The Winners of Our Essay Writing Competition
We asked young writers to imagine what the world would look like in 2050. Here are the three winners from each group, as well as honourable mentions.
Image from Bread Bread (Written by Echo Liu, Illustrated by Hoda Mir)
A Word from Our Judges
Congratulations – and Keep Writing!
First and foremost, congratulations on submitting your work to this year’s writing competition. Putting something you have created into the hands of other people and inviting them to judge it takes courage. Simply finishing a piece and sending it out into the world is something worth celebrating.
This year’s competition was exceptionally strong, and the judging was both difficult and very close. There were many impressive entries and narrowing them down to a small number of winners meant leaving behind pieces that individual judges admired very much.
That is one of the strange things about writing competitions: writing may be judged, but reading is deeply personal. A story that lands at the very top of one reader’s list may affect another reader differently. Judges bring their own experiences, tastes, and responses to every piece they read. A competition result therefore tells you who received the prizes on one particular day, from one particular panel of judges. It does not provide a final verdict on the quality or potential of your writing.
So please take some important things away from this experience.
You had an idea worth exploring. You turned that idea into a finished piece of writing. And, most importantly, you were brave enough to let other people read it. Those are things real writers do.
As you continue writing, remember that some of the most powerful stories are also the most specific. Give readers characters they can care about, moments they can see and fell, and details that could belong only to your story. And once you have shown readers something important, trust them. Often the strongest writing leaves a little room for the reader to make the final connection.
Keep reading too. Notice the sentences that stop you. Notice the characters you miss when a book is finished and the endings you are still thinking about days later. Ask yourself how the writer accomplished that – and then experiment with those techniques in your own way.
Most of all, keep writing. One competition cannot tell you whether you are a writer. Continuing to write can.
Thank you for trusting us with your work, and congratulations again on being part of an exceptionally strong competition. We hope this is only one of many times you will have the courage to share your words with the world.
With admiration,
Cindy Watson (Judging Chair)
The Winning Essays
Group A:
1st Prize: The Future Wrote Back – Mai Hoang Lam
2nd Prize: The Legacy – Jack Miller
3rd Prize: The Library No One Could See – Matis Yaghoubi
Honourable Mentions (In Any Order)
- Dear 2050 – Amaya Allegra Chavez Arizaga
- The Human Inside – Sia Bhadra
- Rooted Technology: A 2050 Story – Kathryn Marseto
- Trajectoria – Grace Dauda
- Dear Ray of 2026 – Ray Wu
- Earth 2050: in the eyes of an animal – Jinlin Liu
- Yuelin (Emma) Wang
- Live in 2050 – Jolin Jielin Ni
- Diary of 2050 – Ivy He
- Letter to the Past – Oliver Rampersad
- A Diary in 2050 – Norah Foo
Group B:
1st Prize: Butterfly Pea Tea – Farah Abdulsattar
2nd Prize: Your Free Trial of Summer Has Ended
3rd Prize: Let Me Remember Wrong – Grace Youmbi
Honourable Mentions (In Any Order):
- The Last Rainmaker – Ajao Iman
- Is There Pasta in Heaven? – Elhaam Naveed
- The Last Human Thing – Seun Bamidele
- The Last Flicker – Laura Brandt Periman
- You Will Be Okay – Claire Chen
- A Journey to the Moon – Ryan Gao
- What the World Has Forgotten – Ethan Zhang
- Outside, Inside – Jason Fang
- The Day They Came – Gaon Jang
- Future diary on May 12, 2050 – Doris Ma
- The World that Changes – Saif Hosen
- Just in Case – Nivedika Nishanthi
The Future Wrote Back
By Mai Hoang Lam
Dear Lam in 2026,
Hello!
You probably won’t believe this, but I am you—twenty-four years older. Today is a beautiful morning in the year 2050. The sky is bright blue, birds are singing outside my window, and I am thinking about you. I decided to write this letter because there is something very important I want to say.
Thank you.
You are only nine years old now. You love drawing dinosaurs, animals, mountains, and trees. You always carry a sketchbook because you never know when you might see something beautiful that you want to draw. Right now, you are sitting beside Grandpa, listening carefully to his stories about Ba Den Mountain. You think they are just stories, but one day you will understand that they are actually gifts that will stay with you forever.
