Amelia
an excerpt

“Hello, you have reached the voicemail of Mr Nicholas Broughton, and his daughters Elyse and Amelia, formerly of Adelaide, South Australia. We are no longer available to take your call, as we are leaving the area permanently, with no forwarding address. If you should like to contact our lawyers, who represent our affairs, the number is zero zero five three five three five four three two two seven seven B. If you are my ex wife, you’ll find everything explained in the letter in Mr Smith’s possession.
Enjoy your times on earth. I know I have. [beep]”

For most, the imminent end of life as they know it, the destruction of their whole world, mentally and quite possibly literally, is a Big Event. Something that would quite naturally cause panic, fear, worry, farewelling loved ones, madly taking digital photos, trying to do all the things that you never had time to do, and more panic. For Mr Broughton, it was the height of his career and his twenty year long goal, for Elyse it was something she had prepared for all her life, and for Amelia it was, for the most part, just a fairly inconvenient event and an interruption of her breakfast bowl of Dried Cereal. She was quite confident that it would be fine. She had her father and her big sister, and she had every confidence that they would look after her. The idea of new people and adventure wasn’t too worrying either, as she knew that everyone seemed to like her. She usually had very little need for concern.

[...]

The slight ping of an alarm dinged at his wrist, and the girls stood up, leaving their breakfasts behind on the floor. Amelia, pretty and blonde and seven years old, and Elyse, slightly darker and shyer and eleven with all the adult behaviour that came with that, stood by his legs, their suitcases hovering just above the floor next to them. Amelia sighed looking at it. So many things had had to be sold. To poor people. But now it was four A.M and time to go.
They walked through the dark front garden, the only light lighting their way the fluorescence of the street light across the road and the fashionably glowing gnomes on the porch of the house next door. Goodbye, ‘FakeUGrow’ lawns.
They were just looking at the only barely smog blackened tree in the front yard for the last time, when disaster struck. A hooded man burst from the shadows surrounding their house, and in an instant he had Amelia by the waist, hauled away from her floating suitcase, holding a broken antique bottle to her neck. Understandably this did upset her. Her eyes were wide and her mouth open in silent terror as the man made his slightly drugged up protest. Obviously a Confidence ™ Drughead, one of the many drugs found on the streets of Adelaide, sold by seemingly every shady Hindley district merchant and their mother. And he’d need Confidence ™ to try to pull a stunt like this, with the number of security guards watching the house, some of the many eyes watching. The guards had only delayed in stopping him so far to decide, via a sophisticated system of schoolyard games done at double speed, who would get the pleasure of defending The Family They Were Paid By. No more delay. Suddenly one of them who had won with “Bomb” against “Rock”, lept from still more shadows, dressed all in black, his face covered but with the Security company logo on the back of the balaclava in a faint phosphorescent glow, and had broken the man’s arm in an instant. He didn’t even see him coming. Contract Guards were trained well.
Mr Broughton turned and pulled his now crying daughter to safety, hugging her close then sighed. This was the state of the world today. He quickly checked her out for any actual cuts, and hurried the family into the waiting vehicle.
“Traitor! “ the man called and spat at him as he left. “Ark Rat!”
He was glad that his youngest daughter did not hear this. It haunted him for many years afterwards, but in a situation like this? Eh. What else could you do? He regretted the whole situation. He went back and gave some money to the Hire Guard, to pay him and his cronies to take the man to the proper authorities.
The Hire Guard regretted that he had not been allowed to kill today.

Mr Broughton looked at the van they were getting into. “…an icecream van?” he looked at the trusted man driving it. “Really. That was the best, least conspicuous thing you could find?”
The friend, a Mr Dixon, shrugged and smiled apologetically, the comp chip in his teeth glittering in the pale light. “It was the best I could do at the time. You have to remember that lots of people are leaving… covertly… tonight.”
“I gave you two years notice!” He buckled himself in using the old fashioned seatbelts.
“I know. But you can’t hire transport that far in advance. Unless you’re someone like Mr Crowe of course. So this was all that was left this late in the earliest possible stage of vehicular hire. If you catch my drift.” He turned around and waved at the girls, barely able to be seen in the converted back of the van. It was mainly filled with strange wires, and there were no windows.
“How can I guarantee my family’s safety in this? They haven’t even been used, this variety, for over fifty years!”
“It’s okay. The Bay to Birdwood antique vehicles run is tomorrow. People will just assume it’s connected to that.” Or, they’ll assume that you’re exactly what you are, he added in his mind. Not like you’re the only one.
Two hours later and they were a distance away from Adelaide, just slightly beyond the outermost urban sprawl, filled mainly with Pandi and the usual lot of American refugee families. At the most non secret secret AstroScience base in Australia. Everyone knew that Adelaideans talk amongst themselves, there’s not much else to do. And it’s not like the camouflage of it being a fancy international research centre for cancer, plus a Big Rocket near it for tourism purposes to commemorate the Australian Astronauts, fooled anyone. Especially since the Big Rocket kept going missing or flying off into space. The rocket loomed before them, and Amelia and Elyse tried to catch a glimpse through the front windshield. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people all with hover suitcases, milling about outside.
The doors slid open and the early morning light shone onto the girls and the suitcases.
“Out you get!” said Mr Dixon, swinging Amelia up over his head and making her giggle and then pretend that she didn’t love it. Elyse clambered down by herself.
“I knew we should have got here earlier” her father stated, looking at the long queues in front of the Xray machines and metal detectors, with only three staff apparently available to help them through. This was worse than Heathrow.