X
Welcome to the 90s

Mike hit ‘enter’ and waited a few seconds for his program to compile.  It worked perfectly.  He grinned.  The chubby teen had just made The Perfect Clock, one that went by the position of the stars.  He made a mental note to use it to reset the time for all the other clocks in the base.  He stroked his goatee and leaned out the window of The Egg.

The Egg, the bright yellow oval-shaped structure that served as the main building and living quarters for the base, sat on a scrubby but soulful desert plain.  Mike looked around at the cool darkness of the night.  It was the base; same old, same old.  In the past, it went by another name, “ARENA 15”; the kids knew this because they had discovered the remains of a metal sign.  But it was the only place they knew, so they didn’t bother setting it apart with a name.  Oh, the base was all Mike and his friends knew, but if you looked at it just right, it could be a really beautiful place.  Fields of sparse desert shrubs, sunken inside a border of hills, and some rocky cliffs a little further away.  In the middle of it all was The Egg, surrounded by plastic palm trees and even-plastickier flamingos.  When the kids dug up the resiliently plastic items, Mike had insisted that they set them out there.  Mike lived by the philosophy that the world is such a bad place that if you don’t learn to laugh, you’ll die crying.  So he chose to laugh.  

Across from The Egg was the hangar, Lance’s usual haunt.  While Mike’s strength lay in computers, Lance’s was in flying.  And in this world, both those skills were hot commodities.  Lance was younger than Mike, but taller, and assuredly fitter.  Also, Lance’s…deformity was a bit more pronounced; his hair was naturally platinum blond, while the dark blue flecks in Mike’s hair were only noticeable in strong sunlight.  The kids didn’t think of themselves as being deformed; they only knew something was a little off because Seth had told them so.

Surly, lanky Seth, their oldest and wisest, had studied enough history to know that something was somehow amiss.  However, there was nothing anyone could do about it, so he doesn’t really try so much to point out the inconsistencies anymore.  He doesn’t really try anything, except playing music so loud that he’ll blow out his hippocampus along with his temporal lobes.

Mike checked the stars one more time and leaned back in the window.

“So?” Lance asked him expectantly.

“11:37 pm, December 31, 1989.”

“I can’t believe you actually spent the last day of the decade sitting at that machine,” sighed Harmony, commenting on the several exquisite programs Mike had thrown together.  

“It’s the same thing I do every day, so why not?” Mike chuckled.

“Come on.  Let’s go up to the roof to ring in the New Year,” Lance declared, waving them towards the door.  “Seth and Mags are waiting for us.”

The three of them headed for the narrow staircase.  Harmony and Lance had a bit of trouble getting up because the stairs were only set wide enough for one person at a time, and the couple didn’t like to refrain from hanging off each other at any time.

It was windy on the acid-yellow roof.  Harmony’s hair, more like fluff on a brown chicken than actual human hair, was waving around her face and jumping into her mouth every time she tried to talk.  So instead of yelling “Hi Seth, Hi Mags!” she just waved.  Mags waved back.  Seth didn’t notice, as he was sprawled out, half sitting, half lying down, staring the sky.  He was humming to himself.  Seth had that way about him, so aware of everything and yet he seemed totally oblivious.  Mags understood this, and didn’t mind it.  Their shared cynicism and contempt for all things superficial made them the perfect couple.  A fairy tale romance? , no, but a decent healthy relationship - surely.  Mags, only fourteen years of age, held the belief that BS is the leading cause of more BS, and the only way to get through life is to do what you have to and try to have some fun in between.

Mike, Lance, Harmony, Seth, and Mags all lay down on the roof of The Egg and watched the skyfull of future suspended above them like a circus tent – a dazzling expanse of colour, but so heavy.

“So,” Lance said loudly, folding his hands behind his head, “what do you think the ‘90s will have to offer us?”

Seth snorted.

“I think that something wonderful is about to happen,” Harmony said, breathily.  “Something that will turn us all around and help us realize our destiny.”

Seth snorted several times more.  Mags failed to stifle her giggling.

Lance protested, “Aw, c’mon, Marger - ”

“Don’t call me that!  You know I hate that name.”

“Fine, Mags,” Lance said, in a drawn-out, laboured tone.  “You too, Seth.”

“Yeah, seriously, guys.  Dream a little,” Harmony chimed in, peeling a hair off her tongue.  “Bleh.”

“Why, what do you think tomorrow’s gonna bring?  Like, literally tomorrow,” Seth asked.

“Tomorrow morning, I’m gonna get in my plane, fly out over the desert, and start flagging bombs.  And we’re gonna clean this place up.”

“That’s no different than what we do any day,” Mags said flatly.

“So?  I still get this rush of pride whenever I go out there.”

“It doesn’t bug you that every day’s the same?  Like nothing ever actually matters?”

“It does matter!”

“Taking care of our parents matters too,” Harmony piped up.  “They’d be in real trouble without us.  They need our love, our compassion.”

“They need us to let them die already,” Seth said coldly.  Mike laughed for a second, and then apologized profusely, blaming his response on Seth’s tone of voice rather than the subject matter.

“I wonder if they can still feel pain,” Harmony said, in a dreamy, far-away voice.

“Maybe not now, now that they’re pretty much zombies, but I’ll bet they used to be just like us before…you know.  The explosion,” Mike said carefully.

“Adults are useless,” Seth remarked, only half-kidding.  “They’re the ones who created this useless world.”

“The world sucks,” laughed Mags.  The two snickered and cuddled together.

The five looked at the stars in silence for a short while.

“Hey,” began Mike.  “What are we gonna do with the radioactive waste once we run out of room in storage?”

“Do you think we ever will?” asked Lance.  Harmony moaned melodramatically and buried her face in Lance’s shoulder.

“I dunno.  We’ve got to keep diffusing those bombs, don’t we?  I don’t wanna risk…y’know - ”

“-Ending up like our parents did?” Mags finished for him, sardonically.  “Whatever,” she said, sitting up.  “I don’t wanna talk about this now.”

“Yeah, it’s New Years’ Eve!” exclaimed Lance.  “Hey, Mike, how much time we got?”

“It’s 11:58.”

“Whoa,” said Harmony.

“So?” said Mags.  “It’s a number.  Nothing’s gonna change at midnight.”

“Except the decade, Margerie.”

“Lance, seriously!”

“I am serious.  Nothing changes unless someone goes and changes it.”  

The five fell to silence again, until Mike started counting quietly.  The others joined him.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one – HAPPY NEW YEAR!