In a World without Art

"You never do anything I tell you, all you do is spend your time doing that stupid art thing!" she spat! This was normal now, she'd yell, I'd run out into the field. I was sick of this, maybe I should run away, but then there's my younger sister, she's the only family I have left.

Out in the field, it's calm, the soft breeze was nice, unlike the hot breath of Ms Barlow when she's yelling at me. Maybe I should just stop doing art, maybe then she'd actually look at me like a person. Then again, art is the only thing that actually matters to me.

As I make my way towards the field I grab my satchel from its place by the door, I can still hear Ms Barlow yelling at me. "Do this, do that," she'd say, "Why are you wasting your potential on art, no one likes that stuff anymore." She's right though art is dead, music is dead, creativity is dead, all people do now is eat, sleep, work, repeat.

I sit down in the grass, with one of my favourite views in front of me and the book open. The book is something very precious to me, it's an art book from around the 23rd century, although it's a couple thousand years old, it's still in pretty good condition. I found it in the attic a couple of years ago, it taught me everything thing I know about art.

I was a 'normal' kid until I discovered art, I remember playing here with some of the other kids from the house and my sister. We would play ball games and I would run around but as soon as I started to show interest in art they stopped playing with me, talking with me, even looking at me.

Since Ms Barlow doesn't think I'm much use she lets me 'play with the rubbish' while the other kids help out with 'real jobs'. In the shed there is a lot of old, broken electronics, I don't know what most of it is, but after the war, there were a lot of crap electronics.

World War 4 happened about two hundred years ago, some scientist created an Artificial Intelligence that decided it was superior to humans and decided to attack. The humans won eventually, but at the expense of all electronics. I've read in books that the world was completely electronic but we've gone backwards into a time where there is now only fairly basic electronics.

The shed is my home, no one wants to come here, one side is my bed and a small bathroom, on other side is my work table with all of the scrap electronics. I have repaired an old music player so I can listen to the old music discs. Most of the old stuff that no one uses anymore is just shoved in here, things like books and paper. I have also made myself a friend, it doesn't talk and I have to keep it turned off most of the time since it's form of AI and no one trust that anymore so they'd try to destroy it like they did to the first one I made.

I spend most of my time sitting on the roof of the shed watching the other kids while drawing, I've tried to join in before but the just gave me a disgusted look and just walked away. It's a nice view from up here, I can see the field from here and the trees that surround the house, there is also a lake that I swim in sometimes.

Then I see Ms Barlow, and she sees me. She's glowing with rage; she's told me off many times for being up here. While I get down she yells "There you are, where have you been all day! I bet you just did your stupid art thing all day!" she passes my satchel and pushes me towards the edge of the property "That's it, I've had it! leave and don't ever come back."

When Ms Barlow kicked me out I didn't go far because I still needed a few things, I just sat in the forest and drew. It was dark and everyone should be asleep by now. I snuck into the shed and grabbed more art supplies, my robot and a blanket. I needed some food to, so I snuck into the kitchen, being careful not to make any sounds since everyone is asleep, I grab a loaf of bread, a jar of jam, a couple of apples and a knife. Then I see her, my sister. I sprint as fast as I can out of there, into the safety of the trees, hoping that she doesn't tell anyone I was there.

It was dark, but the full moon was big and bright, giving off enough light to see everything clearly. I was tempted to stop and draw, but I needed to find shelter.

I'd been walking for few hours and was getting tired, so I sat down underneath a big tree that had probably been there longer than the city itself. I could see the city from here, it was alive and bright even though it was very early in the morning, I'd never seen anything like it, with its bright twinkling lights, loud noise, and tall, towering buildings. I thought about it and it would be safer to sleep during the day, plus I wanted to paint the sunrise over the city in the morning. I could tell it was still a few hours until sunrise, so under the bright light of the moon, I drew, I sketched out my painting and I did a couple of drawings of the lively city.

I was tired but I didn't want to nap in case I missed the sunrise, so I decided to try to set up my robot friend. I called it Robot because I couldn't keep calling it my robot friend. I turned Robot on, it looked at me and I smiled back, it looked around, observing, learning. I spent the next few hours teaching it about the world and all about art.

The sunrise was beautiful, bright and colourful, I was a perfect picture and I was glad I decided to wait for this. The sunrise was a mix of peachy oranges and bright yellows, the perfect sunrise, just a few clouds but it looked even more perfect behind the city. I could see Robot taking it all in, I'd told it about sunrises and now it's seeing it for itself.

My painting was pretty much finished, it just needed to dry but I was really tired at this point so I told Robot that I'm going to have asleep and to wake me if something happens. But lucky that didn't happen and I slept well, it was late afternoon by the time I woke up and I remembered just how hungry I was. While eating I thought about it and came to a conclusion that it would probably be better to just stay here and build a life.

So that's what I did. I found a way to create different coloured paints with natural resources and I have to occasionally go into the city to get some paper, or some food, or somethings I can't make or find myself. This was the life I wanted to live, so I made it happen.