In the last hour.......

of the last day of the last year of the 21st century a girl child sat on the edge of the wall overlooking the forsaken land. She tried to picture in her mind what it must have looked like a hundred years before when people roamed the cities on foot, in cars and trains and buses. She imagined that it had been beautiful, but now all that was left was a wasteland of tumbling broken steel, glass and concrete. She knew that soon there would be nothing left, not even the ruins. Plans were underway to finally clean up the forsaken land. She watched as the men dressed in bio-hazard suits set the charges that would implode the ruins and obliterate the past. They had chosen to forget the past. What was done was done they all said. But secretly she kept a hidden journal full of clippings and photographs and stories about what the world had been like before the "Change". If they knew she had these things they would put her away like they had the historians and scholars. So she kept it all hidden where no one would ever look. She jumped as the first explosion went off. Then as if it were a fireworks display they all went off in succession. And then it was done and the past was gone. Along the wall where a platform had been set up for the dignitaries a loud cheer went up. Tonight there would be many parties of celebration, ringing in the New Year.