We should always expect the unexpected, especially when you’re hanging out with us.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New London
Current Date: March 23, 3085

Character: Asim Amari
Race: Human
Age: 36
Current residence: New London, England
 

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Despite my best efforts, my health took a bit of a downturn a week or so ago. I’ve spent most of that time in bed and it has been less than fun. Then again, any type of illness is less than fun but when it gets bad to the point that I have to remain in bed, I know better than to argue the point of things. My health, since the time in the cave, has been something I’ve had to keep a close eye on and while it isn’t always difficult, there are times, like this bout of sickness, that are much more difficult to deal with.

With passing years and a lot of mindful habits, I’ve managed to keep my wheezing to a near minimum. On the days when things are a little worse, but not terrible, I just make myself slow down and deal with things. There’s nothing else I can do to undo the damage that spending time in the mines has done to me. In a way, I consider myself lucky, I’m still alive. I could have died in those mines, like so many others, but somehow, I’m still alive.

When I get sick, which is thankfully not a common happening, I just isolate myself, I mask up and I ask Petros to mask up when he’s near me, as well as any others; it’s not ideal, but it’s for the best, all things considered.

There’s a lot I don’t remember from the week I spent bed-bound. I spiked fever, I struggled to draw in air, and I know that I should have likely gone to the hospital but I would have been even more isolated than I was here in our separate bedroom and while it might all be in my head, being able to be near Petros every day to keep my spirits up has helped me climb my way back up to health. They wouldn’t have managed to do anything more for me at the hospital than I was already doing for myself here, at home. And here, at home, there was no one judging me. It might have been years since the revolution, but some people seem to remember particular things best forgotten for eternity.

Of what little I do remember of the week, there were hallucinations. I don’t know if they were things I saw while I was awake, or while I might have been asleep, but they were strange things nonetheless and generally calling them hallucination makes the most sense of things, at this point.

Of these hallucinations, even now that I’m mostly back on my feet, one remains with me for the fact that it felt stranger than the others. Possibly because the people that were near me in that hallucination were people I had not seen since I was a teenager. There were others my age I had grown up around but had spent very little time with.

The point of what I remember of the hallucination is more or less why I spent so little time with them, even though it would have made sense that I hang out with that group as we all lived in the same neighbourhood, we were the same age, and we went to the same classes. Any time I would approach them, I would always be told that since I was hanging out with them, they had to always expect the unexpected. It was never said in a tone that meant anything good was about to happen to me, no.

Their version of expecting the unexpected came with shackles as though somehow, I was a magnet for terrible things to happen. The vague memory I have of them, coupled with the hallucination that felt all too real just served as a reminder that even when I was younger, I clearly didn’t fit in anywhere. It might have been my skin colour—it was a very pale neighbourhood and while I am not that dark-skinned, I was much darker than any of them—or it might just have been my accent, but they never truly cared for my presence with them.

As far as my memory serves, I don’t know that I ever spent any amount of time around them. I was too busy trying to keep myself from being bullied because, of course, even now, bullying was a thing, and they had a field day with anyone who was different. I learned to ignore them, as I learned to ignore a lot of things that could have caused me mental and emotional harm had I let them, and, in a way, it turned out for the best.

My life hasn’t been all rainbows and sprinkles, but I wouldn’t change the outcome at this point, my life is now perfectly fine as it is, sickness and the rest all attached to it. I make the best of what I have and Petros at my side makes it easier.

Final Word Count: 827

When will you let me take care of you?

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Current Date: February 13, 2024

Character: Asim Amari
Race: Human
Age: 42
Current residence: New York City Ruins, New York
 

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I don’t know what to make of Brittany. She’s a recent addition to our surroundings, an older woman who clearly has spent no time around the good Doctor Flynn. Despite her completely white head of hair and her wrinkles that tell a whole story, she doesn’t act her age—somewhat. She seems to be able to physically keep up with my generation and even the younger ones and that makes me smile a little.

