The Wastelands

By: Grace Zhang

(Note: This story contains the multiverse theory, or the theory that multiple universes exist. Multiverses have not been proven to be true or false in the real world.The journal excerpts are not real unless stated so.)

The world is covered in water. The icecaps have melted, and the extinction of humans is drawing closer every second. The population is down to a little over one thousand. Plants and animals are dying, and food supplies are extremely low. The only place not covered by water is near Mount Everest, where the entire population lives in crude shacks and tents.

This is not the universe that we live in currently, but a different one. Nobody knows the year, since people are trying to reinvent the calendar to create a more “organized and simple time.” Ironically, the measurement of time is even more confusing now. Most of the trees have been demolished and we can only breathe the contaminated, dirty air because of the new oxygen masks. The oxygen levels are decreasing by the second, and we don’t know how much longer the masks can carry us.

Here is a journal excerpt from a diary of a 10-year-old, scratched into a rock:

“today when I got up, i went hunting for breakfast. I got lucky and found moss by a rock and also ate some wild fungi. I completed my daily chores of getting the water and hunting for lunch and dinner. Life is like this since apparently the generation before us didn’t take care of the environment. When I was hunting for dinner, I found a berry! I gobbled it up and it was delicious. After dinner, I laid down on my straw mat and adjusted my oxygen mask to go to sleep.”

This world is completely fictional, but it could be ours if we don’t take care of the environment, and soon.