Wecome to life in 2075

 

Photo by Dominik Bednarz on Unsplash

 Welcome to the year 2075!

 

Do you think Earth will even still exist then or rather will us humans still be on earth by then? Personally I don't think so. I struggle to believe that we'll survive the next year let alone 50 years. Sorry to sound so grumpy but with all that's going on in the world at the moment it's hard to stay positive. 

 So why am I writing about a year 50 years in the future? Because it's the next challenge in the writers group that I'm part of :

Write up to 300 words set in the year 2075.

This can be in any style, fiction or 'non-fiction' but your challenge is to make it believable.

 

This is how I've started -

‘Come to the Cosmos,’ they cried, ‘& Experience the Wonder.’
Will there be blackbirds?
Bumblebees, blackberries, buttercups?
Damsons, dandelions,
Dormice and damselflies?
Conkers and crab apples, poppies and plums?
No.
I’ll stay here then. This land has all I need.

Well, it did have.

Now it’s just dry and dusty. A hideous husk of a place.
As though somebody took a fruit, sucked all the deliciousness out,
then left the peel to rot in the sun.

I’m one of the few humans left.
And I hate it.
I hate it I hate it I hate it.

I began with a vignette that I wrote long ago. I was thinking about how they would try to lure someone away from earth, lure them to a dry and dusty planet. This was in 2019, so in the early days of Meta and VR headsets.

 

 So I thought this could fit with a world in 2075. As I said earlier, I don't have much hope so when you don't have much hope what else can you do but bring in God? 

 

But how do I bring Him in, that is the question?  And then it came to me. The narrator, once they've done their work for the day, if they are good, they get to go in the nature room - a VR version of all that natural and beautiful, but something goes wrong and our narrator reveals the truth behind the curtain so they get shoved into a cell - two weeks, and it's while they are in the cell, memories of an old, old hymn bubble to the surface -

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

 

And then our narrator remembers a verse -  'I saw a new heaven and a new earth…'

 

I wanted it to be subtle not preachy. Hopefully I'll be long gone before 2075, I'd be 102 by then, which may be the new 90, but we'll see, only God knows.

I'll let you know how everyone else handles the challenge next time.

 

I'd love to hear how you'd write about life in 2075, let me know in the comments or on Facebook.

 

Here's to remembering hymns old and new. 

Martin is a writer, baker, photographer and storyteller. He's been published in the ACW Christmas anthology and Lent devotional. He's currently honing his craft at flash fiction and trying to finish his first novel.