(this is a Fictional Story)
A family of three sit in their box. This box, like a house, is supposed to protect them from the outside world. The weather has gotten too extreme for life to go outside. If one goes out there then they would freeze or burn or blow away by the powerful winds in a few seconds, or get lung cancer. Building, roads, homes are connected by tubes with air conditioning and heating when needed. There is artificial light because the sun has been covered by smog.
Humans grow food by this artificial light, and they take the water from the extreme snow and rainfall then send it all over the world. The world has become a lot smaller. Other animals couldn’t live this way, and the humans are finding it hard to live this way too, but they carry on.
Penelope’s children are the first generation to be born in this kind of hell. Penelope’s father was rich. It seems unfair because the people who caused this to happen were the ones who got to live inside the new tube world. Others died, poor died. Third world countries are unheard of, they all died. It has made getting work hard, no one wants to do, they were all raised with money and corporate jobs, but some jobs need to be done.
Penelope’s Parenter has humbled themselves to work in such a field, they are a farmer. they get paid good money too because there is so little willingness to do the job. Penelope is a stay-at-home mom. There has been a mandate that a parent must stay with children at all times.
The couple adopted two kids there were brought to the new capital by their mother from a country from Africa that was failing right before the fall of the earth.
The fall is when it got too bad, it’s when the tubes when up. When the outside died.
Instead of killing the children, like the leaders did the mother, they put them up for adoption. Schools are still being rebuilt as the leaders do not see the importance.
Now, Penelope teaches them, with help from the thing that helped destroy the world, technology. Even in this strange new world, people find it important to celebrate Christmas. Penelope and her spouse are happy about this, give some joy to the kids. But it’s still a money machine for the leaders with power, that’s really why it is still celebrated. There is no darkest part of the year like before, it’s always dark.
Where the family lives there is no snow. It’s too hot. In other places around the world, there is so much snow. Here Penelope can still see the sky, but in other places, they are covered in snow or sea.
While snow is on the world, there is no traveling. Only government and military can travel, its ridiculous there’s still military, but. . .
Penelope’s children and she are decorating a Christmas tree. It was Penelope’s mother before she passed from lung cancer. Her daughter, Addison, who is eight years old pulls out a Christmas tree decoration that mimics a snow globe. It use to snow here all the time, now it is hot.
She looks at her mother and asks, “What was it like?”
“Hmm?” Penelope replies. “Snow?” Addison eagerly asks.
Penelope remembers it fondly, Sledding, making snowmen, or just watching it. She looks up now, at the grayed sky, no snow will come from it.
“It was cold,” she starts to explain with a smile. “It was so cold that sometimes it would hurt to come inside from the outside.”
Addison looks outside, as she hasn’t been there since she was a baby, and she is fascinated by it.
“There was different kinds of snow.” Penelope continues, “Really?” her son chimes in, always following his older sister. “Yeah, some of it was hard some of it was soft.
“The hard-packed snow was good to make snowmen with,” She holds up a snowmen decoration.
“Or snowballs, or slides. The soft kind was good to eat. I never knew why we ate it, it metaled in your mouth, and turned into water. To go outside you had to bundle up, sometimes wearing three layers.”
“Like when people go outside now!?” Oliver, her son, is referring to is when scientists go out in protection suits to be protected from the weather. “Kinda, but everyone could go outside. If you lived back then you would be playing in it right now, and I would have to call you in for help. You could go sledding and. . “
“Whats sledding?” Addison interpreted. “Sledding is when, you take a sled, a piece of wood or plastic that you can sit on and it slides down a hill that has a bunch of snow on it when you sit on it, like going on sild but bigger.”
“What did snow look like mom?” Oliver asked. “You’ve seen pictures of snow.” “but what did it look like?” “It was white like you’ve seen, and it covered everything. The ground, the tops of trees, and houses.”
“Like it does now?”
“No, it was more like a blanket”
“Mom”, Addison once again asked, “why did it stop snowing here?” Penelope wasn’t sure what to say, “Um. . .” she couldn’t say bad people, those were the people that were keeping them alive right now. But she wished the world was back to normal.
“I don’t know,” She ended up saying. Then she looked at her tree. Christmas was never the same without snow. Even after years of getting used to it, it just wasn’t the same. Life just wasn’t the same in any season. No swimming in the summer, or apple picking in the fall, or butterflies in the spring. It was just this.
Penelope looked outside again.
