MidReal Story
Empathy's Last Stand
Scenario: Evan, a smart but superficial seventh-grader who hides his intelligence and avoids meaningful conversations, stumbles upon an article predicting the world will end in a year. Though skeptical, the thought of impending doom forces him to reflect on his life, realizing that his actions have lacked deeper meaning and consequences. Determined to change, he resolves to spend his eighth-grade year on a path of self-discovery, aiming to understand and embrace empathy.
Create my version of this story
Evan
a smart but superficial seventhgrader who avoids meaningful conversations, skeptical and lacking empathy, appearance not detailed, personality includes being smart but superficial and avoiding deeper connections.
Mr. Selkirk
the teacher who assigns the article about the world ending in a year, appearance not detailed, personality includes being serious about the assignment and its potential impact on students.
Conner
Evan's friend who shares a similar lack of empathy and interest in deeper conversations, appearance not detailed, personality includes being dismissive of others' feelings and focusing on superficial topics.
I was reading an article in class when I learned that the world was going to end in a year.
The article was about a new study that had just come out, and it said that the world was going to end in a year.
I read the article again, but it still said the same thing.
The world was going to end in a year.
I looked around the room, but no one else seemed to be freaking out.
They were all just reading their articles like nothing was wrong.
I looked at Conner, who was sitting next to me, and I showed him my article.
He read it and then looked at me like I was an idiot.
“Do you believe this crap?”
he asked me.
“I mean, it’s not like they can predict when the world is going to end.”
“Yeah, but what if they can?”
I asked him.
“What if this is real?”
Conner rolled his eyes at me and then went back to reading his article.
I was the only one who was freaking out.
Why was I the only one who was freaking out?
The world was going to end in a year.
What the hell did I care about my grades?
What the hell did I care about anything?
If the world was going to end, then what was the point of anything?
Why was I even here?
I put my head down on the desk and took a few deep breaths.
I felt like I was having a panic attack, but I wasn’t even sure what that felt like.
I just knew that I had to calm down or I was going to lose it.
I had to focus on something else.
I had to focus on my article.
It was about a new technology that would be able to turn plastic into fuel.
It was a cool article, but it didn’t matter because we were all going to die in a year.
Why was I even reading this?
If the world was really going to end in a year, then why did we have to do any homework?
What was the point of school?
If the world was ending, then why didn’t we just get to do whatever we wanted for the next year?
I tried to focus on my article, but it was hard.
My mind kept drifting back to the news that the world was going to end in a year.
How could anyone know something like that?
How could scientists predict when the world was going to end?
And why would they want to?
Why would they want to scare everyone like that?
It didn’t make any sense.
None of this made any sense.
None of it mattered.
“Evan, are you okay?”
Mr.Selkirk asked me.
I lifted my head off of my desk and looked at him.
He was standing over me with his hands on his hips, looking concerned.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“I’m just trying to read my article.”
“Well, you don’t look fine,” he said.
“You look like you’re about to pass out.”
“I’m just really tired,” I said.
“Well, maybe you should take a walk around the room or something.Get some fresh air.Can someone else finish reading paragraph four?”
I sighed and closed my article.
I was never going to get this done now.
I had wasted too much time freaking out over nothing.
This whole thing was stupid anyway.
There was no way that the world was going to end in a year.
They couldn’t predict something like that.
It just wasn’t possible.
“Of course they can’t predict it,” Conner said as I sat back down next to him.
“Why are you freaking out like this?Are you serious right now?”
“Did you even hear what Mr.Selkirk said?”
I asked him quietly so no one else would hear me.
“He said that they don’t know for sure if it’s true, but if it is, then I want to make sure I spend my last year doing something meaningful with my life.”
Conner rolled his eyes at me again and shook his head.
“Are you serious right now?You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He looked around to make sure no one was listening, and then he leaned in close to me.
“You’re being such an idiot right now.Do you really believe this crap?
How can you be so stupid?”
“How am I being an idiot?”
I whispered back.
“You’re just going to ignore this and pretend like it’s not happening?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” he said.
“And you should too.Because there is no way that this is true.
There is no way that the world is going to end in a year.It’s just some stupid article that someone wrote to get attention.
You need to calm down and stop acting like a little baby.
We have way more important things to worry about than this right now.
Like what we’re going to do this weekend, for example.”
“What do you mean what we’re going to do this weekend?”
“What do you think I mean?”
Conner asked me.
“I mean that we have two days off and we need to figure out something fun to do before school starts again on Monday.
And if you’re not going to help me figure that out, then I’ll find someone else who will.”
Conner walked away to go find someone else to hang out with this weekend.
I watched him go and then I looked around the room to see if I knew anyone else who might be interested in doing something fun this weekend.
But all of my other friends were already sitting at their tables and looking busy.
