(YOOOO ANOTHER SHORT STORY FOR SCHOOL)

(Um, funny story for this one, there was a word limit of

800 words, but if you know me... O_o i may or may 

not have followed this guideline...

oops T-T)

****

A World Gone Awry

By: Sunny

I sneak as quietly as I can through the metal-walled tunnel system. Overhead lights glare and bounce off the walls, reflecting an image of sallow cheeks and extremely pale skin— though my body is healthy, it certainly doesn't look it.

I said I was going on a walk, but I never said where. Today is the day. I'm going to sneak to the Surface.

There is a forest near the city outskirts, though it's a far way to navigate through the intricate underground tunnel system built years before I was born. I've learned all about forests, we study them extensively in school, but we only get to see them in virtual reality simulations. I don't think it's quite the same.

Up ahead, I spot a tall, rusty ladder that seems to go up forever. I take one last shaky inhale of the frigid, freshly pumped oxygen circulating the corridors. It tingles down my throat. I grasp both hands onto the ladder and pull myself up with a grunt. Its metal is cool beneath my fingers. I climb until I'm blanketed in darkness and can just barely make out the ladder. It's only after my muscles start aching that I see daylight shining through the outline of the exit.

I extend my hand to the exit, prodding it with my fingers. I push with all my might, my heart plummeting to my stomach as my right foot nearly slips from the ladder. The exit pops open, and the blinding light fills my vision. I squint, wincing against the excruciating pain, and pull myself out. I clamber to my feet, wasting no time to fumble for the filter mask clipped to my belt and pulling it over my nose and mouth. I breathe in the filtered air, my breath resounding loudly in my ears.

My eyes adjust to the lighting, and I can make out the impressive buildings that loom over the streets. Thick puffs of smog weave through the top of the buildings, mostly obscuring the sky, but are unable to block the brightness of the sun. The sides of the roads are covered with abandoned cars, and the neon signs of businesses and restaurants have long burned out. Most cities are too polluted by toxic chemicals to inhabit, which is also a reason we moved underground. To travel through these cities, you have to wear a filtering mask that only lasts a few hours. And nobody with the resources is doing much to try to get rid of the pollutants. Most of them have given up and left it to nature to try to cleanse it.

I begin walking in the direction of the city outskirts, head snapping in all directions in pure entrancement, examining the foreign environment. Every crack and crevice on the sidewalk is a new adventure. Even the way my shoes strike the Surface, thudding and echoing softly, seems different. The empty, abandoned cars on the side of the road and the thick air pollution make the scene seem eerier than it is.

But it's the complete silence that's deafening.

What a lonely place this city has become.

***

'They didn't listen.' That's the phrase that has been said to me all my life regarding the Surface. They didn't listen to the signs. They didn't listen to the warnings about the dramatically changing weather, the extinction of animals, and our growing population. And when they did listen and act, it was all too late. The world had been walking an irreversible path for far too long. Humanity didn't back down without a fight at first, we are as stubborn as stubborn can be. Technologies were made to fight against pollution, and ultimately global climate change, but it became too much and the costs for such technologies grew and grew, until only the wealthiest, or most powerful leaders could make a difference. The rest of humanity was left to suffer, now having lost the one constant thing in their lives that was there long before empires were established, and currency became inked slips of paper. For once in our history, we became compliant. We simply gave up. What a contradiction.

Like-minded people were chosen to lead, who ultimately revealed themselves as tyrants and fools, people who used their power to silence voices instead of acting upon them and looked out merely for their own self-interest. Though many people are still fighting, it is more of an instinct to survive than to save.

The environments of the world that aren't completely scarred are either the most desolate environments or the most affluent cities. Nowadays, in 2068, you're living in either an economically prosperous, controlling metropolis, or a technologically advanced semi-anarchical dump.

Or, you're different. Like me.

I go up to the Surface rarely, and for very small amounts of time. My parents forbid me from exploring the city Above. But I long for natural air and the sunlight— I just know we weren't meant to stay holed up underground. I wish to see the ocean, and dash across a beach— at least one that hasn't been grazed by pollution's hand.

My people, the "Belowers '' (as the rest of the world calls us), retreated underground and now wait for the earth to "reset" and adapt to the harsh changes we brought to it. Belowers believe that since humans have harmed the soil of this planet and taken away so much, we have no right to interfere with its healing. We had no place to cause so much hardship to it, and our suffrage is our own fault. The hope Belowers hold is that eventually, without human intervention, the earth will find a way. That is another phrase I hear all too often. 'Earth will find a way.' I wonder when that is.

Perhaps there is something we could do to help the process, but what resources do we have Below? It's the Abovers that hold all the riches.

The Abovers...

They consist of either the prosperous, who live lavishly and have no cares for the world around them, or illiterate citizens who turn a blind eye and sink further into their own lives, or strong advocates who still dare to speak out in a world that has gone deaf to such cries.

