Humane condition. Introduction
During the past decade many people left for the big land. They knew that the island would eventually drown.
The consequences of climate change were hitting the islanders hard – every year the number of fierce forest fires and furious tsunami events grew larger and larger.
Finally, we quitted our countless tries to reconstruct the beach and to build a promenade zone a few kilometres up the shoreline – in the end, all of those efforts were useless since the tourists were never coming back to the island.
This summer the rescue team and volunteers visited the island for the last time. They stopped convincing us. Instead, a young European man told all the islanders to gather in the building which used to be a tourist centre. Broadly smiling, he said that he wanted to congratulate us because we were moving to the big land.
It was not an offer or an agreement – we just had to do as we were told. They gave us 24 hours to pack the bags.
In a day, everyone boarded on a large ship. We were going to the big land.
We were told to make a decision – we needed to choose our final destination points by the time we arrive. Those who couldn’t make a choice would be sent to a “recommended migrant settlement”.
It was almost a blind choice: no one of us has ever visited any of the suggested places. Besides, most of these small towns were built recently, that’s why we could merely find any information on them except advertisements. So, we just were thankful for the fact that we were welcomed somewhere, and left all the other decisions to our fate.
Here is the list of locations that we could choose from:
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Dern, high-tech linear city in a desert
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Ping, floating village
By 2042 there were less than a hundred people who lived on an N. island in the Pacific. And nearly a third of the inhabitants were in their late years.