Sophie sat on the window seat of the big bay window that overlooked the yard.  It was raining.  It had rained unrelentingly for a week now and even the bright green Scottish countryside was looking like it had had enough.  Sophie certainly had.  It had started raining the day her mother had finally succumbed to her illness.  At first the rain had helped set the mood.  Sophie’s mother had been sick for as long as Sophie could remember.  It wasn’t so bad in the beginning, but she felt as if she had been watching her mother die for her whole life, so death was a relief for both of them.  Now she wished the rain would stop so she could escape the house and escape her father.  And escape her.

A month before her mother’s death, her parents’ friend had arrived from America to help Sophie’s father.  Sophie had immediately been suspicious of this woman.  Her mother had been blurring the line between life and death for over a year, why was Rita just arriving now.  Sophie watched the way that woman made her Father light up in a way Sophie hadn’t seen in years.  He even smiled.  The halls of the home would echo with the woman’s laughter at almost everything her father said.  Outside of her father’s presence, the woman was a different person.  She had looks of pure hatred that Sophie felt as if they had been crafted just for her.  She rarely spoke to Sophie, and if she did it was soft and biting. 

The day Sophie’s mother died, the woman almost waltzed into the room.  She quickly assumed a more mournful demeanor before she thought Sophie noticed her, complete with her eyes welling up with tears and announced that her father wanted to speak with her.  Sophie nodded once and made her way toward the woman and the door.  She stood stiffly as the woman hugged her before brushing her aside.

Her father’s study had always been a place of safety. She had hidden under the solid wooden desk during the many earthquakes of her childhood.   She remembered spending hours reading in one of the wingback chairs under a blanket by firelight during power outages.  The books that linked the walls had always been her escape. 

Now she faced her father.  She shouldn’t have though of her father as an enemy, but he certainly had not been her ally in recent weeks.  Even in the later years of her mother’s illness he had withdrawn into himself.  He worked around the clock trying to cure her mother and for that Sophie was grateful, but her mother had been ill since Sophie was five, although they had no idea that was initially started out as chronic fatigue would become the monster that it did.  In the past twenty odd years, not only were both of her parents pulling away from her, albeit for different reasons, but the entire world had been turned into a very dangerous place. 

Both of her parents had played integral roles in bringing phi energy to the world.  The discovery and propagation of this new type of radiation allowed for free electricity to be brought to all corners of the globe.  All electronic devices could be fit with a small phi capture device, a PCD, and it would capture energy from the atmosphere.  For a decade, the world was being made a better place.  There was never a demand for energy, so inventions to improve water access and sanitation around the world were increased.  Carbon emissions dropped to levels not seen since before the industrial revolution.  Food was plentiful.  Her father could not bask in all of the glory that was bestowed upon him, as his wife lost the ability to speak during the fifth year after the introduction of phi energy.  He scoured the planet, but found no other cases of phi causing damage to anyone.  Then the storms started.

In the tenth year after the introduction of phi energy, the earth had a violent reaction to the phi energy that had been building on it and in it.  Storms more violent then any seen in recorded history ripped across continents.  Tides rose and fell, consuming and later revealing entire cities.  It snowed in tropics.  It rained in the desert.  Then it got worse.

The great tectonic plates that sometimes shifted to cause earthquakes began to move.  Volcanoes erupted, oceans grew, continents collided.  The face of the planet was changing.  Not only was earth changing, but also, it’s atmosphere.  Phi particles had become so prevalent, that the spectrum of light that made it to the planet’s earth had shifted and the sky had taken on a more violet hue.  Some plants could adapt.  Other could not.   Some humans could adapt to these wild conditions.  Other got lucky.   

The congestion in the atmosphere also interfere with radio and wireless technology, so communication was almost completely wiped out.  This is the world that Sophie had grown up in.  Although high in the mountains of Scotland in her family’s home that had been converted from an ancient castle stronghold, Sophie was rarely touched by the events of the world other than wide storms and the occasional earthquake, she grew up very isolated and with no friends but her dolls and the family pets.  For that, she blamed her father. 

Sophie sat down in the chair opposite her father, facing the picture window behind him with her back to the door.  She heard the door open and close behind her and the woman shuffle to the side of the room.  Sophie hadn’t had a moment alone with her father since she had arrived.  She wanted to whirl around and confront the woman – tell her to leave.  But she couldn’t be certain her father would take her side, so she bit her lip and waited for her father to speak.

Sophie thought he was staring off into the distance, until she realized he was staring at where she assumed the woman was standing.  She again felt her anger boil up until her father spoke.

“Your mother is gone.  We are going to have a memorial in Hawaii next week.  We think she would have wanted that.”

We, Sophie thought, her father and the woman.

Aloud she said the second thought that came into her head, “Hawaii?  Why there?  How do we even get there?”  Sophie had been to Glasgow twice, but that was before the storms.  Since then she hadn’t travelled beyond the nearest towns. 

Her father replied, “Hawaii is where we met.  There is a way to travel there.  Don’t worry about it.  Just pack.  We will leave next Saturday.”  His sentences were short and rushed.  He wouldn’t even make eye contact with her, his eyes dancing around the spot where the woman stood. 

When it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything else, Sophie opened her mouth to say something, anything, to have a connection with her father.  Something bring them closer together.  Before she could get any words of comfort or words of grief out of her mouth, she felt a hand on her shoulder.  It was the woman, signalling that it was time for her to leave.  That her father should be left alone. 

Sophie retreated to her room in a tower.  The clouds were rolling in and the rain was starting.  It had not rained in as long as she could remember.  Lying on her bed, she had cried, imagining the world was crying with her.  Crying for her mother, crying for her father, and for herself. 

Now that a week had passed, Sophie no longer had any tears, but the planet was still deeply wounded.  She placed her fingertip on the window trying to will the water droplets to stop streaming down the window.  She pitted raindrops against each other to see which one would reach the bottom of the window first. It was a game she had played with her mother when she was younger.  Her mother was tired all the time, and was eventually confined to a wheelchair, but she still could muster the energy to raise her hand to play.  Her mother would laugh, even after she lost the ability to make a sound.  After a time, her laughter was gone too.  Now it was all gone.  And all Sophie had was the rain.

Next Chapter: Dream - 2065