Tuesday 24 May 2011

The end of my street...


Tuesday. Day 5 of staring at the ceiling and the walls (more or less, and yes they are all white – again more or less).

The orange fireball rising slowly from the house opposite (possibly aided by the fact that I still had a temperature) sent me a telegram revealing important insider trading information: stay in bed stop don't go to concert stop xx stop stop
I read it twice, thrice... I was trying to discover what was the meaning of a telegram in the 21st century? For the last decade the government has been controlling our every move through radio signals, and no other communication existed in this alienated society. Through the various revolutions that took place over the last decades (for all of which we believed will change the world for the better) our lives, thoughts, emotions and motives were reduced to: ‘Lucky to get the next breath of air. Lucky to find that piece of rotten plant. Once my neighbour dies I hope I am the first there to call dibs on his ribs. I am lucky, I will live another second, minute, hour, day.’ Never more than that. Nobody could imagine it was possible to live for more than another day. Everybody knew that there were so many things one could do and that could offend our bright and righteous leaders that there was no certainty of surviving. As the society had no interpersonal relationships all communication was reduced to instructions issued by the government. Our implanted receivers received the instructions passed over the radio waves: ‘Work. Worship. Reproduce. Work. Worship.’ At some stage everybody also received a single multiword message, a message that used to be feared, but that was not accepted with the same indifference as all other messages: 'Your useful life has run out. We are grateful for your xx years of service, but now you cost us almost 5 % of what you make us, so your time has come. Die.’

So what was the meaning of the telegram? Who sent it? What was it warning me from? Why me? I had no idea... So, after I translated the day away (and I did, I successfully translated Tuesday into Wednesday), and just before the afternoon turned into the evening storm I risked a feverish stroll to the munchkin land at the end of my street, hoping that I will discover more about the mysterious telegram...

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