From Here, Where?
A snapshot sci-fi story I wrote 5 years ago; feels less sci-fi than it should…
Some say we lost control when the fourth industrial revolution really kicked off, which was once we started realizing the veracity of what was going on and how screwed we were. Automated systems or drones didn’t emit over a million microbes each hour like we did. They didn’t catch and hold onto the new, dangerous ones like we did. Their practicality came from the fact that they were immune to PrionK12 and its consequences, just like nature had somehow designed me to be.
Policy makers and government officials advertised our replacements — strictly temporary — as the only means to procure our future and restore control. Naive and idealist. That’s what it was to believe we could regain something we never legitimately possessed.
Only the lucky ones who dodged the first wave of infection and got placed in the white zone carried such optimism that our posterity could be saved. And that it was worth saving. They continued with their lives while the rest of us struggled to survive and hold onto what little we still had. We’d open our mouths when we shouldn’t and put our hands where they didn’t belong. This went over as well as sloshing through a river of shit under the impression that as long as you washed yourself off afterwards, you’d be fine.
As if to make up for my natural PK resistance, I stupidly contracted some of the white zone’s ethos. The hope — and ignorance — that I could make a difference. That someday I could hold out my hand without Robin falling through my fingers, our grip no longer as effective as the union of oil and water.
Dumbass me. Thought the universe would reign up for a moment. And now I’m caught in more than just a shit river’s torrents.
I had joined a chorus singing for sun.
We summoned a storm.
Enjoy this piece? Check out another of my fiction articles here on Medium:
— Seph
