Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 2020complete | Page 465

The Beginning- A Greater Bay Area Story
Shanghai Singapore International School, Lai, Chit - 12
A hot gust of wind blew across the sandy plains of Sutton. The air was humid and the scorching sun
baked the arid dirt. It was only May, but the temperature jumped up to 50 degrees Celsius. Sunlight coursed into
our huge enclosed world, but down the alleys between apartments, the sun hasn’t risen. This is where she liked
to hang out, near where she lived. Staring out of the large glass walls, all she could see were piles and piles of
waste. It was early in the morning, so they hadn’t closed the shutters over the huge glass wall yet, over the truth.
They didn’t like people being reminded of the mistakes they made. How she wished and wished to see what was
piled under the trash. She desperately tried to search for what happened before, she wanted to know the
Mistakes. She wanted to know the Beginning. The gong rang and the shutters closed; a new day was just about
to begin. She hated the enclosure as if it was a cage. It was as if all the mysteries of the Beginning were hidden
outside of their enclosure. The alarm clock rang as Abby’s mother knocked the door.
“Rise and shine, Abby!”.
Little did she know, Abby was already awake before the gong rang. Abby clumsily stumbled into the
bathroom, changed into her daily attire and hastily tied her messy hair into a bun. She lightly tiptoed up the stairs
into her bedroom and turned on her computer. All you could see in her search history was about the Beginning.
The Beginning was when no one was stuck in huge glass enclosure, it was when people could roam freely
around the world. Only the elderlies knew about the Beginning and they were persecuted if they were to mutter
a single word about what had happened.
Sutton was a huge, enclosed, glass cage to Abby; all she wanted was to discover the mysteries behind all
the trash and arid dirt. Abby took her packed bag and stepped out her front door. There were small Uber pods
gliding down the glass railroads, large buildings and malls filling up the place, but across it all Abby saw highly
armed guards in front of the humungous glass door. The Leaders hadn’t allowed anyone to leave Sutton since the
day they came in, in 2025.
Abby jumped into the Uber pod and pressed her phone against the side of the door. The pod started
moving, indicating that she’d paid the fee. Leaders are superior officials that know about the Beginning, but
thought it was too much for the citizens born originally. The Leaders thought it might start unrest, so all they
could do was to keep the citizens under control by taking control of the whole internet. All the Elderlies were
brainwashed once the Leaders conquered the land, but that couldn’t stop Abby wondering – how had it all
begun?