It's Still Happening

If you were to ask 7-year-old me whether or not he thought he lived in a perfect world, he'd answer "of course," because seven-year-old me thought that he was lucky to be born in the year 2120, and not 2020. Seven-year-old me didn't know any better. Seven-year-old me thought that Earth in 2120 was a good place to live where everyone was happy. 

If you asked 12-year-old me that same question, he would’ve said “sure.” Of course, living with a single mom, who was too sick to work, things at home were a bit...awkward. But hey, 12-year-old me convinced himself that everyone is supposed to be happy, so he tried to stay happy as he worked to provide for a family of two. They had no one else. 

If you asked 18-year-old me that same question again, he wouldn’t answer. Well, that’s because he couldn’t answer. Because 18-year-old me spent a whole year in the hospital after a drunk driving accident. He was lonely, and he was wasting away. He spent a good 8 months prior to the accident drinking all my guilt away, because he didn’t have a mom that could take away my pain anymore. 18-year-old me couldn’t spend a lot of time with his mother, who spent her last years bedridden from the pain and the coughing, after three different attempts at getting help, only to be accused of faking it. 

If you asked me, 22-year-old me, whether or not I want things to change, I will answer “of course.” But what could I do? I was just one man among ten billion. A young reckless man, just like my friends.

Jackson and Parker, otherwise named the disaster twins, both had a curiosity beyond even my comprehension. They loved to explore, but they’d always land themselves in trouble. That’s why we had Sarah and Gina, two of the scariest ladies I’ve ever met. They’d keep us in line whenever we went overboard. Duncan, one of my closest friends, was always sitting in front of a computer screen, learning about coding and hacking, but he never complained whenever Jackson or Parker would drag him out of the apartment. Then, there was me. I didn’t have a particular thing that stood out about me. I was just a guy named Felix who is still trying to get over the death of his mother. I didn’t talk much, and I wasn’t really good at interacting with others, but my friends made up for it. 

I spent most of my time out of the house with my friends. We explored the darkest corners around town, doodled on some poor owner’s storefront, annoyed the police, and other things that reckless teens/young adults do in their free time. Together, we thought we could do anything. We lived our life not caring about the government’s seemingly overwhelming rules, or how messed up our past lives were. We wanted to focus on living in the now. 

One day, we came across an old library hidden away in a small corner of an abandoned subway tunnel. If Duncan wasn’t testing out a thermal detector he modified, we would’ve never discovered it. 

With a count of three, the twins kicked down the door that sealed the place away from the rest of the world. We were all excited. Libraries have all but vanished at this point. There was no longer any need for them with the technology we had. We just made an amazing discovery! 

“Do you think...do you think we should tell anyone?” Parker whisper-shouted.

Jackson nodded. “Imagine the recognition we’d get! We could be famous,” he exclaimed. Gina elbowed him in the ribs, making him yelp. 

“Then the police would know we’d be exploring restricted areas. Use that brain cell of yours,” she chided, twirling a strand of pink hair with her index finger. I cautiously looked into the library with my flashlight. 

“Phew, this place looks crusty,” Sarah remarked from beside me, also looking into the library. Crusty indeed. The whole place seemed covered in a thick layer of dust. Broken light bulbs and shards of glass littered the floor. Cobwebs covered a good chunk of the ceiling. Coughing ensued the moment we walked inside. Jackson almost ran in, if Sarah didn’t yank him by the collar to hold him back. 

“You’re gonna kick up more dust if you do that. Jeez, I don’t get paid enough for this,” she grumbled. Jackson waved her off and gave an apologetic smile. 

I wandered around the broken shelves, taking a look at some of the few books that remained intact. It was certainly interesting, I thought. I wondered if any of these books had anything telling us about the past. Way before 2020, when a rebellion broke out in our world. The government calls it a rebellion. It didn’t work out, apparently. The government managed to settle things down. The reason behind the rebellion? No one really knows. There is no record of history before the year 2020.

