If and Only If

Chapter 11 - Then

I was walking along the ocean, mostly just to escape my depressing home. Everything in my home reminded me that our world was going to fall apart in three years.

I don't know which is worse: my failing attempts to save us or the fact that no one else is helping. Or the fact that no one else knows.

Something washed up by my feet, and I stopped to look at it absentmindedly.

Then recoiled in disgust.

It was a dead fish.

A. Dead. Fish.

I looked up and away from the gruesome sight and glanced down the stretch of the beach. Horrifyingly and unsurprisingly, there were dead fish spread everywhere. The light breeze on the beach paused, allowing the stench of rotting flesh reached my nostrils, and I inhaled the sickly sweet odor.
I don't think our estimated survival time was very accurate.

I needed to do something. And fast.
~~~~~~~~~~
I contacted the Coordinators immediately and they allowed me in their office.

I told them everything. I told them the things I had already told them in the previous meetings and then told them even more. The birds going away, the fire in the woods, the plants dying, the fish on the beach, everything.

They listened to me patiently and then put me in a pod and travelled to some unknown destination.

When I got out, I was shocked.

In front of me was a huge chain-link fence. It stretched at least three miles in front of me, and I couldn't see the ends of it. Inside, the first thing I noticed was the color: green. Plants were everywhere, colors bursting out with freshness, cleanness, aliveness. I nearly started crying as I realized how much my world has died.

Other than the multitude and overwhelming amounts of plants, there were neat homes lined up along a freshly created road. Some pods were already set up in front of homes, and I even saw some people moving in.

I looked at the Coordinators, wondering what this was. They started to explain.

This was the solution.

This small community was the solution to the world dying. They would take all prominent leaders, all important figures, all of the necessary people, and place them inside this perfect community.

But what about everyone else?

They were to be left outside in the dying world to fend on their own.

They invited me to live in there.

I walked away.

How could I live in there for the rest of my life knowing that everyone else was dying?

I couldn't. But I knew what I had to do.
I had to spread the word.