A Heart To Remember

Zaria hasn’t opened her locket. It’s only been two days since she last saw any others and since the appearance of the hearts. August 25th, 2025. That was the last time things were close to normal. Every time you flipped through a channel the news broadcasted the hearts that appeared overnight. Every person in the world had a locket placed around their necks, almost like a curse that was impossible to break away from. There was no way to pry this off and so many others died trying.

“Time,” Zaria whispered. Every locket is timed to open when it is meant to. Zaria sits on the ground of what resembles her bedroom but feels so unfamiliar. Curling into a ball, she shifts back and forth while suffocating on her thoughts about time. Any slight sound or movement made her tick and glance at her inevitable fate. All she could hear in her mind were the screams and cries of her mother and brother once their hearts opened. Zaria’s lock clicks and before she can begin panicking, her body projects seamlessly inside of her locket and falls onto the wooden floor thumping and clanking its metal in an endless loop of time.

Zaria cannot see or hear or smell. All of her senses escape her for an inch of a second. She feels the ground under her bare feet and gathers enough courage to open her eyes to see what lies ahead. She hears the sounds of growling, bombing, screaming, crying, and is reluctant to peek. She takes a deep breath and opens her eyes for what was only a fifteenth of a second but felt like forever. Zaria makes out clouds of brown dust and dirt, and little fires everywhere. There are women and men riding on lions and tigers, covered in clothes made of animal fur, holding torches, following their packs. “What is this?” Zaria questions aloud. She then sees flashes of a series of pictures and events that had taken place on the planet in which she was brought. This was an experiment. Zaria begins processing the information presented to her.

There is no sense of time on Zenamia, two days on Earth is equal to 400 days here. The government created this simulation as a test for all of mankind. On Earth, there was oppressive homelessness, crime, abuse, unfair distribution of wealth, and many broken systems that were too far gone to fix and replace. The idea to create a simulated planet in order to help right the wrongs on Earth for so many years seemed like the best solution. New Orleans was completely under water by the year 2023 and Houston had to raise the entire city above ground 25 feet in order to remain afloat. With the global climate crisis and constant destruction, there were not many years left on planet Earth.

Zenamia had the potential to become a Utopia for humans to create the desires hidden deep within their hearts. Within twenty-four Earth hours of the first set of humans placed on this planet there was a continuation of theft, murder, abuse, and more anguish similar to that on Earth. Each human radiated their Earthly frequencies onto the planet Zenamia because fight or flight senses were triggered once fear took over their system.

“FEAR!” Zaria shouts as she finally breaks herself out of the invasive visions that impeded her mind’s eye. Zaria begins to understand the experiment couldn’t work because the government weaponized fear to keep us from exuding love and kindness. Before Zaria could begin her mission of spreading love throughout Zenamia and showing others the way things can be, she blinks and is back in her bedroom. On the wooden floor lies her locket tipping back and forth against the worn planks. She is alone on Earth while the rest remain prisoners on the planet Zenamia. Zaria sits on the same cold wood with her only memory of her family being their pictures in their heart shaped locket.