Future
Embroidered World by Yasi Chishti
The moment I wake up and face my embroidered ceiling, I realise who I am all over again. It doesn’t have to be the stench of fossil fuels over pumping in their engines or the exotic aroma of the mexican coffee that my robot places next to me. I can tell quite instantly that something is off. Skipping all my regular hygienic tasks, which makes my robot frown, I scurry down the Buckingham Palace stairs, there is something important going on; and if I’m going to ever become a future Queen I will need to know. So I stumble down the stairs, hair unkempt but my persistence sticking to me as much as my nightgown does. Before the colossal palace doors can swing open, I grab a pleated jacket off the door knob to my right and enter the dining room. My father who sits on his elevated AutoChair 2000, greets me with a quick wave of his hand, whilst my mother pats to an empty AutoChair 2000, which is adjacent to her. These chairs were apparently “essential”, the last of the real fossil fuels went into making them for my family. But as I gawk out the large oval windows to the city below me, the entire population of London suffers through the haze of corruption, which mainly we, the royal family, have caused. Straight after, what we call Task No.6, but is actually the term for “breakfast”, my robot,
whom I call Jenny, hands me my division outfit. There are 3 divisions, and we, the royal family, dictate them all. But the only division which should really concern us, is the one we care the least about. We call it the Vagrants, only the homeless and divisionless are confined to the boundaries of that division. However, the other two divisions are out of necessity Militia and Sage, basically just the brains and force of our kingdom. I look at my reflection in the mirror, my awkwardly large green eyes stare back at me, my outfit as leader of Militia is a bulky red vest which stops abruptly at my hip bone and some clunky black pants. I step into AirBoots 2000, saluting to my father and stepping into my shoes. These shoes are one of the newest inventions of Sage’s, so as I soar past 3 counties, I feel secure knowing their reverse gravity theorem is what supports me. Looking down at what London has become, I couldn’t help think of what it used to look like. Green fields and birds that chirp without hesitation. I think back to the family records, my ancestors and how happy they looked, and how desperately I pray the future will hold hope like it used to. Even so as I gaze around me, what looks back at me is a bleak bleak unreturnable London, for which even I have no faith.
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