Standing mid-air on my hoverboard, silenced at the thoughts that are trying so hard to find a place in which to imagine a reality, quite like the one in this letter, that I’ve found, addressed to my mother, from my grandmother many years back.
I’m looking out at the scene before me and I am not sure whether to cry, be afraid, or to be proud of the scenario of the world that I and my fellow generation of mankind, find ourselves amerced in, on our planet earth.
My grandmothers’ words in this letter, depicted a life that she was apologising to my mother, for leaving her behind in as she entered into her final days. She describes a world full of anger, betrayal, racism and hatred towards fellow mankind in barbaric and absurdly stupid and ridiculous ways and reasonings. She also details a world in which the sun and heat have overridden much of the other seasons due to global warming, how there are barely any trees left on the planet to sustain the needs of mankind’s daily breath. She goes on to mention the destruction of houses and businesses and infrastructure, and how all of this and more has left mankind begging and dying on street corners, some with young children still at their sides.
My mother tried to tell me of these stories as a child, where things were so beautiful and peaceful and life seemed to have much promise, but that as she grew older, how she came to see the reality of what was really happening in her world and not what had been cushioned for her. It must have been so bad, that my grandmother felt it a great need to unburden herself and ask for forgiveness from my mother, for leaving her here alone, in this derelict world.
I turn once again, three hundred and sixty degrees on my platform, where I am hovering, and I try to imagine the scene of the past. How very different it is from the days that my mother described the purity of what earth offered and how very different it is to the final words described by my grandmother, of the state of earth on her deathbed.
The world before me now, one hundred years later, well, how do I even begin to describe it…
I don’t know the sun or the heat that my mother and grandmother have spoken about. It is bitterly cold on earth here in my time, but we are fully equipped to deal with it both in our homes the outdoors, for our wellbeing and that of the cultured vegetation and plantation that we have genetically modified to adapt. We also have no use for fuel or cars and any other form of roadworthy vehicles as now thing move either by hoverboard or by willing oneself or item to a specific place and time. Mankind has changed considerably. We barely speak, we rarely connect lovingly or intimately for we have no use to procreate naturally anymore as everything is lab grown and modified for perfection. We know no war, jealousy, hate or greed as all these things have been omitted from our genetics from the time of our individual creation, by man and not the God that my mother and her ancestors have spoken about.
I am not sure what else to describe about my world of today, for I really don’t have any concept of imagination or free will. We are all controlled on every level of our beings, (Can we even be considered human beings any longer?) Have I lost out, or have I gained? How would I ever even know the answer to this?
I fold up the letter and discard it with the passing waste. Does any of its contents even matter to me? Now?