What hope looks like when it's gone!

I remember a time when time-travel films meant everything to me. They were my hiding place. My oxygen. I would sink into those stories like a man slipping under water on purpose, letting the noise of the world fade. I believed in those futures. I believed in what the world could become. Somehow, those films intoxicated me. They pulled me into a strange high where hope felt real and the future felt forgiving.

Then the lights would come back on. The credits would roll. Reality would crash in like a hangover that punches you in the ribs. And I would sit there feeling hollow, aching, quietly broken.

Today I do not watch those films anymore. It is not only because I am tired or sad. That is part of it, yes. But the bigger truth is that the stories no longer convince me. They no longer feel honest.

I know something now. Deep in my bones, I know that 2089 will not look like our fantasies. There will be no flying cars slicing through the sky. No robots rising up with shiny metal souls. No aliens invading us. Honestly, if aliens exist, they would avoid this stupid-ass planet altogether.

The future will look painfully familiar.

People will still fight over some goddamn chair inside a polished government palace. People will still murder each other to raise buildings dedicated to imaginary symbols of faith. People will still spit on walls, collapse on streets and die while the rest pull out their phones and turn the suffering into content. A spectacle. A trend. A circus with filters.

I feel it in my chest now. There is no hope left for this planet. Not the kind we were sold, at least.

Slowly, painfully, I began to understand George Carlin. He was never a comedian. He was a prophet that society chose to laugh away. Osho was right too. Every soul that stood up and screamed against the rules of this world was right. They were not crazy. They were just awake.

I used to believe people would change. I used to believe the world would soften with time. And then one question started haunting me at night, staring back at me from the ceiling.

What have I done to make any of it better?

I search for excuses. I search for comfort. And every time the answer comes back the same.

Nothing. I did nothing.

I was scared. Just a trembling middle-class nobody who grew up hearing the same poison again and again. Do not try to be a hero. Do your job. Come home. Pay the bills. Die quietly. That was the plan. That is the trap we all walked into with our eyes open.

And now here I am.

I have the draft of my next book ready. It sits there like a loaded gun. Like a confession waiting to be heard. All I need is hope. Hope that someone out there will believe I can pull this off. Hope that time will not run out before I finish what I started. Hope that I can somehow survive while telling this story. That I can pay my rent with my truth.

It sounds reckless. It sounds foolish. It sounds impossible.

But the Gemini in me refuses to look away. It needs to know how this ends. I cannot stand unanswered questions. I cannot live as a cliffhanger.

If this world is going to burn anyway, I want to at least leave behind a voice that tried to scream before the fire swallowed everything.