Chapter two

Who wants a normal life?
Seven children who I know of do - three what to be normal people, with normal A++ grades (like me!) and three want to be someone else.
Me? I am the one who wants to be me.
Today was SUCH a normal day.
It was Monday, fun as. I love Mondays, because it is my day off. We all do nothing on Mondays. Even Mum has a break from her obsessive house-cleaning.
What happened today:
For a person in 2005, a million years ago, they would be thrilled to live my life. Especially an only child. I mean, sheesh, only children in my class yearn to be us septuplets. We don't mind. We just wish we could kick Rex and his cronie Cameran out.
I woke up to Ropotora hollering "Monday-today. Please-get-out-of-bed-and-have-brekkie."
Mum has this thing about having things the old-fashioned way. So, maybe a person in 2005 may be a bit more at home.
So, I slid out of bed, with Maggitha close behind me. All of us kids share a room - but Richard gets his own little room. He has it all modern, though, crammed with his things, all his inventions that have been helpful around at home -the sensor that you use to write essays in the middle of the night (have your hand in front of the sensor, move it like you were writing something and the sensor passes the information onto a computer which copies your handwriting style, prints it our and voila you have an essay!
So me and Maggitha tidied our bunk (I am top) which had electric blanket, changeling blanket and duvet. We got dressed in a seamless cream blouse, turquoise detailed creased skirt, little pleated-hem black vest with a small Titran High School crest on the breast pocket and a navy tree-sap jersey with our crest. The school uniform.
We walked out of our room, which was tidied of our clothing and general muck, with light flooding in from outside. I ate Algae-supreme, a delicious cereal made of seaweed, algae and moss. Our plates are made of rubber - so, to clean them, you clean them with a cold-water dishwasher and stick them in a small machine. It heats the plates/bowls up so the rubber snaps into a plat plate. Thankfully, the cups are red, mugs are green, plates are purple and bowls are bright orange! If we want them to become what ever they were moulded to be again, we stick them back in the machine and...
I brushed my teeth while Ropotora packed our satchels with our laptop, essay folder, lunch coins and spare uniform.
Then, we slung our bags over our shoulders, waved goodbye to a soulful Mother and walked our of the automatic front door.
Our houses look like blocks - it is SO modern. All the houses in Auzealand are modern, because all the old, even Victorian houses in New Zealand and Australia crumbled under the sheer weight of all those quakes.
The roads are paving, red and blue bricks, hover-cars everywhere. At least the hopper-buses are fun to ride in. They have their own special roads floating about the roads for hover-cars, and the buses are a big rubber ball the bounces along the road. However, there is this circular room inside, with the domed roof, where children sit in peace and quit, apart from the smooth up-and-downs.
The paths for walking are yellow concrete. Very old-fashioned. We changed from grey and white to yellow about four hundred years ago!
We walked all the way to school - a ten minute walk.
At school, it looks just like the ones in the old days - like a school in 2005. But inside, instead of desks, there is a big circular table taking up most of room. There is a circle cut in the middle, and a semi-circle desk with a revolving chair. That is where our teacher sits.
So, seven identical children sit down, plug in laptops and sit down on the hard chairs. Other students file in, and when the big KABOOM goes off, the revolving chair come out of the ground with our form teacher revolving on it.
She is a kind, thoughtful, imaginative lady named Sasha Burlington. She is married to another... interesting teacher who teaches at intermediate accelerated learning class. I was in his class. It gives me great joy to know my teachers teach at A1 level - and I should be learning at year 13 level!
So, we have our roll; a little quiz; then science; English; Sheembal (the language made up by a computer freak about half-a-million years ago); Mathematics; A technology of our choice; then a language of our choice; Social Studies.
Some kids are taught by a big guy on a screen. My Mum says those kids are basking in the future, and that the past is much more fun.
We go home after an exhausting day of Spanish and P.E Tech, eat some fee-see cereal bars (tree bark, for some reason SO good) and have some Orange pulp, before doing an essay on how grass grows when not in hydroponics before being planted (the modern way), having a dinner of steak-and-kidney pie with apple crumble and putting on pyjamas, brushing hair and teeth, reading a book on our laptop, Maggitha writing an essay with the thing Richard made (referenced before), and falling asleep...