MY SUPER EPIC PROJECT WOOO

Monday December 28, 2099

The lenses lay crookedly on the table, but were eventually picked up roughly, enthusiastically, by a dainty hand that belonged to Rina. Too large for her small head, they hung on dearly to the end of her nose, to her big ears that stuck out. She grabbed the knob at each end, and turned them. Static following broken fragments of conversation, politician speeches and cooking instructions blared into her ears almost immediately. Hallucinations of a million different colours swimming between animations and personal channels pelted her eyes with their random brightness. But, at last, the sound and sight became coordinated, and the channel stopped changing. Rina dropped her hand from the knob and sat back.

Representatives from all the countries in the world sat at their desks, biting their nails despite their suits, eyes shifting behind supposedly serious expressions. Once again, Rina changed the channel and submitted herself to the sensual torture of myriad different sources of information.

"GOOD EVENING, EVERYONE!" the announcer's voice and grotesque smile were absolutely overwhelming, saccharine in their faked happiness. Rina winced and telepathically told the machine to lower the volume. Behind his gray-struck copper hair and tanned skin, one could see the eerie remains of a once-great city, with dust floating ominously in the air, and skeletal ghosts of buildings cutting across the muddy sky. If one squinted, one could even make out the ancient memories of a giant and antiquated screen, hung crookedly on top of many others. It was a sight common in many textbooks, one of ghostly forgetting and harrowing warning. "We are in Times Square, were the new millennium was celebrated, and were the new century will be, too! So everyone, hang on for the turn of the century, in two days!" his voice hung on the lonely wind, surely howling were the Empire State used to be.

Rina grimaced again. Poor guy. Surely he realized how controversial this would be? In a few minutes, he would be flooded with thousands of angry messages saying their own personal sob story about how this loss was so great, and how one couldn't just celebrate in an area of such great tragedy, despite the obvious scripted nature of the newscast, the way the size of his smile could only be hiding wild tears. How boring. The knob was switched another degree.

"Hey, Rina" it was Kenny, a short-haired girl with buck teeth that lived on the other side of the world. "So, um, Rina, y'seeing the newscast? The one in the old American city?" Rina shook her head casually, and Kenny's shy smile began to become more hidden. "I'm frightened," she squeaked. "Ev'ryone says that the world's gonna end on 2100," with another grin, Kenny licked her overly-large front teeth. "'F course it's a lie, but y'can't help but wonder, y'know?"

"Yeah..." Rina said, barely focusing on the conversation. Outside, it was beginning to snow, small flurries caught in the wind and dancing across the window, melting on the asphalt. The grey sky above occasionally let through another ray of sunlight that broke the cloud cover and gave everything light. But then the winds returned and the clouds shifted and everything was bathed in the December darkness.

Kenny bit her lower lip, then shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "So, um, where d'you think Violet is?"

Almost on cue, the screen split into two and a bespectacled girl, freckles plainly visible on her cheeks and hair picked up messily into two ponytails that stuck put from both sides of her face, appeared. "So, did anyone call me?" she asked, smiling broadly. Her home was on Mars, a small tourism business that had jumped upon the chance of a new lifestyle in a relatively experimental environment.

"Hey, Violet," Rina waved nonchalantly. In return, Violet winked happily, joy plain on her face.

"So, they might cut off communications for a while during the new year celebrations, so I might not be here," she said. "Apparently it would be too much information for this crappy server to handle," with a long sigh, she rested her head on her hand and shook her head. "We're thinking about updating it, but with the way business is going..."

Rina nodded, but once again brought her hand to the side of her face and twisted the knob to find the overly joyous newscaster yelling at her face. "So, as you can see, no matter what we go through, humanity always rises again, stronger than ever!" Rina sighed and turned the device off, tossing the lenses off her face so that they skidded on the table before coming to a stop.

Tuesday February 2nd, 2100

So nothing had happened. The newscaster had cheered for the new year and everyone on the square was dancing, and candles lit the empty windows of the abandoned skyscrapers. Reflected on the water below, they were distorted and dark, but yet somehow merry; it almost looked like the ancient city in its former splendour. And the world hadn't ended, it had continued turning around the sun in it's eternal dance, and night had dissolved into grey dawn that broke into a colourful sunset that swallowed the sky in its morning flames. And at last, it, too, had turned into a blue you could drown in.

