Complex Numbers

Ten Years After

What's the point of temptation if you have to resist it all the time? Tonight, I'm giving in to temptation with my response to this prompt.

PROMPT November 5th

Imagine the year is 2030. Write about what has happened in your life over the last decade in the past tense.

This past decade has been the longest century of my life.

It started, of course, with 2020. I remember the sayings well: "This year sucks." "Will this year ever be over?" "And we thought 2016 was bad." All posted on the internet, of course.

I miss the internet.

I miss computers and smartphones.

Hell, I miss electricity.

I tried to warn them, you know. Every time someone started talking about looking forward to 2021, I'd point out that things were only going to get worse. I didn't make a lot of friends, but that's the fun thing about being a pessimist: either you're wrong, in which case you feel good because something better happened; or you're right, in which case you get to be smug about being right.

Silly me. I thought I was preparing for the worst.

I never expected to actually survive.

The pandemic was bad enough. Then there were the riots. And the flooding. And the hypercanes. And the water shortages (which would have been amusingly ironic, considering the floods, but I stopped laughing after the first time I saw the tide of dead bodies washed up from a tsunami) that killed millions outright and displaced billions, triggering apocalyptic warfare.

I don't think anyone used nukes, but I can't be sure. Not around me, obviously. But the sunsets turned bright crimson for a while: dust kicked up by nuclear detonations? Or simple volcanic ash? All I know is the skies glared white in the day and the stars shone only dimly at night, and the hottest years on record got replaced with the coldest weather I'd ever encountered. I meandered south, hoping to be where it's warm, but the murder hornets and plague mosquitoes had the same idea, so I turned back to the frozen zones.

I always joked about how nuclear winter and a drastic decrease in population would be a surefire solution to global warming. Ha. Ha. Very funny. I was such a comedian.

I was able to scrounge, for a while. Fresh food became a distant memory. Plenty of cans, though. Dried beans and rice. After a few years, even in the cold, those staples started to go bad.

How did I manage to survive when so many fortunate others perished? I still don't know. Maybe I didn't. Maybe there is a hell after all, and I'm in it.

If not, then let it be known that my penultimate action in life was to leave this note where, maybe, one day, someone will find it.

I saw a bear out there. It looked hungry. Farewell.