A woman.

The sun was slowly setting in the little town’s streets. The red November light was settling in the orange dust. It was five o’clock in the evening. Public lighting was popping up: one by one, the facades were coming to life. Dark silhouettes were to be seen inside the houses from the street. They moved from room to room, slowly passing by a screen-lit wall. Someone was doing the dishes, an angry dog was barking. The street was dark, and the air was suffocating. Smoke was coming out of a shining manhole cover.

It was the year 2152. After many years of trying to protect the atmosphere, every democratic and diplomatic effort had failed. The Earth was getting hotter and hotter each day. The average temperature was 30°C, and would reach 48 to 50°C in the summer. An artificial dome protected the Earth from the Sun, but the air was filled with dirty particles, and it was very hard to breathe without Air/in.

Air/in was a shot of oxygen contained in a little plastic container you could buy from your local drugstore, in case you felt like you could not breathe anymore. It was expensive, and a cause for many troubles. The situation had not always been this bad. There were movies and photographs about the past, when the Earth was not so hot. People remembered. They recalled each little thing they tried to do to limit the rising of temperatures. Recycle. Ride a bike. Don’t hop on a plane for no reason. People had a bitter taste about those measures in their mouths, and the future was to prove them right.

While everyone was making all of these efforts, the rich got richer and just gave up on Earth. They kept consuming like crazy, while on the other hand the environmental measures became fiercer and fiercer. A guy from Alabama spent five years in jail because he had not paid his eco-tax in time. Some girl was shot when the police realized she owned a 1995 Volvo wagon in her garage and still used it on Sundays. It was crazy: as if the emergency made people angrier and more violent.

It all seemed to settle when, in 2100, the decision was made by Western countries to leave the Earth. Secretly, the governments of the richest countries had built large spaceships where rich people could go and live. They gravitated around the Earth, waiting for scientists to find water on Mars, oxygen on Venus. So far, nothing had been found. No one really knew what happened in those spaceships, because once they were on them, no one would go back to Earth. There were programs on television about life there. It looked like a dream.

A few years later, a lab in Pennsylvania found out about Air/in and commercialized the product. Because more and more people were suffering from breathing issues due to the heat and the particles, Air/in seemed like the ideal solution. In a few minutes, breathing through an inhaler, you were surrounded by a breath of fresh air going through your lungs and your face. Old people said it reminded them of cold wintery mornings. The product was a hit, and very soon everyone’s obsession was to get some.

After a while, other studies were published by European labs. Some molecules in Air/in were found suspicious. The studies said they had noticed physical and hormonal changes in a couple of monkeys and rats that had been exposed to Air/in for too long. The animals were acting abnormally and violent. One monkey in a French lab grew another ear and ate its mate. The product was then banned in countries such as France and Germany. In the US, Air/in was still commercialized, and people were desperate if they had no Air/in left.

Because all the rich had left, the ones left on Earth were those who could not afford the ticket to leave. And that was a lot of people. Everyone was vegetating in the heat, slowly trying to live in this hot, burning atmosphere.

Paige Kent was walking down the shadowy street. She was a tall, brown-haired girl, with an oval face, pale and yellow cheeks that made her look like an out-of-date egg. Her breathing was faint and low. She worked in one of those drugstores down the road, selling Air/in. All of her days were spent cashing money from people buying the product. She kept an eye on a security camera, and was told off by her boss if she missed someone getting away without paying.

She did not believe what the European papers said about Air/in; it was all fake news anyway. Paige actually trusted the product to be a relief for so many people. She liked her job because she felt very helpful to those in need. Her days were long and repetitive, but she didn’t mind.

Paige was a foreigner in this town. She had been rescued as a baby by her aunt, Mrs Kent. Twenty years ago, her sister’s husband came to her door, a bundle in his arms. The man was devastated by drugs and was shaking with fright. Mrs Kent had not seen him or her sister for two years. She had no idea her sister was pregnant. The man said he did not know where his wife went. He was on his own with the baby and was scared to death.

Indeed, Paige’s dad said the baby was acting very unusually. Yes, one could blame it on the drugs, but he swore he saw the baby levitating. He said things burned in the house when the newborn was around. The situation was out of control and he had no other choice but to give the bundle to Mrs Kent: she was family after all.

The lady took the baby. The thing went silent and looked at her. Everything happened before Paige could even blink an eye. To this day, nobody knew about this dark family secret, and it was fine like that. The baby never acted strange again, and bloomed into a very regular toddler. To young, fresh teachers and curious social workers, Paige was a distant family relative. And it was fine like that.

Mrs Kent told her story to Paige when she was seventeen years old. The girl was not surprised. She always knew there was something wrong with her. She just didn’t know exactly what it was, until now. The news did not shock her, because she liked Mrs Kent. She actually thought to herself sometimes: I would have done the same as my father did.

There was something good about Mrs Kent. Her husband had died in the war against China a few years ago. Paige pitied her. Mrs Kent was stubborn, fierce but fair at the same time. When the air was too hot, Paige placed a little fan in front of her chair. The two ladies were nice to each other, and Mrs Kent had never hurt Paige.

And there was Peter.

Peter was Mrs Kent’s son. He was this tall blond man, with transparent eyes and hands constantly shaking. Peter was constantly sick and needed a lot of Air/in every day. The household spent almost all of Paige’s money to buy him some. He worked in an office downtown. His job was to make sure every household paid the eco-tax in time.

The eco-tax was supposed to help research save the Earth. The government asked for it every month. The tax was huge and many people were not able to pay it. Peter’s job was to make sure they paid. He organized raids with special eco-forces, supposed to make you pay by any means. Basically, he just signed forms and decided nothing. He was just a rat, in the long list of rats whose jobs were to exploit the poorest.

Paige and he grew up together. They always shared this dark and unknown friendship, based on nothing more than living under the same roof for ten years. Paige and Peter didn’t notice each other; they just lived together, like brother and sister, like relatives. Mrs Kent called them « kids », and usually had to say the other’s name two or three times before calling the one she actually wanted to call.

When they were thirteen, Peter and Paige’s bodies started to change. It was normal. The boy grew a moustache and the girl started to get lazy. But still, nothing changed between them. They didn’t talk much, and played cards in front of the air conditioning at night.

Paige, Peter and Mrs Kent lived in an old house on the edge of the town. The roof was falling down and every room was dusty, covered with dark curtains and dirty pillows. It looked deserted from the outside, and everybody looked very surprised when they saw Paige or Peter going in and out of the house.

They owned a cat named Melody. On very rare occasions, Mrs Kent had some visitors. She usually had one of her two neighbors coming for a cup of iced tea. The visitors did not really like each other, but they were bored and had nothing else to do.

From three rusty rocking chairs on the porch, they talked trash about every young woman passing in the street and about how the city was before all that traffic and dust. How much safer it was. The « regulars » were Mrs Stevens and Mrs Lorde.

Mrs Stevens was an old maid, and had been evicted from a cleaning company at the age of sixty years old because she did not vacuum fast enough, according to the new manager. She was not « corporate », and did not know what that meant. Angry at anybody, she spent her time on her porch screaming at anyone coming towards her.

Mrs Lorde was this grumpy Latina whose husband had died a few years back. When she, Mrs Stevens and Mrs Kent gathered, it was an epic festival of spitting, verbal attacks and bad behavior. Kids in the neighborhood used to call them the Weird Sisters.

To be continued.