A/N: This was originally posted as a separate story on my account but I decided to post it as a long-ass one shot in here. So here it is. This story is based on the film Elysium (which pretty much sucked in my opinion) and because I liked the idea of a space station that was like a tiny planet and dystopian stories, I wrote this.
Before
In 2050, the world population reached a number of 9.6 billion inhabitants. By 2060, it had increased to 11 billion. The numbers were still rising and the world was overpopulated. Water resources were running out, drought had stricken across the globe, food was scarce and robots handled the day to day law enforcement. Jobs were hard to get and proper housing was a rare phenomenon. Almost everyone lived in shacks, thrown together from old bricks, wooden boards and, if they were lucky, an isolated roof. New technological inventions were no longer a worldwide hype - every single person was busy with surviving and trying to supply for their families.
Almost every single person. The rich and wealthy of planet Earth felt like they deserved more, as they had done for centuries before. And so, with their money and some of the smartest scientists and builders combined, they started building their own little paradise because Earth no longer could supply everything for their ever-increasing demands. And where exactly was their little paradise, you might wonder? In space.
In the year 2055, the rich and wealthy of planet Earth began building a massive space habitat that could house thousands of people. It was never supposed to be a space ship - it just had to launched and then it would be usable for close to forever. It would use the Earth's orbit and with artificial gravity and an artificial ozone layer, it would be perfectly habitable for humans. In 2062, the giant spinning wheel was launched and the experiment had succeeded - the first space shuttles with Elysium's new inhabitants on it left a week after the launch to start up their little community.
Two months later, several more space shuttles left to Elysium. Some rich and wealthy people worked on Earth and lived on Elysium. As if that wasn't yet selfish enough, Elysium was only accessible by shuttles. Of course, people found a way around that soon enough. They built their own space shuttles with the blue prints someone clever stole from the company that produced the original shuttles. Several shuttles reached Elysium and once they set foot on Elysium, they could not be sent back to Earth. That was the one humane rule Elysium had concerning the people on Earth.
Naturally, reaching Elysium became harder. Citizens of the space habitat got special numbers tattooed on their arms in invisible ink. When setting foot on Elysium, robots scanned your arm. Were they unable to find such a number, you were sent back to Earth before you could say 'unfair'. Of course, people caught on to this as well and began copying the numbers on their arms before they flew to Elysium.
So the people on Earth were punished - all the Med-Bays in the hospitals on Earth were moved to Elysium. Med-Bays were the greatest invention ever made. They could heal every broken bone, remove every scar, heal every single illness that existed. The only thing they could not do was stop the aging process, but with a Med-Bay in your possession, you were almost immortal either way. Apart from a few rich and wealthy geniuses who had helped produce the Med-Bays, no one knew the exact science behind it. But everyone on Earth did know that if you were severely ill, having access to a Med-Bay would be the solution.
Harry Styles turned twenty-one in the year 2063. It wasn't a very good year. First, he lost his long-term boyfriend. Second, his sister became severely ill. And third? There was nothing he could do about either of them.
2063 had seemed so promising when the new year had started. He'd turn twenty-one, the legal age to apply for a job at the factory and he and Louis would finally be able to get married. For living on planet Earth in the second half of the twenty-first century, this wasn't bad. He could've done a lot worse. Instead of a shack, he and his mum and sister owned a tiny house with one bedroom and a sofa-turned-bed. They had a teeny kitchen with running water and food wasn't awfully hard to come by where they lived.
