Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE: Take my time/Rifles
THE WAVES COULD be heard from at least two kilometers afar from the coast if we were talking about the good old times. These days, the rain sometimes ends up muffling the beautiful and relaxing sound of the crashing water. It could be just relaxing, or just thunderous and harsh, but they mix, denying each other of the tranquility they’d be able to impose any other day to anyone. It has been like this for a long, long time, and even the unfathomable has to be acceptable when the main subject of our existence is where we currently are: the end of times. One has to fight the loud and imposing water that infiltrates the soil of their life. As cruel as the skies can be, that water can make truth of the bloom of something beautiful; or repress it.
A professor preached to her class, in a tone of warning, voice laced with purposefully contagious emotion. “Humanity ceased to exist that day. Lakes and rivers started overflowing incessantly, everywhere, making huge swamps out of what once were ordinary plains. After little time, coastal cities would be swallowed by the impetuous drive of the sea. Deltas disappeared quickly, watersheds and places of lower altitude transformed into lakes until, gradually, even the highest parts would be touched by the New Seas, and thus, people were forced upon mountains.” Her hand was rapidly making scribbles and her brain was trying to messily organize what could be seen as simple statements and cute makeshift drawings across the board.
She turns on her heels to face the crowd, her wine-colored dress sways just enough of what the grey jacket that grasps her rigid shoulders allows, and she leans against a stand of the blackboard. “And if you really are wondering why I said ‘ceased’, Vernaux explains so. You kids will see a lot of him when studying sociology,” she says with hidden passion, trying not to make a single student feel excluded with those large hazel eyes that lay behind round glasses. “I find it really interesting,” she smiles. “He says that what is left of us is much different from what we were. That the economy-driven assholes that would have put our world into such circumstances of emergency, were humanity at its finest, totally changed, at the latest stage of capitalism and individualization… and having had to change absolutely all of our ways of thinking as a society to adapt and help each other coexist with the rain, could make us capable of being considered a new species, in a new time and place, with new everythings.” She slightly chuckles at the end of the monologue. The tutor makes a pause as her much beloved audience tries to absorb the last fifty minutes, merged onto the other tiring six hours. She realizes such was the time that had passed and quickly says goodbye to her class, while erasing the chalk out of the blackboard and fighting to write the date of today and some other details for them to copy in the remaining minutes. 01/30/2122, she hoped it was comprehensive, mind casually taking her to complaints heard before. “I wish I could address a bit of the biological changes that happened to us and other lifeforms, but it has to be postponed,” only a few were interested in listening to the woman. “...And I hope we have a good year ahead of us!” she says enthusiastically to the multitude of lowered heads while rushing her way to the door, starting to become afraid of the false expressions every now and then.
The day was already dull from the early morning. The only light showing itself came from the clouds, powered by the celestial luminary behind them, with steady rain falling to the cemented grounds, orchestrating an uninterrupted choir through the perpetuating life. Streets were filled with temporary streams and little puddles, which, of course, were stepped on with fervency by the also little demons that laughed hysterically, happy for the arrival of the weekend, a feeling that could describe pretty much everyone in the picture. A feeling that even the moving of the trees could demonstrate. Despite the blurry day, a single person, a young lady, can be seen trying to look for refuge from the imposing bullets that were fleeing heavily out of the machine guns that belonged to the sky’s arsenal, finding herself amidst a shipwreck of sorts.
The results of the current meteorological conditions follow along to a big portion of this place. Ever since it all started, the behavior of the rain and other phenomena have gained plenty more layers to it, challenging the human comprehension; if even professional scientists get lost within it all, after decades of research, I’m really not one to explain it properly. Going from that university, the streets remain unmistakably similar throughout this city, as even I, someone that has only lived on the same block for my whole life, can recognize every corner and element as if it was my very own playground. Many buildings of short to medium size carry on to the limits of the horizon, but, curiously, no two of them are alike, even amidst the pervasive grayness that defines the city. The elevated, ethereal buildings that once cut through the skies, and the immense mega-commercial districts that epitomized the connectedness of life, were forsaken after the Skyfall, along with the very mode of production that characterized such nations of the old world.
An everlasting curtain of rain stands still, stretched upon the profoundness of what a city could mean nowadays, its streets winding in greatly narrow alleys, with water oozing through exposed pipes, some rusty and some glistening with the humidity. Walls are covered by dirt and graffiti that, unitedly, paint the way into and out of the dense darkness in which the uncertainty of this world dwells; the shadows of people doing as much work as themselves. Mixed with the buzz of loose wires and vibrating lamps; raindrops, hitting the metallic surfaces, echoing all around the lanes and the cables that intertwine in a chaotically beautiful manner. The air is as heavy as polluted humidity at its climax could be, conveying the scent of wetness and burnt oil, while the platforms of any other building complex seem to lightly float above, connecting one level to the other as if the city itself breathed in multiple layers.
Going up one of those buildings and its infinite apartments, resides tiredness.