I've heard stories of a green earth. I've seen pictures of it from Orson. It looked like a peaceful green marble floating in the night sky. It was a paradise, until the snow took over. The lucky ones were the ones who killed themselves before the coldness hit. They could kill themselves in the comfort of the warmth. I wish I could have the luxury of taking off my coat and dancing in the sun. But no; I am here. In the dark and cold.
I never knew my parents. Well then again, nobody knows their parents nowadays. The only ones who know their parents are the ones in the Golden City, basking in the sunlight, before the giant tower of ice. All those jerks in that city are the ones whose great grandparents sucked up to the queen early on in her reign. But even knowing that, I wish my ancestors sucked up, so that I could live in the Golden City.
But no, instead I am here, somewhere in the desert of the cold snow, with a band of rebels whom half of which have committed a minor crime.
I do not know the date. The date system or whatever they called it, was abandoned early on, when the seasons became unclear, we just said, "To hell with it!" and stopped using it. Ophelia, however, still likes to keep track of the months, she says its July, or maybe August. Everyone in this group is nostalgic of something, probably because half of this group were raised in the Golden City.
I always ask them about it, they just say, "It was warm, it was nice, it was sunny". I've never seen the sun. When I asked them about it, they say it was a big ball of yellow, that hurt if you looked at it for too long. Orson's showed me some pictures of the sun, it looks beautiful. I wish I could see it for myself. But no; the only place left on earth where you can see it clearly, is the Golden City, a place that used to be called New York City, a place you can only enter if you're either an enemy of the empire and have to be contained, or a resident.
My tribe is made of 8 people. There's Orson, who's 14, my best friend, the collector, who lived in the golden city for 12 years, but he ran away when he finally realised what was going on and decreed no more, and Ophelia, 15, the keeper of time, also from the Golden City. Along with those two, there's Adam, 12, the geographer, whom we would be so lost without, was fascinated with maps when he was in the Golden City, he studied them and he even drew his own.
Because of him, we Mildred, 17, the leader of our tribe was imprisoned when she assaulted a guard. She stabbed him in the stomach when she believed he was assaulting a child, and was sentenced for 150 years of hard labor. She escaped in the third year of her sentence. She never had good parents, she lived in the ghettos of the Golden City.
Then the ones of our tribe who were born outside of the city. Cora, 5, the youngest of the group. Mildred found her in the snows of Mexico, cold, hungry and alone. Most kids don't make it out here alone, because parents usually abandon them. One thing to remember if you ever have a child in this world, don't. Too much hassle. But yet here we are. There's Palau, 8, who sort of found us. He was living in an underground bunker, alone, that was outside of the house we were living in at the time. If anybody survives around here, you're real lucky, but not as lucky as the ones in New York. There's Rhi, 11, who we found failing miserably to melt ice to make water. It's good to remember that it's so cold, that you usually just put the ice in your mouth, it'll melt on its own.
Then there's me. Kai, 14. I don't have a real last name. Outside of the Golden City, people's age acts as a last name, like in cities such as Mexico City, and Rio. People have tried to create new Golden Cities all over the world. First it was Charming Chicago, the new decreed golden city. Then when that froze over, it was all about Austin, the "new new" golden city.
When that got below 0, everyone shifted to Marvelous Mexico City, the "new new new" Golden City. I wonder what will happen when everywhere is below 0, and there's no place left that's not seriously cold. Until then, I'll just keep hearing tales of places too cold for anyone to set foot in, such as Australia and England, and places with names such as, India and Egypt whose temperature gets high as much as 30 degrees!
I don't know where I was born, or exactly when. All I know that I was adopted when I was around 4 months old, by a group of 50 people who were part of a rebel tribe against the queen. The queen organized a mass hunt for people who were traveling in groups of more than 40, under suspicion of rebel forces conspiring to remove her from power. Long story short, they broke up into little tribes.
In the end, in the tiny rebel break off tribe I was in, there was a fight over leadership, and I was the last person to be in that tribe. As for the rest of the tribe, most of them ended up in the gulags in the most horrible places, living at horrible conditions. It's thought that about a fifth of everyone around is in a gulag.
They wake you up at 5:00 in the morning to be forced to work various jobs such as mine gold, mine jewels and mine iron. Very diverse tasks, indeed. Mining for the rest of your life does sound horrible. But the really bad people go to the Prison. It had a formal name pre-cold, but it was lost with so much more. Besides, the Prison is definitely a more fitting name for the establishment.
You don't work, you don't do anything at all. You just sit in a cell with no windows, or anything at all. No other people in there, just a bed in a small cement box, for the rest of your life.
I was told that the queen ruled everything from the very beginning. From New Zealand to Russia, everywhere. She took control of everything a long time ago, before I was born. After a hundred years, It's a mystery why she's still alive, just as much reason why the Golden City, which is far north, a place that should be cold as hell is bright, sunny and, warm. People say she's the reason why everything is frozen over.
She is vague and mysterious, and has not been seen by a commoner in over a century. She goes by only the Queen, but there's also a name, a name that is claimed to tear apart the sky and souls of billions of people, Elsa