Warming
Above the bench where they were sitting was a big sign that said: "City Zoo." The mom was reading a book, and the boy, who was not actually sitting on it, but rather kneeling next to the bench, was using it as a writing desk. It was one of those big, flat benches with no back at all. It was a lot like a low table, really.
The mom's book made her smile often, but the boys was very straightfaced as he drew some type of picture on his large pad of recycled paper. Both could see very well what they were doing, because in the roof of the zoo building were large panes of glass with sunlight coming through them. The panels were designed to filter out what was bad about the sun's rays, and use to use the rest to power the lights and computers and water pumps and such, which it takes to run any zoo.
"Mom?" said the boy.
"Yes, Michael," she answered without looking up.
"What year were you born in?"
Then the mom looked up. "I was born in 2033, which makes me 31 years old."
"Did automobiles run on gas when you were a little girl?"
"No," Michael's mom laughed. "I'm not that old. They ran on gasoline when Grandma was a little girl, though."
"What year was Gram born in?"
"Let's see," said Michael's mom, doing a little subtraction in her head. "Gram was born in 2008, I think. Yes. October of 2008.
"Wow," said Michael looking up from his drawing. "Gram is ancient!"
"Don't say that to Grandma," Michael's mom smiled and looked down at Michael's sheet of paper on which was a sketch of some sort of box with lots of buttons and wires and lights. "What are you drawing?"
"The plans for a time machine," answered Michael.
"How interesting! Would you like to travel through time?"
Michael looked up at his mom and pushed his hair off his forehead. "It's not a time travel machine. It's a machine for sending messages through time."
"Oh. Would you like to send a message to the future?"
Michael looked at his mom with a bit of surprise in his eyes. "Gosh, Mom, we can already do that," he said.
"How's that?" his mom asked.
"Well, say I want to send Uncle Ed an e-mail, but I want it to arrive in the future, here's what I do. I send him two e-mails. In the first, I tell him not to open the second until next Tuesday, perhaps. So what happens when he opens it next Tuesday?"
His mother grinned. "The e-mail you sent today has arrived in the future?"
"Exactly."
"Interesting." His mom continued to grin. "So you want to send a message to the past?"
Michael nodded yes.
"Who will you send the message to? What will it say?"
"It will be to everyone in the whole world, and it will say, 'you have to try a little harder.' "
"A little bit harder at what?" Michael's mom started to say, but just then there was a whoosh as an electric tram pulled up in front of the doors to the zoo. "Oh, is that our tram?" she said and looked through the glass doors. "No, it's not, but it's the Avenue B tram, so ours will surely be next.
Michael looked up from his drawing "May I go look at him one more time, Mom?"
His mom smiled and nodded. "If you want to."
Michael hopped up and scurried across the lobby and down one of the halls a little way. There he stopped and looked through the great window. First, there was a pool of blue, blue water, then a tiny island, then an even tinier mountain of chipped ice, and on top of the mountain snoozed the great white creature. Michael smiled.
His mom walked up behind him. "Why do you so love looking at him?"
Michael shrugged. "It makes me happy. It's very warming inside."
Just then the great white beast raised his head, looked around, and slid down his ice mountain into the water.
"Oh, wow!" Michael shouted. "He's swimming!"
Twice around the pool he swam, and then he crawled back up on his mountain, and looked around with a look that seemed to say, "Could someone feed me a fish?" Then he lay down and closed his eyes once more.
"He doesn't swim very fast anymore," Michael said, still smiling.
"Well, he's very old," said his mom.
Just then there was a whoosh outside the main door. "Come on," Michael's mom said and grabbed Michael's hand. "We don't want to miss the tram."
As he was led away, Michael looked back to where the huge, white creature rested, and he couldn't help but see the sign on the window, the sign which read: THE VERY LAST POLAR BEAR IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.
The stories that won the contest were titled, "The Leaky Robot," "Sand Storm!," and "Snowday in Space," which makes me think HIGHLIGHTS wasn't looking for stories on heavy topics like global warming. But why the rejection letter was positive, was the handwritten note from one of the editors, that had been added at the bottom. It said, "A moving story! Try us again." Six words that keep me writing.