The Academy: chapter 1

It all started in 2016. The world was corrupt. We all knew it was going to happen, we just hadn't expected it to happen that quickly. Towards 2011 the designers started going back to old clothing. Pretty soon in Primark you could buy ruffled tops and petticoats as underwear. If you walked down the street on a sunny day the women would have parasols. Cars were rare. Real ones I mean. Many people had electric ones but they didn't go very fast, which meant that motorways were hardly ever used. Having been a small child pre-2010, I grew up with SUVs all around me. Big, fat gas guzzlers. Transatlantic carriers. Big American trucks. I hardly would have guessed that BMW and Aston Martin would no longer exist by the time I was twelve.
The 'New World' as they're calling it, affected me in many ways, though it hardly bothered me. I loved period films. Perfume- The Story of a Murderer was my favourite. The outfits, the grime on the streets of Paris, the traditions, the expectations. It was all deliciously foreign. Marie Antoinette- another one. Shakespeare in Love. Moulin Rouge. Memoirs of a Geisha. Pirates of the Caribbean. The Painted Veil. Pearl Harbor. All of those new films set in old times. I was meant to be born in that time, I always knew it.
The few fashion shows that took place nowadays were full of voluptuous curves, porcelain white skin, red lips and ample cleavage. I was the palest person I knew. I always had the envious figure of a flat stomach with big breasts and perfect curves. I also happen to love red lipstick. Of course, the sad thing of all this change is the new beginnings of racial discrimination. It seemed to me as if a cross between 'The Day After Tomorrow' and 'Children of Men' had been created. Except of course there was no fertility problem yet. I just mean that immigrants were being kicked out the country. Even the legal ones. Their green cards were being rebuked. Holding bays by ports and marinas were erected, and if you got close enough you could hear the shouting from inside in angry foreign splutters. Nobody knew what went on inside there. The media no longer possessed the power they used to in gaining access to information. The government was unusually secret.
America and The United Kingdom had never been closer. The President and the Prime Minister were constantly flying back and forth between the two not-so-great-anymore lands to have secret meetings. Of course their flight plans were not so secret, just the information passed. The only value the press and media had was to provide warnings and updates on the current situation. They would of course be given some information from the government science labs, but a special pass had to be given and only the manager of the press company was allowed this information.
Povertied towns were no longer paid attention to. Whatever developments places like Camden, Brixton and Wembly were undergoing, they were promptly deserted. Construction companies stood a much better chance working with the Government than creating private estates and office blocks. I have traveled to Brixton with friends since the forces were instructed to leave and most families left the area. The place is a non-stop party. The streets were filled with piles of crap- rubbish spewing from drains and clogging up the most random places like window boxes, gutters and postboxes.
The local police station had been taken over by squatters. Well I say 'taken over' lightly, as they were constantly fighting with some group of drunken teenagers who broke in there occasionally to graffiti on the walls. I loved it. Despite the stench and the risk of contracting HIV from everything you touched, I loved it. It had become my regular Friday night haunt. My mum didn't know of course. If she did then that would be the end of my life as I knew it.
The little information I did know of other countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan was that their governments were corrupt as well. They had used all their nuclear weapons in civil wars. Associations like the Taliban had disappeared. Most of Western Europe was fine. France was going through similar troubles as the UK, but they never had the massive immigrant problem that we have here. Germany and Austria had formed a sort of informal country together. There was no longer a border between them, and there was rumor they were creating it into a new country all together.
You see the problem?
The United Nations was an idea of the past. Western Europe and Eastern Europe had very little to do with each other. The idea that Poland and the UK would communicate was ludacris. The only relationships that we had sustained apart from the USA was with China and India. The amount of produce we received from them was far too high to ignore them. So in return for their stock, we provided financial aid to their governments. Although we funded straight to their governments, we no longer care what they do with the money as long as it isn't against us or the US. Mutiny had occurred across the seas. New Zealand was struggling to sustain its economy. A strong financial bond was stricken between them and Australia, but relationships with the USA and New Zealand were poor, and the USA provided a lot to Australia. Although each country communicated little with another, we were all involved in a tangled web.