I hope you get it...^^'
Standing on a mountain slope, she would look around the wide and mountainous green land with all its little bog-like puddles and lakes. The cold breeze would play with her long, curly hair, whipping it across her face. Her arms would be wrapped around her own slender body, her hands running up and down her arms. The frayed ends of her thin scarf would escape from under her arms and fly around playfully with the wind. She would clench her teeth to stop them from making shaky sounds, close her eyes and take deep breaths to take in the sweet smell of untouched nature, and then open them again and be filled with happiness to be able to see the beauty all around her.
Now, standing on the same slope once again, she looked around her like she had always used to. What she saw could not have been more of a contrast with the view of her memories. Every single puddle and lake had gone. All the green had replaced by dull and grey block-like buildings, and the earth was covered in dark asphalt as far as she could see. Many of the ancient mountains had been ruined, for the benefit of living space for humans. Warm wind had taken the place of the cool breeze, and she stood with her arms hanging next to her body. She wasn’t exactly cold, even though her clothes weren’t the warmest; indeed, it was very warm. A tear was trickling down her face at the sight of the ruined world, as she thought of its long lost beauty.
But there had been water, oh yes… A couple of years before, leaders from all over the world had suddenly decided that this would be the perfect place to live because of the climate, but that the mountains would have to make way for houses. She trembled as she thought of the horrible process that had been put into action by all those leaders. It had been shown in great detail on TV. There had been a machine, an enormous colossus that had been newly invented, precisely for this purpose. One of the scientists who had helped to invent and produce the monstrous machine had explained exactly how it worked, but she had been way too shocked by the images on the screen to pay attention to that.
The machine, as far as she could make out – it couldn’t even be properly shown on TV because of its incredible size, not even from the helicopter above – was made of hard shiny pieces of metal, long black tubes and hoses and parts of some sort of synthetic material. It was very much unlike any machine she had seen in her life; it had an unusual size and shape – she thought it looked rather like some sort of alien animal, and in a way it reminded her of an elephant, or even a dinosaur, however a mechanic one. It had wheels too, twenty of them, ten on each side, and a tiny little one-man cabin for the driver at the top, and it had been driven to a place near the shore of the country.
And then, the entire world had witnessed the destruction of the mountainous landscape, and she was one of the people almost literally glued to the TV screen, sitting on the very verge of her couch with her hands clenched together, almost as if in desperate prayer. A wide hose was suddenly coming out from the back of the monstrous machine, the part that faced the sea. The hose extended towards the shiny bluish water, and she flinched when suddenly it started sucking out the water, as she hadn’t expected the noise.
The slope on which she stood was one of the last; behind her were a few more, but none were there if she looked forwards. None of the block-like buildings really looked like a home, while their purpose was to serve as houses. In her mind she compared them to the cosy and friendly-looking little farmhouses and wooden huts that had stood here and there among the peaceful hills, and she shuddered. How could this possibly have happened?
She knew how it had happened of course, she’d seen it. The machine had sucked as much water from the sea to fill itself up – this had taken place in a remarkably short amount of time, considering its gigantic proportions – and then came the worst. It had started. Another hose had appeared, on the other side of the machine this time, she side facing the land… And the water had come out, with a thundering blast, and even as it threw up the water, the machine sucked up more water through the other side of the hose. The deliberately swirling gush of water swept away the hills as it went, and there were lots of cracking noises as it seized rock and stone in its way to the other side of the country.
Gasping for breath, she turned and tossed about wildly, moaning “No… no… noooo…”.
Miles and miles of land had been cleared. The air was damp and there was a slight haze of fine dust hanging in the air above the country. It was like a place just recently hit by a bomb, when everything in the area has been wiped out by the explosion, except the land was muddy brown in stead of blackened, and the explosion had been one of water, not of fire.
She had to act quickly. It was now time to persuade her colleagues. She could not let her beloved country be destroyed, it was too dear to her. There must be another solution. It was not yet too late.
