The writing prompt for this piece was “Hot, Hot, Hot.’ I chose Climate change as my direction, looking back from the future.
Blast from the Past
“I found it! I found it!” That’s all Charles said, over and over.
His mother rushed into his cube and asked him what he had found.
“I think it is called a booker,” was his response.
“What’s a booker?” his mother asked.
“It’s one of those things that they had back in ancient times. It has all sorts of squiggles in it. I think they called it writing.”
“Writing?” she said, “I’ve heard of that. Refresh my memory. What would writing be?”
“Well, according to the research that I’ve been doing, back in the year 2025, on Earth, that was one of the ways humans used to communicate with each other.”
“That was a long time ago,” she responded, “I’m impressed. No humans are living on that planet anymore; perhaps some insects and fish remain. It’s mostly dried up, with pockets of water. I’m not very versed in history. What happened there?”
“Well, my cube screen told me that there was a great turmoil back then with humans disagreeing on everything. There was also a climate issue, which significantly altered the planet’s structure. Too much heat melted everything, and then the water took over, until the heat dried up a lot of it.“
“Is that how we got out here, in these bio cubes?” his mother asked.
Charles continued, “Yep, it turns out that people needed a way to escape Earth. Its wealthy humans spent lots of something called money to develop a ship that could go out into space.”
“But did they build one big enough for everyone?”
“They totally failed,” said Charles, “And then there was the issue of who would inhabit these vehicles. No one could agree on who would be saved and who would be left behind.”
Charles’ mom begged him to continue.
“Well, it was a simple solution once the discovery was made. It was a female and a male, only 15 solar years old, who discovered the space bubble. That allowed people to reverse gravity, enclose themselves in a cube, and be taken safely away. The cube was flexible enough to accommodate lots of their belongings. I guess these bookers were not very important, so most of them were left behind.”
“That would also explain why there are so few of us here. I understand that there were billions of inhabitants there,” his mother said. “Lucky for us, that some of those that were saved could build upon those bubble discoveries. How many Earth solar years have we been gone?”
“The best estimate I could find, through my screenmindtech, is four generations, about 400 solar earth years.”
“So what will you do with that booker you’ve found?”
“I guess I will have to learn how to translate it, maybe it will give me some indication of what life was like back then. These squiggles must be some sort of words.”
“That’s interesting,” mother said. “Why would you need to look at words when they are just there in your head. It would take too long to decode them visually.”
“That’s what I want to find out.” I think I’ve managed to decode a word that is on the front of this booker. Its six squiggles were all different.”
“What does it say?”
“It doesn’t say anything yet. I’ll need to do more research. I’ve discovered at least 26 different squiggles that show up throughout the booker. I believe these squiggles were called letters. Those that have no spaces between them could be a word.” Here is what the squiggles look like on the front of this booker: EXODUS
