A DREAM

It’s moving time again. My dad was transferred to another city for another agricultural study. He was an agricultural scientist and I know how important his job is. But sometimes, I tend to resent that we can’t stay in a city for a little while. I will leave my newfound friends again and find another group. And, I hate adjusting. The school I went before was a little hard. I was constantly bullied because I was a newcomer. I don’t get how their brain works. I mean, why do you bully someone on the grounds that she just came around your city.

Ah the brain. Maybe it has something to do with our environment, rendering us unable to think properly. In our studies, it says that enough oxygen would help our brains function well. Earth, for the last couple of decades, has been scarce of oxygen. My mom used to tell me that before, they were free to roam the planet, without wearing some oxygen-infused suits. Oxygen was abundant.

It all started right after the pandemic. When the world came back to how it used to be, there was some massive buildup of heat that it melted all its ice in the south and in the north. Water began to rise and submerged all coastal areas, thereby reducing the Earth’s landmass.

The heat was too much, drying the seas and killing the plants, which in theory, produces the oxygen that our brains needed. Now, the Earth is suffering from unbearable heat that we are left to be under the shade of our oxygen-infused buildings.

I would sometimes imagine what life was like if ever I have lived on my parents’ time. From their stories and pictures, I guess it would have been so much fun. When we move from city to city, I seldom see remnants of what mom used to call home or house. Now I know it was a place where families live together from one of our lectures before. It’s so sad to say that we can’t have that now. We only have our rooms to live in.

Playing along the road, maybe climbing up some hills or trees and swimming in the depths of the ocean would have been fun to do. Now, we’re stuck to studying and playing some indoor and board games and swimming in the congested community pool. The pictures I see from my parents couldn’t compare to what kids my age are now experiencing. The past was much better.

I sighed, thinking that maybe this was some kind of punishment to us people because of our abuse to Earth. Mom told me that they knew of what was coming if they continue on their ways. Groups were made all around the globe to encourage the people and make them aware of the dangers they were continuously doing to the planet. Some heeded the call while some others sat back and let it all happen.

But it was too late. Mom said it happened all too fast. She said the first week was just the melting, the second the scorching heat, and a month later, chaos. I couldn’t imagine what I would have felt had I been there. Death toll skyrocketed more than the pandemic. But it wasn’t another disease, it was something simpler but deadly, hypoxemia. The government scrambled to get the resources needed to save their country, from oxygen tanks to buildings that can be infused with oxygen. But the greatest problem would be the source of oxygen.

Good thing people like my dad thought quickly and now we are using the artificially-produced oxygen circulating in our community building. Our community building is a twin tower, one side would be where our residential rooms are located and on the other side would be the location for our school, hospital, labs, offices and other things that adults need to do. Inside, we were safe from the sun’s UV rays and there is oxygen.

We stopped for gas and oxygen. That’s why I have been feeling lightheaded for a while. These stations were built on areas in between community buildings to accommodate people who are moving. No one was manning the station since it was automated.

I watched the outside. It was dead silence. There was no wind, no animals, and nothing was green. Ruins of old homes and buildings are now corroded by the UV and dust. It was something similar to an ancient civilization excavated by some guys at YouTube. There were no people, only the occasional scientists wearing astronaut suits with tubes connecting to a large truck providing them with oxygen. They are looking for some areas to plant and I don’t know, research maybe. They can only be out in the open, two hours max.

We went back on our way, and in no time, we reached to the eighth community building in my life. We settled immediately into our new residential room. After settling down and some hearty lunch of some bland ration food, dad was whisked away for some work on their breakthrough of the growth of a turnip.

Mom then helped me arrange my stuff before leaving me. She needs to go in the hospital to secure a schedule. There are so many sick nowadays, scientists correlating it to a disease called cancer from inhaling the artificial oxygen. How ironic, the one thing that we really needed is now causing us some disease that could possibly kill us. Again, this could be our punishment.

I picked up a brochure my mom gave me during our first move. She found it clutched by a dying man right outside the first community building of their city. He never reached safety and was left to rot outside. The living were the priority back then.

I looked at the picture of a smiling family in the front cover, suitcases in tow and walking under the sun in the sparkling, white beach. They look so happy, with the trees providing them shade. At the back of the brochure was a list of their rooms with pictures including the rates.

I envy them, they get to live in wooden houses surrounded by trees and the sound of the beach to lull them to sleep, and the wind blowing through their healthy faces.

Living should have been fun and mom would always say that I need to be thankful that I am still alive and surviving. But sometimes, I don’t know what it is to be happy about knowing that death looms around us.

We could have been happy, I believe, if the people of the past were able to take care of the gifts they were receiving. Then they could have secured a brighter future. Instead, they left the future to fend for itself.

I closed my eyes and dreamed of the world I could never have.