Alternate Universe || Dump to remember

[01] Adventure to the Past

GENRE: General Fiction

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I heard so many stories from my grandparents. I didn't realize that there were communities unlike Greenville before I was born. Just at the thought of little to no greeneries around me is just so foreign.

"Hey, Eve!" I heard somebody called out for me. I turned my head while my hands were busy tending our backyard garden.

"What are you doing here, Isabelle?" I asked as I stood up and began to wipe off all the excess dirt from my gardening apron.

"I saw some old documents about what's it like from our grandparents' time! It's actually located in our basement," she excitedly jumped up and down, her eyes gleaming with astonishment and curiosity. I hummed and placed down all the gardening tools in our shed.

"Well then, let's get going!" I cheered as I hurriedly left the garden with Isabelle, throwing the apron to some apron holder by the back door of my home.

"I'll be back, mom!" I yelled as loud as I could so she could hear me.

"Alright, just make sure that you and Isabelle would always stick together!" I could hear her from the kitchen.

"Yes mom!" I looked at Isabelle's initial place and began to panic when she was already out of the house.

"Don't you wonder what's it like living in just some community without all these stuff?" she began to point at a building with hanging plants, a big space with trees around, and a park full of lively people around different vegetations. To see all of them nonexistent now feels wrong.

"Let's get to the basement, they already you're here anyway," Isabelle noted and opened up the door to her house and opened the door for me.

"Hurry, we still need to find some more! I'm sure there are more news paper articles and pictures than just what I have found!" she said and closed the door.

The basement felt really cramped, with many abandoned things lying around from old wardrobe clothes to small toys, it's as if Isabelle's family likes to collect memorabilia.

"Here are the ones that I've found so far," she struggled to get some kind of photo albums behind a dusty drawer by the far corner of the room. I hurriedly tried to help her get them.

"These are a lot huh!" she laughed when she was finally able to put the albums on the floor in front of us.

We then began to rummage through abandoned wardrobe drawers and squeaky cabinets. We found a lot of disregarded photos and a few tiny objects that we felt was nice to have.

We tried to clean off all the collecting dusts off the things we found and saw that some of them were labelled prettily and properly. She decided that right after removing all the dusts here, we'll clean them thoroughly up in the living room and eventually settle down in her room to begin our "adventure to the past".

"These are amazing!" she was able to sit down and marvel at the things we just collected. I opened one of the albums slowly, my heart beating fast as I was so excited to see what the pictures would be.

"It's so business-like!" I was surprised and pulled unto Isabelle's sleeve. She gapped and nodded dumbly. We didn't expect that our grandparent's time would be this advanced and modernized.

"Hm, it lacks a lot more plants though," she pointed out a lot of photos with nothing but plain old buildings. Maybe there were little small trees that was as thin as sticks around the sidewalk but nothing amazing in our eyes.

"Don't they know that having plants and trees around us helps the pollution away?" she sighed and shook her head in disappointment.

"That's because the older people of our time were all too stubborn to believe that climate change is real," we jumped up from our sitting position in shock to see Isabelle's grandma leaning on her doorframe coolly as if she wasn't that older than her mom.

"Grandma, are we glad to see you!" we stood up and bowed at her, Isabelle went ahead to press her forehead on her hand.

"Now, what were the two of you talking about?" she sat on the bed while we sat near her feet, all the objects we found from the basement in front of her. She stared at them with tears in the corner of her eyes.

"That was a pin given to me when I successfully planted 100 trees in our community," she smiled at the memory. We were amazed and held her hand.

"Grandma, we want to learn more!" Isabelle cheered.

"How did Eco-communities came to existence?"

"How did your generation convince the older one to change their old habits?"

"Who was able to speak up for your generation when it comes to talking in front of many people to convince them that climate change is real?"

All these questions made Isabelle's grandma laugh in glee.

"Well, Greta Thunberg was the first one to speak up, it was definitely a start."