Nature Rules - 2022 WATTY'S SHORTLIST

Questions and Questions

We start walking to the Four-Way for the community feast. My stomach grumbles. We didn't have lunch. However, my stomach has grumbled before and it'll grumble again. The late afternoon sun is the only thing in the sky besides the couple of drones circling the area. (GlobalGov's eyes in the sky.)

Before the GlobalGov, before the war and its devastation, before there was me and Crinae and Elody, my parents had jobs. Dad told me adults went to work every day to make money. Money went to buying food and clothing and houses. Children went to school as their job. Thinking about that makes me want to laugh. I couldn't imagine going to a place where there were lots of my kids my age and all we did was sit in a room and listen to teachers all day.

There's too much to do to be in school for six hours now. There's getting water. Getting food. Finding shelter. Gathering, bartering – the list never ends.

Dad used to be a meteorologist in the ministry of environment. He was some kind of weather-related government man when the world was made up of different countries and we were called Canada. I really don't know what being a meteorologist means. My father explained it once and I wasn't really listening. (I was thinking about how to steal Crinae's piece of bread without getting caught. I got caught.) Dad had something to do with predicting forecasts and telling people if it was going to rain or snow or not. (Which would be a big NOT these days.)

Mom was a professor. She still is – for us. I think she taught physics at a university. There's only one university left in our world and it's only for those who want to train for the GlobalGov. Dad told us he's never going to let his children attend the Global Government Institute of Learning University (The GGILU) even if Sebastian himself pays for us all.

Mom's lectures can be boring (who cares about centrifugal force?) but sometimes Syon and his sister Eden or other kids from 33 come for tutorials. If there's a course Mom isn't familiar with, we're sent to another teacher. We learn French from a neighbour who lives a few doors down from us. Our Japanese teacher, Mrs. Iawte, is nearby too. We say hello to her when we see her along the path to the feast.

The jaunt to the Four-Way is a hot and a fast one. No one wants to be the last one to arrive and be accused of lollygagging to Sebastian's celebration. We all walk after our father and mother in a straight line – oldest, middle and youngest. There's a long stream of folks heading to the event with us. We're all dressed in our finest. (I wouldn't call this raggy brown sweater my "finest.")

Some men have suits on: real suits like they used to wear before the war. I don't know how they can deal with the wool in the heat. Some women have fancy dresses on, pink and red and yellow. No green ones. Kids of all ages wear nice trousers and jackets or coats. Everyone appears better dressed than us.

Our arms are full of food, though, just like everyone else. Drool slides down my bottom lip when a man walks by with a pile of asparagus on a large platter. That's going to be tasty. This feast is a time where many can showcase talents such as baking and cooking, and show off that they have money to buy some of the best things around.

From halfway down the hill, I see Motos forming a ring around the Four-Way. Their navy blue uniforms make dark marks against the brown sandy ground. Every settler's name has to be recorded before we're let into the feast. If anyone is missing, the Motos will find them. Everyone must be at the feast for Sebastian.

Before the war, Lucius Sebastian was a nobody who was trying to work his way up the federal political ladder. During the fighting, Sebastian claimed to be a peacemaker and acted as a mediator to broker the truce between the 134 different countries involved in the war. He talked a few nations into signing treaties and once everything was said and done, he seized what he could. He took all of Canada and the northern parts of the United States as well as decommissioned armies, navies and air forces and commissioned new ones.