Ye Shall Be Saved

Malena - March 7, 2048

Malena has to stay inside today. Acid rain, they tell her, but she knows they're lying. The blinking holograms above their heads betray them, showing their rushing heartbeats.

"It's for the best," says the man in fuchsia. He's tall. She can't see his hologram without tilting her head up, up.

It's rude. She does it anyway.

"Am I lying, girl?" The man doesn't look angry, but he looks amused. The smug, patronizing smile on his face is worse than a scolding.

Malena nods and juts out her chin like a weapon, her only weapon.

"And what will you do about it?" The man leans down, down until his face is a mere breath from hers. His face is horribly pale, his lips and eyes too red in that colorless face. His breath stinks of palva. "You will not leave this house."

Malena steps back and looks at the others. The skeleton with a woman's voice gingerly lowers herself into a chair, faint as always. The three-chinned man draped in velvet titters. The woman with glowing hair and a voice like death chews on a stick of palva. They are useless. Helpless. Just as she is.

They're all condemned to death in a couple years, just as she is. When the nuclear apocalypse comes in 2050, they will not be saved. They are rich but not rich enough. They are skilled but not skilled enough. They are not beautiful enough either, or well-connected. Their holographs all proclaim their chance of being saved on Reckoning Day as 0%.

It's pathetic, but Mother Earth won't miss parasites like them, like the man in fuchsia. She won't miss any of her people as she thrums with radiation. Those who make it through Reckoning Day will leave the planet; the others die.

Malena thinks of all this often, and she thinks of it now as she turns back to the man in fuchsia. "Yes, father."