But those were January thoughts. It had been a month since. And now Rina was running to school, living centres and the occasional person rushing past her head and breath coming out of her mouth in broken pants. Feet hit the asphalt forcefully, then leaped for half a second as her great bounds covered the two blocks between her house and her school. She might be the only person in her class that walked to school, but she was going to arrive early to her classes today. She had to.

She neared the education centre absolutely exhausted, then straightened the proudly sagging bow on her head, the plaits on her uniform skirt. With a final smile against the cold, she entered the building.

She had arrived just in time. The school was large and empty, yet annoyingly illuminated by the garishly bright lights. In the early morning, and with nearly no people inside, the long hallways and sterile walls were almost uncanny.

"John?" Rina called out, voice rebounding off the ceiling, the floor, the closed doors. The sharp tak, tak, tak of her uniform shoes seemed louder than even her own thoughts. She glanced down corridors in search for the young teenaged boy with a bowl cut and dark hair, but she could only find students sleeping on the textbook database, drowsily copying notes for the coming exams. "John!"

She stuck her hand in her pocket, fingers looking for the small square piece of paper that might save her spirit. At last, they ends of her long digits felt the sharp edge of the letter, and she withdrew them, smiling inwardly. Now, if only she could find the recipient. "John!"

"Yes?" John turned around shyly, and then bowed curtly. "Hey, Rina, what do you want to-"

"He- Here," she said, and quickly took out the letter and stuck it out in front of her, the hasty breathing hid by the eyes fixated on a tile on the floor. She tried to steady the shaking in her hand, the racing thoughts inside her mind.

"Oh?" with another barely perceptible smile, he took it gingerly and began to open. "You wrote it on paper?"

"Yes," Rina breathed. "Because I thought it would be more considerate, because your parents..." she drifted off, and continued staring at the floor, idly trying to find patterns in the random arrangement of dots. Occasionally, her gaze flitted upwards to the indecisive face of John, who still refrained from taking the paper in Rina's outstretched, shaking hand.

"Talking about my parents," he said, chattily. "We're moving. Next week," another shy smile. "And we can't keep the communication up and running, because it's up on Mars, don't you have a friend there? You see, the settlers need agricultural help, and it's too expensive to keep everything perfect," he waved good-bye and left the paper sagging dejectedly on Rina's hand.

Wednesday April 11, 2101

Fourteen years ago, Rina was born in a sunny spring day where the flowers opened up to the warm air. But now, it was raining sheets, the entire world and sky above wiped away by the pouring water and howling winds. She had to celebrate her birthday inside.

Her mother, hair pulled back as usual and smiling wearily, had hugged her and congratulated her until both were too tired to continue. Even then, Rina's mother still congratulated her from her place on the couch. "So, now you can get that ID you wanted, so you can visit the agricultural building without borrowing mine!" she said, enthusiastically.

"Mom, I haven't visited it since a year ago," Rina said, laughing. Her mother laughed too, and for a while they just stayed in this joyous atmosphere. The laughter eventually died down, and both stayed in a content silence for a few minutes, being lulled to a drowsy happiness by the steady rattle of rain on the roof. "Can we contact dad today? It's my fourteenth birthday..."

"Oh, sorry sweetie, you know how tight government controls can be, I doubt they'll let us,"

"But he's my dad, and besides, he did nothing wrong," Rina muttered, looking out the lone window.

"In this country, hacking the security in order to glean information about how to cheat the system isn't 'nothing'," she said, voice low and emotionless. "If you really want more people here, open the hologram creator and get your friends to come," she sobbed. "Maybe... Maybe we can get dad here once the crisis ends,"

"I didn't know there was a crisis," her eyes stayed glued on the window, attempting to fight back the past that was about to rush out of her eyes, hot and liquid.

"Every generation has a crisis, hon," her mother whispered. "And they're fixed by the next, only for them to fall into their own," she drew a circle in the air listlessly. "It's a cycle, you see. Now get your friends on,"

Rina stood up, and walked over to the large generator in the middle of the room with deliberate and angry steps. She entered the base number and planet on both empty lines, then quickly scribbled down the name of her friends on the tablet. For a few seconds, the small red light on top grew brighter and dimmer with her breathing, but eventually it turned a glaring green, Kelly and Violet standing in the middle of the room.

"Happy birthday!" they cried out in unison, bright smiles breaking the atmosphere.

