“I know that, Eila. I understand. But this is my home. This is where I grew up and I’m not willing to run away from this place.”

“But will you be alright? I’m so worried about you. I just don’t think you understand how difficult life will be here for you.”

There was a brief pause before Matt replied.

“Sweetheart, humans started out in this world with nothing. They learned how to control fire, how to grow crops, invented tools and medicines. We don’t have to do any of that. We will just have to live without the technology developed in the last 150 years. It really won’t be that bad.”

“Eila, while we are apart I want you to keep in mind two things that I know about people in general and one thing that I know about me in particular.”

“And what would those be?”

“One; people can never have enough. Two; people can always live with less, and three; I will always love you.”

They stood there in the hallway just holding each other very tightly for a few more minutes. Finally, without looking up Eila said “I have to go”. She opened the door and wheeled her suitcase out onto the street. She walked the 6 blocks to her school without looking back once. She was proud of that. She had got past the first hurdle, the most difficult hurdle. And she was doing alright.

After entering the school she dropped by the teacher’s lounge, hung up her heavy coat, mitts, and hat, and placed her boots by the radiator to thaw out. Then she walked over to her classroom. She hesitated for a moment, her hand on the doorknob. “Next hurdle” she said to herself as she entered the room.

She originally had 27 pupils in her grade 4 class but there were only 8 left. She smiled as they enthusiastically greeted her.

“Good morning, Ms. Ojanen”.

“Good morning, children. I’m glad to see that you are all here and apparently happy to spend some time with me.”

“As you know, this is my last day with you. Starting tomorrow you will move to Mr. Aanstad’s grade 5 class for a few weeks.”

“I want to make this day a bit special so I’m going to do something that I haven’t done with this class yet. As some of you know, I am related on my mother’s side to the inventor Kristian Birkeland who did research on the Aurora Borealis.”

“I knew that!” said a little girl at the front of the class.

“That’s great, Mareja. But did you know that Mr. Birkeland also invented something called a coil gun?”

Eight shaking heads and 16 widened eyes indicated that this was news to everyone in the class.

“And did you know that we have a small coil gun set up here at the school?”

More shaking of heads, this time accompanied by considerable murmuring.

“We haven’t used it much in the last few years because it takes a lot of electricity to operate. But I have permission, because it is my last day, to operate it one more time. Nobody else here knows how so I guess this will be the last time it is ever used.”

“Now before we head over to the lab I want to make sure that everyone in the class knows why I am leaving – why we are all leaving in fact. Some of you already know but I want to make sure that everyone knows.”

“The most important thing for you to understand is that it is good for us to leave. Some people have said it is unfair but that is not true. The Global Council, our government, decided almost 7 years ago that everyone in the world has an equal right to energy.”

“Those of us that live in the Northern part of the world use too much energy. We have to. It is cold and dark in the winter. Our cities are far apart so that we travel more than people in the south.”

“So the Global Council decided that we would have to move south to an area where we could live without having to heat our homes or have lights on as much as we do here. Decree 55 requires that the areas north and south of 55 degrees lattitude must be abandoned. So that is why we are all moving to Spain. It is sunny and warm there and it will be a wonderful place to live. So we should all be happy about the move.”