Collecting Dust

The sunlight trickled in through a gap in the pair of dusty-pink curtains only to spew out over my still body. My free hand that wasn't supporting my head from under the pillow instinctively moved to slap the alien presence disturbing my sleep, only to smack myself in the face and wake myself up. The clock on the table beside me told me that the time was 4:55 in the morning, meaning I still had 2 hours left of sleeping before I had to be awake. Groggily, I looked around at my cream bedding for my phone. Whether this was to double check the time, untrusting of anything other than the electronic device that houses all information in the world and is never wrong, or whether I just wanted to play Clash of Clans I have no idea, but it felt that it was important that I found it; I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep until I did. I pulled at the quilt that was covering me and flicked it upwards sending my phone flying towards my face. It didn't register with me that I had found my phone and I continued looking around my bed for it- until it hit me. And, like reality, it hurt like a bitch. With all of my teenage overreacting, I genuinely thought I was about to die as my phone launched itself into the back of my head. Annoyed at the stupid inanimate object, I snatched it off from my pillow, where it decided to lie innocently, and switched it on while I rubbed the sore part on my head. I placed my thumb over the home button and opened it, then clicked it twice and swiped to get rid of TikTok, which I was watching just before I fell asleep. I flicked my fingers left and right over the homescreen for a little bit, pausing every so often for my thumb to hover over a few apps before I continued my thumb's game of mini table tennis. After a while, I became bored and wide awake so I let my thumb hover over the first app of its choice, which happened to be the news. Boring. If apps could grow dusty, the news app on my phone would've had a mile high pile of the stuff; I had never in my life read the news. But, I decided today was a new day, so fuck it.

If I could have changed anything in my life, it would be to have kept my blissfully innocent ignorance and left the stupid app alone. Leave it with its dust and cobwebs. It would deserve it.

I obviously knew that horrible things happened in the world like school shootings in America, homophobia, racism and misogyny all over the world, child abusers, rapists, murders and all that, but I would've never thought that in the big wide world I was an incredibly naive person. I sat and scrolled through the headlines for that day, some popped out to me; some of those I wish would pop right back out of my attention so I forgot I ever read it. Some articles seemed pretty uninteresting, some science stuff seemed cool and there was a LOT of politics. "The same skyscraper in Moscow was attacked by a drone": the most uninteresting headline ever. The same skyscraper was attacked by a drone, referring to the little flying hoop things that kids play with, I didn't believe that merited being described as an attack. And the same tower? Reporters reported on this more than once? Jeez how dull did the world have to be if this is the kind of news being put out into the world. I chuckled a little bit after reading that headline and scrolled past it and onto "Broad bowls England to series-levelling win" which, as you could imagine, I glanced at for a second before scrolling away. A few more headlines down and I was getting tired again. Tired of the world, tired of stupid people and tired from being up most of the night. Until I scrolled upon THE article. The life-changing little article that finally sparked my interest, thinking it looked cool. Because I was an idiot.

"Wuhan testing recently dug up virus". Below this headline were two pictures: one was of an ice cube; the other of a photo from a microscoped virus. Below those were a description of the photos, which informed me that the microscoped image was from the dug up virus, being temporarily named the "Sleeping Beauty", which is such a stupid name for a virus. No virus is a beauty, but thankfully this one was sleeping. I glanced at the time on the top of my phone and saw that it was nearly 5:30. I decided to cancel on my plans of going back to sleep and read the article. I was in a stupid productive mood and wanted to read because I wouldn't have been better off waiting until I was in school for it and cancelling my sleep-date with my pillows and duvet, which were literally screaming at me to crawl back into them.

The article told me that Wuhan scientists while out on an expedition in god-knows-where found a floating iceberg, similar to the one that sank the titanic. Tragically, there was an earthquake or tsunami or something that killed the crew of scientists and when the team back in Wuhan sent out more scientists to try and retrieve any bodies, journals or specimens that they had found. When Team Two reached Team One's last recorded coordinates, they (Team Two) found the iceberg split in two from the force of whichever natural disaster had occurred. In the middle of the iceberg, where there would naturally have been spiked oceanic blue crystals of ice, was a bright blue, smooth layer of ice rock that apparently glowed. There was no record of what happened to Team Two, but they never made it home and Wuhan's pregnancy-like craving for whatever was inside of the strange ice, the scientists' bodies and work led to there being another team sent out in search of the answers. When Team Three reached the ice rock, they extracted a block of it wearing very expensive protective gloves and bought it back to base. Apparently, Team Three concluded that Team One and Two's bodies must have fallen into the ocean. Maybe Team Two abandoned their post with a passing boat. Nobody knew.

Fucking idiots.