A Dystopian Futuristic World of Sadness
With no sun shining in the sky, there is no hope and no morality in humankind. In a world of cities covered in neon lights, radiating sadness. Humankind has evolved in a way that is cruel and dishonest and the systems are flawed due to the humans who created it.
It’s the 25th century, the year 2523, on the 21st of October. The night city is glowing with neon lights, and a girl is walking towards her shattered dreams, trying to conceal her sadness with happiness, attempting to fit into this broken world of despair. She spots a building in the distance on this snowy night. She asks her Artificial Intelligence on her phone to play an old song from a band she used to know. While listening to the song, she walks toward the building and gazes at it. When she reaches the building, she realizes it’s her home, not her dream. She used to live in her dream, so she mixed up reality and her aspirations. It’s an old building with broken lights on the roof, and her home is on the 18th floor. As she was going up to her floor, she found an interesting device on the ground floor among the scattered stuff. She picks it up and inspects it. It displays the message, “Time is limited, use it to make your friend or it will become your enemy,” and the date on the device reads 2023, 21st October, 12:45 am. It prompts her to press the button “travel now.” Without hesitation, she presses the button.
She finds herself in a bustling city in the middle of the night. She is shocked and gets scared by the jump between times. She looked around and saw people walking arounds in the city in the middle of the night. She searches for her home, but after a few miles of walking, she realizes she is not in the city she once knew. Everything is different; people speak a different language. She doesn’t stop and continues her quest for her home by walking. After a few miles, she grows tired, takes a break, and decides to buy food and drinks. She spots a small store in the distance and goes inside to shop. There, she encounters a young boy about his mid 20’s, working in the store, engrossed in playing a video game on his laptop and listening to old songs on the speaker in a slowly fading volume. She asks him for food and hands him an advanced futuristic card to pay the bills, cause she had no cash on her. The boy is astonished by the unfamiliar payment system and inquires about it. She smiles and tells him that she’s from the future. The boy laughs and proceeds to educate her about the future’s grim realities, how miserable and terrifying it is. She asks him if he’d like to live in the 25th century if he had the chance, to which he replies that he would love to explore a dystopian world, but not to live there permanently. They sit in a corner of the store, and she starts describing life from the 25th century. The boy shares facts, and they both realize they are from different timelines, and both timelines are damaged by humanity’s flaws.
It’s 2 am at night and the girl says she needs to return home. The boy asks her how she ended up in this timeline and why she chose this time and city. She shows him the device and explains it’s from her apartment and said someone must have left it. He asks if he can accompany her to the 25th century of her timeline, and she agrees. They held hands and traveled to her timeline. This time, they end up in the exact timeline of her but in a different city. It’s a beautiful yet perilous and desolate place. She welcomes him to the future. They observe the tall buildings, neon lights, flying cars, and holographic billboards, with AI bots outnumbering humans. They ascend to the top of a building and discuss their dreams and experiences while sitting on the roof. The boy realizes it’s her birthday and understands why she’s feeling lonely. He wishes her well with a song, and she smiles and thanks him.
In this convergence of different timelines and time zones, the void of technology pervades with no hope in sight. Both of them are in timelines that aren’t meant for them to live in. It’s like living in a black hole, a true dystopian reality. There’s no sunlight coming to shine everyday from the sky, and the people in the timeline fakes happiness while being lonely and miserable within. Secrets are kept hidden, and each day and night is a endless loop ending with fake smiles. Time behaves strangely in all timelines, and people are born and die alone, but they meet others who aren’t meant to be with them on their journey.
After a while, the boy asks her about the music she listens to and the books she reads. She shares some names and tries to connect over their experiences. The boy inquires about her daily life in their world, and she describes a world falling apart, with wars between humans and system governments, and AI authorities. It’s a bleak existence, and 90% of the population lives and spends their time virtually. The boy is nervous yet curious to explore the futuristic city, feeling a mix of joy and sadness. He wants to live in that timeline briefly, but suddenly, the device starts beeping, displaying the same message: “Time is limited, use it to make your friend, or it will become your enemy.” They realize it’s time to return to their own timelines to prevent a time paradox. It means being stuck in a time loop forever. They say their goodbyes, but she starts coughing, and there’s blood in her cough. The boy worries and asks about it, and she downplays it as just a sickness. Unknown to her that she’s infected with a highly contagious virus that’s spreading rapidly in her timeline which was meant to destroy rogue fugitive humans. She has only a few weeks to live and doesn’t know what to do. She didn’t even realize she was sick until that cough. They bid farewell, and the device stops beeping, returning the boy to his own timeline in the 21st century. Both are now lost in time in different timelines with a little hope.
A week later, the girl lies in her bed, severely ill, desperately searching for a vaccine. However, there’s no hope of finding a treatment for this deadly virus. She remembers the boy she met from a different timeline in her final moments and realizes that he could have brought the virus to his timeline, potentially leading to the deaths of billions and she has no idea whether it will happen or not. She rushes to find the device she used, but it’s not functioning correctly, displaying an error. She’s too late. The timelines of the two worlds are about to end, leaving it only a memory. A tear falls from her eyes onto the device, symbolizing the cruelty of time and the science behind it. The world ends in her eyes, filled with sadness. She returns to her bed, closes her eyes, and wishes it was all just a bad dream. She enters the dream world, the opposite of the world she lived in, until reality eventually finds her. Was it reality or just a bad dream?