Violet, eyebrows raised, leaned in closely. She was in her unflattering tour guide uniform, but it was obvious she had prepared for the celebration, hair finally let down and makeup smudging the freckles that were just beginning to disappear. However, out of its two ponytails, her hair had exploded into a ring of golden fire over her head, and the makeup had obviously been applied while running downstairs. "Now you can shoplift and it'll be even more illegal, huh?"

Kenny looked a bit better, with a dress and hair combed. "Shh, Violet, that's not a nice thing to say," she hushed Violet beneath her with a swift motion, but her eyes were focused on Rina's mom, who was surveying them critically.

Rina laughed. It was good to have her friends here, a momentary bit of sunshine against the rain. Would it ever stop raining?

Her birthday was celebrated quietly, but it was obvious that behind everyone's polite gestures and expressions, people were waiting to eat lots of food, chant songs in an old language, laugh and sing and chase. Even Rina's mother had an expression of thinly veiled excitement, and she whistled to herself the melody of "hapi berdej" in secret as she packed everything into her tight black bag and left the room.

Thursday August 25, 2101

Rina was sitting on her bench, seeing the people pass busily, chatting to one another on hand-held devices. Transportation running down the street picked up the water that had fallen upon the asphalt, creating waves on each side that soaked the now angry and cussing pedestrians. Rina liked the soft spray of water upon her face, though. Above, the sun was commanding the heavens from it's celestial position, the blue of the sky merging into the grey horizon.

It had already been four months living alone. In the empty passages of her home, Rina skipped down to her room, tea in hand, and did schoolwork. Now that she was one of the children with abducted parents, everything, from the electricity to her health, was payed for by the government. It wasn't all bad, she reasoned, attempting to not cry at night over her last sight of mom, walking out of the house with that black handbag. Besides, it was all dad's fault. It had to be.

From her skirt pocket, a slight buzzing tickled her leg. She took out the small, reflective communication device, and with a quick hand motion had it unlocked and was staring straight at Violet's anguished face.

Violet, with her sardonic smile and ironic voice. The sane one in the group, level-headed but with a sense of humour. Only it wasn't like that at all, not now.

She was pink-eyed and red-faced, shoulders heaving and face twisted into an expression of worry, agony. Rina stayed silent, listening to the howling and unearthly screams torn from Violet's chest, waiting until she was only slightly hiccuping, and with a tired hand wiping the water from her reddened eyes. Then, with a ghostly voice that was so low she barely moved her lips, she said: "They said we aren't worth it," once she had established this, she broke down once again into tears, though silently now and with a crumpled and closed posture instead of hysterical sobs.

"Who did?" Rina asked, leaning forward.

"They did. The guys. They said that with the situation on
Earth, it was impossible to keep giving us resources. They bombed the agricultural centre and now they're closing all communication and..." she stopped for a while, tears still creating a shiny river on her cheeks, slowly dripping of her face. "And... And... And..." she hid her face in her hands, wailing.

Rina couldn't answer. She gasped, her brain formulating comforting words, smiling hope for a sun-struck tomorrow where everyone could hold hands forever more. But when she tried to speak, to actually create a change in Violet's expression, all she could do was mouth unintelligible words, occasionally allow for a lost and short sound to be gasped out. "They bombed the agricultural centre?"

Violet nodded violently, rage showing clearly in her forceful motions.

"Was anyone inside?" Violet nodded once more, and immediately afterwards both sides thought to themselves, Violet cloud in herself and whimpering slightly as she rocked back and forth, Rina imagining the agricultural centre falling down, the bottom giving way as the building swayed, then fell over, creating a cacophony of disaster and death. A chaos in which John could be, eyes closed and body bleeding, motionless on the bottom of the rubble.

And that was when Rina realised she cared. She cared for the boy with shining eyes and subtle expressions, that had always been there through tears and happiness, who had attempted to stay friendly even after one person had ruined it all. And when Rina was called a traitor due to her father, he had always been holding an umbrella in the rain that sometimes fell from her eyes and the sky, still smiling.

She cared about her mother, lost, and herself, in the same situation, roaming empty rooms, entertaining herself with empty thoughts as to not realise her unimportance. And she cared about Violet, turned into nothing more than a pile of incomprehensible sobs that would die from starvation.

Rina could feel her eyes stinging at the edges, growing heavy, body crumpling as suddenly tears fell hot and liquid. Both the girl on Mars and the girl on Earth cried in unison, passerby giving Rina strange looks as she ignored their whispers.

