Rise of the Hummingbird

Prison Break

            "Deep in the heart of England lives a legend..."

...that would have been a great beginning. Or "there were dragons when I was a boy", or basically anything else than what it really is.

Instead, my story begins with me, sitting my ass on a toilet and busted for life deep down in the dungeons under Lyonhall, with a guy who liked to call himself Elskan Tesoro sleeping just next door.

Now, little one, you may have heard this story before, but just in case I have not had the time or courage to do so, I'll give you some much needed background.

The very first day it all started was the August 8th 2033, morning, when I woke up to the sound of an alarm on my phone with as much joy to be alive as an injured blobfish and a shrunken, growling stomach complaining of hunger.

My real name, which might be new to you, is Anthony Scott and back then I used to live in some fairly simple lodgings with my sister on the outskirts of the town of Nederstone and I've been unemployed for almost three months, effectively making me a dead weight to her, after they kicked me out of the office for nicking food.

And I get that you might think I used to be just some weird, petty kleptomaniac or something, but trust me! In my days food was more than scarce for us little people and we had to do what we could to get to it.

This England of my past might be a little different than the one you know.

I'm sure your teachers must have bored you to death with the history of all the Great Wars that used to rage throughout Europe at the time and the issues and consequences they had on the world, so I'll try not to bother you too long. This story is not about them. Great Britain was, more or less, managing to stay out of the way of the ever-present conflict and the people who dared to climb the greasy pole at Westminster did their best to shield us from anything that might have been happening behind the Channel.

We'll further explore these minor expository details later.

The important part is that while almost everyone tried to stay blind to the harsh reality of the world around us, we couldn't ignore the thousands of immigrants fleeing from the war and flooding our streets. We called on the army and closed our borders in a vain attempt to stay safe, we cut off all the roads and forced everyone to stay outside no matter who they were and as a final nail into the red, white and blue coffin over our heads, all of our imports and exports straight out died in almost a single week as the kingdom severed its last ties with its former allies and our economy crumbled into something that would try to sell you a bag of tea for the price of a new Chevrolet.

Don't get me wrong. My job at IT used to be fine and all, as is any form of income in the case of a potential political conflict, but only until they started paying me about 10 per cent of my present minimum wage.

And of course the kingdom isn't going to cut your taxes to compensate for all of this, because why would they? Our new king had bigger problems to deal with than his own, dear subjects...

As a natural consequence people started losing their money, then their jobs, then their homes, and in a few short weeks, tens of thousands joined the homeless immigrants on the streets. What a wonderful time we used to live in!

Then the Great food crisis of Great Britain spread throughout the land like a plague.

In desperate attempts to help each other families huddled together in small lodgings just to be able to pay for their basic needs and so it was that I ended up living with my sister, Sam, who used to be a police officer and as such was too important for the future of the kingdom and the town to be left without some form of payment. The rest of our family lived in Wales on the other side of the island, so they left us to rot in this hellhole alone, but I shouldn't be too harsh on them. Our parents were old, and a trip back home would only add more problems and more mouths to feed.