Trip To Tomorrow
Penicuik 1915
I woke up expecting the chilly bite of the wind against my exposed skin, the dark shabby walls of our house, the coal in the fire who would have generated warmth and a small amount of light turned to grey ash, my dad would have gone to work in the paper mill and Penicuik’s cold grey sky would be looming above my head.
But I Victoria Burns did not wake up in a cold bed but in a warm one and I wasn’t wearing my grubby nightgown and clutching an old worn out rag doll instead I wore a silk shirt with mother of pearl buttons and trousers which looked like they had been deliberately cut short to my knee and clutching an expensive china doll with silky blonde curls.
I threw off the covers and ran to the window the buildings were tall and they looked like they could touch the sky, people where talking to small, thin, objects and giving them weird instructions like “Siri call Sandra for me please.” Little children zoomed about ten feet off the ground on small, sleek platforms, and flashy futuristically looking things that looked suspiciously like our cars sped through the air occasionally slamming the hands on the steering wheel that immediately emitted a horrendous sound that made me clutch my ear in pain.
Suddenly someone knocked on the entrance of my room which was decorated to fit a king. A woman that looked like my mother but wore completely different clothing walked in “The shower is warm, the pancakes are ready, and apple juice is on the table Hun, oh, almost forgot lunch is in the microwave,” she chirped I looked at her weird what was a microwave? She ignored my look and carried on “I’m off to work you be good Hun, I’ll give you £5 pounds if you behave!” wait, hold up! Did she just say she would give me money? We never had any money to spare my father earned barely a shilling working in the paper mill!
My breakfast tasted bittersweet, full of nutrients and very filling I explored the house which looked like a fairy-tale version of my own some metal board had a pristine, white shirt and some mechanism which spewed steam rolled backwards and forwards; the shower as I later found out was a rectangular box the let out powerful jets of either cold or hot water and when you came out you were blasted by hot hair that dried you instantly, the bathroom was full of various smelling lotions and potions. There was a living room full of electronics A television that talked to you and was as big as…as….I couldn’t really come up with a simile so let’s just say it was 3 metres by 2 metres in diameter there was a glass table on which I could scroll and listen to music, level the temperature of the house, order food, play games and many more things I swear there was even an “application” as the television called it to learn other languages like Chinese and Spanish and Indian, the glass table had a label with the work “computer” written on it in beautiful swirly, cursive writing.
I also found stairs leading down to the basement there were tones of broken things, things that looked like they came from “my” era a hobby horse, marbles, dolls, wooden figurines, a chunky looking television…
“AAAAHHHH!!!!!” I shouted as a huge black spider lowered itself in front of me, I instinctively jumped back and my arm hit the boiling hot pipe behind me.
I sat up cold sweat dripping down my face a warm coal had landed on my arm, dad must have relit the fire before he left, it was all a dream but what if Penicuik, Scotland, Earth as well shall be like my dream one day? How long will it take for it to change? A decade? A century? A millennium even? Was my dream a view of the future? Of how Earth might be one day? I shall never know for sure.
The End
