Out of space

The sky is black, despite it being morning. I open the window to get some fresh air, but all that comes in is smoke. I take a step out of the house hoping to feel the grass, a sidewalk, but all that’s below my feet is dust and trash. Why have they done this to us? Just because we don’t have as much money as them, we are put in this hole. I have stopped trying to reach their level. The distance is too much, the gap is too wide open. They have made it impossible for someone to reach their status unless they are born into it.

Their skyscrapers are right next to our slum, yet they feel a hundred miles away. Why? Because reaching them is impossible. When I was young I used to tell myself that I would live on top of that building, work tirelessly reading more books than anyone in this slum, even do enough factory work to buy myself a laptop. This laptop. I used it to learn, to work, to find a way out. But it is not there, it is impossible, we are blocked out of their world. Each day the situation gets worse, the sky gets darker, the smoke gets heavier, and our lungs die out.

The sky above their buildings is clear and blue, why and how I can never understand. Is it just that the grass is greener on the other side or does our side never get the opportunity to water our grass? What’s the point of thinking this way or even questioning anything? When I could never do something about it. Never even reach them or take revenge in some way. It made me angry, watching them live better than us for no reason at all. The blood in my veins flows faster, the thoughts in my head bump into each other reaching different parts of my brain. My hands form fists without my control.

I heard some chatter yesterday, my neighbour said that we were going to be flown out of the planet since the industry needed more space. We were going to be test dummies for humans outside of earth. Where we're going to go? Would we have a choice? Probably not. Everything was done so that those in the skyscrapers could stay there. It doesn’t matter what we face, they must not suffer at all. It was unfair, unjust but it was how it was, I was used to this by now spending so much time in this slum.

The next thing I knew, I got an alert for a rocket flight on my wristband the next day. They had put a wristband on all of us, just to keep us in check. I don’t really know what they think we would do, but a few incidents of outrage may have caused our imprisonment. Anyways, so we get on this rocket. I don’t really know where it is going, I just know that there was everyone from the slums in that rocket. Not one soul could tell where we were going. The woman sitting beside me began praying, she began in English and then moved to Arabic, then to Hindi and finally ended it with Hebrew. Seeing her I thought it was the end. The rocket started shaking, I could smell the oil burning. I saw tears form in the eyes of the woman beside me. Then finally the rocket took off.

A few moments of high pressure and a shaky rocket till we entered a space full of silence. No matter to transport the sound waves, nothing picked up by the ear at all except for the silent decomposition of our bodies. I should have known; they were just trying to get rid of us. They were out of space, so they took us out of the little space they’d left us. Putting us in outer space. Just as I was closing my eyes, accepting the situation, we crashed.

I don’t know what it was, but it did not feel like a solar nebula, a space cloud. It was absolutely solid. Almost like steel. A loud thud woke everyone in the rocket. The tears of the women began to float. A bright light emerged from outside the rocket. I thought we had hit the sun, but it was too fast. The light got too bright, and my eyes couldn’t take it. When I woke up next, I couldn’t feel anything. My body felt as if it wasn’t part of me. My vision felt pixelated almost as If I was looking at an old screen.

My body was artificial, the touch of my skin felt solid, like steel. My bones felt incomplete airy. Almost as If they were never there at all. I looked around everyone looked the same. Like a metal soldier almost. The woman beside me grabbed my hand and screamed “what are we?!” told her I had no Ideas, and she began to scream. Her scream led to another, another, and another. The whole rocket was filled with animated screams.

The rocket broke out. We were just metal figures floating in space. If you saw from the earth you’d think we were stars. Why were we metal? I didn’t know, it could have been something to do with the light. But we’d never know. We turned back and saw our planet. Earth was right behind us. All sense blew out of the window. All of us like a metal army began to storm towards the earth. It was as if a group mentality formed. Our individual thoughts disappeared. It was contagious. We wanted to destroy the planet. If we couldn’t live on it neither could they.

We destroyed everything on our site. Each and every skyscraper broke till the ground, till their rubble filled the sky with dust, Making it as black as ours. Despite our world having everything for everyone, we destroyed it because it was not given to us.