The Inadequate Experiments: 1. White Noise [Rough Draft]

Prologue - The Watch

There had been a War.

The Third World War.

Just like the second one that happened in the 1940s, they promised us it would be the last.

When the War ended, it was the year 2358. The world was in ruins, torn down at the height of its power, by people starving for just that. All the new technology each country had been inventing in secret in an attempt to gain the upper-hand on the battlefield had practically destroyed the planet. It was a wonder the world wasn't forced into a nuclear winter, They say.

Who are They?

The Scientists.

But bear with me, I'll get to them later.

Rebuilding was hard. It always is, or so I'm told. It's so easy to break something, yet trying to put it back together after it's been broken – trying to get it practically the same – is simply impossible. Like scrunching up a piece of paper and flattening it out again. No matter how many times you flatten it out with your hands or even iron it, it will never be the same as the smooth, crease-less sheet you began with.

That was one of the worst things after the war – knowing you would never get your home back the way it was before. There would always be something missing – fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, mothers, cousins, family heirlooms, houses passed down from generation to generation. So much was lost that many people couldn't bear to go on living. People nowadays call them weak. Me? I call them smart.

They escaped the worst age of the world without even being aware of what they were doing at the time.

Every age starts with something. This age started with the Depression that followed the War. After the whole world was almost destroyed, the Depression wasn't exactly a surprise. This depression, though, was worse. I'm told that even after the Ancient World Wars in the 20th Century there were mass depressions. Yet, I'm also told that neither of those depressions were quite as extensive as the Depression that dawned after the end of the Third World War.

This Depression was the worst depression the Earth had ever seen, even in its incredibly long existence. Suicide rates were unbelievably high – statistics I learned in my history lessons at school showed that a third of the Human Population was lost during the War, dropping the population from six billion people to four billion. After the war ended, a quarter of the remaining Human Population was lost due to suicides, dropping the population even further to three billion people. Half the population, eradicated.

Sometimes I wonder what it must have been like; living in an overly-populated world one second, then an incredibly under-populated one the next. I wonder just how lonely it would have been.

In an answer to that, it must have been incredibly lonely – that was when the UN intruded. They gathered the remaining scientists of the world and forced them to group together and invent something incredible. Something to make the world a little more bearable  for its human inhabitants.

The Invention was a Watch.

You heard me: a Watch.

It sounds simple enough, yet this Watch, as you've probably guessed, was no ordinary watch. After all, no ordinary Watch could cure the world of suicide and depression in the way this particular Watch did.

I'll explain it to you the way They explain it to us.

When you start school, you're told a rhyme that explains the reason for the Watch you have worn on your wrist your entire life, simply because you believe it's right. A simple, eight line rhyme that explains the meaning of the huge numbers that line the watch and countdown to something. As a five-year-old, I don't suppose it matters what it's counting down to; just the fact that it's counting down to something that is uniquely yours is overly exciting, even if you don't really understand what it is. The rhyme went like this:

The Watch does not tell time,
The Watch does not show the date;
The Watch is merely a countdown
Until the day you meet your Soul Mate.

Swap your Watches, you will see,
The time left between you and me.
Until one Soul leaves the other blue;
Until you leave me or I leave you.

In simpler words, the Watch counts down the years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds until you meet your Soul Mate. Sometimes, it will get down to mere seconds, blink, and readjust itself. As if you just walked past your true love in the street, could have met, but the two of you were too caught up in what you were doing. It had happened to me eight times. I had started to wonder if my Soul Mate even existed. My mother explained it to me as the Scientists who invented the Watches had said; time is not a straight line. Instead, it is more of a scribble, or a labyrinth, depending on which way you look at it. Whichever path you choose to take determines when you will finally meet your Soul Mate.

I supposed I was just making all the wrong choices.

Or He was.

But, that's not all the Watches do. There is a button on one side of the Watch, and when you press and hold it in, it shows you how long it has been since you and your Soul Mate have met, down to the very second.

After you have met your Soul Mate, it is also possible to swap Watches with them. When the two of you are wearing the opposite Watches, the times flicker up to a number from zero and start Counting down once more. This countdown, though, was not one to look forward to. This blood red countdown counts down until the day on which you or your Soul Mate will die.

After their invention, the Watches were given out for free to everyone on the planet. They were fitted onto babies' wrists when they were born. They saved countless people from bad marriages and abusive relationships. Suddenly the suicide rates were stable again, and the world was rebuilding itself ten times faster than before. Within twenty years of the Invention, the world was just as strong – if not stronger – an empire as it had been before the Third World War.

There was no poverty on any continent; no strife between countries. Just an eternal journal to find one's Soul Mate, which was suddenly easier.

Schools were free in every country. Your first house was free. If you wanted furniture for your first house, all you had to do was show your paperwork, and that was free too. College was free. First jobs were easy to come by.

World peace was firmly in everyone's grasp, all because of these little Watches counting down each and every day.

Though, one thing the world failed to understand was the peace always comes with a price. Another was that someone will always be fighting to gain power. The Scientists wanted power. The Government was the price.

And now, two hundred and sixty years later, it's the year 2518.

The world is still at peace, but now the Government have laid down laws.

If the Government see you unhappy with your Soul Mate, they kill you both. Soul Mates share a Soul, they say. In their mind, if you're unhappy with your Soul Mate, you don't have a Soul. All living things have Souls. So, if you're unhappy, they kill you. So you're Soulless, bodiless and lifeless.

This is the year, though, when things change.

My name is Sera Grey, and I'm not exactly what you would call... normal.

This is the year I meet my Soul Mate.

And well, things aren't exactly going as planned.