What shows her age, other than her looks, is the fact that she’s a very mothering woman. I wonder if that’s the right word for it. Every single person who passes her by who might look like they would need a bit of help—be it a limp, be it that they look sad, that they look tired, the list could go on—she’ll do exactly that. She’ll offer help. Now, that, in and of itself, isn’t a bad thing. But when the person she’s offering help to refuses—most of the time kindly that I’ve witnessed—she’ll tut, huff a little and do that thing where a mother will put her hands on her hips and purse her lips. She’ll ask the person in a very sad, sad voice why they’re not letting them take care of her, and when will they let her do just that.

At times, I wonder if her memory isn’t starting to go. Most of the time, you can’t really tell, but in these particular situations, it’s a bit more visible. It’s as though the people she’s trying to help all end up being the same person in her mind. It’s in her mannerisms, it’s in the way she treats them as though she’s known them for years. I don’t know if it’s her memory or that terrible disease. I mean, both lead to similar things in the long run but one is just her losing track of a few things or memories, and the other will devour all of those memories until there’s nothing left.

A drastic way to think of it, but I’ve met one person whose mother had lived with Alzheimer and from memory, it had been very, very difficult, the more it progressed. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy—I don’t even know that I have enemies out here anymore. I might have had some before when the world was as it had been but since the snow? Sure, there are some people I don’t get along with but that’s beside the point, they’re no enemies of mine. We’re just not on good terms.

More than once, I’ve been tempted to take her to Doctor Flynn. It seems like it would be the better option, but I don’t even know if there’s anything she could do about what’s happening. By all means, I could be more than a little wrong about her behaviour and she just wants to be everyone’s mother, but I feel as though I can see the signs, minuscule as they are. At the most, if I do end up bringing her to the good doctor, she’ll be given a once-over. I don’t think she’s had one. When she moved into our little neighbourhood, she showed all the signs of someone who hadn’t been in the hub before. She just sort of came in one day, found an empty apartment and called it her own.

A passing thought here, just the same, is that by thinking of doing these things, I could be seen as the one overstepping things. I need to talk to Petros about it. I know he’s noticed her as well since she’s near our building quite often and while I’ve yet to be on the receiving end of her doting nature, I figure that it’s just a matter of time before it does happen.

One of the small things I’m grateful for is that she shows no signs of having issues with same-sex couples. Call me an arse all you want, I know that most people from the older generation weren’t as open-minded as the younger generation and, yes, I’m assuming things here. I’m just glad that she doesn’t discriminate at all. That or she just doesn’t seem to notice, too focused on her desire to help any and all that might cross her path while looking like they could do with a little extra help.

In a few more days, after I’ve talked with Petros, we’ll see what we’re going to do. At most, we just leave things as they are, and life goes on. Maybe I just want to make sure that she’s healthy in any and all possible ways. Maybe I just want to make sure that if something does happen to her, she’s actually in the files and doesn’t end up just being a Jane Doe. I don’t know that I’d be able to deal with that knowledge. Knowing that I could have possibly done something, but I hadn’t done it.

Final Word Count: 829

I hate your lectures, which is why when I think one’s coming, I’m outta here faster than anyone can blink.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Characters: Asim Amari
Race: Human
Age: 40
Current residence: New York City Ruins, New York
Final Word Count: 778 words
 

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Some people aren’t meant to be responsible. I don’t know that there’s anything else that can be added to that. Even now, with the world as it is, that hasn’t changed. Now, I’m not talking about the children who are too young to truly know better though they still should know about a good few limits they normally should not push beyond but still.

I’m talking about grown-up adults; those of us who have lived through the snow. The ones of us who have made it this far in this brand new world. You would think that all of us adults would at least be responsible enough to know when certain things are clearly not all right, even if there are no true laws anymore. There still are the security groups, the remnants of the army group with others added in, that walk the perimeter and the hub. Everyone knows about them; they serve as a safety net of sorts for everyone. Keep the bad out there, and still make sure that everyone here behaves, to a point.

They are no bad cops; they won’t go after someone who might have snagged a few fruits or vegetables from someone else’s gardens, but violence against others is very much frowned upon and dealt with fairly quickly from what I’ve seen.

I trust these people to keep us safe as we might need it and while some of them are idiots, the vast majority that I’ve seen in passing do seem like good people.

