DECEMBER FIRST
ANNIE O'CONNOR
PLANET EARTH
YEAR 2100
When Annie hurried across the plaza, she saw snow for the first time in her life.
Of course it wasn't real snow, the kind that used to fall from from the sky when her mother was still young, the kind that she had only seen pictures of. It wasn't soft ice showering her gently.
It was chemicals, expensive ones, the little town was hardly able to afford it, but the nostalgic mayor had decided that it was worth it. He had put up machines between buildings, machines that made the snow-like chemicals fall over the heads of the passing, making the ground almost white.
Annie considering opening her mouth, putting her tongue out and letting the flakes melt to water, just like her mum had told her she used to do - but decided against it since this wasn't real snow, and that she knew damn well that it could be made out of anything. Instead, she took her hat off and collected the falling sensation.
She carried the snow carefully the last bit home.
Her mum was up. Sitting at the kitchen table, tablet in hand, watching the constant flow of incoming news. She smiled when Annie got inside, though, her smile seemed to grow weaker with everyday of the disease eating her up from the inside.
"Did you know the new used to be printed on paper once a day?" she asked. Annie sighed slightly, she had grown a little tired of her mother being stuck in the past. "Or on the TV, twice a day, no more than that."
"I didn't know that," Annie said. Sitting down at the table, placing the cap between them.
Her mother gasped.
"That can't be-"
"It isn't real," Annie said. "Just something to look like it. It's all over town."
Her mother looked a little disappointed, but didn't lose her smile.
"It's beautiful," she whispered, touched it, then frowned. "Warm."
"Isn't it supposed to be?"
She shook her head. "Snow is cold. Was. Was cold."
Annie rose from her seat. "You can keep it if you want, I'll throw it out otherwise."
"Wait," her mum too rose slowly, wincing at the pain. She walked into her room, leaving Annie waiting impatiently waiting at the table. Her mum got back, with what seemed like a thin sheet of cardboard under her arm.
"You can see it as a birthday gift, but it's supposed to be revised the first of December."
"What's a December?" Annie asked, tired, knowing that this was something old, something she had never asked for.
"A month, from the old system. Another way of saying day 335." she looked excited, thinking that her daughter was interesting in the era of her childhood. She passed the sheet to her.
Annie took it, critically. It was what seemed like an old picture, a animated landscape (laughtworthy unrealistic) with little men in red clothes. Numbers were randomly placed all over it, along with bits of yellowed plastic that covered small openings.
"What's this?"
"A advent calendar. From when I was a kid, and christmas still was a thing- you know what christmas is, right? I have told you-"
"Yes, I know." Annie knew damn well by now, all of the lost traditions of her mother and grandmothers childhoods.
"I just found it, I thought it was long gone... " her mum seemed lost in thought for a second. "You're supposed to open the number of the day."
"Okay."
"Aren't you going to open it?"
"Later," she said, the look of excitement in her mums eyes dying and being replaced by pure disappointment.
"Oh," she said. "Okay."
Annie was about to leave as she remembered something. "I was at the store today. We will get our ranson tomorrow."
"Terrific," her mum tried her best to sound excited. She looked at the teblet for a second, still rolling the endless news. "They will celebrate the anniversary of the Evacuation in thirteen days."
Annie stopped. "Okay," she said, then went straight to her room. She sat down before the Screen, watching it lit up in the darkness of the room.
"The Evacuation," she said, then waited for a moment as the Screen processed her order. They had the cheapest, and therefore slowest version.
The Screen had pulled up the official article of The Evacuation. YEAR 2025, DAY 341.
The day of her birth.
Also the day that the 100 richest family of England got sent to a high developed civilisation on March.
So that's what the snow was about, she realised. It wasn't some nostalgic act of the mayor. It was all a celebration of the traitors who had left them, and taken all the money they were desperately in need of with them.
"Off," Annie commanded.
The Screen turned black.
Annie stared at the sheet. The calendar.
She didn't open it. She hated the fact that her mother was stuck in the past. That she wasn't in the present enough to realise that they were starving. Annie hated her name, and the fact that she was named of some Billy Jeans song, recorded almost 100 years before her birth.
She turned the screen function all off, stared out the window that now showed the outside, the fake snow.
It hadn't snowed since the day she was born.
