2050: A Time of Courage

Chapter 1: Shemik

The snow falls steadily, distracting me from my lessons as I glance out the classroom window. It is cold, something that never used to bother me. Having lived in Kraków for my entire life, the winter weather has always been bearable, but this year has been particularly difficult.

The school's heating system has been malfunctioning for weeks, and no one has the money to fix it. Students have been wearing their coats in every classroom of the school, though my threadbare excuse for a jacket serves as poor protection from the cold.

I glance to the clock in the corner of the room. It is one of those clocks from the 2020s, one of the last to run off batteries instead of being solar powered.

10:05.

I will be in maths for fifteen more minutes.

The teacher is talking nonstop in Polish. He wears the most convincing fake smile I have seen in a while, seeming as though he genuinely cares about all of this.

He doesn't.

One look into his mind tells me he can't wait to get out of here. Teaching twelve-and-thirteen-year-old primary school students is driving him crazy, and all he wants is to go home for the weekend to be with his wife and child.

I can't say that I blame him. I can't wait to leave school for the day, making my way home to be with my mother and sister.

My mother.

These days, whenever I have time to think, it seems as though she is the only thing on my mind.

She hasn't been herself since my father and the twins were killed, accused of being thieves when I was the guilty one. The city patrol wouldn't listen to me, even though I begged them to. It didn't matter what I said; they always accuse the oldest first, and it didn't help matters that all three of my family members confessed.

It would have been better in the long run if they had taken me; losing one family member is much easier to cope with than losing three.

My mother would have been fine without me.

There is a knock at the classroom door, and despite myself I flinch.

Surely, this isn't who I think it is.

But it is my sister.

Milena has clearly run all the way from her secondary school, her light brown hair falling across her face and a German textbook still cradled in the crook of her arm.

"Shemik," she looks at the teacher with a pleading expression, "I need Shemik."

Milena looks calm, having mastered the skill of acting over her sixteen years of life. She looks a bit disheveled, but other than that anyone might think she was just running a bit late for something important.

Being the only one who can read her true thought process, I can tell just how afraid she is.

The neighbor stopped by our house again, the way she does every morning, to check up on our mother. The door was locked, and she didn't want to call the city patrol over nothing. The neighbor called Milena's school, but Milena forgot her key at home again.

She knows I never forget mine.

Milena is still pleading with the teacher, now speaking furiously in Polish. She is practically shouting, the volume of her voice attracting my classmates' attention as they crane their necks to stare.