A Dot In The Universe

What I Know Now

Even now the world isn't desolate enough of a place. People are dying, people are sick with illnesses never heard of that have no cure, treatment, or temporary relief. People are starving, people are homeless, people are wandering the deserts of demolished forests like fucking animals. But it's never quite bad enough until it comes to you. Then you are forced to look into the eyes of your neighbor who's a mother of three and two minutes away from giving up, the boy who is too young to be alone who's raising his younger siblings while running from the police for stealing a loaf of bread. One fucking loaf. The leaders of the world are coated in targets, no one is certain when one will drop dead one day from ricin poisoning, or something more vulgar like snake venom in their wine or acid in their face wash. The wealthy congealed in the greenest regions, where they blocked themselves from the reality of what occurred outside. A reporter was as wanted as a hit man. The words of truth were a reign of bullets on the shielded and sustained. The rest were left to rot in the scorching sand and belligerent rays of the sun, or suffocate in the sand storms. The world had a bleak face outside the Eutopia of the city. No one went in, and no one went out. A revolt was rising outside the wall, and those on the inside always knew the tide was coming. The ultimate back fire, only it would be more like the sun crashing down on their quiet life styles.

I was on the inside. I had worked for the FIRA since the collapse of the fishing industry. Ten years ago the ocean was stripped of life from the shell fish and smallest organisms, to the graceful giants of the deep. The FIRA was designed to cushion the enormous economic fault in the North west hemisphere by offering jobs to those in the fishing industry, including myself. I remember within the first year of employment there as a technician, I was kidnaped by pirates. They were searching for the remaining active fishing ports to steal the stock and use themselves. My sister's husband was the captain. They were the leaders of an underground rebellion which predicted the political unrest which would soon ensue between the Scandinavian and Slavic countries. When they asked me to join, I refused and returned to FIRA. I was later notified of their deaths after their base was located and "cleared", as though it were a file of meaningless documents. I still stayed. Over time, I rose to CTO, and became one of the most wealthy individuals in the city. I suppose I forgot the "money can't buy happiness" mantra, because my coping mechanism was the exact opposite. In a way I felt as though I'd killed the rebellion. I leaked their information to FIRA, and even had a few opportunities to preserve their confidentiality. My sister was pregnant at the time of her death. That was what guarded my free way of thoughts from sleep like a rabid dog. So I bought. I bought houses, entertainers, alcohol, drugs, friends, boats, the list went on. But I'm no special case. This city was numb. There was no crime, no unemployment, no political unrest, only gossip of what the CEO next door did to feel alive. What I did to feel alive. Gossip became like another step on the food pyramid, or Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It was how we didn't lose control. Only now, people whispered of crooked, ragged, uncivilized humans breaking the wall from every side, coming to take all we owned. Most were angry, not knowing what was truly in store for them, how many would survive and wish they didn't. Of course I found myself in that sad stack of humans, as death also had an annoying habit of ignoring me. The rebellion laughs at me from the tawny sky.

Before I lose my mind, I would like to explain. My name is Nicholai, I lived on the coast of Norway as a fisherman. After we sucked the land dry of oil and were ransacked by the Russians, we were depending rather heavily on the catch of the day. I was given a day off after an oddly light load, then two, then four. After I'd been given a week off the port, the news was delivered that from Tromso to Siberia, the sea had been confirmed dead. It escalated rather quickly from there. Our leaders were well aware it was the unbalance provoked by carbon dioxide exhaust, but couldn't settle on a solution. Russia relied heavily on just about every source of energy which oozed the toxin, and some other idiot blurted during the conference they would never trust Russia with nuclear power. Naturally, there was a heated argument. I had already joined FIRA by that point, where I was safe from the draft which was ultimately an aggressive regime to wipe out all environmentally hazardous energy sources, and replenish the areas with cooperative, and ideal western democracy for clean energy. What we didn't realize was we were not at war with the destruction earth, we were at war with each other. FIRA was the primary support of the massacre, the reason my sister had joined her husband to bring the fledgling organization to ashes. I would've stayed with them had I known what was scheming behind the perfect faces and etiquette of the top ranks of FIRA. Ironically, it is exactly where I stand now.

When my sister collected me from my dorm, it was like waking up mid day after staying awake long after it grew dark. The light was tearing me apart. I was exposed for the first time to what really happened outside the FIRA empire. In the sand I saw a child try to steal food from an adult. They killed the child. Pyrrhic as it was, the world went on. Then I gained the mind set that all life was meaningless to an extent. It's disposal was small, but a waste none the less. My sister told me the longer you lived in the sand, the more you realized how large the impact really was. She said no life lost was really ever as small as it seemed the moment it happened. She was right. The little girl's death became propaganda to sell an idea. A concept which only the recklessly illogical brain could grasp. Mutual respect in every being.

What I saw in the sand were dangerous people who believed in taking from one person to build up another. I later realized it was no different in the city. The wealthy took from the less wealthy to become more wealthy. The world was always a place of vicious cycles, I guess I just paid less attention to it then.

 I wonder if it's still worth trying to make a change. Even if we were to change this  unfair system, the world outside is still a ticking time bomb. I guess we never realize how disposable we are until a massive natural disaster puts you in your place by wiping out half a fucking continent. Our galaxy is a dot in the universe, but that never stopped us from believing that as an individual we had the ability to take over the world. At this point I suppose I could consider myself on the top of the world our little crowd of pompous asses created.

I suppose you could say I welcome what is to come. For thirty years my heart has been beating without life, but what kind of life could I live in the world as it's become. Science programs are dedicated to health care and locating planets which could sustain life, only now people don't pursue these carriers because they care, they pursue them because of the title and power attached to them.