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  He has his notebook in front of him. He could always use a typewriter, but he prefers to write by hand. He begins with this:

   The year 2023 will be almost completely different from the year 1983. A giant technology boom will result in the entire world being interconnected through a series of channels. Information will be able to travel through these channels in just a few milliseconds. This has its negatives and positives, but as time goes on the more educated members of society will begin to see the negatives outweigh the positives.

   He stopped writing. This was incredibly stupid. Forty years couldn’t create that big of a difference. He then realized that these were his predictions, and his only. As long as he kept with the prompt, and used proper grammar, he would get a good grade. They couldn’t kick him out of college for his opinion on an issue, could they? But will they ever be able to? He pondered this as he picked up his pencil and began writing again:

   A giant, worldwide disaster has resulted in the world never being the same again. The U.S. government is not tyrannical, in the sense we know it today, but they have overused the same narrative to instill fear in the American people. Fear has put the world in 2023 behind several years. The average fifth grader in this time struggles to write simple sentences. Instead of teaching these children to be better, our school system as a whole works to teach them the opposite. They are taught that they are oppressed by their higher-performing peers, and our school system works tirelessly to bring down advanced and gifted children. This is not okay and this is not right, but society in 2023 is built on fear, censorship, and technology.

   He thought about the long paragraph he just wrote. He was lucky to be born at the time he was. In seventh grade he was taking high school writing classes. He was in all gifted programs, and he even found some time in between to help his struggling classmates. He wondered, for a minute, if there would ever be a student, similar to himself, that would be very advanced in school. He wondered if they would be brushed off and brought down. He hoped that wouldn’t happen. If so, he wanted to let that student know that there was nothing wrong with them, and that things hadn’t always been the way they were. He wasn’t sure exactly how to do that, but he trusted that that student would fight for the justice and recognition they deserved. He began his next paragraph:

   America is beyond recognition. What once was the greatest, most unified country in the world, is now seen fighting amongst itself. After the end of the Cold War, America stops paying attention to foreign enemies and instead becomes over-politicized, and anyone who does not share the common view at the time is seen as radical, and receives a great amount of hate and judgment from the masses. Only one side of the aisle is interested in calm debate, but the other side would rather scream, curse, and hit. We know that this is not the right way to show someone your beliefs, but these people do not. A childhood centered around technology and video games has done the youth of 2023 no good.

   Now, he thought, it was time for his conclusion. His essay seemed crazy to him, and there was no telling how crazy his professor would think he was. But, he kept pushing on. He had come so far, why should he stop now?

   In summary, in only forty years our country, and our world as we know it, will have changed forever. When we enter a world where technology governs our civilization, and spreads information faster than any human can comprehend, we have reached a turning point in our history. We will be given two choices, one to keep up with the charade of disinformation and darkness, or to fight for our livelihoods, and our children and grandchildren. By then the youth of our current era will become older, and it will be up to the younger generation to carry on American traditions, and freedom as we know them.

   He was done. He placed the notebook in his desk under a large mass of papers and went to bed. It wasn’t until forty years later when he was cleaning that he found it. It was April of 2023. A senile Joe Biden was president, juvenile crime was rampant, and many U.S. households had struggled to heat their homes that winter. America had never been more divided. As he was reading through the notebook, he found his essay. He’d forgotten all about it and had instead passed in another essay. He wondered what would have happened if he had passed this essay in. He then realized that nothing would have happened. He knew now that many people hate admitting that sometimes it takes a kid to show adults the truth.


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Josie is a nearly twelve year-old sixth grade student at Fort Fairfield Middle/High School.