The End [Completed]

1

-Cattleya

“Cattleya!” Dad
screamed “take cover, Cattleya!” I sprang up and ran to him, shielding my head and on the brink of tears. He scooped me up and we ran, mom held the door open in
her nightgown and we headed for the basement. Dad gave me to her and shut the door, finding anything to
bolt it shut. Mom hid with me under the stairs of the basement, comforting my sobs “are we going to die?” I cried so innocently. “no, my darling we’re okay” dad said, “we’re okay”.

Raging thunder storms with hail the size of basketballs burst through our roof that night while we were asleep. That was the first night of many incidences where weather fluctuations were happening all around the world. I was only 5 years old.

The government released a news broadcast that all resources for fire fuel were running out. Wood was becoming hard to procure. Trees were illegal to cut down as our oxygen levels in the atmosphere were
becoming dangerously low with minimal trees in each city and town.

“Our plan in assisting with fuel sources are as follows:
You are to bring every newspaper, magazine or book you own to your public library, where it will be scanned
in and made available to the public via the internet.

Once every text has been scanned all the resources will then be divided among the citizens of that city or town to be used as fire fuel to cook with or kept warm, using this to warm water for washing or whatever use you may need it for. There should be enough fuel for everybody for a few years. There will be government officials at each library aiding with this transition. All our information will be safe and accessible to everybody requiring it. Don’t worry folks, all of our information is secure, and nobody will freeze this winter” the government official assured us. She made us feel safe and looked after. She made us believe the government was there looking out for our best interest.

We ransacked our house for every book, paper, magazine we owned. We filled up the transport van and drove to our nearest library. There were queues upon
queues of people there waiting for their turn to contribute. When the week was over it was time to collect our fuel. We received enough fuel to burn for that winter and every winter for 5 years.

Later, Dad had rebuilt our house with reinforced materials that were made available to him by his company. Dad was a carpenter and he studied architecture. He knew how to make our home a fortress. Our home was weather proof and I knew we’d be safe.

We had officially transitioned to a paperless world and 7 years after external feul sources was no longer necessary, all our information was stored onto hard drives and computers. Storage had gotten much bigger in that period of time to accommodate all the information and
technology had developed to the extent where paper was not necessary to be burnt to keep warm.

We had cooling/warming system standardly built into every home around the world. Enough to withstand extreme weather conditions such as the iciest winters and the hottest of summers. The system was able to warn of tornadoes in the area, or seismic activity causing earthquakes. It had the function of going on lockdown when there were any natural disasters imminent. People was then safe in their homes till it had passed.

We relied on our government to get us through the worst of times. I am now 17 and our lives were good again, despite having to deal with erratic weather, we adjusted and moved on, it became a part of our lives.

We had school most days when weather was acceptable enough to drive in, other days we’d have school over the internet. Our teachers would connect their video calling to every student and give us our lesson or assignment.

My history assignment was a report I had to do on the old world. Why living with waste and eating junk had caused such unique weather changes. I wrote an incredible report that I was quite proud of and couldn’t wait to turn it in.

After having breakfast, I went to our computer to print out my report. I sat down, waiting for the internet to load, twiddling my thumbs as the hourglass on the screen kept rotating ‘hmm, that’s odd that it would take this long to load’ I thought. I switched the computer off and on again. I had heard that the old-world people had to do this with previous technology devices when it failed to work.

Our tech very seldom failed to work, in fact, this is the first time in my generation that our tech has ever glitched. As the computer rebooted I had a very strange feeling in the pit of my stomach, ‘it can’t be the food’ I thought.

Our food was healthy and organic to the point of only biodegradable products including packaging. There is no way our food ever went bad; our tech once again has been proven to surpass all possibility our fridges for example gets rid of waste or food that has gone bad through a dumping system built in in order not to contaminate other food stuffs. So, unless the fridge isn’t working like it should which it was I went to check then something was just not right with me.

This feeling was intuition something was happening, and I didn’t know what it was. The internet once again didn’t load and this time I knew it wasn’t the tech. The internet for the very first time was not working. It was off. I was stunned.

My bad feeling became worse when a realisation occurred, I didn’t have internet. I didn’t have my report. I couldn’t communicate with anybody or research anything. All the information we ever owned in the world was gone. Inaccessible. That’s when panic set it. Bile rose to my throat as I choked on the thought of how dangerous the world is with no information. We are sitting ducks. Is it just our house? Maybe it’s the whole country.

As I ran to the monitor and flicked through news broadcasts that luckily ran on a different frequency, my panic was reflected in the news anchors face as they reported the worst news I could have imagined, for the first time in history, we had no internet, throughout the world!

It was an international crisis, and everything was about
to change.

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