I grabbed the bag that slid to a stop at my knees, tore the receipt that hung out to my left and pulled out my ATM card from the machine. When I walked away, my space was quickly occupied by another person eager to claim their goods.
The silence was almost deafening save for the few automobiles that zoomed past, and the lonely ring of a bicycle bell. I pushed my shades up my nose so that the air from mask doesn’t fog the lens too much. Although I don’t know why I bother with it at all; it simply slides back down the mask.
The frame is loose and I know I should get it checked but with only one hospital working and the growing number of sick people…? A little fog and adjusting my glasses was a small price to pay.
People hardly left their houses these days. Everything that could be automated was automated and technology ruled. The government of my youth quickly died as the pandemic swept through, killing all those who were above 60.
Many of us were orphaned overnight, babies died and sick people followed shortly after. It was like what I imagined rapture would be like only this time, we ran out of space to bury bodies so we burned them.
My partner and I take turns to grab supplies from the supermarket. It takes about 2 hours to shop and claim goods because of the long queues. We worked in tech before the global meltdown so making money in a tech world hasn’t been difficult. But with whole countries going bankrupt and economies crumbling, we still lived off the little farm and poultry we have. Food, after all, never goes out of fashion. I will spend one hour in the sanitizing chamber as my partner talks to me through the glass door. It’s not so uncomfortable, just hot from all the steam. I do this naked, while my clothes are washed and dried and ironed and sanitised as I sit here. She’s saying something funny and I hear myself laughing; small blessings in such trying times: the gift of humor. Her slender shoulders have always been able to carry burdens, from when she was young. Now, she wakes up bright eyed and cheery because my black soul can’t muster up the courage to be happy. Can you blame me? I watched my parents wither away before my eyes and it killed something in me. They had disowned me long before their deaths but I was the only one there, close enough, to show up for their last moments.
We make dinner together, exchanging gossip and talking about people we used to know. Amazing how even in the midst of utter carnage, humans still find a way to bring each other down. With the expansion of technology and the need to track everyone, no one was safe.
Webcams and phone microphones gave tech companies access to people who were suspected of having the disease. Any malady that seemed like a symptom at all and the van is outside your house with a mobile station to to test you. The effectiveness of the entire system was jaw dropping; it had to have been in motion a long long long time ago—long before the pandemic even hit.
How do you explain establishing such effectiveness GLOBALLY, in under two years? Some of these technologies that run automated systems take years to develop. How, did they pop out in less than two years? They called me mad when I said world governments were working on population control. No one believed me; I was laughed at all the time. Well, baby believed me. She saw the signs with me so when I said we need to be ready for anything, she joined me. We stopped eating so much junk, made our farm, stopped cigarettes, picked up yoga and home workouts…started to get healthy. This was about five years ago when Africa suddenly started improving.
I am not trying to say that Africa is utterly useless but for a continent that has been seeped in corruption, to drastically change in what felt like a night…? I knew something was going on. We lost friends and neighbours to the disease. It is an airborne disease so masks were the first thing to happen. Baby and I applied to work remotely and we were granted that when the CEO died right there at their table. Baby was the only who believed me then, and I think because of that I have her here and now, with me.
The world over is a shadow of what it used to be. Some countries don’t even exist anymore because everyone there was taken by the disease. We don’t even have the news cuz no one goes out enough to do that anymore. It’s a series of random reports done by individuals, mostly on YouTube—which became a major platform for the world. So many opened channels to report what happened on their remote areas. Our next door neighbour is one of such people; I know this cuz I granted an interview a few months ago for his channel.
The world is nothing like it was, and will never be anything like that again.
My singular consolation, is baby.
We live to fight another day.
Together.
That’s good enough for me.
Candid. Real. Me. 