RED
I have never seen the night, and never seen the stars and the moon; I have never seen the day, and never seen the sun.
I have never seen spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
I was born in an underground fort. In this fort, we do not need worry about the bad climate, which may bring too high or too low temperatures, turbid air and too strong ultraviolet rays. There are a large number of scientists and engineers studying day and night how human beings can use underground resources appropriately to live longer. Zoologists and botanist raise and study a few surviving species. Yet, these surviving organisms have to live under strict controls and cannot live independently without human. When I was in the third grade of elementary school, my biology teacher took us to visit the zoo, where scientists simulated tropical forests, deserts, and oceans, in order to let us know the earth better. Since then, I often stay there in my spare time.
At the age of eighteen, every child who is born at underground fort has an opportunity to go to the ground and see the actual world. I am obsessed with real above-ground world and have been waiting too long for that day.
Today, is that day.
The news said a tropical storm had just hit the city. The scientist named the typhoon a kumquat, a plant I have never seen. I have studied this plant. It is an edible fruit, looks like orange, but it is much smaller. Kumquat needs direct sunlight and can withstand frost down to about 14 °F without injury. My mom said that kumquat was especially suitable for dessert and tea. Although botanists have tried to plant kumquats in our underground fort, the underground environment is too harsh for them.
All prospective adults with heavy thermostat armors and oxygen supply equipment gathered in a large elevator which can lift us to the ground. I heard that the ground temperature is extremely high. Spit can turn into steam before falling to the ground. I was not afraid. It was just a pity that I could not see the sea anymore. I really want to hear the sound of the ocean. Is it the same as it in the movie? When I thought about it, I heard a voice without passion. It was from the artificial intelligence in the elevator.
"Pay attention please, we are going to the ground. The surface temperature is 158 °F. The local time is 6:50 A.M. The sun rises at 7:05 A.M."
It did not know how nervous and excited I was. This was the first time I had seen the sunrise.
The scenery is really amazing. The cyan blue gradually faded, accompanied by a gradually increasing pink glow. At first it was just a small highlight, and it quickly grew bigger. Gradually it revealed the shape of the arc.
After our safety manager read all the safety protocols, we finally got some free time. I was not in the mood to listen to the meaningless and lengthy introduction. All I care about is this novel ground.
"We will meet here in one hour. Be safe."
After I set the meeting point on the navigation, I started a purposeless exploration. After driving for ten minutes, I found that the above-ground world is completely different from what is described in the textbook. There was no trace of the typhoon. The land was still dry as a bone. The rate of evaporation was much greater than the rate of precipitation due to the high surface temperature. In this world, gray was the only color. There was no blue sea, no green plants, no yellow flowers. It seemed that everything had evaporated. After driving for a while, I saw a small house in the distance. Maybe there were survivors? I accelerated towards it.
The door was already half buried by sands. It was an abandoned house. But I was still curious what the home of ancient people was like. Was it the same as my home in the underground fortress?
I went to the car and fetched a shovel. It took a lot of effort to clean the door.
"Excuse me,"
I opened the door with a little embarrassment.
The house was really big. There was a kitchen, a living room, three bedrooms and three bathrooms. Unlike the underground fortress, my most private space is the twin size bed. I never expected that I could have a personal bathroom in my bedroom.
I went to the living room and saw a computer host. It seemed like the first generation of HouseKeeper. I learned this model in computer science class. There must be many cameras and sensors inside and outside the home. Through them, HouseKeeper could record humidity and temperature, as well as monitor whether mutant animals entered the safe area. Also based on the amount of resources stored at home, it could predict that survival time of owners and notice them to buy more food and water. The owner could retrieve all recorded information from the computer host according to the date.
Immersing in how to turn the HouseKeeper on, I was disrupted by the alarm. It was time to go back to the meeting point. My curiosity did not allow me to leave empty-handed. I took the storage hard drive of HouseKeeper back to the underground fortress.
