Another World; Another Time
Written by: Big Bee
Chapter
5: A New Friend
I
followed my new found friend, Jennifer, to her house. We chatted
nineteen-to-the-dozen, strolling down the road to her tiny cottage at the end
of the road. I tried to keep up with her incessant chattering. Jennifer really
was talkative and friendly. With her hospitality and friendliness, I could keep
my problem out of my mind thankfully. We walked on the touchscreen roads, because
there were no cars at all. Hovercrafts just travelled high above our heads. There
was no animals or plants in sight at all. I made an assumption that they were
all extinct by now.
Her
personal robot, whose name I found out later was Rose, carried my time machine
that was at least a thousand kilograms. The way she carried it made it look
like it was as light as a feather.
Her
little cottage had only two storeys, and she lived with her stepbrother,
David and her stepsister, Selena. Rose left my time machine in her backyard, as instructed
by Jennifer. I hoped to start fixing it as soon as possible.
My
new found friend, Jennifer, had golden hair, with curls that looked like strands
of noodles. She was slim, unlike all the other people in this future world. She
was also fair and kind of pretty. Jennifer was clever and I found out that she
too excelled at Science - another similarity between both of us. That made me
feel less agitated. Maybe she could even help me repair my time machine.
She
let me stay in the attic and set up a little bed for me. I found out that
she was also an orphan, like me. We had meals with David and Selena, and there
were robots which served and cooked the meals. We barely even had to lift a
finger as all the usual household chores were all done for us.
As
the days passed, I just stayed in the backyard to fix my machine. Thankfully, I
knew that there was a solution to fix my machine and I had a chance to go back
home. I grew closer and closer to Jennifer. With her intelligence and skills,
she helped me fix the time machine. Rose was helpful too, and she provided materials I
needed to use to fix my time machine. I was very grateful
to Jennifer for helping me and providing a roof over my head whereas I did
nothing to help her.
Before
long, I stopped fussing over all my problems. After all, what was the use of
crying over spilt milk? I was in a different world with my first friend.
In
the mornings, David and Selena both went off to work and Jennifer was the only
one who stayed at home every day. Now, with me, she had company and enjoyed
chatting with me, finding out about the past, two hundred years ago.
Chapter
6: The Past and The Future
In
my time in the future, I stayed mostly in Jennifer’s house, but I did go
shopping with her every now and then. The shops there were all run by robots.
Rose kept all of Jennifer’s money and paid for everything that she bought.
We visited
the museum one day and it was then when Jennifer showed me how to teleport. She
had instructed me to click my fingers and say where I wanted to teleport to and
in a second, I would be there. I teleported to the museum and it was an
extremely memorable experience for someone who once lived in the past. She explained that most people used hovercrafts to travel around instead of
teleporting because it was safer. If something goes wrong while you were
teleporting, you would lose a few of your body parts, or even be left with only
half your body. Thankfully, Jennifer and I did
not lose any body parts.
The
museum was enormous, way bigger than the Louvre Museum in Paris. The Louvre
would just seem tiny, compared to this museum in the future. There were amazing
items in the museum, like portals to different planets, a device that could
make you stay underwater for as long as you wanted without an oxygen tank, etc.
An
ant in a gigantic cage was considered to be one of the most treasured exhibits.
It was known to be the last animal ever alive. I furrowed my eyebrows upon
reading it and stifled a chuckle. In 2013, ants were everywhere! People
squashed them, hated them and even put ant baits to kill them! Now, this little
ant had a home about the same size as Jennifer’s, and had a dozen robots taking
care of it.
I
even forgot about going back home to my time. After all, in my past, I lived
alone and never had any friends. I just buried my head in a book all day long.
Now, in this future earth, Jennifer was my first friend. My first friend in 16
long years. And the technology here was superb, the weather was awesome and robots did everything for you.
Robots
controlled the weather here. You could program a robot to make the weather
sunny that day, or to make the weather stormy.
Even
fixing the time machine was easy. I could easily have ordered a robot to fix my
machine for me and it could be finished in less than an hour. However, I
trusted my own capabilities of fixing the machine, thus I wanted to do it by
myself. Besides, I could spend a longer time here in the future with Jennifer.
Jennifer
was just like me too. She had no friends, except for David and Selena. There
was one robot for each of the people in Jennifer’s house. Therefore, she owned
three robots - a typical, common number for most households in the future.
Jennifer asked me about the past too. She asked me curiously, as robots could
not see the past, but only the future, how it was like back 200 years ago when
there were forests, reservoirs, zoos and jungles.
The
first thing I told her about was Aidan, my sweet little dog. I told her how he
entertained me every day and how I looked after him. I also explained to her about
how the birds flew around freely in the vast, azure blue sky. The sky in year
2213 was anything but a shade of blue. You could not even see what colour the
sky was, because of all the smoke and pollution that filled the air. The
animals were the best things of all to Jennifer. The only living things now in
the future was just humans and robots. No cute, furry little animals for people
to admire in zoos and forests any more.
Two
months had already passed, and I had completely forgotten about my time
machine, although I missed Aidan a lot. It was put under a shelter in the
backyard, untouched. I forgot about the fact that I wanted to go back home to
my time. With the technology and cool weather here, who would want to go
back to a world where it was sweltering hot and you had to do everything by
yourself?
To be continued...
