I didn't leave the room for the rest of the day, ignoring my hunger. This all... It felt like too much to handle. End of the world as I had known it, the questionable morals of current society and the obvious manipulation... That's too much. I just wanted to go home. I did not even realise when I fell asleep.
I woke up to the sound of my buzzer alarm, like always. I didn't take a bath day before it, but after quick verification of my smell, I decided to skip shower, no matter how disgusting this could seem. I just didn't feel like showering, in fact, I just wanted to stay in my room and disconnect myself from everything again and preferably forever. Still, I got dressed and reluctantly left the room. I walked through the jungle-corridors, washed my teeth, walked through the jungle-corridors, sat to eat breakfast in complete silence, went to my room to watch TV, went to the hall to learn more about the future, ate lunch (sweets again), done exercise, skipped dinner, took a shower, went to sleep. And I just continued going on like that for a few days, in a boring routine, barely talking to anyone, even Jasmin and July.
We learned quite a lot about how the world works. What will happen to us when we leave the Shift Centre where we were currently being "rehabilitated". We'd actually leave soon, in oder to discover the world on our own, we were assured that we would get help no matter what questions we had.
"Your citizen IDs are specifically marked as "u", for Unfrozen." Amina told us. "Each one of you, even the teenagers, will be assigned an apartament. They'll be quite small, but two people can agree to share and get a larger one. Details about placement will be discussed individually." she explained. She also later told us that, we'd be getting payed the average pay until we finish education - we were supposed to have individual lessons through computer, which would be designed specifically so we have the learning process accelerated, instead of having to go through school again. Then, after we reached the new high school level, we'd loose our monthly financial support. Seemed like an easy system to exploit, but I decided not to question it.
On 24. 05. 2117 we finally left the Shift Centre. We, the Unfrozen and Amina, who wore a dress with a collar taller than her head. It was vibrantly pink and her clothes stood out so much - the unfrozen prrefered less in-your-face clothes, after all. Besides Jasmin. She seemed to enjoy those odd... "Things" because I could hardly consider them clothes. She wore an extremely bright yellow dress with enourmous shoulderpads and neon blue knee-hight socks.
It was the first time, since we've been unfrozen, that we could truly see with our own eyes what the world looked like, what the city looked like. It turned out that the Shift was located high above the ground floor, we stood on a huge balcony, able to see the city, Bristol of the future. All the buildings were tightly squished skyscrapers, with vibrant, green tops on every single one of them. The buildings themselves were too covered with plants growing on the sides, all the balconies. In the distance, below us, we could see streamlined huge vehicles moving around, hanging from the tracks, circularly moving around huge skyscraper complexes, like lifts. I had no idea how high we actually were. When I turned around to see the Shift Centre for the first time from the outside, I noticed how simplistic it looked on the exterior, very unlike to what I've seen on other buildings or in the interior of the Shift. It was basically a simple rectangle shaped, white block. No columns, no flowers, no decorations. Nothing.
I looked up and I saw a clear blue sky, not a cloud on there and when I focused, I could spot odd lines on the surface of the "sky". The dome that acted as false sky, sheltering humans from the truth about what their ancestors've done to our world. The most noticeable thing on that sky however, were the fake suns. There was a lot of them, dots of light trying to replace the real thing and supply humans, plants and everything with the light and energy. I wondered, what happened to the real sky? Was it dark and gloomy outside..? I stared at my surroundings, trying to capture as much of the new world as I could, while everyone else chatted, some excitedly, some more calmly, while admiring the view, while Amina was explaining something about the world, like usual. Jasmin was already taking pictures with her new camera-glasses thingie that we all got, despite knowing that this won't be as impressive and incredible to anyone that we meet and talk to when we get down and start our lives anew... It didn't matter to her. Why would it? For now we were time travelers. We all were like the Doctor, even if we couldn't ever go back. We all were discoverers, but our findings will only feel revolutionary to us. We were Hal Bregg, but had never seen the stars, no, wait, the new world would be our stars, we-
My excited thoughts have been interrupted. I noticed the curly haired man walking slowly to the edge of a platform. "He is just admiring the view" I told myself, but continued to observe him. He continued walking and then gripped the barrier tightly. He stood there, his loose clothes, his wild curly hair fluttering along with the wind. His head slowly moved down, his hair completely covering his face. "He is just... Admiring the view" I repeated to myself, while not beliving it. He just stood there and I started to walk towards him. Step, by step, shyly, slowly, scaredly. I wanted to scream, towards him, towards Amina, just scream, but I couldn't even open my mouth, so I walked. Just walked.
He straightend up, his hair still covering his face, like a mask, like a veil. He turned his head and looked at me, then looked down again.
I felt my hart skipping like crazy.
I felt like if the time had slowed down.
I felt like hours passed between him standing.
And him stepping over.
And him letting go.
And him falling.
"No, no, wait!" I bellowed and pointlessly reached my arm to warss him as the man fell, just a fraction of second after it was too late.
Everyone looked towards us in terror, I heard people yell, gasp, they were shocked, but it was too late, everything was too late.
The man fell down. We didn't hear him reaching the ground. We were too high up. Amina tried to calm us down, but I didn't hear her. People were shocked, maybe cried, maybe panicked, but I did not hear them. I just stood there, my arm reaching out, like I was frozen, a statute. Had I ran, had I shouted, had I said anything at least. Had I not tried to ignore him at first.
Would he be alive? I fell on my knees, felt tears dripping down my cheeks, felt powerless. I never knew that man. I saw him, standing alone, not speaking. But not once I said a word to him.
And I never will.
No one will.
***
We returned back inside. Our first trip to the city wouldn't happen. In silence we walked through the hallways, as a huge group. Amina, seemed nervous and looked around, almost desparately. We returned to where we started, the meeting hall. We all sat down, quiet.
"Do we need to stay here?" somebody said "This... Doesn't concern us, does it?"
"It's all your fault for what happened to him!" shouted a middle-aged man "You are neglecting us, pushing so much tension on us. Don't you ever think that we had pasts?? That it may be hard to move on?!" he continued. Jasmin stood up and clenched her fist.
"Our pasts don't matter! That nameless man's person's choices don't matter either! We were supposed to be free!" she shouted, with tears in her eyes "Lets just leave already! I don't want to stay here anymore!" she cried. Another woman looked at Jasmin in disapproval.
"A man just died before our eyes! Have some respect!" she lectured the girl.
"That's why I want to just leave already!!" she bursted out in tears "I just want to live normally!"
"Please, please, calm down!" said Amina desperately "There... There is no reason for going funny now!"
"THIS IS NOT FUNNY" another man shouted
"I meant... Crazy?" she said quietly, wuth fear in her eyes "I'm... Sorry..."
This mess continued for a long time. I didn't want to hear any of that. I could've saved that nameless man. I could've preveneted a death. But I didn't.
July walked to my side.
"It's not your fault, Ellie." she said calmly while placing hand on my shoulder "It's this insane world that is to blame. We will fix it somehow..." she added while squeezing my shoulder slightly. "I don't know how, but we will!" she exclaimed. July was definitely a revolutionary type, I always found those admirable, but... I felt like this would be hopeless. Everyhting felt hopeless. But I kept quiet.
Like usual.