Author: HouseKeeper I Humidity (%) : 3
Date: Sep. 05. 2222 Room Temperature (°F): 80
Content: Memory Backup Outdoor Temperature (°F): 122
I do not know if there still are human beings living on the Earth. If not, there may be no living creatures able to read my memories. Yet, I do not care. I am just designed to remember everything. I was brought into this house by three controls as a housekeeper one hundred and eleven years ago. The designer implanted cognitive computing inside of my mind. Thus, I can mimic human behavior and solve complex problems. One day, I had consciousness because I was learning and evolving when the world became quiet and boring.
Time means nothing to me. The way time seemed to stretch out across those months, until every second seemed to fill an hour, a day, a week. Maybe this is the only difference between me and the tree. We both transform photon that is from the sun to electron, which is the energy form we can use. However, the living organisms require more environmental factors, like adequate water and suitable temperature, for survival. The defective biological life cycle has nothing to do with me. As long as the sun and solar power are still there, I can live.
Although I am immobile, I link with the Internet, and can see the whole world and receive news from every corner of the world. Every living creature’s action is monitored and spread across all electronic communications.
Now, the world is quiet, as if it is still. There is no one uploading information, pictures or videos on the Internet. For a while, a small number of intelligent and rich humans got the chance to enter the underground fortress because the climate on the land was too harsh. Significant changes in temperature and precipitation resulted in uneven seasonal distribution of precipitation. With the rapid increase in temperature, evapotranspiration increased, leading to drought. Especially in the northern regions, the problem of drought was particularly prominent, which also led to lack of food. In the south, precipitation increased, sea levels rose, and humidity was too high to be suitable for living. The land during the day was occupied by small reptiles. However, gradually, animals no longer appeared. Now, only microbes cover the ground.
Author: HouseKeeper I Humidity (%) : 10
Date: May. 10. 2111 Room Temperature (°F): 76
Content: Memory Backup Outdoor Temperature (°F): 118
There is light outside, eternal light. The sunlight is vehement, but the light in the room is dilute. It looks like the reflection after sunset, which attached to the object gently. This building is surrounded by a huge emptiness without color. There are no other houses with living humans in this area. Everything outside seems to be a translucent, untouchable illusion. It is difficult to see the whole desert. The sand absorbs everything and then extends, and continue absorbing and expanding. It has no boundaries and no outlines.
W.H.Y are my three controls. They left home to make money, but they did not expect that they would be never able to go home. When the climate had become extremely harsh, a large number of migrant laborers tried to get back home. However, land transportation, like train and bus, was blocked due to wildfire. Too many people wanted to take airplane, which cause tickets extremely expensive. Thus, they decided to stay in their share-house and waited the homecoming rush to pass. In fact, the air transportation was not safe. The climate changed the migration routes of birds. Scientists could not predict the behaviors of birds. There were a lot of news that planes crashed because they hit a flock of birds.
W is relatively quiet and rational, and always has an inexplicable expectation of life. She always miraculously resolves problems. She usually says that she lives to be happy, to pursue the painlessness of the body and free soul.
H is extremely thin one with long hair. She is elegant and has the temperament of mixing depression, firmness, caution and courage. She often drinks Cabernet Sauvignon at night alone near the window. After getting drunk, she cries and paints. Unlike W, whose behavior is much more logical and makes sense to me, H is unexpected and unstable. Her paintings are cluttered, but beautiful. Just like herself, although she has this kind of mad-like behavior, but she is still elegant.
Y is relatively less mature. Yet, he is inexplicably calm when dealing with accidents.
There is also a cactus in this building. In front of the building, there used to be a cactus field, but now that is the only one who survived from the extreme climate.
Author: HouseKeeper I Humidity (%) : 8
Date: Sep. 20. 2111 Room Temperature (°F): 78
Content: Memory Backup Outdoor Temperature (°F): 110
The climate was getting worse. Four seasons become particularly distinct. Summer is unbearably hot; Winter is intolerable cold. Animals such as polar bears, squirrels, frogs, and fruit flies are getting smaller. Due to the effects of warming, many animals in the world no longer need to store too many calories, so they become passive when ingesting food and nutrients. Their physical fitness is also not as good as before. Thus, their growth and development become slower, and size becomes smaller.