Clearly, not everyone thinks that way. There is one particular woman, her age is hard to determine because some from the just-somewhat-older generation have been spending time with the good Doctor Flynn and some have come out of those mock retreats looking a few years longer, so age is hard to figure out. That woman, though, she seems to not have a single responsible bone in her body.

I’ve lost count of how often I’ve seen her actually running by with a few stolen food items in her arms. I don’t think she understands that pretty much everything can be bartered for at this point and that a lot of food items are actually free if you know where to get them from. Not everyone has a green thumb and can manage to grow their own small garden and with things as they are, the main market is free, but you are expected to only take what you need so that everyone might have a little bit of everything to bring home if they so want.

By her scurrying away, arms tight around her items and the furtive looks she throws everywhere, it’s rather plain as day that she hasn’t come from the market. Plus, the simple fact that she’s coming in from the outer edge of the hub and not the heart of it also makes it clear. The security folks can’t do much, as far as she’s concerned, but I know that they’d spoken to her on a few different occasions. At times, I wonder what goes through her mind.

I mean, I’ve seen her go out of her way to avoid them and, once, while I was feeling under the weather and just didn’t want to really think much about anything if I could help it, I saw her stall when one of them came out of a side street. She’d been half hiding behind one of the nearby buildings. I was on our little balcony, nursing a cup of cooling tea, and the moment he had his back turned, she ran right past him nearly stumbling in her scrambling to get away.

On that particular day, I found myself shaking my head somewhat, imagining that her mind, right at that point, was thinking up something along the lines of how much she’s always hated their lectures, the way they try to tell her what she can’t and can’t do; so that whenever she sees one of them coming, man, she’s out of there faster than someone might be able to blink.

I might or might not have been feeling particularly dramatic on that day, but I really had been feeling under the weather, so I’d like to think I can be forgiven for that particular little thing. Not that I screamed it out onto the rooftops that this had crossed my mind and that yeah, I’d seen her run right on past. There’s really only so much she can do about it and while the people she takes these things from can complain, we’ve all sort of accepted that she might not be all there and that nothing will change that.

Someone wise once said that, meaning me. I was the one that said that.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New London
Characters: Asim Amari
Race: Human
Age: 34
Current residence: New London, England
Final Word Count: 775 words
 

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People are full of themselves. This is something I’ve realized a long time ago but had never really spent much time thinking about. I mean, what would be the point? What good does it do me to think of all the things that people might believe of themselves that aren’t necessarily true?

I think that, before everything happened, before I landed in the mines, before my life changed in a rather drastic way, I had to spend more time thinking about what people might or might not think because it helped with the job. Knowing what was on their minds and what they thought their issues were helped in a little way. I did not have all of the knowledge in the world. I knew what I had studied of things but hearing people’s side of things was always useful.

In a way, I feel as though it is more the psychologists and perhaps less so the psychiatrist that truly had to focus on how people truly were, in the end. In the case of the psychologists, it came with the job description. Listening to what people thought, listening to what they believed were their problems, trying to find the truth in all of the words that came tumbling out of people’s mouths so they could help them get better.

Still, since the revolution, I’ve had more time to sit back and sort of find myself again, in a way. I still do help a bit as a doctor, but not quite in the way I used to before. I limit my visits to certain things and my boss understands it well enough that there are people I simply cannot be around, people I simply cannot help.

Not so long ago, I had one particular patient that stopped by my little office, telling me exactly what they thought was wrong with them and it only made me quirk a brow. A single look at them made it clear that he was not sick with what he was claiming to have. The particular illness they spoke of had very visible signs and the man showed none of them. None that I told that to his face. I sat him down and did examine him.

By the end of the examination, I told him that he was doing well and that what he had was likely a common cold. He harrumphed at me, told me some bullocks about how he had read a book on medical illnesses and that he knew better. And that someone wise had once told him that reading a book to have the knowledge meant that he was right. He huffed a little more, told me that he was the so-called (my words, those!) wise person that had told him that if he read a book, he would have the knowledge and be right about what ailed him.

I might or might not have stared at him in disbelief. Can you blame me? Here was this man, not only claiming to be wise, but he was claiming that, because he had read a medical book—an old and outdated one, mind you—on illnesses, he now knew everything and could diagnose it all with just a simple look.

