Alles ist Jetzt (Everything is Now)

The Future

Jonas woke up suddenly on the cold hard floor. He opened his eyes and saw himself to be in a beige coloured bunker of sorts. He quickly jumped up, unaware of where he was, or when he was. He looked around, seeing the bunker also had a solitary set of stairs and a small halogen lamp, somehow bright enough to illuminate the entire room. He looked around and saw no one else, but saw something that was impossible to notice.

He saw a diagram, a mind map of sorts, not of words, but of people. Jonas stood in awe at this, as he observed pictures of the people he knew, such as his dead father, his mother and Bartosz, and some people he couldn't recognize, such as a woman with red curly hair wearing a suit. Every person was connected to another via a string, some only having one string attached to them, while some having many going to seemingly unrelated people. Then he settled on his picture, connected with a red string to the man he saw earlier, claiming to be an adult version of himself. He pondered over this for some time.

Jonas was cautious, though, always checking to see if anyone had crept into the bunker every minute or so. The bunker had a weird smell to it, like used ammunition and the fact that only one wall was covered in pictures gave him the creeps. He wanted to study the wall more and try to understand it, but he was eventually broken out of his intense concentration by the sound of a machine outside. Sensing that he was not safe, he quickly ran up the staircase.

As he neared the top of the stairs it looked like it was snowing outside. But as Jonas climbed out of the underground bunker, it quickly became apparent that the snow was not snow, but fine particles of some strange substance that he had not seen before. Further more, as he slowly looked around, he saw something was not quite right.

He was standing in a forest, except the forest had been partly destroyed. All that remained were some trees, all the same grey colour of the stuff that floated around in the air and some scout style huts, made out of the few fallen branches that remained in the area. He continued on through this ruined forest, and he soon came to a bank, which he climbed over to reach the main road.

He started to recognize the area as Winden, but not as he knew it. The main road was littered with cars, barricades, spiked devices, danger signs and more items that Jonas couldn't recognize. All of this in front of the power plant, the building that always shadowed over the small town, now destroyed, as if it had been bombed.

Jonas walked with a careful step towards the signs. "Danger! Radiation affected area!", they read. Ignoring the signs, he continued to walk through the apocalyptic area, his face gobsmacked, looking at the ruins around him.

Suddenly, he heard a car, more of a large truck, with hissing pipes. He spun round, and saw it was heavily armoured, and had at least 10 people riding on it, all armed with rifles. One of the people, a man wearing a balaclava, jumped off and shouted "On the ground!", kneeing him in the back, causing him to fall to his knees. Jonas put his hands up as the truck stopped, and the gang of people riding on it jumped off, all with menacing gazes. Jonas, still on his knees, asked "Where am I? What year is this?", to the person standing directly in front of him, a woman with a long scar running across her head and black flowing hair, which caught the particulate matter as the wind blew it along.

The woman took off her face mask, but didn't answer him, just looking over the top of his head, as if staring off in the distance. Jonas turned his head to see that she was staring at a flying quad-copter, carrying a payload of sorts. It flew quickly, soon disappearing behind what remained of the forest. The woman then looked back down towards Jonas, with him fearing for his life. "Willkommen in der Zukunft.", she said, "Welcome to the Future" and she punted the butt of her rifle against his head, knocking him out.