Demiverse Our World
We do not know much about the old world. All we know is that something terrible happened to lead our lives to be constrained in a man-made world pioneered by the great Okonkwo. Demiverse was Okonkwo’s dream and realization. My grandmother told me that Okonkwo was an environmental pessimist. He was alarmed by the way geopolitical systems ignored climate change. He alongside my great grandmother pioneered a project that envisioned a self-sustaining system that would support life independently. My grandmother likened the Demiverse to Noah’s ark in the old Christian book except the Demiverse is not just a vessel. It is a sophisticated miniature world, a result of the scientific ingenuity of its creators. The Dimiverse is powered by solar energy in conjunction with nuclear energy. From my grandmother, the Demiverse like our hearts must always be lively, it cannot afford any second of pause or failure or else we will all perish.
We are lukewarm people. We have nothing much to look forward to except the next day. It is like living on the edge except it is easy because we believe the Demiverse will never fail us. Unlike my grandmother’s golden days when plants grew from the soil, animals walked the earth, and flowers bloomed in spring, we grow our food and animals in the lab. Everyone has shifts to work. If you are not monitoring the weather system in the server room, you are either in the lab mixing chemicals or you are taking care of newborns. There is not much work to do, almost everything is automated. We live behind closed doors. It is either very hot or freezing, nothing in between. We prefer coldness over overheating. Heat has consumed most of our folks and we fear that one day it might turn our home to ashes. Our way of living is constrained within the Demiverse. The people who choose to walk out rarely come back. But when they do, they die sooner or later. Our world contradicts my grandmother’s world in so many ways. Sometimes I wonder how she managed to stay and hold on when most of her age mates were all gone. There was a common belief that she was among the original officials who were tasked by Okonkwo to enforce the rules. She liked to avoid this topic. She allowed people to speculate. In the same way, so many other things are speculated but not known. It is a price for survival. “The more you know the more easily you will harm yourself — Okonkwo.
We do not bury our dead. The bodies are laid outside at nightfall and when the sun rises, we chant from the scripts and watch the bodies melt and evaporate under the scorching sun. We do not have religion. It is forbidden to believe in anything except the Demiverse. We are taught to believe that the Demiverse will never let us down, that it will withstand whatever wrath the external universe will send us away, and that it will protect us till our last days. Every night before bedtime, we pray to the Demiverse, and when we wake up, we do it again. Once I asked my grandmother what people prayed for in the old days, she said people believed in different things and prayed to those things to provide for their needs. She would have shown me a religious book she called a bible except it was burned after Okonkwo constituted that there would be no old religion in the Demiverse. Okonkwo wanted his populace to be united. It’s only in unity that he thought they would have a chance to protect the Demiverse. He banned religion and languages from the old world. I was shocked when my grandmother told me how in the past people with black, white, and brown skin spoke in different languages. It did not make sense but I believed it because there were so many things that did not make sense i.e. having a child. The fact that women in the old world were free to choose whether they wanted to have children or not. In the Demiverse, we do not choose. You are chosen. Women of my age group 20–30 are randomly picked to give birth. The picking happens every time somebody dies. The population must be maintained strictly at ten thousand people. Nothing less or more. It is every woman’s dream to be picked. It raises our status and we get access to premium services of the Demiverse. Once you give birth, the baby is taken away. All children belong to the Demiverse.
My grandmother was an exception. She birthed my mother and took care of her until she gave birth to me. I was taken away and my mother could not bear the loss. So much that she walked into the night and did not come back the next day. My grandmother, being a high-ranked official, negotiated to have me in exchange for her status. History repeating itself my grandmother watched me get picked to birth Demiverse a child. I felt blessed and I was excited as everything unfolded. My body was closely monitored, food was not rationed, sleep was long, and entertainment was abundant. The law forbade any kind of discomfort on my part. I was comfortable but my grandmother was worried to an extent where her health started deteriorating. She started seeing things. She said she was scared of what was coming.
That night in the delivery room, my grandmother requested that I close my eyes. When I finally opened them, I saw an official holding my newborn. I raised my hands as a gesture to hold the baby but the official just ignored me and hurriedly walked out of the room. My grandmother followed her and that was the last time I saw her. I contemplated following in my mother’s footsteps but I wanted to be different. I wanted to stay and find out why the Demiverse took away much more than it offered.
