Short Story

The World after the 1st of March

When I was younger I always wanted to be able to look into the future. I would have liked to have a time machine to see what’s going to come and how the world is going to change. But back then in 2009, I would never have been able to imagine that the world would be doomed ten years later; doomed because of World War III.
I guess it all started with the election of a young, charismatic president in the US. In his presidential campaign he had promised to finally bring the war in Iraq to an end. However, he was assassinated soon after his inauguration and his vice-president, a 70-year old war-veteran called Adrian Shotler probably wanted to continue playing war and instead of pulling the troops out of Iraq, he sent even more. Of course, the Iraqis weren’t happy about that. I remember that the war in Iraq had started because the Americans assumed that the Iraqis were building atomic bombs. However, the American troops never found any. And since the Americans didn’t come to the bombs, the bombs came to America. How the Iraqis were able to smuggle bombs of the size of a car to the States, nobody knows. But on 1 March, 2018, three atomic devices exploded in the USA destroying NYC, Washington DC, and Chicago and killing 3 million people. It is impossible to describe the chaos and mayhem which suddenly arose throughout the world. Lots of other nations acted rashly, especially the European Union which immediately agreed to also send troops to Iraq to destroy this country and its weapons. It soon developed into a war of religions: the Muslim-based countries against the Christian-based countries. And bombs started falling in Great Britain and all over Europe, too. Nobody in Britain was safe anymore and the few hundred thousand survivors were evacuated and brought to an uninhabited island which is now called New London. But our colony doesn’t have anything to do with London. It only consists of barracks where we sleep on straw and other barracks where we eat our apportioned food. It’s always cold and windy here because the island is located in the middle of the ocean. We don’t have telephones, computers, or TVs here; things I took for granted only a year ago. We don’t even have anything to do: there’s no work because we don’t have any tools or materials to build anything with. Once a week, a ship comes over here to bring some food, letters, and more refugees. Most of these refugees are even sicker than us and except for a few doctors, who have no tools except their own hands, there is no medical treatment here. I have been exposed to an atomic explosion myself and I can feel how my hair is falling out already. Our colony mostly consists of women because nearly all the men have been drafted to fight in the war. My boyfriend Michael died 2 months ago. I still can’t imagine that I’ll never see his smile again. For me all that is like a bad dream from which I’ll awake soon. There is nowhere for us to go: nearly all the countries in Europe have been destroyed and those which are not will not take any more refugees. I am not so sure what we are doing here. Are we waiting for the end of the war? Or the end of the world? And even if the war does stop, what will we do? Will we rebuild all of Europe? Will there be anything left to rebuild? And will there be enough healthy people to produce non-retarded children?
Einstein once said: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” I now, unfortunately, know the answer to the first part of his saying and I am sure that Einstein is right about the second part as well.