how goes the destruction of public facilities?"

- Ian, Pandora Tainted

Pandora Tainted is a work of dystopian fiction by Vak Beacon. It follows the adventures of the titular Pandora and her partner in crime Ian, both terrorists attempting to overthrow the iron-fisted regime of a government known as the Global Empire, GE for short. The story is set in the city of Eden, capital city of the GE built on top of what used to be London. The GE embodies every corruption of any government ever. They've globally segregated every race, citizens are under near-constant surveillance, entertainment and sources of entertainment such as books, movies, the internet have been totally shut down. Citizens wake up, eat, work, and sleep. Behind the Global Empire is General Enforcement, the sinister army of the new Earth, it's ranks entirely filled with automatons. And behind the General Enforcement is Pendarious, the self-proclaimed emperor of the new world.

The story is part revolution, part mystery, part political intrigue, and dashed with loving parody of all of the above. The main character, Pandora, though being a skilled fighter and clever in her own right, is ultimately used as a pawn and figurehead by the resistance movement. Meanwhile, brilliant Ian plays an important role as strategist for the resistance, and finally deals the crippling blow that allows them to overthrow the GE's reign. And then there is the curious case of the group called the Seven Fears that stalk Pandora and Ian, and the man called Fedora who stalked the Fears. Not to mention the hospitable and insane Kitty, or the resistance mastermind Galt.

Pandora Tainted is not a warning about some flaw in humanity that brought them down, nor is it an uplifting story about man's undying spirit and his will to fight for what he believes in. The citizens of Eden did nothing to deserve what is happening to them, and have been worn down, their entirely lives reduced to tunnel vision. They don't even notice that they are being massacred for what seems to be no reason at all. I suppose that I have to sum things up, so here goes; Pandora Tainted is a story about evil, injustice, and hypocrisy, and what those things make people do, the good and the bad.

And it also thinks very highly of itself (or I was just lazy and copy-pasted the 'About' page from the site.


 * Action Girl: Pandora herself
 * Badass Normal: Both Pandora and Ian, but Ian is more of a Badass Bookworm.
 * Complete Monster: Pendarious gets more and more evil as the story progresses. He's never directly shown doing anything particularly evil at all, seeing as he's not seen until the end. But the things that he has his Mooks do...
 * Devil in Plain Sight: Pendarious is the ruler of the planet, who has people massacred daily, and no one notices because he's constantly pumping amnesiac drugs into the populace.
 * The Empire: The Global Empire, to be exact.
 * Hero with Bad Publicity: Both of the main characters are made out to be terrorists by the GE, making it so that they can't even show their faces in public without setting off every alarm in a one-mile radius.
 * Implacable Man: More like seven of them... The Seven Fears.
 * Mecha-Mooks: General Enforcement is entirely populated by robotic automatons.
 * Villain with Good Publicity: One of the main villains, Pendarious, rules the planet, and the other, General Enforcement, is the world's law enforcement.