To see the sky

The scientists had predicted a brand new world. The government said it was supposed to be better than the last. Each iteration was worse than the one before. Huge swaths of the world are useless and destroyed. It is because of what the scientists and the government has done, not what us the people have done.

We are all scared and no one in our group can even take off our protective gear. Communication with the outside world and the leadership has been out for about three months. We are stuck in this box, and rarely, when it is opened, we are dropped some much needed supplies. A drop of water and a few molecules of something edible. For us, this is enough for a few weeks. It takes much longer before the next batch is delivered. I wish we could see the sky again. I miss it very much.

The changes in our world came because the government and the scientists think the world has to many people. They tried many things to find us more room. There were the space races. That worked until they realized that they couldn't move people off planet in a high enough volume. They tried digging and storing people underground. Millions died when the earthquakes collapsed much of the structure. They tried putting people in different dimensions. That worked somewhat, but it was too expensive and only the rich could afford it. The rich that could afford it, also were rich enough to avoid it. Then they tried our experiment. They called it The Squeeze. I wish I understood the science behind it. Apparently it is a way to shrink people. They were able to shrink us so that we fit in a pendant or locket of some sort. We were first as they wanted the people who couldn't afford it to be taken care of first, since they would have to rely on others anyway. Well, at least, that is what they told us the reason was. Even so the people they chose like me, were not given a choice. We were just bundled into comfortable vans and brought to this big building. They led us into a room. They did something and we felt nothing. Then they took the lid off the room and now we are now smaller than ants.

That is when things started getting weird. There were twenty of us to start with, half boys and half girls. None of us had relationships when we came into this thing. I think those people are somewhere else. I think they were trying multiple experiments simultaneously. The first thing they had to develop, was gear so we could breathe. The air didn't change size just because we did. We were able to get a little benefit from it, but not so much that we could move much. It was like a really, really bad asthma attack. One of our group had asthma, and this killed him. We could see a tv that sometimes had the news on. None of it was good. We couldn't hear it, but we could see it. Our world was falling apart.

It wasn't long after this, that other issues were found. We lost our second person to a mosquito. It was the stab that got them. There wasn't enough blood for it to suck. The first injury was with a bed bug. Those things act like what we were told piranha are like. A guy named Sam figured how to get out of where they were keeping us. He got stepped on, but he survived for a few hours. We couldn't get to him, but we let the scientists know and they took him away. They let us know that he didn't survive. Stella died from drowning when a drop of soda spilled into our area from a clumsy intern. The stickiness prevented us from getting her out. We came close to losing two of the other guys from that. We did lose one of them when it got cleaned up. He got caught in the fibers of the rag they used. We never saw him again. After this they found a better place to keep us. They made the box for us.

The box, I am sure you are wondering about the box that is our new world. It doesn't appear to matter which way the box is moved we stick to the bottom. We are in the base. It is a nice sloping curve all the way to the other side. The box is rounded with a deep indention at the top. It is probably no more than an inch across, but still takes us about two hours to cross. There is a lip around the edge that protects us and is relatively comfortable. The lid for the box is on a hinge. We can see the hinge if we are in the right place when it opens. The top is shaped the same as the bottom, and clicks in place when it closes.

We have been out of touch for so long with the outside world, I wonder if we ever will again.

Today was the last day I will every have hope that this will end. Today I died inside. Today I looked up when the lid was opened. Today the person wearing the box with us in it opened it and let it hang from her neck as the door of her box was opened. I saw this because someone had opened the box while facing a mirror. I saw so many...they were not boxes. The first was a oval locket on a chain. The next was a broach on a shoulder. It was so much, and took me a while to realize what I was seeing. I saw pendants and lockets inside of pendants and lockets as far as I could see, and the smallest one was me in a heart shaped locket.