“Check it out, they had computers back then, too!” Parker’s voice echoed from the other side of the dark and broken down library. Stepping over fallen furniture, I followed his voice to find a counter. It seemed relatively intact. On it, was a desktop monitor, a relatively old model. There were others of the same model, but they were all broken beyond repair. A drawer caught my eye, but I waited beside Gina and Sarah.

“The PCs are busted,” Duncan muttered. His blue-grey eyes wander between the one intact monitor and the PC attached to it. It was busted, indeed, but with a bit of fixing, it seemed like it could still work. He seemed to make up his mind, and he started dragging out the PC from underneath the counter. 

Gina ran her hand down her face. “Are you really going to try and take this?” 

“Yep.”

While the others discussed, I took this chance to look into the drawer. There could be something interesting, I thought. I grabbed the handle and pulled it open, internally cringing at the creaking noises it made, and began searching. It was nothing too interesting. Wood pencils, which you don’t see everyday anymore. A roll of tape. Paper clips. Sticky notes. Basically, just old-timer tools. Then I caught a glimpse of a green usb, one for one of the older models of laptops. I took it out, raising it to eye level. It didn’t seem damaged at all, I observed. We could probably use it. 

Sarah noticed what I was looking at and leaned over my shoulder for a better look. “Do you think there’s anything in it?”

“I don’t know either...we can try and look,” I replied. 

“No one uses any of those old laptops anymore, though.”

“I mean…” my gaze turned to Duncan who was inspecting the inside of the damaged PC.

“Do you think you’ll be able to fix it?” Jackson asked. Duncan scoffed. “What do you think of me as? Of course.” 

“I wasn’t insulting you!” Jackson said indignantly. 

“Yeah, I know that.” 

“Anyway, we should take a look inside once it’s fixed,” Gina crossed her arms and glared at the twins. “And don’t any of you dare tell this! Cuz we’re so gonna get busted.”

“Aye,” they drawled out. 

-

The trip home back was rather uneventful. The following week went as normal, with an occasional update with the PC from Duncan. We spent our time doing the stuff we kept on doing, until Duncan texted to our group chat one night.

_.doughnaught: yo its done

Jacksunshine_: done as in doomed or done as in completed????

_.doughnaught: stfu

7Jeansz: I’m coming over

Saraaaa_: If ur driving can u pick me up

7Jeansz: k

PraktisMeksPirfec: Bruh jackson I’m still in the bathroom don’t drive yet

Jacksunshine_: idc hurry up

Felix_Navidad9: Tmi much ._.

-

We met up at his apartment an hour later. Duncan somehow connected the pc to his own computer, so we took a look at the files in the PC first, looking over his shoulder onto the desktop.

“Damn...this layout looks so different from what we got,” Parker said.

“Old tech,” Duncan muttered, scrolling through the files.

One file caught my eye that said 2020_Prompt_Change.mp4

“That one first,” I said, pointing at that file. Duncan let out a hum and clicked it. A video popped onto the screen. A woman in her 30s was at a desk. Her dark curly hair was put into several braids, and tied back in a ponytail. Her outfit was bright, her blouse yellow and white. She had a lot of silver bangles around her wrist, standing out from her dark chocolate skin. 

“Man, people back then were stylish, too.” Sarah whispered.

“This week’s discussion prompt will be about change,” the woman said. Her voice was soothing. She looked like someone you could talk about your problems to with ease. “As we know, with what’s been going on, we’ve all seen how people have been treated unfairly. Racism, as we all know, has always been a problem throughout history.”

“What’s she talking about?” Jackson wondered. 

“And only now, are people realizing how big of an issue this is. We see it everyday from many different people who think that just because of the colour of our skin, they think they can look down upon us. Not only that, but we are seeing it from the very people who are supposed to protect us and they treat us unfairly. Sadly, police brutality is not something that is new, but it’s just getting filmed now.” 

