Dating : Dystopia

Dystopia One

“What you got there?”
— “Not sure exactly… stuff. Found it in the ruins.”
“Show me!”
Before Snickers can counter with anything, Twix already takes the stuff.
“Hey!” is Snickers manages to utter in response. But Twix is already completely immersed in his inspection of the items.

‘Wait a second’ you will think now. ‘Snickers and Twix, that’s not proper names… Nobody’s called like that!’
Good point. Our parents were not the ones who named us like that. It was us.

Sometimes, when we are walking in the ruins, we find things. For example, this old cabinet with packets of colorful foil with funny characters. They looked pretty. Took forever to get them out of there though. Then we brought them to D. so she could tell us what the signs meant. The old lady said they were names. We had her recite them over and over again until we knew them by heart.

Twix thought /twɪks/ was the best. Sounds hard and masculine, he said. And apart from that, the gold foil with the red characters looked the best anyway. The rest of us were not convinced. But no one told him. He can be quite the handful when he is angry and he gets angry quickly.

I am Mars — /ˈmɑːrz/.
I liked that. Better than /ˈsnɪk.ɚz/, /twɪks/, or /kɪtkæt/.
/ˈduː.plō/ and /ˌmɪl.ki ˈweɪ/ were also available. But none of us wanted them.

D. is the oldest adult I know. At least I think so. We are not sure how old she is. Snickers once said you are not supposed to ask adults. He never said why. KitKat speculated the reason is that it makes them remember that they are old already. And whoever is old must die soon. Nobody wants to think about that. That is why we do not ask. But we know that she was a child before the world became what it is today. Back then, people had some stuff to become really old. D. got a lot of it as a child. I think she will still be alive when KitKat, Snickers, Twix, and I are long gone.

When she saw the packages, her face suddenly looked completely different. Somehow, all wrinkles and spots were gone and her eyes were glowing. When she opened one of the packages her hands were shaking a bit, so she could not tear open the foil right away. The contents did not look too promising, though. She sighed softly and threw away the gray-brown clump with the little white crumbs. She shook her head a little and chuckled quietly. The others never even caught it.