It would be a lie to say the world didn't see it coming. A complete fallacy. The warnings blared for decades, each generation stacking another layer of panic and prophecy onto the last. The 2020s, the 2010s, the 1990s and 1980s—decade after decade, the same dire messages, the same parade of expert testimony and artistic doomsaying, all swept under the rug by those who could afford to ignore it. We were warned, and warned, and warned, until the warnings themselves became background noise. Most of us were hypnotized by their lies, numbed by the repetition of disaster movies and dystopian books, the endless news cycles and the scientists whose doomsday predictions became punchlines at dinner parties.
But the punchline was this: it happened. The air so hot and thin it scalded the lungs. Water rationed and hoarded, its price set by men in glass towers who never had to worry about thirst. The robots came, too, not as saviors or slaves but as middle managers of misery, enforcing quotas and boundaries, their algorithms tweaked to optimize oppression. All of it controlled by men—greedy, desperate little men—who needed to keep us in place, to keep us working, to keep the machine running just long enough for them to escape the consequences.
Now, all I see is desolation. The housing estate where I grew up is a graveyard, the town a patchwork of empty windows and shuttered stores. Those who survived the first waves of heat and famine are locked in their homes, terrified of the next pandemic or the next mutation, or the things that crawl in from the wasted edges of civilization, hungry for anything. Flags hang from every crumbling balcony, ragged symbols of a patriotism that’s curdled into hatred. We’re taught to hate each other, to fight each other, because it keeps us from fighting them.
But someone has to see it. Someone has to remember what was, and imagine what could be. I will protect what’s left, even if it’s only a memory. I will keep it sacred. I will find a new way to live, and so must you.