I still remember the day Grandpa told us about the war. He was a young soldier then. Ba Den Mountain was a dangerous place. There were bombs, smoke, and fear everywhere. Grandpa was injured during the fighting, and the scar on his leg stayed with him for the rest of his life. But whenever he talked about those days, he never complained about his pain.
Instead, he smiled when he remembered sharing his last piece of military ration with two hungry children he met near the mountain. He said their smiles gave him more strength than the food could have. He believed that kindness was stronger than fear, even during the hardest times.
You stayed very quiet after hearing that story. Then you asked a question that seemed so small.
“If some children cannot even buy food, how can they buy paint?”
Grandpa looked at you and smiled. He did not answer right away because he wanted you to discover the answer yourself.
That one simple question became the beginning of a journey that changed both of our lives.
Soon after that day, you became curious about colours. You looked at flowers, leaves, vegetables, and fruits in a different way. You wondered if nature could help children paint without spending much money.
So you started experimenting.
You crushed old spinach leaves, purple cabbage, butterfly pea flowers, turmeric, beetroot, dragon fruit peels, and many other plants. Sometimes the colours were bright, but they disappeared after only a few days. Sometimes they became too watery. Other times they were too thick to use with a brush. Some colours even turned brown after drying.
You felt disappointed many times.
There were days when you wanted to stop because nothing seemed to work. Your hands became messy, your table was covered with colourful stains, and your little notebooks were filled with failed experiments.
But every mistake taught you something.
You learned that success is often hidden inside many failures.
You kept trying again and again because you believed there had to be a better way.
As the years passed, your ideas slowly grew. Teachers encouraged you. Friends helped you collect fruit peels and old vegetables that would have been thrown away. Scientists, artists, and volunteers joined the project. Together, all of you discovered safer and better ways to make natural paints from food waste and local plants.
Today, in 2050, I wish you could see what happened.
Children in many schools across the country are making their own natural paints in class. They laugh while mixing colourful powders with water. They learn that beautiful art does not always come from expensive materials. They also learn how to reduce waste, protect nature, and use resources wisely.
Many families now save fruit peels, flower petals, and vegetable leaves instead of throwing them away immediately. Communities organize workshops where children paint together using colours made from nature. Parks, museums, and libraries often hold art days that teach young people how creativity and environmental protection can go hand in hand.
Your tiny experiment became one small step in a much bigger journey.
Of course, our world is not perfect yet. Climate change has not disappeared. Some forests still need protection, and many animals still need our help. There is still a lot of work to do.
But every small act of kindness matters.
Every child who learns to waste less.
Every family that chooses to recycle.
Every picture painted with natural colours instead of harmful chemicals.
All of these little actions come together to create something wonderful.
Grandpa is no longer with us, and I still miss him very much.
Whenever I visit Ba Den Mountain, I think about his stories. The mountain is greener than before because many people have worked together to protect its forests, streams, and wildlife. Visitors walk along clean paths, birds sing in the trees, and children laugh as they paint the beautiful scenery with natural colours.
Whenever I paint there, I feel as if Grandpa is standing beside me again, smiling quietly, proud that his story continued through another generation.
So, Lam, I want you to remember something.
Do not be afraid when your first colours fail.
Do not give up when people say your idea is too small.
Do not stop asking questions just because the answers are difficult to find.
Sometimes the smallest question can change someone’s life.
Sometimes the kindest action can inspire thousands of people.
And sometimes one child with a caring heart can help make the whole world a little better.
Thank you for believing that even things other people throw away can become something beautiful.
Thank you for believing that sharing is more powerful than keeping everything for yourself.
Thank you for believing that art can bring people together and help protect our planet.
Most of all, thank you for carrying Grandpa’s story into the future and allowing his kindness to continue growing long after he was gone.
Because of you, my world in 2050 is a little greener, a little kinder, and a little more colourful.
I cannot wait for you to begin this amazing journey.
See you in the future.
With gratitude,
Lam
2050
The Legacy
By Jack Miller
Three chuckwagons wait for the horn. The Legacy is the only one driven by a human. My horses are unsteady. They breathe unevenly. Somehow, all four know our chances are low. Everyone knows when you’re on barrel 3 in the Rangeland Derby, especially against AI, you don’t stand a chance. Many people claim I was lucky to get to the finals, but that I could never defeat APEX-1. But it’s not about winning. That’s something AI doesn’t know.
