You are the Younger Version of Me

 

Dear Lucas,

If you have just found this, now may not be the best time to read it, or ever but there is a point this will happen to your world anyway. The only reason I am writing to you now is to inform you of what will happen, not so you can attempt to stop it. It is inevitable. You are the younger version of me so I that would make me the future version of you. What I’m about to tell you Lucas will shape the rest of your life. You may already be experiencing it, or the revolution might begin in another 20 years like it had for me. Its currently the third or fourth month of 2072, I have tried my best to keep track of time, but it has been especially difficult with electronics fading into the history books over the last 30 years, not that there are many books left, there is not much of anything of value left. The worlds no longer how I remember it and not how you would have imagined it so I guess I should start explaining what happened.

Currently a popular debate for people of your time, climate change finally caught up with humanity cracking the earth dry over the last 60 years. The earth is now a crusty orange, it smells of burnt rubber mixed with a mouldy drink bottle left to sit for the last five decades. The people, or the people that are left, suffer from illness caused by dehydration and sunburn. All of this because our leaders decided to stand aside and do nothing, generations of clueless cowards to greedy and selfish to help. That is when the revolution began, our generation, filled with unrealistic fools, thought they would be able to stand up to the world’s leaders and create change in a peaceful manner. Of course, amongst any peaceful idea there is always one person willing to take it to the extreme.

Once the violent attacks begun, the governments saw the people as a problem and began placing restrictions as punishment. First it was basic things like how much water you were allowed a week, things like that but eventually, as things got worse, it became that they controlled every aspect of what we need to live. I thought joining the revolution would be a way out of this ridiculous lifestyle but now as a 66-year-old man I finally realized that they were the ones who started this endless war. They use propaganda to spread their message about how the governments have water, but the truth is the probably have less than us. This shows to those who are not completely brain washed already that our so called “leaders” are just as bad as those before them. Every day we fight and fight, but it does not stand for anything anymore, we are not challenging the government to get our lives back, we are challenging the government, so we keep our lives. This sounds strange I know but fighting is the only way to live now. If you leave the revolution, you are considered a traitor and killed. If you wish to join the government, you are considered a spy and killed. There is no change and that is why there will never be an end.

There is no hope for escape, only hope for survival, although it feels I am the only one that hopes for anything now. I try harder and harder every day to fix the mess that I am stuck in but there is no point because there is nothing left to return to. There is only control and power, nothing else exists or matters anymore and that’s something that you will have to decide you want to live through or not.

I hope things turn out differently for you and if it were to be, my advice would be to take control first. This is the only way you can decide your own outcome. Enjoy the rest of your free life while you can, work harder at school so you have the knowledge to survive when the time comes.

Best wishes to you Lucas. I know you are going to need it. Stay strong.

Lucas, the future version of you.

Image source:

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