Friday April 13, 2103

Quietly, silently, all the teenagers sat, cramped in the same underground shelter. It had been so long since the last time they went outside, conversation lulling often and the same books and board games becoming dull and lifeless after thumbing them a million times. But there was one thing that living in these conditions could promise: safety. Wile the entire world fell, and whole countries disappeared under the blood and fire. Communications had been closed, and everything became independent all of a sudden, everything was made by oneself.

It was in this chaos that Rina found herself, sitting in the corner of the shelter room, fear growing on her chest and becoming stale, only for another warning to give it life again. The combined phrases of a million conversations hovered around the room, but Rina closed her ears to them in order to listen to her own thoughts.

Night came only a little while afterward. But there was no sunset testing the sky apart, no gradual descent into purple then black coming from the single window, turning on the lights for a few hours before the onset of sleep became overpowering and Rina jumped into bed. Instead, the fluorescent lights above simply flickered, then turned off and suffocated the room in absolute darkness.

But Rina couldn't sleep. Yesterday, and the day before, and for a year, the moment curfew came she would curl up in her corner and would welcome unconsciousness and wild dreaming as an alternative for a reality with sterile, white walls and sporadic announcements. And yet, tonight, the darkness had taken form and loomed above her with penetrating and suffocating solidness. Her thoughts whirled wronged with too much force, the floor was much too cold, and everything yowled around her. Sleep was impossible in these conditions.

So Rina stood up, then walked towards the door. It was forbidden to exit the room, especially in these conditions. The guards would shoot you down with a single, well-placed bullet, and blood would wet your clothing, leech life out of your frail body until it collapsed and lay dead. Nobody would know in the darkness. But in the wild night reigned by silence, all was possible, so Rina left the room.

Her steps echoed of the passage walls clamourously, sounds bouncing off the walls. It might be dangerous, of course, but it also gave a sense of freedom, of being able to clap and dance and sing without anyone noticing, sleeping in the young adult room at the end of the night.

Rina climbed steps in a half-conscious drowsiness, winding stairs disappearing under her feet as she ran what appeared to be miles of nothing other than passages and stairs with ice-cold walls on either side. But at last, Rina had reached the top and could open the door.

The cold air smelt of dust and rain, and the moon gave everything a silver tinge. Night outside was different from the emptiness in the shelter, full of life and colour, warm and with the lifted dust creating a misty fog around the buildings in the horizon.

Rina skipped down the streets, with the once-perfect asphalt cracked and sometimes completely destroyed. Clothing hung on trees like anguished ghosts, building broken and large piles of rubble piled high on the streets. The agriculture centre stayed standing, although now the windows must be cracked and spiders building their home. Transportation devices had been turned over, glass littering the street as broken as the city itself.

She hummed to herself, a bit of human life in the desolation, ignoring the caves dug underground, where everyone lay sleeping or crying. She kicked a can out of the way, and it flickered into life, a hologram appearing above it. Rina was supposed to be surprised, but in the stage of frozen time that gave everything a magical aura the city was now in, all she could be was interested.

"I have discovered a way t solve everything!" it was an old man, smile much too large to be sane, hair growing in disorganised clumps. "I know how to-" the hologram surreptitiously cut off, to his crazy laughter.

Rina laughed too, echoing off the empty buildings. She had a letter to give to John, but it hadn't been received. How sad, right? Perhaps in the afterlife it would. Rina sat down, back laying on the rough wall, and awareness drifted into a dark sleep.

The next morning, Rina stood up once more, humming to herself. However, the notes began to take shape, turn into a melody with lyrics, and Rina found herself singing to no one in particular, to the broken and splintered wood, to the cover of dust.

"All the countries that have been celebrated, stare down at their desks with a troubled face. They ne'er progress on anything, on reality they are truly clueless," She stood up, dancing to the melody. Smiling to herself, voice cracking, she continued with the happy song, optimistic for a depressed Earth. "Another day 'round the street corner, to say it's a coincidence would be to lie. I stay to your perfect left, for a five-minute smile to see,"

Her voice grew in strength as verse followed verse, anger turned to a happy disbelief. Accompanied by the instruments of silence, the war seemed so far away. "The end seems to be coming at last! Not that I'm interested in such trivialities. The weekend seems to have come at last! This time, I will need to tell you my thoughts,"

And at last, her voice became soft, face buried in her hands as to hide the grin spreading across it. "Even though the end is coming, I hate that you'll not come again. Even though the weekend's coming, nobody will smile again,"

That was when the perfect sky, devoid of clouds, kind and blue, fell down.