Somehow, keeping my hold on my patience intact, I asked him why, then, he was in my office if he could diagnose himself just fine on his own. He grumbled under his breath for a moment, and I only waited patiently for him to give me an answer of sorts, I mean, answers would be good to have. Eventually, since it was clear I wouldn’t ask him to give me an answer a second time and I would stay quiet until he told me something worth a proper answer, he told me that he could diagnose just fine, but he didn’t have access to the things he needed to get better for the diagnosis he could give himself.

Thank goodness for that. I don’t know what kind of quackery he would have tried to pull if he had access to medications. I mean, the medication he normally would have had for the illness he claimed to have, if not given in the proper dosage and mixed with what it needs to properly do its job, would kill someone. If the man believes he has the knowledge because he read a book, he could end up killing so many people by giving them wrong the diagnosis for whatever ails them.

In a way, I guess this is why so many things are locked away and kept from the reach of many. Better be safe than sorry.

Doubt is a powerful feeling and I’ve learned long ago not to underestimate it.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New London
Characters: Asim Amari
Race: Human
Age: 32
Final Word Count: 687 words
 

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A year has passed and still, the mysterious woman has not appeared or made herself known. For the first few weeks, there were so many rumours that you would have thought it almost real. In the long run, however, most of us who know better, assume that a group started the rumours in hope of… who knows what.

I’ve had my doubts from the beginning. I learned only too late in life that doubt is a powerful feeling. I wish I could say I’d learned of it much sooner than I did, but I didn’t. I wanted to believe that all could be well and fine and that I could trust one and all. It’s only once in the mines that I realized just what kind of situation that had left me dealing with.

At this point, however, whenever I begin to doubt something, I let that doubt take a bit of a spot in me. I know now to not underestimate that doubt. I’m usually more than pleased when my doubts are proven to be false but I would like to think that it has potentially saved my life once or twice in the last few years. I don’t mind people rolling their eyes at me and my need to hold onto my doubt until I have solid proof to the contrary. I’ve learned to ignore these looks.

But really, the rumours about the lone woman who somehow traversed the oceans from the place they used to call the Americas were nothing but that; while we have no proof of their source, our own contacts seem to have located a small group of sorts that seem to mostly be about doing things like these. Getting small but outrageous rumours out there and supposedly just seeing how far or how long they might last, I don’t know.

There’s no solid proof of anything but I’ve mostly stopped paying attention.

Yes, it could have been interesting if there had indeed been someone who had managed to trip across either of the oceans. We all know from the history books that it was more than possible but the creation of the ships that might take anyone across the water is a lost art. No one knows how to anymore. Maybe someone out there, in a small little village near the water knows how to build small boats, but large ships that could accommodate any trip across the water seems like it would just need so much more.

There are places I’ve read about in books that just seem so interesting, places that might possibly not even exist anymore, I know. Places that still would be worth the visit even if it was all abandoned and falling to ruin.

I might be a doctor, but I think I’ve always had strange fantasy-dreams about trying to rediscover the world. It’s not really a possibility, I know. Not with the way things are now. Vehicles work on electricity for the most part and only the metropolises have charging stations since they’re such complex things to build. Going from one place to another is manageable but requires so much planning. The idea of crossing the waters to check out other places is something akin to a fool’s dream and, well, I am but a doctor, not an explorer.

With my lungs as they are now, I don’t know how well I would handle the wastelands between the metropolises and the small villages here and there. I know I might as well simply continue to dream and read of these things; the books transport me well enough into places that I know likely no longer are as they once were and it is enough for the time being. It isn’t perfect but it’s enough.

The rumours of the woman from the Americas, I think it gave people false hope and that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t even really want to believe any of it, even from the beginning. False hope tends to fester and leave people feeling quite a bit bitter and it’s not a good way to go about life.

None of your excuses make any sense. You should try better than that.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Characters: Asim Amari
Race: Human
Age: 38
Final Word Count: 700 words
 

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One of the recently rediscovered areas turned out to be a theatre. When that particular set of news reached my ‘neck of the woods’, I was surprised. It brought back so many memories. I started my career as an actor in plays and live productions before I moved on to ads, and then a few roles in movies. That’s where my career was at when the snow first started, a few small roles in movies but it was enough for me.

