STRANDED, 3000.

They called her the nutcase, as long as they could remember. Physically, she looked like a feeble cat but her presence couldn’t be ignored. Nutcase came in the class and started writing something on the board with a terrifying noise: ‘3000=EARTH DOOMSDAY’. Students who were only looking at their phones talking with each other frowned and took a quick glance at the board and noticed the teacher came in the class. Only 3 students in the first row, Jin Aldwin and Kayelin had their science textbook opened on chapter 4, ‘8 planets in our solar system’. The 3 scholars were ready to learn the lesson for the day but it seemed the teacher wouldn’t teach and so didn’t have the attitude. A student that was sleeping woke and shouted, “It’s nutcase. Join me sleeping during class” and he fell back on his desk snoring. However, Nutcase’s presence with what she wrote on the board was enough to make the class uproarious for a while and soon they soon started yelling at each other. “What is she going to talk about again? Didn’t the government formally announce that was a rumor that didn’t make any sense?” The sleeping student woke up angrily and shouted at the whole class. “I have no idea. Can’t you see there are people that are trying to sleep? If you want to listen, then please just shut up and listen to her. But you know that old nutcase always tells us things unnecessary for our lives.” The old lady who was listening all of this didn’t seem hurt with the words. Instead, she hit the desk hard 3 times with her calendar and shouted “Quiet.” She walked around the class and hit the ones what were sleeping with her calendar. It was the first time she woke up students after she became a teacher. She always believed that it wasn’t her fault if the students didn’t listen to the lesson. She believed her waiflike shyness couldn’t save anyone. Even with just 3 students, Kayelin, Jin and Aldwin focusing in class, she would continue the lesson even without her face changing. “Listen. I am not going to force you to believe what I am going to say. I believe it is my last role or perhaps it should have been your parents that should have told you already. As you know 5 years later, it is 3000. The start of a new millennium. People are only thinking of celebrating the new start and I know lots of people are planning to have their babies in 3000 because of the benefits the government will give. Just a year ago, the government never allowed us to celebrate anything unless it was the national day. There wasn’t anything called a party for the last 200 years. Now, everything is allowed under the name of a new millennium. Party, drugs and even sex at any time at any place. Outside this school just 100m away from the main gate you can see your parents who used to greet you asking how your day was now drinking with others not even noticing their child are back from school. The students looked outside the window. Just like what the teacher said, there was a big crowd of adults were outside drinking and dancing everywhere. They were so drunk now they rather looked like zombies than people. Then the teacher opened the curtain, a man from the crowd of beasts, crawled on his four and came close to the school window. His red eyes and ripped clothes with holes everywhere and body smelling like dirt seemed to tell anyone that saw him that he didn’t wash for a long time and had been taking alcohol without sleeping. The students stared at him stunned, petrified. “You think I’m funny. I ain’t. Enjoy your lives animals. This is the only chance. They deserted us already. Here take this wine. Lick it from the windows. It will taste like me.” and he poured the wine into the glass. He bumped his head on the windows hard and had until one of it broke which ended up a police that was near grabbing his hat and pulling him away and the man screaming to let go while he was pulling his bloody hair. The window was now turned into wine purple but still no one else except Kayelin, Jin and Aldwin from the students looked at him with serious eyes. It was about 6 months now since all the adults went out of the house and changed. This meant that not only the adults, but the lives of children changed. When they came back home there wasn’t anyone except their robots that were becoming their parents. What they would do was to turn off the robot and call their friends to come over and sleep with each other. From the student’s bag, it wasn’t books that came out. Bottles of alcohol drinks and if you looked carefully, condoms were inside them. It wasn’t that there was no one looking over them. There were police all over the whole country that were standing still and watching everything but all they would do is hold a camera and take videos of what was going on. Every afternoon, through the large television outside, the president of the country, Mrs. Brigitte would say to the drunk “Enjoy the time everyone. For the year 3000! Cheers!” Students even saw their young sisters and brothers who were still babies trying to get to their mothers from the crowd of people. “No. He is not your dad anymore. Stop crying. Nothing is going to change.” The children became violent as days went and would just his their young siblings until they were too tired to cry from pain. When they let go of them, the young babies would go into the crowd of people that were sleeping and drinking all of the place to find someone. They were crying and seeking for love that was normal to get at the age under 10. If they cried too much in the crowd, adults near them would slap them, tear their clothes off and put beer in their mouth to make them quiet. That day, a warm corpse of a baby was left alone in front of the school which Kayelin had to call the police. Her best friends who were Jin and Aldwin around her begged her not to be foolish since if they called the police, the whole school would be involved in the investigation. However, she did. She was seeking redemption for the poor little baby that escaped hell and the police took the emaciated that was still such as weight. The next day when all the teacher and the students heard what Kayelin had done, most of the teachers didn’t seem to care but it was her colleagues that stared at her and stared at her as if they were looking at criminals. Kayelin, however didn’t care because she still had 2 great friends who believed what she did was right and she felt that was better than single serving friends. The science teacher closed the curtains and started her words again. She would make a breath of sighing at every end of her word.“You children are now free from studying. From the 500 of you, only 1~3 of you will get the chance to get further education. Don’t you remember it was the opposite just a year ago? Everyone in middle school except the worst 2 students were required to go to high school if they were not planning to live as a miner. I am not saying that I miss that system but what changed all of this so fast? Why? Is a new millennium really what the government wants to celebrate? People are enjoying it too much that they are not even taking care of their children or thinking of what is even going on in this world. But folks look outside. Don’t you ever question yourself why we are living underground? Why there were so many natural disaster recently?” She opened the curtains and then the windows. Dark light came into the room directly and covered the bright class. Then the whole class could hear the cry of the wind. The teacher looked at the children. For the first time she could see her class listening carefully with eyes that were full of wonder. She took a deep long breath and started continuing what she was going to say. “It is because the world is too devastated for humanity to survive. What if the community is trying to hide this horrible fact by celebrating 3000 is coming soon?” She looked again at the children they were not concentrating anymore. Just the 3 students that focused during her class were the only ones listening to her seriously with her shiny eyes. All the others were sleeping with their ears closed or putting on makeup. Some were even smoking while there was a couple kissing at the back of the class just like they always did. The teacher did no longer respect her students nor the students did. The old lady looked around the class whispering to herself, “I wasn’t lying to you… I hope some understood what I was trying to say...” Before she left, she looked at where the 3 best friends were sitting and left smiling. Soon she got a message from the school president to come to the office with a letter of resignation. The old lady smiled as if she had expected this to happen and walked to the school office. That day there was a rumor that they heard the old teacher got arrested by the government police and she was killed. The students never saw her again but no one ever wondered why. Kayelin and Jin later talked about this day imagining how things would have been different if they truly understood and believed what nutcase was saying. However at that time they were too young to believe everything was being controlled under the truth that earth would be sucked into a blackhole which was the doomsday nutcase was talking about. They didn’t dare to think everything was true, they didn’t want to believe as a creature born on this planet.