The holographic scoreboard in the middle of the track claims I have 20 seconds. APEX-1 is unfazed. The AI driver stares right ahead, calculating the exact angle its horses need to take around the barrel. Meanwhile, Air Riser-4 on barrel 2 is the exact opposite of its AI opponent. The robotic horses stomp impatiently. The driver has no control over its horses.
Ten seconds left. In my last few moments, I survey the track. It’s the same as always: dirt. A dirt oval track a half-mile long. Stands wrap around the track, seating seventeen thousand people.
Suddenly, the horn blows and the crowd erupts in cheers. I snap the reins hard, forcing my horses to dash forwards. I had spent hours last night practicing endlessly, determined to beat the AI. Winning would mean hope restored to the Calgary Stampede. Hope that humans remember the point of the games: sportsmanship, connection, and history.
I arrive at the first barrel; the barrel that determines who leads. “Come on,” I whisper to myself. Pulling on my reins, I lean to the left, forcing my horses to turn…
The sun was barely rising above the horizon, but I was still out here at five am training. My horses needed a lot of work before they were worthy of a win, especially against AI machine horses.
“What’re you doing out here, Mark?”
I twisted my head sharply behind me. My wife, Miranda, was standing on the porch still in her pajamas. “Riding!” I answered. She just laughed. “Well, I know that!” she replied.
“You know,” she started. “Just because you got the news about the derby yesterday doesn’t mean you have to start riding right away.” I pursed my lips. “But…I want to!” Miranda laughed again. “Okay,” she mouthed. Then she walked back inside. It was time for me to start practicing my winning turn. The first barrel turn is basically life or death. Even the slightest mistake could end in a loss…
I double wrap the reins around my hands. My whole body whips to the left. For a moment, time stops, and all I can hear is the clacking of my horses’ hooves. I can feel a connection with my steed. Together, we can make the turn…
The crowd suddenly bursts into cheer. I’m ripping away, after making the most impeccable turn in history! “Yes!” I yell. My heart is thumping out of my chest. It’s taking all my power to hold onto these reins. We’re going so fast my hat blows away and is trampled by my opponents. It doesn’t matter. I’ve made history.
But it’s not over yet. Behind me, APEX-1 is already gaining on me. Now we begin the battle for lane 1. As long as I’m able to fluently change lanes, I’ll end up on the inside wall, solidifying my victory.
APEX-1 shifts closer to lane 1. Air Riser-4 is stuck in the back, its horses still out of control. I lean out of the wagon, making my horses slide closer to the wall. We still have a steady lead, but my horses are already losing power. Now we really need the first lane.
The AI horses sneak up behind me. Throughout the noisy crowd, I can hear the steam coming out of the bulky machines. It creates a hazy screen around them, making them even more menacing. My horses start faltering as the wagon APEX-1’s horses move in, scaring my own.
Dang it! “Come on,” I whisper to myself. I imagine myself back on that field, where the only people there are myself and Miranda. My horses trot happily around, grazing the grass. These moments are what force me to keep going. These are my superweapon. And AI is my kryptonite.
Well, not today.
I snap the reins one more time. With all their effort, my horses push themselves into the first lane, leaving APEX-1 trailing us. “Woo!” I shout. My horses and I race along the wall, soaring past drones filming by our sides. Every few seconds I twist my head to check on my opponents. APEX-1 is still behind us, trying to sneak up from beside. But my horses are just too fast.
We leave APEX-1 in our dust as we arrive at the finish line. I can hardly believe what is happening. In a short few seconds, I could be the Rangeland Derby winner that’s actually human since 2030!
An explosion of cheers as we shoot past the line, cementing our victory! I stand up and pump my fist into the air. How could I resist? I’m the first human to beat an AI chuckwagon! I can imagine Miranda right now. She wouldn’t be jumping up and down like me, she’d be smiling in the corner, thinking of how proud she is.
Tom, the announcer leaps into my wagon as we start slowing down for the interview.