It opened doors for me that I never imagined would actually ever open, not for the likes of me. Though I suppose it might also have been the ‘circles’ in which I spent what little time outside of my home with, that weren’t quite what I needed. These so-called circles weren’t very open-minded and trust didn’t seem to be a given for most of them after the horrors of 2001. All that is in the past, though.

Mostly.

Not all of my memories of my time in theatre are good ones but they weren’t terrible ones. I always tried to be a good person and while not everyone appreciated me, some certainly did and I managed to make a few friends. I’m sure the general behaviour came from the fact that I was one of the rare darker-skinned people in the general area and theatre. The neighbourhood the theatre was in was mostly white folks, rich families, preppy kids. It was as close to a gated community as it could get without being a gated community and I didn’t really fit in.

Except it was where I wanted to be and where I’d planned on staying.

For the most part, it was all right. There was one guy who was constantly on my case and eventually, I managed to learn to ignore him but it wasn’t all that fun at the beginning. Every time I would mix up my lines, every time I felt a little under the weather, I’d give him the reason why—usually it was a cold, or a short night due to something or other—and he’d just roll his eyes at me, telling me that none of my excuses made any sense (and that confused me). He’d then just tell me that I should try harder and just do whatever it is people like me (his words!) do to be ‘fine’.

I think it was his own weirdly racist way of, well, being racist. As though somehow ‘people like me’ had some ways of life that differed from his. I know he never saw me as his equal and that’s why I learned to ignore him though eventually I also moved on from theatre to television but that’s a story for another time.

I remember, a year or two after I’d left the theatre group, I was roaming in the area after a good day of filming and photo-shoot for an ad and I came across the theatre, it looked forlorn, almost abandoned and I stepped inside for a few moments, out of curiosity.

Near the stage, there only seemed to be three or four—it was a long time ago—people and my good old friend was in that group, almost screaming and gesticulating about whatever it was that had set him off that time. I didn’t stick around long. I just knew that he hadn’t changed and he probably had just found someone else to turn his picking on, on. I felt bad for whoever the poor soul ended up being.

I missed most of the few friends I had managed to make from that group but, in the long run, it really was for the better that I moved on. A year or so before the snow started, the whole theatre had been foreclosed and I’m pretty sure the group was dismantled. I’m glad I found an escape when I did and I hope that those who had a true passion for acting had found a spot for themselves before the end truly came.

I’m curious about what they’ll find in the old theatre they’ve uncovered. I might be interested in some of it for decorative purposes.

Before you go, I just want you to know your shirt’s on backwards.

 
Timeline/World: New York City – Surviving Earth
Characters: Asim Amari
Race: Human
Age: 37
Final Word Count: 654 words
 

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Life is something you can’t take for granted. I know there’s that one movie that I can’t remember the title of but I’ve heard of it often enough that says something along the lines of life being like a box of chocolate, you never know what you’ll get. I suppose it’s true enough. You could be waking up one day to find out that your whole world has been turned upside down and that’s actually what happened to me eighteen years ago.

Though I suppose it’s not so much that I woke up one morning and everything had been turned upside down, but it’s closer along the lines that by the end of that fateful day, the American world had been turned on its head due to that one act of terrorism that so many people now showed even more distrust of people like me, whose skin colour was a certain shade, that it made trying to get through the day unharmed almost a challenge.

I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to forget that day or the following one, let alone the years that actually followed them. I had to be so careful. It hadn’t been great before but it was worse now and I felt as though I was at the centre of so much hatred, even though I know I wasn’t the only one targeted. However, when you find yourself shoved onto train tracks, I think your life changes a little.

As is, enough of the past. I’m just mentioning all of this because this change in the population is what led me to him. It is what led me to this second chance in life. I never thought I would have someone in my life. I met that particular someone just a day to the ten-year anniversary of that ugly day that changed so many lives forever. He saved my life. Though we later on realized that we’d crossed paths before but I suppose that this isn’t important information either at this point.

