As I race down the long hall and turn the corner passing the robot dusting off the lamps I hear the robotic voice echoing,
“ Andy?… Andy?… Andy?…Andy?”
Finally I’m seated at my desk and I slam my palm down on my projection button, which starts school. Holograms appear all around me, kids from all over the United Republic projected into my room, turn to greet me as if I’m actually there. This year, I’ve already figured out that Chole, Jack, and Iris are all bots, subbed in for the kids who did not show up. Although their voices sound human, their expressions appear forced, their laughter is synced, and they talk far too slow and formal. However it’s getting harder and harder to tell, last year they added bots that make mistakes to mimic humans even more.
“Hello Andy. How are you doing today?” Asks my teacher, spending way too much time on each syllable.
“I’m good,” I say.
Teachers are AI, since they’re just there to present the material. Like the AI students, communication can be hard with them because you have to format your sentences perfectly or they won’t respond. I chat with my neighbors who I know are human, until the teacher’s voice interrupts everyone at 9:00, exactly as it always does.
“Good morning students, before we begin with our lesson we should recite the pledge of allegiance.”
“I pledge allegiance to…” My teacher starts until eventually everyone stands and joins in,
“The flag of the The United Republic of America and to the autocracy for whom it stands, one nation indivisible with equanimity and fairness for all”
“Meow!” A holographic cat squawks as he scoots into frame.
“Mittens!” a frantic voice shouts, “You can’t be in here when I’m doing my school!”
He scoops the cat up and disappears for a few seconds, we hear a door shut, and then he returns.
“I’m sorry about my cat.” He says.
“Yup, Definitely a human” I think.
“That is all right, Sam, Now let us begin with today’s history lesson.” My teacher says
“Today we are going to learn about another past millennium, in fact we are going back exactly 1000 years to 2024.” My teacher says,
An image of a ridiculous amount of trees projects in the middle of my room, spinning slowly so everybody can get a good look. The sage-green trees look strong, tall, and have rough bark. The foliage is full and bushy. They make our waxy and flimsy trees today look like weeds. These trees are so tall they stretch all the way up to the sky, and the skyline reminds me of the same one our skyscrapers create. Oh the sky, I think.
The radiant sunrise frames the canopy of the trees. It reminds me of the ombre effect my electronic’s screensaver has. Our sunrises look like a small fire in the distance. Until the small fire rises higher and higher into the firment, gradually changing the sky from dark gray, to light gray. This past sky had fluffy pure white clouds and summoned hundreds of different colors. I’ve never seen this shade of blue anywhere in nature before. Its blueness reminds me of the diamonds. It almost seems to glow, nothing like our dull gray sky now.
“Today’s lesson will cover the landscape of the earth, this is called a forest. A forest is a group of many prehistoric trees.”
I glance around the room to see many confused faces, and even the AI has managed a shocked look, although it’s much too exaggerated. The AI’s mouth has completely dropped open, and delivers a fake sounding gasp. Everyone giggles.
“The forest was home to many unique species for example,”
The projection of the forest in the middle of the room disappears and an image of weird looking animals appears.
The photo zooms in on an orange looking dog, with a weird pointed snout.
“This is called a fox. They went extinct in 2508.”
The teacher continues, “The forest no longer exists because most of the large groups of trees were burnt down after the ruptures in the ozone layer caused several fires, and made the earth far too hot.”
“Now, let’s continue.”
An Image flashes of small furry black and yellow dots floating in mid air. I decide it must be some kind of hologram they were testing back then.
“These creatures are called bees, they were pollinators which means they helped plants to reproduce, but since the increased heat, we no longer had enough plants for the bees to pollinate, which destroyed their source of food, and they became instinct.”
Sadness for the losses our world has suffered at our human hands is all I can feel.
Completely unaffected, the teacher says, “Can anybody think of a prehistoric job we covered from our last unit that may have been affected by the eradication of bees?”
I wracked my brain, trying to remember the prehistoric jobs, construction workers? Teachers? Accountants? Until finally a kid raises their hand and waits for the AI to sense the response.
“Yes?” Asks the teacher.
The kid who’s cat interrupted earlier says, “Farmers?”
“Alex, you are correct, without pollination, we were no longer able to grow our own food which meant we did not need farmers anymore. As a result, we were forced to manufacture genetically modified foods for consumption.”
I can’t seem to wrap my head around the process of growing food, does it grow like humans do? Slowly and slowly getting bigger and bigger?
My teacher’s voice disrupts my thoughts, “Now is your lunch break, we will resume our next classes afterwards.”
The hologram is gone in a second. I stay still, stunned and upset by the thought of all we have lost, eventually I walk back out into the hall and step into my elevator and use it to move up to the 5th floor of the house. I reach the kitchen and instead of having the chefbot prepare a sandwich, I’m inspired by our ancestors who did so much by hand, and I decide to make my own. I take out two slices of bread that are hard and crisp. I grab a plastic container and break the canned seal and reach into the slimy juice in the container and pull out some gray ham. As I layered it onto the bread, I wondered what kinds of food the past people ate. Finally I grab the cheese, and spread its odorless powder over the ham.
Before stepping outside to eat on the patio I put on my heavy coat and hat that reflect the sun and put UV protection cream on the parts of cream that are exposed, like my hands. I find myself staring at our own sky. It’s polluted, the atmosphere is a mix of a metallic gray and silver fog. The clouds are a wispy dark ecru colored mess that hardly move across the sky but disperse until they fade away. Various metal pipes pump powdery charcoal-colored contamination into the air. It’s as dark as a night a thousand years ago, even though it’s midday. It looks nothing like the other beautiful masterpiece. I think back to the old world, I bet they didn’t need to wear extra clothing to protect them from the sun.
How did we get to this point?
5000 Words 
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