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ecotone99 · 5 years

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[SF] Trouble in Paradise

Hi all. This is a little Cli-Fi short story I wrote for one of my english classes. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Trouble in Paradise

Part I: The Boys

“Breaking news! Rio de Janeiro has been completely devastated by a series of natural disasters, leaving 500,000+ dead and hundreds of thousands of children orphaned”.

Section 1: Rafi

Do you ever have the feeling of being completely lost. The feeling of having nowhere to go and no one to go to. Rafit never knew that feeling. From a young age Rafi learned how to support himself. His parents weren’t dead, just never around. Rafi’s parents worked eighty plus hours a week each to support the three of them. This often lead Rafi alone for a good majority of the day.

Unlike most kids who would be at school, Rafi wasn’t. He had been suspended from nearly every school in his area. Rafi was a fighter. Now he didn’t go around looking for fights, but he lived his life by seven distinct words: I ain’t going down as a bitch. After school number five Rafi was done. There were no more schools within a six mile radius.

Rafi’s parents weren’t the type to give up however. Even if he couldn’t go to school to learn, he would learn at home. This is why they worked so much. Rafi’s parents worked day and night to be able to afford the books and supplies that Rafi needed. They even were able to buy him a computer, so he could go down to the library and use the public wi-fi to learn online. However, as much as he loved his parent’s for working so hard so that he could get an education and be successful in life, Rafi hated school. Growing up poor, he had grown an attitude that if it wasn’t useful in the present moment in regular life, it wasn’t useful. Like why would he ever need to know how to find the square root of 255?

Rafi liked to focus on the more practical aspects of life. Like how to start a fire with a rock and two sticks, or how to make a backpack out of an old rag. Stuff that would actually be useful to someone of his current status. So that’s why when the mudslide hit, and when the only two people in the world who cared about him were gone, he wasn’t scared or sad, but more disappointed how things had turned out. But he knew what to do. All those years of skipping school work to hang out with the construction workers or fisherman had finally paid off.

Section 2: Chris and Pablo

Only 4 minutes separated the two. Besides the slight crookedness of Chris's nose that happened from an accident when he was five, the two were identical. Friends, teachers, even their own parents at times had trouble distinguishing the two. Who thought it would be a good to build a ten million dollar mansion on the side of an unstable mountain. Well, pablo and chris’s parents did. And you would have trusted them to. They had made their millions being real estate tycoons.

The day it all went down. April 04, 2044. Chris and Pablo, although way too rich to be walking, were walking back from school. This was their choice, as they often felt alienated from everyone else because of their parent’s money. However, once they got to the base of the hill where there house was, they something had gone terrible wrong. They had seen fire trucks headed to the other side of the mountain, where a bunch of office buildings and commercial real estate was. Their road had been closed off, and nobody was allowed in. When they saw search dogs being brought in, they both assumed the worst.

“I’m sorry but I can’t let you guys in” said a cop. He looked straight out of the academy, and nervous as hell.

“But we live here, our parents should be over there” said Pablo.

Just as he said that another lady, not a cop but someone who looked like she still had authority, walked over to them.

“Hi boys, my name is Juliana Souza. I’m a social worker for the city of Rio. I’m afraid there’s been an accident at your house and you can’t go back right now”.

“But what about our parents” the boys asked in unison.

This made Juliana visible uneasy.

“You see boys, your parents were in an accident. We don’t know exactly where they are right now, so for the time being you guys will come with me ok?”

Both boys looked at each other and instantly realized that something had gone wrong.

Part II: The Girls

Section 1: Aline

Aline had lived in Barra de Guaratiba her whole life. Her father a fisherman and her mother a shop owner. Her brother Jose helped their father on their fishing boat. Dad and Jose would catch the fish in the morning, mom would sell it in the afternoon. It was a simple life, but it was their life.

April 06, 2044. Just like any other day, or so you would think. Aline had seen that there was a major landslide a couple days ago. Although saddening, she gave little thought to it as it was over sixty miles away from her house.

