Rebecca McNutt

People never like pollution, it has become very wrong to like pollution at all. But just like there are good and bad things about people, there are good and bad things about pollution. If people were pollution we would get rid of anyone who was different, anyone who was considered an inconvenience_ but we__ be getting rid of a life, a lot of lives_ because we didn__ like them. If pollution was a person would we still be trying to get rid of it? Would we have environmentalists still complaining and protesting and trying to get rid of all pollution?

Just because something isn__ good doesn__ mean it__ bad.

There are some things in the past that_ that just aren__ meant to be viewed.

_So, um, you__e from Rochester? Like, New York?_ Jersey asked.__up, we used to live out there,_ Rudger confirmed, nonchalant. __ou ever been?___aw, the closest I__e ever been to there would be_ well, believe it or not, New Jersey, the place where my parents named me after. It was crowded, polluted and full of crime_ I loved it.

Every day it__ something worse being predicted. Mearth says that sooner or later copyright on books will be all in the past because they__l all be available electronically. She says that electric cars will replace gasoline-powered cars. She says that something called drones will be used to watch the entire country, she talks a lot about something called nanotechnology, and 3-dimensional printing and cellular phones being implanted into peoples_ minds and all available careers being replaced by robots and human cloning and overpopulation and film becoming obsolete, cellular phones making regular telephones obsolete and LED lighting replacing everything and eventually she says that the planet will collapse and become an apathetic wreck,_ Alecto replied rapidly, his run-on sentence sounding sinister and dangerous. __earth says that eventually people will be able to see inside the minds of everyone.

The print was an old one made from a negative taken in the 1960__ of her parents in Sydney Mines, dancing with thrilled, excited expressions on their faces, in front of a classic car that had been a wedding gift at the time. Her mother__ hair, red back then, was held back by a blue handkerchief, and she was dressed in a billowing skirt and white blouse. Her father__ denim jeans and faded t-shirt were streaked with coal dust as he held her hands and spun her around in the front yard of their old clapboard house, yellow grass under their feet and a cobalt-blue sky with white clouds drifting above. Mandy could almost feel the late summer breeze as she gazed deeply into the print, watching the flamboyant colors come to life. She hung it up to dry on two wooden clothespins hanging from a string above her.

She dug into one of the boxes, finding clay angels she__ made in art class when she was seven years old. She found plastic swans on strings and red crystal cardinals. She found a blue-and-white rocking horse covered in glitter. She found a porcelain Santa Claus. She found that she couldn__ figure out where the hell time had gone.

He__ completely blown through his younger years like his childhood was one big cigarette to smoke carelessly.

Mandy loved the smell of a sunny day after a night of rain. The sun hit the orange puddles, the overgrown, soft, green grass on her lawn, and it beamed down through the orange steel mill smog, sending otherworldly, bizarre shadows across the concrete sidewalk.

You should find something better to do with your time,_ Mandy told him. __ spend my time shooting people, and then I take them to darkrooms and blow them up.___Come again?_ Alecto questioned with a tone of alarm in his voice. __ take photographs and develop them myself, I__e got my own darkroom_ it was a joke,_ Mandy laughed. __ love photography and I__ gonna be a photojournalist someday.___eally?_ Alecto asked. For the first time since she__ met him, he sounded slightly enthusiastic. __I take photographs and I film my own home movies, I have a darkroom as well_ but I can__ be a photojournalist like you_ I can__ be anything_ still, at least I can take photographs, it__ fun.

Alecto Sydney Steele, an entity of few words whom society managed to overlook as it rapidly dove into the 21st century. Everything about him, his interests, his friends, his own life, was constantly in danger of becoming an anachronism. And caught up in that mess was Mearth, not exactly evil in nature but just misunderstood. A very long time ago Alecto__ life had been all incandescent sparkles and Kodachrome, but that was before the environmental movement changed Mearth from a perfectly nice and kind guardian, to a deranged and malevolent monster.

Hey Alecto, film this!_ she called out. With the slide being as tall as a two-storey house, it felt slightly risky being up there. __n second thought, why don__ you come up here? It__ a blast being up here.___ don__ really like to be in high places,_ said Alecto as he filmed her, the camera lens reflecting the entire playground, which was partially secluded by tall trees that cast otherworldly shadows dancing across the ground.__f you don__ like being in high places, then why__ you take so many drugs in the seventies?_ Mandy questioned jokingly. __o you want me to go up there and push you off the top of that slide?_ Alecto threatened coldly.__ou__ never do that, we__e best friends!_ Mandy pointed out. She reached over and picked a bright red maple flower from one of the long branches of the trees, tossing it down to him. __ven in this failing 21st century, where people are cell phone addicts and crude humor and violence is the norm, even when society falls apart and drowns in its own mistakes, we__l still be best friends!_ She looked incredibly eccentric, never mind the fact that she was an adult woman wearing a trippy rainbow Pucci dress from the 1970__, standing on top of a slide at a children__ playground. Alecto didn__ seem to mind, he just continued to film her with his camera like she__ asked him to.

I used to think to myself that I was the last kind of person who should have a guardian angel, but then I realized that maybe my type of person is the kind who angels come to first.

When I was in junior high school, I used to think that Disney's 1990's paranormal television program 'So Weird' was every kid's ideal life - not going to school, living on a tour bus, having rockstar parents, traveling all over North America and never staying in one place for more than a week or so. Of course, eventually the realization hits you that the kids out there who really do live like this, pulling up stakes every week and never staying with their friends or having a permanent residence, aren't really happy.

So many people spend years (and money) studying to be doctors, lawyers, actors, dancers, business executives and scientists - when you're an author, you can be any of these things, and you don't need a degree or certificate; all you need is an imagination, a dream and an open mind.

Mearth appeared angry and disappointed briefly, but then she just gazed at the ground. __It must be horrible, feeling all alone, is it?_ she asked.__h, not really,_ said Alecto, his eyes lifeless, his voice listless. ____ going to be forgotten by someone who I can__ forget, though. That will be terrible_ but maybe it__ better if she does forget me altogether.

I can__ look people in the eye and tell them that they__e going to die anymore.

I__e seen a lot of stuff_ maybe I__e seen too much. I see most humans in a bad light because I__e seen what they can do, how evil they can be_ I__e seen the Holocaust and I__e seen Jonestown, I__e seen the Vietnam War and I__e seen Hiroshima_ I__e seen the Chernobyl disaster_ I__e seen the World Trade Center attack_ I__e been alive too long, over a hundred years is a long time to be alive,_ Alecto sighed, staring at the cigarette he was holding.