Several clips appear on the screen, which causes all of us to gape. Policemen firing bullets at people. Some bystanders are getting tackled. One is put in a chokehold. Another’s face bashed onto the ground. This is what happened in 2020?!

“This can’t be real,” Parker said in shock. Duncan put his face in his hands. 

“This is why we, as a community, must stand up. Because if the police are going to punish us instead of help us, then let us change it. What are you willing to do in order to change something for the better? What is your motivation to make a change?” 

The clip went on for another five minutes. We watched in stunned silence as more clips appeared throughout the video. 

“I can’t believe this…” Gina said, hand hovering over her mouth. A million questions ran in my head. Was this the reason behind the rebellion? What went wrong for the rebellion to not work? Why were people not being treated fairly? Why was this wiped from history? 

“Let's...keep watching. I think it’s necessary,” I said. Duncan nodded. We spent another five hours looking through files. A lot of it was horrifying, to say the least. Jackson went to the bathroom to vomit twice now. I was on the verge of puking too. From the disgust at what we were watching. 

As soon as we went through the last one, we sat there in Duncan’s room, with one question in our head. 

What in the world went wrong?

“I can’t believe it was like that back then,” Sarah said, pulling her knees to her chest as she sat on the floor. 

“It’s no wonder people started to revolt,” Duncan sighed, wiping beads of sweat off his forehead.

“But then...if the people were just fighting against corruption then…” I trailed off, realizing what this meant. The others seemed to realize too.

It wasn’t the people that won. The government did. 

“Are...are we really the only ones that know about this? Other than the government?!” Jackson said, dark brown eyes blown in fear.

“If the rebellion lost then...what the hell went wrong?” Gina asked herself. Then I realized that we still had the USB to go over. 

“The USB that I found…there could still be answers,” I said. My friends snapped their over to my direction.

“Right! The USB! Felix! Did you bring it?” Parker asked. I nodded and felt for the usb in my back pocket, and took it out. 

“We can still look here. But…” I checked my watch. It was 3 in the morning. Duncan nodded in understanding. 

“Tomorrow. I’m beat,” he said.

“Same. So much information in one day…” Sarah stood up and yawned, stretching.

“We can meet after lunchtime,” I agreed. 

That night, I dreamt of my mom, and people fighting for a certain cause.

-

I walked along the sidewalk towards Duncan’s apartment the next day. Questions remained lingering in my head from last night. An image of my mom popped up in my head, and went away just as fast, but the sharp knife that has been in my heart these past several years still dug in deeper.

I was snapped out of my thoughts by a loud banging noise behind me. 

“I didn’t do it! I swear I didn’t!”

Turning around, I saw a man on the ground, with two police officers on top of him. The man was clearly distressed, holding his arms in front of his face as one of the police officers kicked him in the ribs. There was a crack and the man screamed. 

I was frozen on the spot, staring at the scene in front of me.

It was just like 100 years ago. 

Glancing at the others who also gathered, I noticed them standing around, watching a man get beaten up, whispering amongst themselves. Why weren’t they helping!? Why wasn’t I helping?! 

Why, why wasn’t I stepping in?!

Why are things the same as before?! 

The man, beaten bloody, and sobbing, was taken away. And I didn’t lift a finger to help. Ah, I thought. Felix, you selfish man. I thought to myself, as I trudged my way to Duncan’s apartment. 

Of course, even back then, there were some people who didn’t do anything to help. Just like how no one did anything to help my mother and I. Just like how no one did anything to help even today.

People weren’t taking action, I thought. This didn't have to happen. And we didn't have to be the only ones to know about this either. The world's gonna have to know about this, I realized. Which means, we need to be the ones to reveal all of this to the public.

My chest felt heavy as I walked into the apartment. 

“Felix?” I looked up to see my friends looking at me in concern. 

“It’s...it’s fine.” I said, holding up the USB. This, I thought. This had to be the answer.

“I think...I think we’ll finally have our answer,” I said.

The feeling of the usb being inserted felt like a key unlocking a giant gate.