How Could We Know

They asked us to play inside and wait for the clouds to blow away. Our teachers usually didn’t allow that. We loved the snow. Any attempt to keep us from frolicking in it was met with fierce resistance. But this time was different. When our teacher tools us to play inside, her voice shook. I texted Viktor in the class next door. He said his teacher was acting weird, too.

None of us could have known at the time about the Russians. Or, if we did, we chose not to acknowledge it. How could something like that get in the way of our future? Were we not the youth who would inherit the tech revolution? Our country had the highest rates of STEM degree earners. We were poised to usher in Web3, cryptocurrency exchanges, entire new ways of interacting and understanding knowledge.

No one could have known that the Russians were after us, the youth. What’s the quickest way to kill a fire? Starve it of oxygen. 

So when the clouds rolled over, the ground began to shake. It was just drills. That’s what the teachers told us. It was just drills. We were expected to gossip, flirt, pull pranks, look at a screen, do anything except acknowledge the shaking ground, the black clouds, the fear thicker than blood spreading through the room. We drowned that day.