“Wow!” he exclaims. “What a race! What’s it feel like to win one hundred thousand dollars, especially against AI?” I shrug. “It’s not about the money, Tom. Look at the crowd. We didn’t need perfect algorithms today—we just needed a little bit of human heart.” Tom chuckles. “That sounds about right, coming from you, Mark! Give it up for the Calgary Stampede Rangeland Derby winner of 2050, Mark Stein!”
The Library No One Could See
By Matis Yaghoubi
Luna always thought there were no secrets left in her city.
Every street was monitored by smart cameras, every building had a digital map, and even the streetlights knew when they needed to turn on.
But one day, while Luna was taking an old route home, she noticed something that did not exist on any map.
A blue door.
In the middle of a brick wall.
Luna was certain she had never seen the door there before.
There was only one sentence written on it:
“If you have forgotten something, come inside.”
Luna lowered the handle.
The door opened.
Behind it was a narrow, dark hallway.
She took one step forward.
A tiny bell rang.
Suddenly, the lights came on.
Luna looked around in amazement.
Tall, endless bookshelves stood on both sides of the hallway.
But the books on the shelves had strange titles:
“The First Laugh of a Child”
“The Sound of Rain on a Summer Day”
“The Last Time Someone Said I Love You”
and even:
“The Day Someone Was Brave”
Luna whispered,
“Where am I?”
A voice answered from above the shelves.
“The library of things people have forgotten.”
Luna looked up.
An old man in a brown coat was standing on a tall ladder.
“Who are you?”
The old man said,
“The librarian.”
“But these books… are they really about people’s memories?”
“Some of them.”
Luna picked up a small book.
The title on the cover read:
“An Ordinary Day That Wasn’t Ordinary to Someone.”
She opened the book.
Suddenly, she heard the laughter of a child.
She quickly closed it.
“What was that?”
The librarian said,
“A memory belonging to someone who has forgotten that day.”
Luna put the book back.
“Then why do you keep them here?”
The librarian replied,
“Because some memories disappear forever when they are forgotten.”
Luna asked,
“And if someone finds their book?”
“The memory returns.”
Luna looked at the shelves.
There were hundreds of thousands of books.
Maybe millions.
“You must have a lot of work.”
The librarian laughed.
“I am not alone.”
He pointed toward the end of the hall.
There, several other children were arranging books.
Luna stared at them.
“Who are they?”
The librarian answered,
“They are people who once learned that forgetting is not always a bad thing. But forgetting the people we love can be painful.”
At that moment, a book fell from the highest shelf.
Luna caught it.
The cover said:
“For Luna.”
Her heart began to beat faster.
“Is this book about me?”
The librarian was no longer smiling.
“Yes.”
Luna opened the book.
The first page was completely blank.
So was the second.
Every page was blank.
“Why is there nothing in it?”
The librarian said,
“Because your story has not been written yet.”
Luna asked,
“Then why is it here?”
“Because every person has a book. But no one knows how it will end.”
Luna closed the book.
“Can I write my own story?”
The librarian said,
“Everyone can.”
Luna looked at the endless shelves.
Then she held the book tightly.
“Then I want to begin.”
On the first page, she wrote:
“Today I found a door that no one else could see.”
At that moment, one of the lights in the library turned on.
Then another.
Then hundreds more.
The librarian smiled.
“Now the library will remember you.”
Luna asked,
“Does that mean I can come back?”
The librarian replied,
“If you truly have something to say.”
Luna walked through the blue door.
When she turned around, the door was gone.
There was only an ordinary brick wall.
Luna went home.
That night, she took a new notebook.
On its cover, she wrote:
“Things I Never Want to Forget.”
Then she wrote the first sentence:
“Today I learned that some mysteries are not meant to be found; they are meant to lead us toward who we are meant to become.”
Then she smiled.
She did not know when the library would appear again.
But from that day on, whenever she saw something strange, she never simply walked past it.
Because she knew that behind an ordinary wall…
there might be a world waiting for just one person to be brave enough to open the door.
Butterfly Pea Tea
By Farah Abdulsattar
“ Tatsu,” I cajole, evening the paperwork on her weathered chabudai. The low, circular table is made from Keyaki. The ring stains tell my interface it is at least 40 years old. “Let’s work through this again. You said your daughter was, what? AI?”
“Ai,” the Japanese elder corrects, her razor-thin eyebrows shaped like slits in her skin. Her grey hair is cut short, neutralized with a slight purple tone. “藍, like indigo. Not artificial intelligence.”