It’s always been hard to imagine myself with someone at my side, someone I would cherish and want to spend the rest of my days with. Never mind that this particular someone already had a family of their own, I think that just sealed the deal for me. I knew, for a fact, that I never would have children of my own, though I’d always hoped to at least have someone at my side, I just had never held much hope for any of it. That hope dwindled to nothing after 2001.

We were together when the snow started, we survived together, all four of us and we’ve made it this far in life. I don’t think we’ll ever truly have to worry about being apart. His son has his pair as well and they’re so beautiful together. I have no words to explain. I didn’t really get to see him grow up, he was already a teenager when I first met him but I still feel like I might be a second father figure to him.

I mean, it feels that way but I could be wrong. I still remember one particular morning when he was getting ready to head out and just, ever casually so, with maybe a slight teasing edge, I reminded him that his shirt was on backwards. It must be a family trait because I’ve had to remind Petros of the same thing a small handful of times. I think it’s adorable really and it mostly seems to happen after shared pleasurable moments—at least between Petros and me, I wouldn’t dare to assume for Niko and Yuuki.

I love my family. That’s what we are in my heart, a family. I love them to no end. Their quirks, their happiness, their sadness, their anger. I want it all and I want to be there until the very end of everything.

Have you heard anything interesting?

 
Timeline/World: New London
Characters: Asim Amari
Race: Human
Age: 31
Final Word Count: 597 words
 

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There are few travellers amongst them anymore. Long travel is hard and difficult and travel across the open oceans is nearly impossible anymore. At least, that’s how I see it. There still are vehicles about but their engines run on electricity and there’s no charging station between what’s left of the metropolises that are now the main cities of the world. There are small villages dotted everywhere but charging stations can’t simply be built up out of spare parts, they need to be made in specialized places and then taken out to these places and there’s no saying that someone might not come around and dismantle it for whatever reason so travel is rare.

Travel over the waters is now only possible with wind ‘powered’ devices. Anything with sails can go but long voyages require much bigger ships and most people are afraid to venture far out onto the water.

So when murmurs of new visitors from far away or from across the water begin to circulate, the rumour mills begin anew and the circle is just right back to what it had been before. There never is any rest from rumour, I know that much.

I see so many people come in and out of the hospital, some for minor things, others for much bigger issues but I see more people than I thought I ever would. Before the revolution, unless you could afford the hospital visits, you just would have to find someone else to stitch you up if you were hurt. The doors were rarely open to anyone below a certain level clearance. It meant we didn’t see many.

Not that I have much experience with it all since I was taken away from my post not long after I’d first started working and had landed myself in the mines. That’s a story I’d rather not think about too much.

As of the last few days, rumours have started circulating again about a woman who claims she came from far over the water. Somewhere they used to call the Americas. No one has seen the ship she’s come in on and no one has any information on her. When someone is asked about how they’ve heard that information, they shrug and say they heard it from the friend of a friend.

I just don’t know what to think about this particular rumour, what’s the point of it? A single woman, alone, traversing the ocean on what type of embarkation just to come and do what, here? That’s the point of the rumour I’m having issues with. I know that desperate people will do desperate things and if she desperately wanted to be here, I’m sure she could have found a way. There are rare sailing ships that come and go; she could have been a stowaway.

Until I have proper proof of her existence or the fact that people state she came from across the water, I’ll refuse to believe it. I’ve suffered too much from letting myself believe in the simplest of things without proof before that I refuse to fall back into that old trap once more.

Patients can talk, they can murmur away between themselves, thinking we hear none of us but we hear it all. I suppose they keep it between themselves by fear of being reported but that’s something left from before the world turned itself over. We’re a better place now, people can talk, whisper and discuss, no one’s going to stop them unless they cause a scene.

Then we have to do something but that’s about it.

Where does it begin?

Timeline/World: New York City – Surviving Earth
Characters: Asim Amari
Race: Human
Age: 35
Final Word Count: 542 words

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He wasn’t one for knitting. He couldn’t really understand the point when he heard others refer to it as relaxing. He could understand the need for knitting, for warm blankets, warm socks, warm everything. But in this jungle life as the one they had now, warm things didn’t seem to really be needed. The nights were cool but comfortable for the most part but not cold enough to require heavier blankets or anything else of the sort. Still, he did remember a friend, though perhaps more of an acquaintance, they’d met on the set, who’d had a fondness for knitting.