Monday December 28, 2099

The lenses lay crookedly on the table, but were eventually picked up roughly, enthusiastically, by a dainty hand that belonged to Rina. Too large for her small head, they hung on dearly to the end of her nose, to her big ears that stuck out. She grabbed the knob at each end, and turned them. Static following broken fragments of conversation, politician speeches and cooking instructions blared into her ears almost immediately. Hallucinations of a million different colours swimming between animations and personal channels pelted her eyes with their random brightness. But, at last, the sound and sight became coordinated, and the channel stopped changing. Rina dropped her hand from the knob and sat back.

Representatives from all the countries in the world sat at their desks, biting their nails despite their suits, eyes shifting behind supposedly serious expressions. Once again, Rina changed the channel and submitted herself to the sensual torture of myriad different sources of information.

"GOOD EVENING, EVERYONE!" the announcer's voice and grotesque smile were absolutely overwhelming, saccharine in their faked happiness. Rina winced and telepathically told the machine to lower the volume. Behind his gray-struck copper hair and tanned skin, one could see the eerie remains of a once-great city, with dust floating ominously in the air, and skeletal ghosts of buildings cutting across the muddy sky. If one squinted, one could even make out the ancient memories of a giant and antiquated screen, hung crookedly on top of many others. It was a sight common in many textbooks, one of ghostly forgetting and harrowing warning. "We are in Times Square, were the new millennium was celebrated, and were the new century will be, too! So everyone, hang on for the turn of the century, in two days!" his voice hung on the lonely wind, surely howling were the Empire State used to be.

Rina grimaced again. Poor guy. Surely he realized how controversial this would be? In a few minutes, he would be flooded with thousands of angry messages saying their own personal sob story about how this loss was so great, and how one couldn't just celebrate in an area of such great tragedy, despite the obvious scripted nature of the newscast, the way the size of his smile could only be hiding wild tears. How boring. The knob was switched another degree.

"Hey, Rina" it was Kenny, a short-haired girl with buck teeth that lived on the other side of the world. "So, um, Rina, y'seeing the newscast? The one in the old American city?" Rina shook her head casually, and Kenny's shy smile began to become more hidden. "I'm frightened," she squeaked. "Ev'ryone says that the world's gonna end on 2100," with another grin, Kenny licked her overly-large front teeth. "'F course it's a lie, but y'can't help but wonder, y'know?"

"Yeah..." Rina said, barely focusing on the conversation. Outside, it was beginning to snow, small flurries caught in the wind and dancing across the window, melting on the asphalt. The grey sky above occasionally let through another ray of sunlight that broke the cloud cover and gave everything light. But then the winds returned and the clouds shifted and everything was bathed in the December darkness.

Kenny bit her lower lip, then shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "So, um, where d'you think Violet is?"

Almost on cue, the screen split into two and a bespectacled girl, freckles plainly visible on her cheeks and hair picked up messily into two ponytails that stuck put from both sides of her face, appeared. "So, did anyone call me?" she asked, smiling broadly. Her home was on Mars, a small tourism business that had jumped upon the chance of a new lifestyle in a relatively experimental environment.

"Hey, Violet," Rina waved nonchalantly. In return, Violet winked happily, joy plain on her face.

"So, they might cut off communications for a while during the new year celebrations, so I might not be here," she said. "Apparently it would be too much information for this crappy server to handle," with a long sigh, she rested her head on her hand and shook her head. "We're thinking about updating it, but with the way business is going..."

Rina nodded, but once again brought her hand to the side of her face and twisted the knob to find the overly joyous newscaster yelling at her face. "So, as you can see, no matter what we go through, humanity always rises again, stronger than ever!" Rina sighed and turned the device off, tossing the lenses off her face so that they skidded on the table before coming to a stop.

Tuesday February 2nd, 2100

So nothing had happened. The newscaster had cheered for the new year and everyone on the square was dancing, and candles lit the empty windows of the abandoned skyscrapers. Reflected on the water below, they were distorted and dark, but yet somehow merry; it almost looked like the ancient city in its former splendour. And the world hadn't ended, it had continued turning around the sun in it's eternal dance, and night had dissolved into grey dawn that broke into a colourful sunset that swallowed the sky in its morning flames. And at last, it, too, had turned into a blue you could drown in.