Silence burns between us. Underneath the table, my arm twitches with a surge of annoyance. This is the reality of being a Memory Archivist: listening to stubborn elders with traditional opinions. I write down every memory, every story, to feed it into the city’s data center so the AI learns what it means to be human.
Or at least, how to mimic it.
“Understood,” I tell her. “So, tell me about this latest memory. You said you were in your blue minka house, correct?”
“Yes,” she muses, her eyes clouding with something unrecognizable. “I was making oversalted eggs.”
“Tatsu,” I say, setting down my stylus. “I said significant memories.”
There is nothing significant about salty eggs. Most rational citizens would agree. It represents human error, an inconsistency between bites. The Home AI installed into newer apartments tells me exactly how much sodium intake I need, what ratio of chives to use, and the precise amount of oil.
“They were terrible eggs,” Tatsu murmurs, completely ignoring my frustration. “Ai was seven. She had snuck behind my back and dumped the sea salt into the pan when I wasn’t looking. And when I forced her to eat it, she downed it.”
I pause, my finger hovering over the ‘Delete Draft’ button on my monitor. I have to file each memory into distinct emotional categories: Happy, Sad, Angry, and every other shade on the human emotion spectrum.
“I’m not sure whether to file that under ‘Happy’ or ‘Sad,’” I admit, scrolling through the catalog. I resort to the more complex sub-categories lower down, the ones the AI is being taught to grasp by senior-level trainers. Should I choose grief or nostalgia?
“Neither,” Tatsu says, sipping butterfly pea tea from her rusted copper cup. “It doesn’t fit into a box.”
“Of course it does,” I scoff, spinning the stylus between my fingers, mimicking the lion ribbon dancer depicted on her teacup. “This entire city is a category. A pocket in the AI web.”
“You have an ego,” she scolds, her eyebrows drawing tight. She slides the teapot she offered to me earlier away, a clear sign of hostility.
My posture straightens. “I do not.”
“Then why apply to be a Memory Archivist at 18, the highest-ranked job?” Tatsu challenges from behind the frame of her glasses. “Because you knew you’d get in. Your ego did.”
“I did it because it was my dream to improve the city!”
“So you think all this,” she gestures to the room around us. The sterile marble walls are plastered with bio-panels designed to automatically self-heal any dent or nail hole, though she has covered them with woodblock prints called ukiyo-e. “Is this right? Is this improvement?”
I stare at the straw tatami mats beneath our feet, where waves of rippling Prussian blue and vibrant indigo shoot through the fibers.
Indigo. Like Ai. Like her daughter.
“Yes,” I stutter, but I don’t sound so sure. The words weigh heavy on my tongue. “The city is more efficient. No one starves. No one works.”
Tatsu lets out a dry bark of laughter. “They sand down the edges of life so no one gets cut,” she tells me. “But this is what happens when we don’t bleed.”
Steam rises from her teapot, carrying a roasted scent that overrides the sterile scent of the walls. I remember that smell. Before Neo-Tokyo, dubbed ‘The New Capital of Japan,’ our streets were crowded with elderly-run cafes, where AI was only integrated into the digital menus rather than the food itself.
Before the genetically-optimized plum trees, my mother used to burn the edges of eggy, plum tarts in our crowded kitchen. Her cheeks had looked like swollen fruit rolled in sugar freckles.
And for some reason, I crave oversalted eggs.
“She choked on the brine,” Tatsu says, a distant warmth returning to her voice. “Her face was smeared with runny yolk. She said it tasted salty like the ocean.”
I look up sharply, the old family name catching in my throat. Narumi. Belonging to the ocean.
Tatsu leans over the weathered table, her gaze locking onto mine. “But my question for you, Archivist, if everything is artificial, how do you differentiate the land and the sea? How do you separate the AI from the human?”
You don’t.
The autopilot on my software chooses to place the memory in ‘Happy’.
Beyond the window, Neo-Tokyo shines in a way an artificial sun might. But if there is no darkness and no suffering, how can The Land of the Rising Sun ever truly shine?
I can’t upload this memory to the mainframe, or it will be consumed. It will be deconstructed until it is just lines of code to feed to the machine, until a mother’s grief is no longer a feeling, but a utility.