Said acquaintance had come to the set one day with a full shoulder bag with yarns and a current project being worked on, something that had been sealed on all ends, a sort of tube of sorts and he’d been left staring at it, trying to understand how it worked. It was too large for socks, maybe the arm of a shirt? He didn’t know. He hadn’t been sure how these things worked back then, after all. Where did it begin and where did it end? How did it even work with all four, point-ended needles? He hadn’t asked and the information hadn’t been offered over either.

That particular day had ended up in complete and utmost drama, too. The scene, for an ad of sorts—he couldn’t really remember the details of it at this point—had required kittens. Just a few of them but somehow they had gotten into that one particular bag, he couldn’t recall how or why, mostly why, and had made such a mess of that yarn that he’d heard complaints about the whole messed up project for weeks afterwards. More or less for the duration of the rest of the shooting for that ad, that had required being done over a few times, not even due to the unpredictable nature of the kittens.

Shaking the memory off, he looked down to the box of items he’d unearthed. Now and again, small teams were sent to the outskirts of the settlement to see if they couldn’t dig up items from underneath the vines that had grown over the bottom levels of most places, to replace the snow that had swallowed them whole. When they were lucky, they found an old store that still had plenty of items that hadn’t been too ravaged either by time or humidity. This discovery, however, it was different and he wasn’t sure what to make of it. In a way, he knew it could have its use; they would just need to be stored properly. The box of yarn that sat at his feet amused him in a way and he shook his head gently at the memory it had indeed brought up.

The whole store was mostly intact, skein after skein of yarn in one section, sewing things in the other, some leather belts and things in another, the store looked like a mix between a shoemaker’s place and a knitter’s paradise. It was interesting. He could imagine that plenty of good would come from the way to this store being cleared out for better use and the ceiling secured so it wouldn’t drop on anyone while they were inside.

Don’t tell me you’re fine. There’s no way you are, after that.

Timeline/World: New London
Characters: Asim Amari
Race: Human
Age: 29
Final Word Count: 529 words

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It’s been three years. Three years since I’ve feared for my life, struggling to keep my head up and yet down at the same time. I saw the world crash and burn and then slowly pick itself back up, little by little.

Things are not perfect; I don’t think that things will ever be perfect. For hundreds of years, the life we’ve known was one that was separated by the government, into groups. How much food could be had depended on the government, depended on your station in life, depended on a lot of things and it was unfair. People with the hardest jobs were the one who were allowed the smallest amount of food and it just made no sense.

New London was the first to fall but now news has travelled from around the globe; other cities have fallen and are slowly picking themselves back up.

Of course, not everyone is all right with the changes but they are a minority, some grumble but go with those changes without any fight and others are just happy to no longer be starving. Food was just one of the changes, music slowly came back, jobs are no longer forced on someone, anyone can apply and interviews are fair.

Fights still break out now and again. Groups of security agents are sent out to deal with them. Most of them are broken up peacefully but some escalate and I’ve seen agents come back bloodied. I could call them soldiers but the term doesn’t really fit. Officers? Maybe.

When they come back bloody, it’s my job to take care of them. Of course, I’m not the only one on duty to help but I’m one of the few who are. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had one of the agents come back from dealing with an issue with an uncomfortably deep stab wound to the gut. His partner at that time looked shell-shocked and nothing I could do would bring him out of it. We managed to save the wounded one but his partner never seemed to really come out of the shell. Some handle the sight of their work partner getting hurt well enough, they’re made of strong stuff but now and again we’ll get someone who wants to be tough but ends up really not being so.

Those are rare, but when they happen we try to shepherd them off into what once was the asylum. I don’t like the use of the term but I know it still is fitting. It is a mental hospital, where patients who need the help can go, they can sign themselves in, sign themselves out as necessary but we have a few rooms that are specially kept open for agents or their partners who suffer from the fights and seem to not handle the amount of violence well.

That is not to say that anyone should have to deal with that kind of violence easily but it’s just part of the job description, they know this when they join the ranks. Hell is not over but it certainly is much better than it had been just three years ago.