But those were January thoughts. It had been a month since. And now Rina was running to school, living centres and the occasional person rushing past her head and breath coming out of her mouth in broken pants. Feet hit the asphalt forcefully, then leaped for half a second as her great bounds covered the two blocks between her house and her school. She might be the only person in her class that walked to school, but she was going to arrive early to her classes today. She had to.

She neared the education centre absolutely exhausted, then straightened the proudly sagging bow on her head, the plaits on her uniform skirt. With a final smile against the cold, she entered the building.

She had arrived just in time. The school was large and empty, yet annoyingly illuminated by the garishly bright lights. In the early morning, and with nearly no people inside, the long hallways and sterile walls were almost uncanny.

"John?" Rina called out, voice rebounding off the ceiling, the floor, the closed doors. The sharp tak, tak, tak of her uniform shoes seemed louder than even her own thoughts. She glanced down corridors in search for the young teenaged boy with a bowl cut and dark hair, but she could only find students sleeping on the textbook database, drowsily copying notes for the coming exams. "John!"

She stuck her hand in her pocket, fingers looking for the small square piece of paper that might save her spirit. At last, they ends of her long digits felt the sharp edge of the letter, and she withdrew them, smiling inwardly. Now, if only she could find the recipient. "John!"

"Yes?" John turned around shyly, and then bowed curtly. "Hey, Rina, what do you want to-"

"He- Here," she said, and quickly took out the letter and stuck it out in front of her, the hasty breathing hid by the eyes fixated on a tile on the floor. She tried to steady the shaking in her hand, the racing thoughts inside her mind.

"Oh?" with another barely perceptible smile, he took it gingerly and began to open. "You wrote it on paper?"

"Yes," Rina breathed. "Because I thought it would be more considerate, because your parents..." she drifted off, and continued staring at the floor, idly trying to find patterns in the random arrangement of dots. Occasionally, her gaze flitted upwards to the indecisive face of John, who still refrained from taking the paper in Rina's outstretched, shaking hand.

"Talking about my parents," he said, chattily. "We're moving. Next week," another shy smile. "And we can't keep the communication up and running, because it's up on Mars, don't you have a friend there? You see, the settlers need agricultural help, and it's too expensive to keep everything perfect," he waved good-bye and left the paper sagging dejectedly on Rina's hand.

Wednesday April 11, 2101

Fourteen years ago, Rina was born in a sunny spring day where the flowers opened up to the warm air. But now, it was raining sheets, the entire world and sky above wiped away by the pouring water and howling winds. She had to celebrate her birthday inside.

Her mother, hair pulled back as usual and smiling wearily, had hugged her and congratulated her until both were too tired to continue. Even then, Rina's mother still congratulated her from her place on the couch. "So, now you can get that ID you wanted, so you can visit the agricultural building without borrowing mine!" she said, enthusiastically.

"Mom, I haven't visited it since a year ago," Rina said, laughing. Her mother laughed too, and for a while they just stayed in this joyous atmosphere. The laughter eventually died down, and both stayed in a content silence for a few minutes, being lulled to a drowsy happiness by the steady rattle of rain on the roof. "Can we contact dad today? It's my fourteenth birthday..."

"Oh, sorry sweetie, you know how tight government controls can be, I doubt they'll let us,"

"But he's my dad, and besides, he did nothing wrong," Rina muttered, looking out the lone window.

"In this country, hacking the security in order to glean information about how to cheat the system isn't 'nothing'," she said, voice low and emotionless. "If you really want more people here, open the hologram creator and get your friends to come," she sobbed. "Maybe... Maybe we can get dad here once the crisis ends,"

"I didn't know there was a crisis," her eyes stayed glued on the window, attempting to fight back the past that was about to rush out of her eyes, hot and liquid.

"Every generation has a crisis, hon," her mother whispered. "And they're fixed by the next, only for them to fall into their own," she drew a circle in the air listlessly. "It's a cycle, you see. Now get your friends on,"

Rina stood up, and walked over to the large generator in the middle of the room with deliberate and angry steps. She entered the base number and planet on both empty lines, then quickly scribbled down the name of her friends on the tablet. For a few seconds, the small red light on top grew brighter and dimmer with her breathing, but eventually it turned a glaring green, Kelly and Violet standing in the middle of the room.

"Happy birthday!" they cried out in unison, bright smiles breaking the atmosphere.