Slowly, I slide the stylus back into its port. I press down hard on the power button until the screen flashes to black.
I take the cup she poured earlier, the heat spreading across my palms. The city may continue its endless electronic thrum, but inside this cup of indigo harvested by real farmers, the entire sea and land is ours.
Your Free Trial of Summer Has Ended
By Shaun Santhosh
At 7:09 a.m., we lost the sky. Minty toothpaste still dripping down the corner of my smile, I
jumped back in surprise. The mirror flashed. There it was, emblazoned in yellow, “Payment
Unsuccessful.”
I spat into the sink.
“Mom?”
No answer.
The text on the screen was then replaced by another notification: “Your AtmosTM Home
Climate subscription could not be renewed.” Then in a cheerful shade of green, ”YOUR
FREE TRIAL OF SUMMER ENDS IN 16 HOURS AND 56 MINUTES”. I sprinted into the
kitchen and saw my mom glaring at the air-screen above the counter. Behind her, our windows
glowed with the soft gold of a perfect August morning.
22°C.
Humidity: 42%.
UV: Moderate.
Exactly as ordered.
“It’s a mistake, right?”
Mom stopped tapping. That was enough of an answer. Atmos had raised its prices again. As she
hurriedly turned the screen away, I got a glimpse of the number displayed.
“That’s per month?”
“Eat your breakfast.”
“For weather?”
“Breakfast.”
Outside, sprinklers activated along our street. They weren’t really necessary. Rain had fallen
between 2:00 and 3:15 that morning, exactly enough to water every lawn without
inconveniencing anyone. By breakfast, the clouds had been cleared. That was how the weather
worked. Or at least, that was how I thought the weather worked.
At school, I made the mistake of telling Noah.
“You’re going uncovered?”
“Could you say it louder? I don’t think the cafeteria heard you.”
He leaned in closer.
“I’ve never met someone who went uncovered.”
“I’m not dying.”
“I know.”
He paused.
“Probably.”
I nudged him in the shins under the table.
Noah lived in High Gates, a picture perfect neighborhood. Almost everyone there had Atmos
Premium. Premium members could reserve weather thirty days in advance. His family had
booked snow from 6:00 p.m. December 24 until noon on Christmas Day every year since we
were seven and it melted automatically before Boxing Day traffic. Last year, it rained in my
neighbourhood. Noah pulled up his wrist display.
“My dad says you can join our family plan.”
“I’d rather drown.”
“That’s one of the possibilities.”
I nudged him again.
A bell chimed overhead.
“Students are reminded that atmospheric irregularities are expected in unprotected districts
tonight,” the announcement said. “Please arrange transportation accordingly.”
A few people glanced at me. I had never given the ground so much attention in my life.
11 HOURS REMAINING.
On the ride home I stared at the sky. Not ours, the other one. Our transit pod crossed the bridge
separating High Gates from our neighbourhood, and overhead, blue stretched from horizon to
horizon. Almost. Halfway across the river it came to an abrupt halt. Not gradually. A wall of
grey clouds sat beyond an invisible boundary, piled over the eastern districts like dirty cotton.
Behind us, High Gates remained an immaculate blue. I pressed my forehead against the heated
glass, my thoughts clouded with envy.
“Why are all the clouds over there?” I wondered aloud.
The pod answered immediately.
“Atmospheric redistribution optimizes weather conditions according to service coverage,
municipal contracts, and environmental requirements.”
“Redistribution?”
Would you like a simplified explanation?
“No.”
I already understood. The clouds had to go somewhere.
At 11:58 p.m., Mom checked every window twice, Dad brought the patio furniture inside and my
little sister sat cross-legged on the couch watching the countdown on our wall.
00:01:43
“What’s going to happen?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Dad said.
Thunder rolled somewhere in the distance. She jumped and let out a muffled scream. Dad
reconsidered.
“Probably.”
My iPhone 42 vibrated.
“STAY PROTECTED. Reactivate Atmos Basic for only $49.99 today.”
A photograph showed a smiling family beneath a flawless blue sky.
“Because your family deserves better weather.”
“Thirty seconds,” my sister whispered.
I edged toward the window. Across the river, High Gates glittered beneath the stars. Above us,
there weren’t any.
The lights flickered.
Rain tapped against the glass.
My sister cried out.
