Teens Write Fanfic: Champion Figure Skaters Escape a Climate Change Nightmare

For Teen Week, we reached out to three teenage fan fiction writers and asked them to write a short, politically focused piece of fan fiction. In this story, C.H. Rissy, a 17 year old from Georgia, envisions a dystopian future ruled by a Trump-like figure.

C.H.'s note: I write fan fiction for Yuri!!!, a popular anime with a queer couple as the main characters. My idea was around imagining the world in the hands of Trump for a mere eight years, should he be elected again. The world would be destroyed by intense climate change and the use of atomic bombs, most of the population will have perished, and a group of people will be the only ones left aside from the leaders who orchestrated the world's destruction. It would then be up to them to discover the plethora of secrets hidden by the President and a chance to set the world to rights again.

Inside the house nine bodies hover above a dining table with a map sprawled over it, sections of land scribbled out with black ink. Seunggil's finger presses itself against the United States capital, and the motion alone is enough to send shockwaves among the rest of them.Years ago, they used to be world-renowned figure skaters, and Seunggil was the best of them all. Now, the former figure skater is responsible for finding them another future. "This is the only thing that stands and holds our last chance," he tells them.

This could be the last chance they have to see the next dawn, or the night glittering clearly against the clouds of pollution. Where they go, second thoughts cannot follow.

Eight years ago, they hadn't had to worry about taking precautions to protect the Earth and its creatures, to preserve it by using cleaner means of transportation. But laws were loosened as the new leader of the nation came into power with his greed and wealth.

The leader had no name to speak of after he came to power, instead demanding to be referred to in a variety of honorifics like a king would to his underlings. He claimed his name was above being spoken by anyone else but himself, and it was then that the enthusiasm from his supporters died down into something more apprehensive—it became apparent that the man they'd been rooting for was invested in his own interests and his interests alone.

He spread disease across the country, and the Earth was slaughtered by human selfishness—waste being spilled into the sea at alarming rates, trees being torn from the root to be replaced by facilities and suburbs. The sky became gray, and breathing in strangled you. Just surviving was hard, like wading through quicksand for years.

Then nature hung its noose around the human race's neck and collected its debts. Now, the earth is a barren wasteland.

JJ reaches out and nudges the side of his hand against Seunggil's, and Seunggil knows much better than to look up. JJ is more important to him than anyone else: He's his open ear, his shoulder to cry on. "There are other places we could be, still in states of decay, but more uninhabitable than it is here," JJ says. "You're sure about this?"

A kaleidoscope of memories flickers in the vast canvas of Seunggil's mind. Once, all Seunggil had to worry about was his ranking in the figure skating world. But being a champion figure skater was about more than just showcasing your talents on the ice—it was about discovering yourself through all forms of love. He looks to JJ's face last, all at once imploring and resigned and hopeful.

Seunggil rolls up the map. The heat chokes him with two heavy hands. "Submission to leaders and their politics is suicide. And I'm done knowing that they're trying to kill us and waiting for them to just do it." Silence. "We set out at dawn, so get all the sleep you can muster." Seunggil wants to tell them to spend as much time together before then, but he knows that JJ will scold him. He keeps it to himself.

All night, Seunggil has the vague feeling of standing on the edge and deciding whether he wants to jump or be pushed off. The feeling doesn't leave him until the morning sunlight spills over the Earth's trembling trees. The group trek past familiar pathways—rivulets of coal-lined water pouring into great pools of infestation, tree leaves dried and eaten up by the continuous cycles of acid rain that ruin the soil, bodies lying face down in the ground and covered by an unidentifiable film. They trek past the desolate towns and cities that were once lively with city lights and the glittering promise of opportunity. Cars line the sidewalks, rusted and eaten away by time and pollution. Seunggil abruptly feels that he hasn't seen the world in eight years, despite having walked these same paths every day since then.

They arrive at the Capitol Building, a place that had once been filled to the brim with corrupt demons disguised as politicians for the people. They ran their puppet show here and pulled the strings of society as they liked, subtly controlling the daily aspects of civilian life—initially through methods of propaganda and then through blatant threats and terrible laws.

Soon, the leader's paranoia got the best of him, and very few of his chosen colleagues could be trusted. Then even they went missing: The leader killed them all in secret, just like he killed the regular civilians.

Before them, Seunggil and his comrades see a towering mountain with edges and ends sharpened to kill. A sense of urgency overwhelms them all. The facility is just barely holding itself up—the hallways are dim and trees crawl up the walls. Seunggil pictures the cowards sheltered in the hollowed shell of the world, destroying it all without moving a single nerve or expending a decimal of energy. Ending hundreds of thousands lives with a single signature, a minute movement of the hand.

They reach a room that blooms with bluish fluorescence. Inside it is a pool—a compilation of moments of everything in the past shifting into various futures. It's a portal to a dimension separate from their own—a divergence of events that were always meant to lead into different outcomes. For a minute, Seunggil sees a different vision of future. They crowd around it, linked together by adversity, expectantly leaning forward into the pool of a different kind of universe.

Gleefully, they collapse into the pool with their arms wide open. Time wanes and pours into another world where greed and bigotry lost horribly and fell flat on its face, in which justice prevailed and ruled over all. The sky remains its signature blue, the earth its pure soil and roots. Quiet settles among the group, above the rush of blood in their ears.

Seunggil vows that in this world, he will protect the future with everything he has inside of him, no matter how hard or long he'll have to fight for it.

Illustration by Dan Evans.