Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2019 16:41:00 +0000 From: Andrew Passey Subject: Look To The Stars Part 1 (Young Friends) This is a new story, you can check out my other stories on my author page on Nifty, some of which are still ongoing. (The Village, The Island, Things Are Going To Change and The Foster Boy etc) Please donate to Nifty here: http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html and keep this great resource going! Ok. the story... As my brother once said to me, "This might be our future but it feels like the past". The first half of the 21st century had been a time of rapid technological advance, but also a time of climatic change that set a clock ticking. By the time we reached 2050 we'd hit the peak of the wave, it was all downhill from there. Or at least it was in our small rural town as we approached the end of the century. The crops struggled with the changeable weather, power cuts were so common it was the norm rather than the exception. Information was hard to come by, the Government didn't want us to know how bad things were. The tech giants had turned their gaze away from us ordinary folk and lived in their vaulted ivory towers. Out in the rural sticks, we struggled to get by. I'd read old books by candlelight at night, non fiction books from earlier in the century now seemed like the most outrageous sci fi. I'd read that books were soon to be no longer than a thing, that everyone would be reading on tablets, and yet here I was surrounded by books, tablets and tech a thing of a different world. I'd picture myself in that world sometimes, knowledge at your fingertips, so many luxuries that people took for granted. I'd wonder if they knew they were squandering it all away? Leaving us with nothing but dust. My life, well it was a world away from that tech world, it was a more pastoral life than I'd like, it was bloody hard work trying to just survive. I'd work in the garden after school every day, and at weekends, trying to eke out whatever I could from the slightly reluctant soil, it helped us eat fresh vegetables, those that still grew. It was nowhere near enough food though, and given we had no money, I had to do what I could to supplement our diet, something that at times made the hard work in the garden feel like bliss. In bed at night I'd lie awake, looking out the window at the stars, sometime wondering if my Dad was doing the same wherever he was. I'd fantasise about a better life, I dreamed of going to space and the stars above. This planet had served us well but it was telling us to leave. Not that we could do anything about that, no we just had to make the best we could with what we had. I'd recently turned 13, not that it was the milestone it once was. My Mum barely acknowledged it, "one year closer to the end" she said fatalistically. She'd left my Dad when we were young, she whisked us away from him one day when he was at work. She didn't say why or what he did, just that he was partly responsible for the mess that we were in and his solutions weren't the answer. She wanted us to live a quiet life, get back to nature, living off the land. Maybe the typical dream of a city girl who'd never done it before, thinking it would be idyllic, instead it was tough. I couldn't help but feel she regretted it, she spent a lot of time in bed, she was heavily depressed but she wasn't alone. A lot of people had lost hope, some reacted by fighting for what little they had, some went fatalistic, some like me dreamed of a better life, others relished being brought down to a more antisocial and feral level. My brother had run away a couple of years ago, or at least I hoped that is what happened. He was only 13, I woke up one morning and he was gone, he'd left me a note to say he had a way out but not to try and follow him. He promised he'd find Dad and he'd come back and get me. Two years on it felt like empty words, I'd not heard from him, I was here alone apart from Mum who was so withdrawn these days I might as well have been alone to be honest. Was my brother John dead? Was my Dad? Did John have to do what I did to survive? I didn't like to think about it, I had enough to worry about. I was living in my own version of hell, waiting for a rescue that in my heart I knew would never come.. It was Friday morning in late October, I didn't like to think of what was coming. Winter. When the land would be even more unresponsive than it usually was. I checked the cupboards before I headed out on my way to school, they were bare. I'd be able to work in the garden that evening and over the weekend but we'd need more food. Not just for the week but to survive the winter. I sighed to myself, and got mentally prepared for what I'd have to do to get it. I knew we had no food, I'd been putting it off for a few days but it was the weekend tomorrow, we'd starve if I didn't get it sorted. I headed out to school, walking through the short cut through the cornfields, heavy hearted and dreaming of a better life. School was ok, it was a respite from hard physical work but I didn't really have any friends. Friends were a luxury that boys like me couldn't afford. However I loved learning and was top of the class in all subjects. Not that it mattered, being a science, maths or engineering genius didn't matter round here, nope we needed farmers, and people who would happily be broken by the system, plodding through their lives not asking questions, clinging onto life with cracked fingernails.. I caught up with Rick at lunchtime (not that I had any food to eat so I guess I'll just call it hungertime), and agreed to see him after school. His parents had a big farm outside town, loads of corn fields, loads of other crops even if they often failed, they also ran the village shop, they were what counted for well off round here. Rick was a tall blond haired boy, taller than me although he was 14 so that was to be expected. He helped out in the store after school and was a handy contact to have, calling him a friend would be definitely pushing it. Still, he was much nicer than most of the boys at our school, and while it didn't make what I do any easier, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I stayed behind after school to discuss spaceship engineering with my teacher, he might have ended up teaching in this no hope town but his father had been an engineer and he was always interested in chatting through theoretical as well as practical scientific and mechanical matters. He'd often say I was wasted in that school and town, I sort of felt he was talking about himself as well.Anyway, I couldn't put it off any longer and headed off to the shop to see Rick.