As she was approaching the hill to walk down to where she lived, she noticed something odd. The sand was wet.

“Odd, I didn’t see it rain today.”

But then she noticed something wrong. An overturned boat near the entrance of their village. This was odd, but assumed that someone had just left it their to fix. But twenty steps later she realized what had happened. Aline went to a school that was twelve miles inland. She hadn’t heard any reports of the tsunami that hit her village a couple of hours ago. When she finally reached where her house would be, she saw nothing. Everything that should be there, her house, her family fishing boat, her mother's garden, had vanished. It was a relatively small tsunami, but when you live forty feet from the shore even the smallest of tsunamis can be devastating. She instantly thought to run to her neighbors. She looked to her left, only to see the same scene. A couple of hundred feet away she saw the ruins of her best friends house.

Carla, Aline’s best friend, lived next to her for as long as she was alive. They were the same age, went to the same school, shared the same interests, and were even born in the same month. They were basically twins with different last names. Then the worst just hit her. Carla wasn’t at school today. This wasn’t a huge deal, as carla often missed school so she could help he grandma. Carla’s grandma was getting towards that age, and with both Carla’s mom and dad working, she was the only one who could be there a lot of times. Carla’s grandma lived about a couple miles northeast of her small village. She decided that it would be faster just to run.

On her way over things weren’t looking good. As she ran along the coast she saw more destroyed houses and more overturned boats. What she didn’t see was people, which she couldn’t decide was a good thing or not. Once she finally reached Carla’s grandma’s house. She was met with grim news.

“Carla hasn’t been here today. I’m worried, I just heard about the tsunami and I haven't heard from anybody yet.”

Aline was lost. Her family was nowhere to be found, her best friend was nowhere to be found. She was completely on her own.

Section 2: Francesca

You would have thought that companies would have learned their lesson after Fukushima. Well, history always tends to repeat itself. The Luz Futura power plant located just off the eastern coast of Rio de Janeiro. It was a architectural work of art, and an even bigger engineering work of art. It was able to produce 20 TWh of energy each year, more than double any U.S. power plant.

The Luz Futura was located only 500 feet from the shore. When the tsunami hit, the plant took a hard hit. The waves only reached about fifteen feet high, but hit t over 300 mph. At this speed, the plant took major structural damage. It was an exact repeat of Fukushima. The impact from the waves caused the safety’s to fail, so the generators kept on creating and creating energy. Soon there became too much energy and the plant imploded.

Francesca hadn’t heard the news until she got home. When she arrived, she was greeted by one of her mom’s work colleagues.

“Hi Ms. Alvarado, everything alright?”

The look on Ms. Alvarado’s gave it away instantly.

“Francesca, there's been an accident at the power plant. There was a tsunami that hit us hard, which caused the safety measures to fail. The plant exploded.”

Francesca dropped in shock. She knew what was going to be said next.

“Where are my parents?” Francesca said solemnly, knowing the answer.

“They were both inside the plant when it happened. At first we thought it was a small earthquake, which we were prepared for. But somehow the safety measures got damaged and it went undetected. By the time anyone realized it was too late. I got lucky because I called in sick today.”

Francesca dropped to her knees. She didn’t have any siblings and both of her grandparents had already passed away. Ms. Alvarado couldn’t look after her, she had her own family to worry about. What would she do? She had the house right now, but she was only thirteen. Eventually the house would foreclose and she would be out on the streets. She was all alone now, just like 100,000 other kids in Rio.

Part III: The Kids

God’s week of reckoning will go down in history forever. Four huge natural disasters all within the span of one week. Wildfires, Landslides, Tsunamis, Earthquakes. The whole nine yards. Rio was left shattered. More than 500,000 people had died and more than 10,000 children were left orphaned.