“It touched the window!”
“That’s generally what rain does,” Dad said.
The tapping became drumming.
Thunder cracked.
The golden Atmos symbol disappeared from our wall.
For the first time in my life, tomorrow’s weather became unknown. In 2050, uncertainty is our
biggest fear.
The rain pounded overhead. It hammered rooftops, rattled gutters and slapped against windows
like thousands of impatient fingers. Later in bed, my shaking hands would not settle. It felt like
trying to sleep through a rock concert. At 12:17, I went downstairs. Dad was standing beside the
front door.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re looking at the door.”
“So are you.”
“I’m an adult.”
“Congratulations.”
Lightning flashed. For half a second, everything outside turned white. I reached for the handle.
Dad sighed.
“Shoes.”
Three minutes later, I stepped into weather. Actual weather.
The first drop hit my forehead. Then another. Within seconds, my shirt clung to my skin and
water ran down my face.
“This is horrible!” I shouted.
Dad laughed from the doorway. I couldn’t tell whether he was laughing at me or the rain. Then I
stepped into a puddle and cold water exploded over my ankles. Something about it made me
laugh.
My sister appeared behind Dad wearing yellow boots and a winter coat.
“Mom said no.”
“And?”
“She’s getting her shoes.”
Soon the family across the street came outside. Then Mr. Alvarez from three houses down. He
didn’t run through the rain. He simply stood on his porch with one hand stretched beyond the
roof. He was almost eighty.
“I forgot,” he said.
I walked closer.
“Forgot what?”
He watched water collect in his palm.
“What it felt like when nobody owned it.”
Across the river, High Gates still shone beneath a perfect sky. No thunder. No puddles. No
soaked children running barefoot down the sidewalk. Just twenty-two degrees and forty-two
percent humidity. Exactly as ordered.
By morning, three branches had fallen, our basement window had leaked, and Mom’s flowers
looked like they’d been punched repeatedly. I loved it. At breakfast, Mom’s screen chimed.
“Oh!”
She smiled.
“What?”
“They’ve offered us a seven-day complimentary renewal.”
My sister cheered. Mom tapped ACCEPT.
By 8:47, the rain was gone. At 9:12, sunlight spilled across the kitchen floor.
WELCOME BACK TO ATMOSTM
TODAY: SUNNY • 22°C
Mom opened the window.
“See?” she said. “Back to normal.”
Outside, our sky was flawless again. Then I noticed the clouds. They were moving east. Past our
street. Past the school. Past every neighbourhood that had paid to keep them away. Until they
gathered over a row of apartment towers at the edge of the city.
My phone chimed.
Enjoy your complimentary week of summer!
Lightning flashed beneath someone else’s sky. And suddenly, the blue above us didn’t look so
beautiful anymore. It looked bought. For the first time, I understood that we had never controlled
the weather. We had only learned how to choose who suffered from it.
And maybe that was the most dangerous thing about 2050: not that humanity had finally
conquered nature, but that we had found a way to turn even the sky into something unfair.
Let Me Remember Wrong
By Grace Youmbi
Some ghosts we spend decades trying to bring back, while others remain buried so deeply inside us that no amount of time can reach them. My brother was neither. He was simply the person who had once made an empty room feel full.
Today, Noah would have turned forty-two.
Rain streaked across the windscreen, blurring the city into red brake lights and neon signs. Above me, delivery drones slipped quietly between the towers, their lights disappearing into the rain. Beneath the dashboard, the car hummed softly as it adjusted my route toward the house I had known since childhood, finding a faster way there even though I could have driven the road with my eyes closed.
I let the city pass without really seeing it. My thoughts had already gone somewhere else, drifting quietly toward Noah.
Grief, I had learned, was never one thing. At twenty, Noah’s absence had torn through my life so suddenly that I could barely understand how the rest of the world continued moving. At thirty, the pain had become quieter, something I carried without thinking about every day. Now, at forty, what remained was stranger. I missed the person he had been, but sometimes I also mourned the person he never had the chance to become.
That was the one thing the Archive could never give me.
The Archive could bring back his past with almost frightening detail. It could return the warmth of a summer afternoon when his head had rested against my shoulder, the rough cotton of his old shirt beneath my fingers, or the sudden laughter in his eyes when Father caught him stealing pastries from the kitchen. It could give me his voice without the changes time had made to my memory, placing him back into a room so completely that, for a moment, my body forgot he was gone.
