Twelve years back, the land collapsed, the sea rose. Ten years later, the asteroids rained down, the other planets gone.
Then, the Subzero started.
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A year after the Late Asteroid Bombardment, a winter came that seemed t...
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Halley Jacquards is such a stupid girl.
When I was turning four – a year before the Upheaval – I snuck to the kitchen for chocolates. Dad somehow caught me. He said that it was bad, that heavens had a lake where the angels could see whatever you're doing. Like a huge surveillance camera.
Right now, the angels are probably watching me and murmuring that Halley Jacquards is such a stupid girl, like how you scream at the TV character even though she won't hear you. Ah well.
In case you're an angel and watching me:
Thank you for just watching me. Your salvation is very much appreciated.
Okay, I'm stupid, I will admit that. I walked out of the house all of the sudden, all the rationality flying out of the windows, not knowing that in twenty minutes I will swerve because I walked to the wrong direction, then walk back into the house, which is now empty.
It looks almost the same. The ice table untouched. No blood. No broken panes. But it's not totally the same. I can almost see the boy slumped at the corner, crestfallen, clutching the red snowflake pendant of his necklace.
I shake the image out of head.
I must not stay here.
I grab my backpack and put on more layers of clothes. Mom's clothes, then Dad's. All share the same color, yellow, since our division allocated yellow clothes only. Color coding, I guess.
I'm about to close the backpack when a picture frame catches my attention. For months of ignoring and trying very hard not to think about them, here they are, smiling at me, a timeframe captured and kept in a picture, the happiness frozen in time. Dad's left arm around me, the other wrapped on my little brother, and Mom hugging his middle. I swallow and sling the backpack.
I stand there, facing south, the direction Dad headed whenever he would take the weekly supplies. I stare ahead, at the mist that hides what comes forth, at the gray sky and gray scape that look the same. Die facing everything or die regretting everything. Die externally or die internally. Be brave or be coward.
I will now be a Wanderer.
Everyone will now see me like how I see the boy with the red snowflake. They will treat me the way I treat the boy, or worse.
Be brave or be coward.
I start walking.
I remember the boy and imagine him walking alone. The Northwestern Division is as vast as Asia, and I imagine the relief he had felt when he saw my house. An oasis in the ice desert. I'm such a bitch for not welcoming him. Each divisions contains only hundreds of house, I guess, plus the main city. The chance of me reaching a house is 0. 1%, minus 10% for the blizzard. He's lucky to find a house and unlucky to find a house that doesn't welcome Wanderers. If this is California I can easily navigate myself to the next house. But California is long gone, now only a fracture of history.
Screw the Upheaval.
It's been twelve years since the Upheaval, but the memories it carved in my mind, still fresh, still raw, it felt like it only happened last year. It's something you will never forget.
The Upheaval, from the definition itself, the earthquake that made a major change at everything. It primmed the human population, corrected the human had changed on Earth, restarted the nature, divided the history.
Prehistoric to The Utopia: the Old World.
The Upheaval to the present day: the New World.
The Old World is the normal and better world. That's why we called it as The Utopian Era. You know, with animals and plants, all survived from extinction. A 60 percent land and 40 percent water Earth. Twelve billion humans, living at those widened coasts, almost occupying all the space left on land. The era where humans discovered how to make a vehicle float, how to convert gasses, how to make plasma bullets. Era where terrorism stopped, where all people became contented. Era where you will least expect an apocalypse.
The Government had constructed plans how to stop natural disasters, as they were sudden, unstoppable, unforgiving, especially the earthquakes. So they patched and stitched the fault lines. Along the patched fault lines, they made holes, huge holes that released thermal heat that made earthquakes. The holes became a great source of thermal energy. Electricity became cheap. After the project, the Government announced that Earth has finally reached Utopia.
Only for five years.
Let's take a kettle with boiling water as a resemblance of Earth. Rumors had that one of the holes malfunctioned, unable to release the thermal heat. Then another. Since the cracks between those plates tectonics were glued, and the holes malfunctioned, like a kettle without any opening, the pressure inside will try to find a way to be released. What happened? Boom-ba-DOOM! The humans made an apocalypse unintentionally.