They probably all had plans this weekend already, so there was no point in asking any of them what they wanted to do.
Besides, I wasn’t even sure if I could call them my friends.
Most of them were just people I talked to when I didn’t have anyone else to talk to.
Some of them I had known for years, but we had never actually done anything together outside of school.
And the ones I did know well enough to hang out with outside of school were probably not the best people to be spending my last year on earth with.
They were all just as stupid and shallow as Conner was, and they didn’t care about anything but themselves and having fun.
They would probably just make fun of me for even asking them to hang out for once and then go do something without me anyway.
Because that’s what they always did.
They never wanted to hang out with me because they always thought they were too cool for me or something.
But what did I care?
It wasn’t like I wanted to hang out with them anyway.
They were all idiots and I was way smarter than all of them combined.
I was just using them for now until I could find some friends who were actually worth hanging out with, and then I would move on and leave them behind like they never even existed in the first place.
But maybe it was time to start thinking about doing that now instead of waiting for new friends to come along.
I just wish that meant that we were all going to die right now instead of having to spend an entire year stuck together while the world ended and we all pretended to care about being nice to each other for once so we wouldn’t feel guilty about leaving each other behind, even though none of us really cared about each other anyway and would all be better off dead than having to go through the humiliation and torture of having to fake it for that long.
I had a whole year to live, and there was no way that I was getting that time back, so what was the point of even trying at this point?
I had wasted the past two years of my life avoiding having to think about anything real or emotional, and now it was already too late for me to ever go back and change that, so what was the point of even trying to start doing it now?
It wasn’t like anyone would notice the difference anyway, and if they did, they would probably just make fun of me for being a different person than they thought I was or something, since no one else ever seemed to care about getting to know the real me anyway or have any interest in forming a real emotional connection with me as a human being.
I wish you would all just realize how much better off the world would be without you and go die already so that we could all move on with our lives and stop pretending to care about each other for once, but at least we only have a year left anyway, so maybe now is finally the time to start doing that already, instead of waiting for some miracle to save us all from this misery.
“Alright, class,” Mr.Selkirk said before I had the chance to think about it further.
“Time’s up, everyone.I hope you all took this assignment seriously, because it will have an impact on your grade for the quarter.Please do not forget to complete your response questions before you leave.”
I closed my laptop and turned off my phone just as Mr.Selkirk walked through the door and started coming around to collect our laptops from our tables.
I looked over at Conner, but he already had his stuff put away and his table was pushed in, and he didn’t seem to want to talk to me anymore, so I just sat there in silence and waited for Mr.Selkirk to come around and take my laptop before I could leave to go do something more important than sitting in here reading an article that I didn’t even care about anyway.
I knew that I wasn’t really fine, but maybe if I acted like nothing was wrong, then maybe nothing really would be wrong after all, the way that I wanted it to be.
I tried to talk to Conner when we left the classroom, but he didn’t really seem to care either way, so he just ignored me and walked right past me without even looking at me or anything, as if he didn’t even want to be my friend anymore, which made me wonder if maybe it was really true that he didn’t even want to be my friend anymore or something like that.
“Are you really sure that you’re okay?”
he asked me as we walked down the hallway, but he didn’t even stop or anything, so I just kept walking right next to him without even saying anything in response, until finally we got to our lockers and stopped walking altogether.
“I’m fine,” I said as I grabbed my stuff out of my locker and put it into my book bag, but I didn’t look at him when I said it because I didn’t really want him to know that I wasn’t actually being honest with him when I said that.
“Is everything going alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said as he grabbed his stuff out of his locker and put it into his book bag too, but he didn’t look at me when he said it either, because he was too focused on getting his stuff ready and put away so that he could get to his next class on time, since he was a lot more worried about that kind of thing than I was.
“Alright,” I said as Conner closed his locker and we started walking down the hallway towards the cafeteria together.
“I just wanted to make sure that you were okay.”
“What do you mean?”
he asked me with a confused expression, but he didn’t seem to mean it when he asked me, since he was already starting to walk away from me anyway.
“You just failed our last math test,” he said after a moment of silence had passed between us and we were almost halfway to the cafeteria already.
“That’s probably why you’re acting like this.”
“Alright,” I said as we walked through the double doors and into the cafeteria.
We got our lunches and found a table to sit at and eat, but we didn’t talk very much while we were eating our lunches, since Conner’s phone was turned off and he wasn’t going to talk to me until it was turned back on again, which made me wonder what the point of talking to him in the first place was if he wasn’t going to listen to anything that I had to say and just ignore me instead.
I used to think that Conner was cool because nothing ever seemed to bother him and he never really seemed to care about anything except having fun all the time, just like I used to do too when we were still friends back in sixth grade and played video games together all the time and talked about girls in our class that we thought were hot or had crushes on and stuff like that.