Monica’s gifts were legendary: a quilt stitched from shirts they’d torn on hikes, a charm necklace made of screws fallen from their barn, a music box rigged from lightbulbs and wire that played their song.
Rose’s gifts were… less legendary.
A birdhouse that collapsed mid-breeze.
A mug that leaked.
A robotic parrot that sang out of tune and then promptly escaped.
This year, Rose vowed to do better.
She gathered Monica’s old gifts and fed them to the UpCycler, piece by piece with care.
On UpCycle Day, she handed Monica a palm-sized projector. It flickered to life—playing scenes of laughter, kisses, and quiet afternoons sipping tea in their garden.
Monica stared, eyes shining. “You UpCycled our time together into a gift.”
Rose smiled. “I finally made something that lasts.”
Author’s Note: For those of you who read solarpunk, you know that it’s a genre that depicts humanity using technology to live in harmony with the Earth. One of the values emphasized in solarpunk is reusing and recycling items, rather than wasting them—as we do in our current day and age.
Thus the idea of UpCycle Day came to me. Unlike Christmas or birthdays in our world, where people fall into consumerism and buy a large number of gifts that end up eventually filling a landfill, the idea of UpCycle Day is that it’s a day when people turn their old junk into something useful or sentimental or both.
Let me know what you thought of this concept.
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Stories From Tomorrow - Jessica Brook's Author Site 