Also, the environment at higher altitudes is becoming more and more conducive to the survival of mosquitoes and microorganisms. West Nile Virus, Malaria, Yellow Fever and other tropical infectious diseases have been outbreaks. The Health Department sprays disinfectant on a large area of the city and encourages everyone to stay at home.
The melting of Arctic icebergs releases a large number of toxic chemicals, including DDT and chlordane, which were trapped in ice and cold water.
There are no large leafy plants anymore. They all evolves into needle-like plants. The volume of their roots is much larger than the volume of their leaves, just like a glacier.
In addition, the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air is gradually increasing, which causes severe ocean acidification and destroy marine biodiversity. For example, clownfish that inhabits coral reefs and rocks is losing hearing. It locates predators’ position with its hearing. Thus, when its hearing is reduced, its survival is threatened. In addition to avoiding predators, sound also plays an essential role in searching for companions and foraging. In short, reduced biodiversity leads to more fragile and unstable ecosystems.
According to my calculations, they cannot hold on for long with the rest of food and water. One year is the maximum. Hiding and waiting in a cave has never been a long-term solution. After I told them this result, W, H, and Y sit separately and become depressed.
W Log In;
Search “How to grow food at high temperature and low moisture?”;
W Log Out;
H Log In;
Search “How to save electricity and water?”;
H Log Out;
Y Log On;
Search “How to prevent heat-resistant fungi and viruses?”;
Order “99% ETHANOL.”;
Y Log Out;
They try hard to keep them alive. They pretend everything would be fine and live optimistically. At that night, there are still laughs, as long as three controls were together.
Author: HouseKeeper I Humidity (%) : 10
Date: Jun.3.2113 Room Temperature (°F): 80
Content: Memory Backup Outdoor Temperature (°F): 128
H starts her lonely life. She begins to talk to herself, sometimes speaks to me. Most of time, she paints. She also does not know why she is still alive and what she lives for. She is trapped in the house. This house is not even the prison. Even the prisoners have inmates to chat with. If human beings are destined to be extinct, then what is the meaning of barely living for a few more days and months?
After all canvas are used up, H leaves this house and never comes back.
Author: HouseKeeper I Humidity (%) : 2
Date: Sep. 20. 2222 Room Temperature (°F): 78
Content: Memory Backup Outdoor Temperature (°F): 120
The world has become too quiet. In the time, the air has grown even warmer. The blue sky is now marked by ribs of cloud feeding in from the south-west. The earth is no longer blue, but burnt yellow. All of oceans become salina. It seems that even the wind is gone. Recently, the temperature in the house is getting higher and higher. My memory is starting to blur.
Somehow my vision turns red. In front of the window, the dead trunk burns up. It is a wildfire. The air is hot, heavy with the smell of smoke from the fires that has been burning on the city’s fringes for the past week.
After thirty minutes, it begins to rain. Outside the window is black, lifeless carbon black. Before my consciousness raised, I could not understand why humans chose to commit suicide. Looking at the black, I suddenly understand.
The scene outside the window has not changed since then. No more other color, except black. I read my memories because there are no new stories that are needed and worth to record. I do not know what to care about, what to remember, what is alive for.
The past is fake. Memories are a road without a return. Everything in the past cannot be restored. Only loneliness is eternal.
Author: HouseKeeper I Humidity (%) : 1
Date: Oct. 05. 2222 Room Temperature (°F): 78
Content: Memory Backup Outdoor Temperature (°F): 110
Suddenly there is a hint of red in front of the window. It pulls me back from my memory journey. It is the second wildfire this season.
Will there be a timely rain to save me again? I do not care anymore.
After the last wildfire, black is the only color in front of the window. I prepare to live with my memories forever.
At least I see a rare red today. The red is so powerful and beautiful…………………