Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 2020complete | Page 468

Noah in 2300
Shanghai Singapore International School, Nyamjav, Makhamaya - 12
As he protruded his head to see around the corner, he felt sweat rolling down his back. He was unable tell
whether he was dead or not but he wished that he was, rather than existing here. Just when he was about to stick
his head out to see once again, a green darted line past just by him. He would have been killed at that moment if
he hadn’t moved a little.
“These creatures are nothing like us. They don’t know anything about tolerance and their target is to
kill us, I mean me. Only one is programmed not to and there is no way of knowing which one it is! There is
nothing worse than the thought that you are the only human in a country taken over by AIs,” he said to himself
and wished a “person” could listen to him talk. He noticed that he was talking to himself and stopped.
Right now he couldn’t think of anything; his head was hurting as if it was about to burst open, it was
burning and spinning at a very high speed. He felt dizzy and fe……
As his eyes barely opened, he could feel his body moving. He was moving, but his body was still. He
opened his eyes and realized that he was at a very tall height. He looked down to see how he was at that
frightening height and all he could see was metal, walking metal.
“Would this turn out to be a dream or am I just not thinking right again?” he thought.
He looked down again the very last time and it looked just as it did before.
“Well it probably could be.. “
Then he froze. His body once again felt a cold chill down his spine. The metal walking things were legs,
definitely not human legs. He looked sideways to find metal arms carrying him. It was real, a robot was carrying
him.
He was paralyzed and didn’t know what to think or what to do. Then that giant held him dangling
from the sky above its mouth, ready to drop him into that grey hole. He tried to scream for help but nothing
came out as if he was muted. Then when he looked down he realized that it was saying something. It was saying
‘13542’ very clearly. Very odd he thought but that was only one hundredth of his thoughts. The rest were just
screaming in fear and rescue.
Then it dropped him. He was falling endlessly until………
Noah gasped. His eyes were wide open; they were watery. He looked around. He was in his bed. He
tapped on the button as he did every morning. His clothes were put on and his breakfast was put in front of him.
When he moved forward to eat, sweat dripped down from his forehead. He felt feverish but got up to continue
the day as if that nightmare hadn’t happened, but he couldn’t possibly. It stayed as if it was glued on to his
memory.
The day was usual. His job to make sure the 'AIs' up in space were doing as the instructions. It was not
working very well lately. The AIs were not following instructions and were doing other things off camera. This
gave him weird feelings but no one else seemed to find it weird. He went out to go back home when it was
eight pm. The buildings were towering as big shadows had faded as the rest of the Earth became dark. He saw a
dog in an airwing, an air transportation. They are transports that look like plates and they travel on air but they
are not very efficient if you want to go at a very high speed.
Noah himself sat on his scoller, another transport that floats a little off the ground by magnets (much faster than
airwings), and headed homewards.
When he arrived home, he sat down as a cup of tea was made by the AI that had worked for him around
17 years. Still he never trusted and found AIs safe. This led him to remember when he started disliking them.
When he was a kid, he had watched a movie about robots killing humans, there was a lot of blood and
fighting. Due to his young age he had thought that this actually had happened. Since then, he never liked them
and became very cheerless around them.
The next morning his aunt came rushing in his room. She was an ancient but very sweet looking old
woman. She was a great cook and amazingly talented at knitting.
She was speed walking towards Noah as he asked her what had happened.
“What is going on?’” he said.
She didn’t answer, but held a note that was grabbed in her hand tightly. After he had read it, he stared at
her (who was wearing a very excited face) with a questioning look.