Draconian Directive.

The Awakening

"It works, Mr Twigs it works. My machine works."

I could not contain my excitement as I entered my underground lab and saw the improving state of my "New Earth". New Earth is an air-locked, glass box the size of a regular low cost house. The beginning of the end came in like the proverbial thief. Heralded by a virus that severely compromised the human respiratory system, a series of natural disasters destroyed entire communities in places too remote to arouse any sort of attention.

Then volcanoes started waking up. Some rumbled from their slumber in a mighty roar that threw hot ash and coals of molten rock high into the sky. While others woke up in a huff and a puff that displaced a lot of earthlings.

It was in 2019 and I was an ambitious geeky 9 years old introvert, who loved nothing more than taking apart his gadgets and putting them back together again. It was my religion. I did not care if the governments of the world restricted their citizens' activities to couch athletics, nor did I shout "Hip, hip, hooray"  when the couch olympics ended. A year before the virus disrupted humanity's carefree existence, our esteemed scientists at the International  Institute of Science reported that we have reached a point of no return with regards to climate change.

Did we listen? When did an addict ever listen, especially when his or her favored deadly elixir is always within easy reach? Humanity was addicted to fossil fuels and we had become lethargic and irresponsible. 

Mr Twigs; a raggedy steampunk inspired miniature robot, sat mute and immobile on a plinth made of a pile of papers. An eternal frown on his face disagreed with New Earth's atmospheric changes. New Earth and the huge lab are part of an underground facility that was under the curatorial hands of my family.

For centuries, this subterranean world of catacombs going deep into the nadirs of the earth served as a sanctuary for our clan; Amathole We Mthwakazi. However fate was not that kind to our people. The earth suffered a lot of disasters that drastically changed the course of evolution on the planet. With the Covid19 pandemic, came mistrust as nations tried to find someone else to blame.

Nefarious agents took advantage of the chaos that ensued. Soon it was everyone to his kind, as irrefutable evidence emerged that some vaccines were biological weapons targeting specific groups of people. Almost overnight Africa found her children thrust back into servitude. Her leaders became careless in their scramble to save their own skins. Selling out the poor and powerless country buffoons, who being inebriated with dogmatism alien to their own existence, offered nothing but whimpering pleas of mercy to their oppressors.

I woke up from my suspended animation sleep at the beginning of the 41st century. It was early winter morning in 4099, as I was to later find out, when I woke up from my sleep with a terrible headache. Moments later, I recalled a series of horrible nightmares about people I knew, drowning while I helplessly watch. Somehow the lake had a membrane-like substance that rendered any rescue attempt a futile exercise.

I am glad that this is now a flickering wisp of light in the vast eerily silent and cold tundra that is now the scene of most of my dreams.

"I think if they found out about it I would be worshipped as a god. However given the fact of how much we, as a species, messed up in the many names of the various deities that are now forgotten. Mine is a family name I shall not allow to suffer the same fate."

My robotic companion's usual reply bothered me for the first time in the last seven years since my rude awakening. I  came out of cryogenic sleep as a result of a failed protocol that was part of emergency procedures set up in case the back up power failed. My father, the then celebrated now forgotten astrophysicist and leader of the Amathole We Mthwakazi; Dr Bangani Simon Dalindyebo made the decision to seal the remnants of our clan in kwaXhosa on the eve of Emancipation Day 2035. The decision to enter suspended animation was made seven months later on the eve of my twenty sixth birthday; 01/03/2036.