The 2023 J.U.C. Media, Research & Writing Awards | Submitted Category: WRITING/General
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The 2023 J.U.C. Media, Research & Writing Awards 
Submitted Category: WRITING/General – Story
Submission Code: W6/G 
Student Age: 16 | Grade 9 | Word count: 1225

THE BLUE GOLD

[The 2023 J.U.C. Awards, LMGlobal.Org]
They lived in a far away place, in a region that was thought to be not even in the world or a place in the world that no one has ever seen before. From the moment that Magi was awake, she was searching for her friends and family. It was hard enough for her because she didn’t know where the place she was searching was now. The region was much more colourful than the world she knew. She had never seen the sky so blue, the trees so green, the flowers so colourful before.

It was as if there was something that coloured the whole world. Magi couldn’t understand, maybe it was because she had never experienced anything like this before, but whatever was causing this brightness right now, should not have spoiled at all. Even if she was in a dream, she didn’t want to wake up. She felt the peace of silence and blue with every part of her body. She had never felt so peaceful before. There was something very different in this region.

Everything looked very orange and yellowish, but a very familiar sound came from somewhere far away; the sound of water that she always heard on television or in historical documentaries. She decided that water had a much more soothing voice than the voice she heard on television. What a miraculous thing water was when you thought about it. Even it’s voice, apart from everything else, could not even comment on its importance to mankind.

She knew that water was important to all human life. A long time ago, when there was still water, people used to use it unconsciously. Waste rates of water were very high. Despite this, there were many seas and lakes, but it continued to decrease as the drought increased. Classic mankind, greedy it was. They are also the reason for the running out of water. Since all the people spend without knowing the value of water, it has run out. At first they still believed that there was water somewhere, but when they could not find it in any way, they realized that the problem was serious. Magi knew all this from the documentaries that she had watched or from encyclopaedias. No matter how difficult the life of the people at that time was, Magi still wanted to see, smell, touch and drink the water. She had never had a chance to hear or see it in real life, and right now she couldn’t believe the sound of it was real. She walked towards the sound and found a sea (she guess they called it like this) and a lot of people who were watching it.

At first, Magi couldn’t decide what to do. Some of the people were drinking it, some of them were trying to keep it as much as they could or some of them were just watching the sea and waiting like her. It was the first time she saw many of the people and that much amount of water there. However, some of the people from the crowd seemed familiar. She was even more confused when he saw Jim, who lived in the same neighbourhood. According to her estimations, there were people living in her neighbourhood and on the streets close to it considering all the people in the world couldn’t have gathered here, not even all the people of America were here. Her thoughts were interrupted by the voice of her friend Della. Magi was ecstatic that she had found her friends.

After talking to her friends, Magi understood how they got here. It was all thanks to the government. After people ran out of water, America was the first country to discover that region that everyone was looking for. While it was believed that only one area of the world had water left, no one had talked about it before. Many people believed that even in an area there was no water anymore. At first, almost everyone was trying to search for water, but as the number of people who did not find water increased they gave up day by day. People did not know how they got here. It was probably to prevent news from reaching other countries and citizens. While Magi and her friends were still trying to figure out how they were brought here, a boy came to them.

The boy, who said his name was Austin, claimed he was conscious when he was brought here. Austin said that the committee injected all people with something like a vaccine and put them to sleep, but when they were going to do it to him, the man unbelievably forgot to inject Austin when someone else called him who gave the injection. He explained that they brought people here in a lot of cars while everyone was sleeping. People thought they were obligated to do it, even if it wasn’t a highly appreciated and recommended way to do, so no-one took any action to cause problems.

While there were many people waiting to be rescued, everyone was thinking about their own life first, and the government announced that they would start doing various studies to increase the amount of water when they found it here to help other people. It was said that no one should send news to other countries until any second order, and their phones were dispersed on this condition. At this point, Magi didn’t know what to feel or what to do. All she can do for now is just wait for the news.

People weren’t sure what to do until further decisions that the government would take, and in order not to do anything wrong, everyone put their phones aside and started to critique the situation with each other. Some were commenting on what they were going through when they were brought here, some shared the excitement of finding the water, and some were debating whether the state would actually share this water with other countries or not.

Magi and her friends had never seen water before due to their young age, but people who had seen it before were weeping across the sea. After the water resources ran out, millions of people died because no one could figure out how to continue living without water. Of course, something was artificially produced. Although it was not as effective as water, it satisfied the needs of water for a short time. On second thoughts they tried to obtain water from all the resources they could get like fruits. She was so happy that they found water. But of course, as expected, she had a lot of questions in his mind. If they had found the water, would they be able to multiply it as they said? Would other people really be notified? Or would that amount of water be enough for the people who are here now? What to do in any dangerous situation? She doesn’t have any answers for these questions.

Sometimes we all think maybe we’re all just a project assignment for an alien boy, right? Magi were not sure that anything that was happening now was real. Everything seemed too real to be a dream, too dreamy to be a reality. She couldn’t escape this world but she wasn’t so sure if she wanted to escape.