Rafi stayed at home for a couple of days. But soon after food started to run low. Rafi hit the streets. Luckily the connections he made while not doing school work ended up helping him in the end. The carpenters he talked to were able to help him out. One, Rico, had an extra room in his apartment. He was even able to get Rafi a job at the construction company. Naturally, Rafi was all about it. He already knew the basics of construction work so it went easy for him. For some reason, he wasn’t that sad about his parents deaths. Maybe because they were never around, or because they forced him to do something that he saw no value in and despised. Either way, the sadness only lasted a couple of days. Rafi always thought of himself as a lone wolf, now he really was.

Chris and Pablo struggled at first. The first couple of weeks were really hard on them. Being only 13, this was expected. But luckily their parents left a vast fortune for them. After their parent’s death the twins moved in with their grandparents. However their grandparents lived in the United States, so they had to move. Not that the packing was hard though. Everything they owned was destroyed in the mudslide. All they owned was the shirts on their backs and about thirty million dollars. Their lives were over in Rio, but there lives in the U.S. were about to begin.

Aline was probably hit the hardest of the four kids. She had no money, no family, and nowhere to go. She wandered the streets for a few days before getting desperate. There were refugee camps that she could go to, but she refused. They were crowded, dirty, and disease-ridden. They were just too sad and she couldn’t deal with it. She was able to steal food from carts along the streets of the main part of the city about once a day, but she was still hungry and had lost some weight. The one day she saw a boy walking home. He looked around her age, maybe a year or two older. But she wasn't interested in the boy. She was interested in lunch cooler and chain around his neck. She had to follow him and wait for the perfect moment to snatch the cooler and chain from him. She felt wrong for this, but at the time it seemed like her only choice. She followed the boy for another half-mile before he turned into an alleyway.

“Now’s my chance” Aline thought to herself, knowing this may be the best chance for her to get some food and money. She picked up a bottle an empty bottle she found on the sidewalk and creeped up on the boy. Unfortunately for Aline, she wasn’t very quiet. The boy heard her when she was about ten feet from him, and turned around to face her.

“What do you want?” the boy asked, with a fixture of anger and confusion in his voice.

“I’m sorry” aline said, before swinging the bottle at the boys head. The boy ducked and avoided the bottle, then immediatly swing the big lunch cooler at the girl. It hit her in the side,and Aline fell over.

“WHAT THE HELL” the boy yelled. Aline was now visibly scared and started to cry.

“I’m sorry. I was just so hungry and I’m really desperate right now.”

The boy looked at Aline and noticed that she was was very dirty and skinny.

“Get up. You can come back to my place to clean up and eat.”

“Really?! Oh thank you. That’s so kind of you, considering I just tried to rob you” Aline said.

“Forget it. Just get up and let’s go”.

Aline jumped to her feet and they started walking down the alley.

“So what’s your name?” Aline asked.

“Rafael, but everyone calls me Rafi”.

Francesca probably had the simplest “rescue” of them all. Her whole family was dead, so she didn’t have anyone to go to. Ms. Alvarado had called Child Protective Services and explained the situation. Within a couple of hours someone had come to pick Francesca up. She packed up her most valuable items and got into the car with the man from C.P.S. From then on she was put into the foster care system with all of the other orphans. The system was particularly bad now because of the huge influx of children. After three weeks in a foster home, Francesca was starting to lose her mind. There were over fifteen different kids living in that house all ranged from eight years old to sixteen. They all shared two bathrooms and five bedrooms. By week four Francesca had enough. The next night she snuck out of her foster home and ran as fast as she could. The first thing she thought to do was return to her house. Only problem was that was twenty miles away. So she ran until she found a bus stop and rode until she was a couple of miles away. She walked the rest of the way and got to her house within forty-five minutes. When she got there, everything was as she left it. She grabbed the key from the third plant by her door, opened the door, walked straight to the kitchen to make some tea, then went to her room to take the longest nap of her life. She didn’t know what she was going to do or how she was going to do it, but somehow she would figure out a way to survive on her own. There was no way in hell she was returning to that foster home.

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