Update 1
(Goodman, 2016).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi I'm Gia, and I don't remember the last time I saw the Sun.
In the summer of 2050, when I was 7, the Party declared that the sun had become too intoxicating and that the citizens had to be protected from its rays. The news spread across all social media and television platforms where there were increased incidents of people dying from cancer due to the toxic radiation. With the immense amount of scientific backup of the news, the whole society went into a state of panic. After a year, the Party had created a high-tech planetarium, the Barrier, that hovered over the city that replicated the sky and protected the citizens from the rays. They also declared to destroy the Sun using their own methods.
And in the winter of 2050, they succeeded.
But strangely the situation of our lives became worse and worse every year. Nature withered, food supplies decreased, and oxygen levels gradually started to become low. When conspiracies rose, the Party declared that these incidents were simply part of a transition. But there remain theories that the Party was hiding something beyond the Barrier.
I told my mother about how Theo had told me that there was brewing an intoxicating poison in the restricted areas and that was the cause for the cancer. She stayed silent as she sipped on our daily brown colored porridge. I thought it had a nauseating taste and couldn’t get myself to put my spoon into these musty liquids. But it was the most we got living in the poorest district in the city.
“So, what do you think?” I asked eagerly as she slurps the porridge.
“I think it’s stupid.” She snapped. “The Party has been so good to us. And in time we will get an alternative.”
I sigh and stick my spoon in the porridge.
“That’s what Professor Fredrick says too. But Theo told me not to believe in his fake science.”
My mother raised her eyebrow and sighed.
“Don’t let this boy brainwash you with such ridiculous ideas.”
“But Theo’s not ridiculous! He’s gotten A’s in all the sciences!”
“And a high school dropout.” my mother said with a cold tone.
She picks up her empty bowl and places it in the basin. My mother faces me with a stern look.
“Don’t you have to go on your night patrol?”
I roll my eyes and walk off to my room.
I sigh as I stare at the broken glass near our door to see my tattered navy uniform and unwashed frizzy hair. I open our crooked door and run across the fake evergreen grass.
I reach the barred fences and see Theo, also wearing a ruined uniform, leaning against them. He greets me with a nod.
“So, are we breaking in tonight or not?” He asks.
“How are you so sure that they’ll be something beyond these fences?”
“There’s so many witnesses about light seeping through the Barrier. The Party says it's just a fault in the system, but I don’t believe that.”
He starts cutting through the fences and I stare at him anxiously. He finally cuts it open and walks in, but I don’t move.
“You coming or what?”
I slowly take a few steps forward.