But the Archive could not show me the years he never lived.
It could not tell me whether Noah would have grown into a quiet man or a loud one, whether he would have fallen in love, what kind of work he would have hated, or whether he would have called me late at night just to tell me something completely pointless. It had every moment of his life that had been saved, but nothing from the life he never got to have.
A huge advertisement flashed above the road, glowing through the rain.
SHARED REMEMBRANCE.
Families could now combine their memories of the same person and enter them together, experiencing a birthday, a holiday, or an ordinary afternoon from several points of view at once.
I looked away.
I belonged to the last generation that remembered when memories had no place to live except inside you. In my youth, a brother’s eighth birthday survived in a blurry photograph, a shaky video or maybe a voice recording. Everything else was left to the mind.
And the mind was wonderfully imperfect.
It softened familiar faces. It mixed up conversations. It borrowed the colour of one summer and gave it to another. It made people kinder, funnier, younger, or sometimes worse than they had really been. It forgot the details you thought mattered most and somehow held on to things that should have disappeared years ago, like the smell of rain on a wool coat or the cheap peach shampoo someone used when you were a child.
Maybe that was the point.
A memory was never meant to be an exact copy of the past. It changed as we changed. Sometimes I wondered if that was what made remembering so painful and so precious. There was always something just out of reach, some detail I could almost recover but never quite hold onto. And perhaps that was why I kept returning to Noah in my mind. I could never be certain I had remembered him perfectly, but I could always wonder.
My parents’ house sat at the street’s end. The porch paint had faded, and a stone step was cracked, but the house seemed almost untouched by the years, as though time had passed around it rather than through it.
Mother opened the door before I arrived. Her hug was warm, scented with the familiar perfume of my youth. “Happy birthday,” I whispered. She smiled, but the hollow-eyed grief I remembered from the years after Noah’s death was nowhere to be found. Neither was it in my father’s real, steady smile as he appeared behind her.
Inside, the house was alien. Screens had replaced the old paintings; the hallway, once lined with photographs, was now just a stretch of clean, empty wall.
Dinner was a performance of normalcy. They asked about my drive, poured wine, and ate. I waited for a crack in their composure, a mention of Noah, a moment of silence, a break in the routine, but it never came.
“Are you sure you don’t want to join us afterward?” my mother asked.
They have done it every year since the Archive became part of our lives. Noah’s birthday had become the day they returned to him, stepping into one of the memories they had saved.
Lately, though, I had started to suspect they didn’t wait for his birthday anymore.
“No,” I snapped, the bitterness sharper than I intended.
They weren’t grieving anymore. And that hurt far worse than the tears. I remembered the early birthdays: my mother’s sobbing, my father’s empty, staring eyes. Now, there was nothing to mourn; they had simply replaced the empty chair.
The rain resumed its tapping rhythm as I reached the car. My hair clung to my cheeks like damp silk, cold strands tracing lines across my skin. I started the engine and sat idling, staring through the rain-blurred glass.
Why were humans so terrified of the natural order of loss?
We had memories, photographs and voices trapped in flickering recordings. We had stories that shifted and frayed with every retelling. We had the strange imperfect gift of forgetting. Why was that not enough?
The Archive had started with a simpler purpose: helping people with Alzheimer’s hold on to memories they were slowly losing. A familiar voice, a loved one’s face. Little pieces of a life they were struggling to remember.
And now? Everyone possessed it.
Somewhere along that jagged path, a tool designed to cradle the fragile failing mind had been twisted into a shield against reality.
A violent anger flared in my chest as tears blurred my vision.
I missed him, the real him, the boy with a contagious smile, the one who could turn the quietest room into something warm. He was curious about everything, always asking questions, always finding something to laugh about.
Then, my hand brushed the passenger seat. The Archive. A slim, dark book-like device my parents had gifted me years ago, I picked it up. My hands trembled. For twenty years, I had held onto the sanctuary of my own forgetting, a messy, beautiful imperfection.
But tonight, in the quiet, damp dark of my car, the yearning finally eclipsed the principle. I understood now. It wasn’t a matter of ethics; it was a matter of hunger.
I opened the Archive.