Satellites

Chapter 1

I hold my breath as I open the door to my hut.

"Here we go," I mutter through my fluffy white mask. Dust and dirty air clings to my short brown hair and rubble pierces through my already hole-filled boots and scrapes my heel vigorously. I hurry along the broken path and turn right, wincing as my ankle rolls on a piece of glass. I can already feel the blood.

This is year 7014, fourteen years after my birth. Skies have long since disappeared, leaving behind streaks of sludgy grey and temperatures have spiked so high that everyone is required to wear very light fabric that covers themselves from toxins yet cools them down. Fifteen billion deaths left my mother along with four-hundred other individuals in mourning. They were the only survivors left of this wretched landscape.

Satellites are now used to keep track of people. The little satellites provide everything for us, as our government, which is now just one person, sends everything we require to them. Masks, emergency kits, scarce amounts of food, and water for an absolute emergency.  If ever we need them,  it takes just a tap on our bracelets.

I tuck a piece of my crazy brown hair away behind my ear as I start to reach the school. The school is nothing more than a stretch of rocky terrain with a teacher who scribbles what we need to know on a dull, meticulously square whiteboard. Everyone learns the same thing, regardless of age since no one is the same age as another over here.

I sit on the edge of a rock beside the boy born in 6999. He has the fairest complexion I have ever seen in my life, along with pale blue eyes and rosy cheeks. He is tall and broad shouldered with fluffy blonde hair. I look at him, but he doesn't stir. I wonder how he gets so clean in the dusty terrain.

"Alright," says the man at the front. He wears a high tech mask, with tubes that deliver him fresh oxygen. "good morning."

It's  hardly a good morning, I think angrily, but I repeat with the other students around me with what he said. Thirty or so people sit before the watery eyed professor, and ten of them were younger than me.

Our teacher dives into math equations. That's really all that we did in school, as our ancestors have long gone, leaving us behind with no answers. No one really knows what our planet looked like years and years ago. All we know is that we are in a big mess.

I start the third mental math equation when my eyes start to water.

No, no, no, I think, no, no, no...

I leave class early. I always do.

When I get home, I peel off the brown contacts. Then I look up into the mirror and into my reflection.

Water drips down my rosy cheeks and my messy brown hair clings onto my face like Velcro. I press my lips together in frustration. Crying. It was something that no one did anymore...it became a recessive gene as everyone's eyes got used to getting dirt and emotions became bland. But somehow, I still have it. And that wasn't the only thing that was unique about me.

I was about to look at my reflection again when a bang signifies the door bursting open.