I'm not supposed to like the Abovers, they broaden the gap between the fortunate and the less fortunate and have wasted our resources. But, lately, I've been thinking that perhaps my people are not so different from them at heart. Perhaps Belowers only hide behind a mask of justification, watching pensively from the shadows while they go about their sunny days in ignorance. I've never met an Abover.

I cross a street. The large, painted lines that mark the route are worn and faded. I ponder on what this place must have looked like before it became a barren city with looming buildings, the air thick with smog and pollutants, and forsaken cars scattered across the road, a place where the silence is absolute. The city before the Disasters, with busy streets and busier people, never genuinely paying attention to their surroundings.

After what feels like ages (and bearing an uncomfortable amount of sweat which has gathered on me since I needed long, draping clothes that would cover my sunlight-deprived skin from harsh rays), I reach the fringes of the city. The smog thins, and suddenly the world becomes more saturated, like a photo with a greyscale filter was reverted to its original state. Finally, the thick pollutants part and the last towering building is passed. I find myself venturing down a long-forgotten dirt path, pushing past the wild tangles of branches and vines, overgrown weeds and lavish flora brushing against my legs. A warm breeze tugs at my hair.

It's utterly spellbinding.

Hesitantly, I take off the filter mask, lungs filling with the dewy air of the dense forest. Unfamiliar aromas make my skin prickle like my senses have been heightened. I brush my hand over the grooves in a tree's umber bark.

"Wow," I exhale in amazement. It's like the universe is a brilliant, surreal kaleidoscope, and my whole life I've been wearing dim shades. The leaves are so delicate. The sunlight that filters through them provides just enough serene luminance. Every hush and rustle of the lofty trees, every crunch of my shoes on a stick or protruding root fills my mind. I don't even care if my parents or anyone else finds out I explored the Surface. This, this feels... right.

How could we have let this all burn? Let it crumble right between our fingers?

I know of the forest fires, of how the Amazon rainforest had been struggling for decades, and how many trees were chopped down with little regard for replenishment or the protection of other species outside our selfish nature.

So why is everything so lush here? I thought this forest would be withering so close to an area full of pollution. Are we not so lost as my people say? Have they been lying to the next generation, or have they convinced themselves to the point of complete despair, so afraid of messing everything up further?

The technologies we've developed to survive underground... I wonder what could be done if those with all the resources put aside the need for power and aided the earth sooner. Did any of them stop to take a look at the ground they eat and slumber under? Whatever happened to explorers and scientists, always looking for ways to improve and better the world?

Maybe I am too idealistic, but I'm far from naive. Belowers are far more knowledgeable than the average Abover anyway. Perhaps I should be more cynical, I guess there's nothing I can do to help speed the earth's recovery, stop the wars over resources, fix the natural disasters that plague the coasts, clean the ocean's entirety...

But what is the point in blaming the past if the people who need to learn from it refuse to listen?

I should go home soon, the sun is slipping over the horizon. It looks far prettier in person than in a simulation. I can even see the way the sunlight fractures through the tufts of clouds.

As I return to the city's outskirts, I adorn the filtering mask once more, the taste of filtered air drier and much less comforting than in the woods. I flex my hands in front of my face, admiring their contrast to the lush trees. My hands are so pale and bony, almost deathly. Mere skeletons are what my people have become, shells of who we were meant to be as human beings. My people say shrouding yourself in eternal darkness, never to see the light of day, is the right way to help the earth. But wisdom is not wisdom if it includes the denial of cowardice and acceptance of blind compliance. They've given up, but they don't acknowledge their failures.

This world was, and still is, a broken one. But I want to make a difference. I know we can make a difference if only we stand together. Yes, we are the ones who caused all this harm. Shouldn't that mean it's our very right to fix it? To own our mistakes? How peculiar is it that we have so much power but are too powerless to act?

They all say that the world is bound to get better, that earth will find a way; the world will keep spinning, and the tides will still rise and fall, as they always have.

But may the right time be now?

Hope is not a fleeting whisper, it's a battle cry. Yet we've all closed our ears, Abovers and Belowers, locked the doors, forever engulfing ourselves in an infinite silence.

...until something shatters that silence.

Do you hear that?

I hear birds singing.

Listen to them, really listen.

Isn't their melody just beautiful?

****

THIS STORY IS TOTALLY CONTINUED

IN MY TALENTED FRIEND ScoobyDoobyDooXD'S NOVEL

"CONTINUATION OF A WORLD GONE AWRY"

THAT SHE TOTALLY WROTE FOR THE PURPOSES

OF CONTINUING THIS STORY AND NOT FOR THE SAME ASSIGNMENT IN SCHOOL.

https://www.wattpad.com/1080010580-continuation-of-a-world-gone-awry-next-chapter