Three short weeks

Have you ever wondered if your life had a purpose bigger than yourself?

Larger than your fears of not fitting in? Larger than your stresses about what to eat, who to be friends with and how to get a boyfriend?

Sometimes I wished that I did not have a bigger purpose. The responsibility was too great for a girl who hadn’t yet reached double digits. Nobody else seemed worried or consumed with this type of thinking. I was nothing special. Why should it be me - insignificant me - who had a bigger purpose?

Yet.. I knew that I did.

My alarm rang, warning me to brace myself. It was 6:45pm. Time for an update.

The images that flashed before my eyes were horrific. Fire ripping apart buildings and what was left of trees. Acid rain. Avalanches of fractured ice crashing into a black sea that seemed to grow deeper and wider by the second. Mushroom clouds spraying grey foam against a brown sky. The ticking of rapid fire machine guns. People screaming. People begging. People dying.

I wasn’t yet an adult, but I would turn 10 in three short weeks… and then I would be.

The idea of being an adult terrified me. I did not know what was expected of me, but what I did know was that other adults didn’t seem to know either. That thought was not as comforting to me as it was to my friends. They were happy that nobody seemed to know what to do. They could relax knowing that those who should know better - those who were infinitely more experienced - seemed equally inept.

To my mind that was not relaxing. That was insanity. And so, on me, the pressure mounted.

We had learned in history that there used to be governments who controlled everything and made decisions for great big groups of people. We all knew the catastrophic disasters that had resulted from that system. Humans just could not, it seemed, overcome their selfishness. When put under pressure, people save themselves. When opportunities arise, people line their own nests. Always. To hell with everyone who falls off the edge.

Now we didn’t have those people in control and it was everyone for themselves. I wasn’t sure if it was better, worse or the same. There were still factions and alliances and enemies. People still stepped on those below them to get what they wanted. If they could, people would still demand instant gratification regardless of the consequences. And at a basic level, it was still “to hell with everyone who falls off the edge.”

My stomach growled aggressively, more urgent than my usual baseline of moderate hunger. I recognised that I would need to eat soon.

I’d been alone since I was able to walk and feed myself, just like everyone else my age.

I did not know if I had come from a laboratory test tube or if I’d had the ‘old fashioned’ type of parents. To be honest, I wouldn’t have known them either way so it probably didn’t matter.

All I had in my possession from my toddler years was a small black leather notebook full of handwritten stories.

I read that book of stories cover to cover every night, and every night I had the same thought.

What if we could try some of this again?

The stories were full of hope and love and humans caring for other humans.. and even animals?! The idea of sharing food (the scarce food that there was) with an animal was absurd. I wondered if I could even find an animal to test this theory? From what I’d learned, all the animals had retreated long ago to places that weren’t covered with water and ash. I wondered if they were doing better than we were.

My alarm buzzed and five seconds later, the images were flashing before me again. The next mandatory news bulletin. I must have been daydreaming for a full 10 minutes.

These images were more of the same, no more or less horrifying than usual. The commentary droned in my ear. More of the same misery. No hint of hope or a future.

I wished I could turn it off but I couldn’t. Nobody could. No matter where I was, these updates flashed before my eyes every 15 minutes. All day and all night. Relentless. Scorching my mind, puncturing my waking hours and infiltrating my dreams. Even when I squeezed my eyes shut, they played on my eyelids.

The historical governments may have fallen but the media certainly had not. In fact, they had grown into the vacant space. With a god like power, they had invaded our minds and bodies so completely that the majority of what was left of the human race couldn’t think or speak other than to repeat sound bites from the most recent news bulletin. They had become glorified zombies.

Not me.

I had what nobody else had.

I had my book of hope. My book of stories.

On the last page were the instructions I must use to hack the 15 minute broadcasts without detection, together with a speech that I'd learned by heart before my fifth birthday. I repeated it several times each day, testing out my voice and my inflection. I was certain that when the time came, I would deliver these words in the most persuasive and compelling way. Beneath the speech was a pin code for a safety deposit box in the Main Bank, where I knew that $20,000 was waiting for me. I would need this to pay off the relevant people. Also waiting, would be a streaming device that had not been in the hands of an ordinary human since before the ash fell and the water started to rise.

A streaming device that I would use to replace the destructive and hopeless 15 minute broadcasts with my face and the words from my book. The words that had become MY words.

Whoever wrote these stories and left me this book had trusted me to fix this broken world.

I was ready. I had three short weeks until I turned 10 and became an adult. Then I would be legally permitted to enter Main Bank and put their plan into action.

Three short weeks until the world would hear me.

After that, it was up to them.