In the year 2098, the days are warmer in the summer and the nights are colder in the winter. They predicted this climate behavior in the early 2000s on their global climate models and change scenarios. Most people thought it was paranoid scientific wolf-calling, but it was all true. The climate change movement started too late and too slow. Now the ocean is hotter and the sea level is higher than it used to be. In South America, the Amazon rainforest is only barely reminiscient of the lush glory it had once been. In China, the vast productive farm lands are reduced to less than half of its total surface area because of extreme weather patterns that plagued the agriculture during the last half-century. People moved to cities, now cramped and filled with high-rise living apartments. Cities were required to plant more trees and build more parks, and to persuade home owners to move to tall mansions to save space. They had to redesign metropolitan areas as the world tried to keep up with the accelerated changes and sudden droughts and heavy precipitation that occured almost every month since 2090. Fortified water-saving dams, more efficient irrigation systems and improved flood mitigation, heat sink walls and energy-efficient cooling systems-- all of which were now normal facets of everyday life. 

The entertainment of the people from that time consisted mostly of the internet. Entertainment companies relied heavily on the web to publsh their content. The cinema, television and radio have become unique artifacts, much like the way turn tables were in 2011. They were there for people to be curious and feel special about. Some say it's more authentic when you watch in the cinema or on a television, but it was far easier to just watch the shows or buy the music online. Besides, watching a movie in a real cinema has become so expensive, only richer people do it. Several theatres were forced to shut down. Paper books began to be reserved only for libraries, and e-books became the primary medium for reading. The mass production of books were restricted because it was more important to save the trees, though many publishers have adapted by paper recycling. Art became more and more expensive, though interest never dwindled. Which is to say, the fast-paced flow of information allowed the arts and entertainment sectors to expand to an almost frenzied sea of limitless options, all at the tip of your fingertips. One boy, though, had a secret fascination for the exact opposite.

In the main Eastern district of Beijing, on the 26th floor of a living mansion lived a boy named Lu han. Lu Han liked old things. He collected old car models, defunct quirky flip phones and small outdated netbooks. He even has a working record player and a few records, which he liked to play despite not being familiar with the Western music that came from it. His favorite, though, is an old ham radio he bought from an antique electronics store in Chaoyang. He was a regular in that store, so that the owner would sometimes recommend newly acquired gadgets to him. When he found out that the radio actually worked, he bought it right away. He learned how to use it from a very old tutorial video on the internet. It took him 3 weeks to find a signal, and 4 more to realize the radio can only transmit to one frequency. It was a disappointment, but Luhan loved it anyway. 

At his university, Luhan was very popular. He had a lot of friends that he was constantly surrounded with, and he never failed to accommodate them. He was open, warm, friendly and smart. As a Linguistics major, Luhan was the International Students Department's favorite go-to person when new exchange students come in from Korea. Most Linguistics students took up English or French instead of Korean, except for Luhan, who liked hangul ever since he went to Seoul for a study program once. Therefore he had a lot of Korean friends as well as classmates that he went out with almost everyday. When he got home though, the first thing he did was to check his radio. 

"Ni hao," Luhan always started with a greeting in Chinese. "My name is Luhan." 

The repeater had a LED screen that would blink every time he spoke into his transceiver, indicating that his message got out fine. He pressed the transmit button again. "Hello, this is Luhan," he said, this time in English. He thought that English was probably something most people would understand. If he spoke in English, a receiver end might respond on his frequency. He did this every night, but not once did he get a return transmission. On the 24th night that he did this, an idea sparked in his head.

"I'm going to sing a song," Luhan announced into his radio. He wasn't sure why, but his heart pounded. It was silly because there was no one listening. And his singing was well-liked by his friends too. There was no reason for him to be nervous, but he was. He cleared his throat, and locked the transceiver so he doesn't have to keep holding down the transmit button. Then he began to sing.

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