Violet, eyebrows raised, leaned in closely. She was in her unflattering tour guide uniform, but it was obvious she had prepared for the celebration, hair finally let down and makeup smudging the freckles that were just beginning to disappear. However, out of its two ponytails, her hair had exploded into a ring of golden fire over her head, and the makeup had obviously been applied while running downstairs. "Now you can shoplift and it'll be even more illegal, huh?"

Kenny looked a bit better, with a dress and hair combed. "Shh, Violet, that's not a nice thing to say," she hushed Violet beneath her with a swift motion, but her eyes were focused on Rina's mom, who was surveying them critically.

Rina laughed. It was good to have her friends here, a momentary bit of sunshine against the rain. Would it ever stop raining?

Her birthday was celebrated quietly, but it was obvious that behind everyone's polite gestures and expressions, people were waiting to eat lots of food, chant songs in an old language, laugh and sing and chase. Even Rina's mother had an expression of thinly veiled excitement, and she whistled to herself the melody of "hapi berdej" in secret as she packed everything into her tight black bag and left the room.

Thursday August 25, 2101

Rina was sitting on her bench, seeing the people pass busily, chatting to one another on hand-held devices. Transportation running down the street picked up the water that had fallen upon the asphalt, creating waves on each side that soaked the now angry and cussing pedestrians. Rina liked the soft spray of water upon her face, though. Above, the sun was commanding the heavens from it's celestial position, the blue of the sky merging into the grey horizon.

It had already been four months living alone. In the empty passages of her home, Rina skipped down to her room, tea in hand, and did schoolwork. Now that she was one of the children with abducted parents, everything, from the electricity to her health, was payed for by the government. It wasn't all bad, she reasoned, attempting to not cry at night over her last sight of mom, walking out of the house with that black handbag. Besides, it was all dad's fault. It had to be.

From her skirt pocket, a slight buzzing tickled her leg. She took out the small, reflective communication device, and with a quick hand motion had it unlocked and was staring straight at Violet's anguished face.

Violet, with her sardonic smile and ironic voice. The sane one in the group, level-headed but with a sense of humour. Only it wasn't like that at all, not now.

She was pink-eyed and red-faced, shoulders heaving and face twisted into an expression of worry, agony. Rina stayed silent, listening to the howling and unearthly screams torn from Violet's chest, waiting until she was only slightly hiccuping, and with a tired hand wiping the water from her reddened eyes. Then, with a ghostly voice that was so low she barely moved her lips, she said: "They said we aren't worth it," once she had established this, she broke down once again into tears, though silently now and with a crumpled and closed posture instead of hysterical sobs.

"Who did?" Rina asked, leaning forward.

"They did. The guys. They said that with the situation on
Earth, it was impossible to keep giving us resources. They bombed the agricultural centre and now they're closing all communication and..." she stopped for a while, tears still creating a shiny river on her cheeks, slowly dripping of her face. "And... And... And..." she hid her face in her hands, wailing.

Rina couldn't answer. She gasped, her brain formulating comforting words, smiling hope for a sun-struck tomorrow where everyone could hold hands forever more. But when she tried to speak, to actually create a change in Violet's expression, all she could do was mouth unintelligible words, occasionally allow for a lost and short sound to be gasped out. "They bombed the agricultural centre?"

Violet nodded violently, rage showing clearly in her forceful motions.

"Was anyone inside?" Violet nodded once more, and immediately afterwards both sides thought to themselves, Violet cloud in herself and whimpering slightly as she rocked back and forth, Rina imagining the agricultural centre falling down, the bottom giving way as the building swayed, then fell over, creating a cacophony of disaster and death. A chaos in which John could be, eyes closed and body bleeding, motionless on the bottom of the rubble.

And that was when Rina realised she cared. She cared for the boy with shining eyes and subtle expressions, that had always been there through tears and happiness, who had attempted to stay friendly even after one person had ruined it all. And when Rina was called a traitor due to her father, he had always been holding an umbrella in the rain that sometimes fell from her eyes and the sky, still smiling.

She cared about her mother, lost, and herself, in the same situation, roaming empty rooms, entertaining herself with empty thoughts as to not realise her unimportance. And she cared about Violet, turned into nothing more than a pile of incomprehensible sobs that would die from starvation.

Rina could feel her eyes stinging at the edges, growing heavy, body crumpling as suddenly tears fell hot and liquid. Both the girl on Mars and the girl on Earth cried in unison, passerby giving Rina strange looks as she ignored their whispers.

