Lucky One

Before I entered the contest I never paid much attention to The Future Library. I guess not many did. I mean, a time capsule in Norway. It sounds a little bit like a joke. A time capsule hidden deep down in a norwegian wood, among huldras and trolls.

Hardly no one in the year 2014, hardly anyone in the year of 2114 either. Of course it was in the papers and all over the net once a year when it was annonced which writer who had been chosen to be leave a contribute to that collection of stories. But compared with the attention the Nobel Prize Winners still got this was nothing.

Until now. Now media is very interested in The Future Library.

"Which stories do you think will be read first when the Future Library is being opened? And what will be in them?

You all got 60 minutes to write down what you think.

Good Luck! :)"

I began to shew on top of the pencil. My mother justed to tell me that it is poisoness to do so. It is something in the orange paint I think that can be dangerous in high dosis. Or maybe it is truly lead in them. Pencils began to scratch the surfaces of sheets of papers. The sound was like voices whispering to each other from places in time. A monolog that never truly could be a dialog. We were all still pale in ghosts in the window, but almost everyone was working now. With the exception of me. My mind was locked in a way.

Very carefully I lay the blue grain of sand down in my mandela. It is a small part of a sea where a full moon is mirroring itself. There is a beach. Trees, bushes and further away there are some rocks. They are just shadows in the blue night. Like accusing fingers they are pointing at the Moon. And tonight I can see it. The Moon do not have a face. There is no man in the moon. Not any Goddess either. There are letters. Scribble. Maybe from a now distant God that passed by. Or maybe passed away, living us to ourselves.

"This is 2114", I wrote. "In the year 2014 there was a lot of turmoil going on in the world. Apocalyptic visions filled peoples minds. It seemed inevitable that Doomsday was near.

Day in and day out heroes solved the worlds problems by using weapons in the theaters and in many books. Capitalists and politicians refused to listen to reason when came to climate change, pesticides and pollution. Nuclear power was still in use. Companies went on with business as usual, feeding healthy animals antibiotics and cutting down the rain forests of the world. They drilled for oil in the Artic, overlooking the warnings of distaster. Mankind was waiting for someone else to solv their problems. A returning God, a friendly alien or a big technological innovation. Hardly no one saw the beautiful world that surrounded them."

I get up at my feet and look out through the window. It has stopped raining. And the Moon is now raising in the east. Maybe the weather tomorrow will be okay after all, maybe even beautiful (even if that might be to much to ask for).

When I was young, well, younger than I am now, my great grandmother told me of the lemmings, a small animal that looks a bit like a hamster or a genua pig. They live high up in the North of Sweden. A lot of animals, like owl and artic foxes, depend on them for their survival. Some years there are not many lemmings at all, and a lot of animals starve. Other years there are so many lemmings that they would starv and get into fights with each other, until, one day, they begin to migrate. The lemmings pours down from the mountains; come out of their holes and like a living flood they go to the Baltic Sea where they threw themselves from the cliffs to a certain death. Some lemmings that for whatever reason did not hear the calling survive and therefore the species do not die out. My great grandmother Edda, is supposed to have said that of course it was not true; that the assumption was based of a misunderstanding of the animals behavior. And then she ended with: "But there is truly one animal that is trying to commit suicide by throwing itself of a cliff and that is homo sapiens sapiens. We bribe about our intelligence, opposite thumbs, creativity and a lot of other things but we are the true lemmings. We want to be Gods, or at least angels, but we are just animals."