I can still clearly remember the last time it rained. The last time the sky was clouded by not quite dark grey masses and the sun was hard to find. It started as a nice and normal day. The sun rose in what I imagine was a beautiful morning. I was taking a bath when it passed the horizon to shine on my part of the world. Or maybe I was eating my daily oats, I don’t remember. In any case I was still trying to wake up completely when I stepped outside and set course for the bus. The rain started shortly after the bus dropped me off at the trainstation. Sitting by the window, I once again marveled at the shapes and patterns formed by fleeting drops on glass. Obscuring and twisting the world speeding past outside, another might want to see it as a foreboding sign of the coming change. I on the other hand simply entertained sentimental thoughts about my best friend, who years before had taught me the trick of smiling beneath raincloud. It’s a simple trick really, but it’s not my place to explain it. It’s one of those things that should be felt. You might say it demands to be felt. It’s a way of letting the rain wash not just your face, but your fears as well. A way of letting the drops drip on your dread. Mostly it’s a way of avoiding salt in the joyful tears trickling towards the tip of your chin.
But all that was before the world went mad. Before the anarcho-capitalist rebellion on Cuba. Before the reveal of Vatican military naval bases along the eastern coast of Italy. Before the rise of the Saami empire ruling with a snowy iron fist from Stockholm to Moscow. Before San Franscisco sank into the ocean and the rest of that continent fell into chaos, anarchy and civil war. Before the Moroccan Union of Technocratic States controlled the Atlantic from Lisboa to Dakar. Before the Kingdom of Nigeria covered half of Africa and subsequently split into warring Princedoms fighting to control the darknet. Before North Korea invaded China and merged borders with Japan and became the Glorious Empire of the Rising Sun. Before Siberia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland was invaded by Polar Bears armed with lasercannons and plasmarifles trained and directed by the Free Peoples Republic of Arctica. Before Chile perfected superluminal travel and colonized the moons of Jupiter.
All that is past and unchangeable now.
And here I sit eating my lunch.
My pants still wet and the sun suddenly shining.
Down at the harbor.
In Aarhus.
In 2057.