Friday April 13, 2103

Quietly, silently, all the teenagers sat, cramped in the same underground shelter. It had been so long since the last time they went outside, conversation lulling often and the same books and board games becoming dull and lifeless after thumbing them a million times. But there was one thing that living in these conditions could promise: safety. Wile the entire world fell, and whole countries disappeared under the blood and fire. Communications had been closed, and everything became independent all of a sudden, everything was made by oneself.

It was in this chaos that Rina found herself, sitting in the corner of the shelter room, fear growing on her chest and becoming stale, only for another warning to give it life again. The combined phrases of a million conversations hovered around the room, but Rina closed her ears to them in order to listen to her own thoughts.

Night came only a little while afterward. But there was no sunset testing the sky apart, no gradual descent into purple then black coming from the single window, turning on the lights for a few hours before the onset of sleep became overpowering and Rina jumped into bed. Instead, the fluorescent lights above simply flickered, then turned off and suffocated the room in absolute darkness.

But Rina couldn't sleep. Yesterday, and the day before, and for a year, the moment curfew came she would curl up in her corner and would welcome unconsciousness and wild dreaming as an alternative for a reality with sterile, white walls and sporadic announcements. And yet, tonight, the darkness had taken form and loomed above her with penetrating and suffocating solidness. Her thoughts whirled wronged with too much force, the floor was much too cold, and everything yowled around her. Sleep was impossible in these conditions.

So Rina stood up, then walked towards the door. It was forbidden to exit the room, especially in these conditions. The guards would shoot you down with a single, well-placed bullet, and blood would wet your clothing, leech life out of your frail body until it collapsed and lay dead. Nobody would know in the darkness. But in the wild night reigned by silence, all was possible, so Rina left the room.

Her steps echoed of the passage walls clamourously, sounds bouncing off the walls. It might be dangerous, of course, but it also gave a sense of freedom, of being able to clap and dance and sing without anyone noticing, sleeping in the young adult room at the end of the night.

Rina climbed steps in a half-conscious drowsiness, winding stairs disappearing under her feet as she ran what appeared to be miles of nothing other than passages and stairs with ice-cold walls on either side. But at last, Rina had reached the top and could open the door.

The cold air smelt of dust and rain, and the moon gave everything a silver tinge. Night outside was different from the emptiness in the shelter, full of life and colour, warm and with the lifted dust creating a misty fog around the buildings in the horizon.

Rina skipped down the streets, with the once-perfect asphalt cracked and sometimes completely destroyed. Clothing hung on trees like anguished ghosts, building broken and large piles of rubble piled high on the streets. The agriculture centre stayed standing, although now the windows must be cracked and spiders building their home. Transportation devices had been turned over, glass littering the street as broken as the city itself.

She hummed to herself, a bit of human life in the desolation, ignoring the caves dug underground, where everyone lay sleeping or crying. She kicked a can out of the way, and it flickered into life, a hologram appearing above it. Rina was supposed to be surprised, but in the stage of frozen time that gave everything a magical aura the city was now in, all she could be was interested.

"I have discovered a way t solve everything!" it was an old man, smile much too large to be sane, hair growing in disorganised clumps. "I know how to-" the hologram surreptitiously cut off, to his crazy laughter.

Rina laughed too, echoing off the empty buildings. She had a letter to give to John, but it hadn't been received. How sad, right? Perhaps in the afterlife it would. Rina sat down, back laying on the rough wall, and awareness drifted into a dark sleep.

The next morning, Rina stood up once more, humming to herself. However, the notes began to take shape, turn into a melody with lyrics, and Rina found herself singing to no one in particular, to the broken and splintered wood, to the cover of dust.

"All the countries that have been celebrated, stare down at their desks with a troubled face. They ne'er progress on anything, on reality they are truly clueless," She stood up, dancing to the melody. Smiling to herself, voice cracking, she continued with the happy song, optimistic for a depressed Earth. "Another day 'round the street corner, to say it's a coincidence would be to lie. I stay to your perfect left, for a five-minute smile to see,"

Her voice grew in strength as verse followed verse, anger turned to a happy disbelief. Accompanied by the instruments of silence, the war seemed so far away. "The end seems to be coming at last! Not that I'm interested in such trivialities. The weekend seems to have come at last! This time, I will need to tell you my thoughts,"

And at last, her voice became soft, face buried in her hands as to hide the grin spreading across it. "Even though the end is coming, I hate that you'll not come again. Even though the weekend's coming, nobody will smile again,"

That was when the perfect sky, devoid of clouds, kind and blue, fell down.