I woke up feeling dull and mentally exhausted like I have been doing a lot of thinking. it’s raining heavily outside, though we are not allowed to see the rain, we could hear it and it made some people excited and extra chatty. I don’t feel like doing anything today but I have to. The conversations coming from the different chambers was competing against the sound of the heavy rain. I lit a cigarette and let it burn as I smoked my weed to drown the smell of the weed. I stared at the brown wall around me, lifeless and cold as usual, the alarm went off- breakfast time.
We are all trapped in a bubble and there’s apparently no way out. We are all from different parts of the world and how we were all brought together remains a mystery.
There have been rumors of a tunnel that leads into the western roads but no one has ever seen it, no one even know where the western road leads or if it’s even real. We have been trapped here for years, we’ve lost count and track of time. There’s no game, no survival just existence and anguish.
It’s almost ridiculous this bubble, held together by our collective opinions formed not based on our own individual thinking and profound experiences, the simple, yet difficult act of humanity, the spirit of humanness; it is all held together by a widely infected bias picked by everyone in different unsuspecting situations and conditioning.
I think a lot, my mind has always been my hiding place for the longest time, it was no surprise to me find out how much I’ve taken to thinking since being trapped in this bubble. This bubble has a name, it is called Zealux. I have no idea what it means, no one does or at least agrees they do, everyone just remembers it as Zealux, some elderly people call it ’Zealos’ from the gap of their broken teeth. A lot of the old people here have either their front teeth broken or crooked in some sort and I’ve wondered why.
I and my group of friends call it Dystopian Nightmare. We think about being revolutionaries but it only ends in our thoughts conversations, it’s too risky for anyone to dare to be different.
Zealux is a home for us, some many years ago the world was coming an end and a bunch of us slept and woke up in this bland atmosphere. Things are very different here, it’s not like the world I was born into, it’s been many years ago and I only existed in that world for a short time but I still have bits of my memory to compare just how different and uninteresting things are here.
Here’s what a typical day in the Dystopian Nightmare is like: we all wake up at a certain time when the alarm goes off, the Localists can’t tell time as we’re not allowed that privilege. Things like using clocks, seeing colours, sniffing perfumes and scents are big deals reserved only for the members of the Grey Area. We’ve never seen them but I hear they’re just like us. Anyways, everyone wakes up and goes about their different duties, another alarm goes off and we all have to report to the clinics for our routine brain check.
Each member of the dystopian has a membership chip installed in our heads right next to the ears, we are told it is for our protection and to ensure everyone is accounted for but my friend Tshola who cleans the Louvres in the clinic told us it’s a lot more than that. Kasiri who works at the saboteur told us they use it to listen to our conversations and record our thoughts, Tshola asked him if he learnt that from the inside of the one of the cows he had slaughtered; we all laughed.
There’s is a lot of unanswered questions, some persons look like they know but would rather not divulge, while a greater majority genuinely have no idea what is going on; there exist a list laid down rules which everyone is expected to follow without questions.
Two weeks ago I heard some older women talking about the ‘situation of things’ in the dystopian, Tshola’s older cousin was one of them. It was the same week I was reassigned to a different duty, I used to work in the pantry but I was recently moved to gardening, there’s hardly any explanations for the occurrence of things so I just went on with it. I was returning from the roster office when I heard a voice say ‘we’ve witnessed the blossoming, it means we have hope’ I was so confused but I kept moving, minding my business has always been my best suit.
The garden was a burst of colours and the flower beds were all made out of blue clay. It was beautiful to look at, I had never seen any colours at all since the inception of the dystopian. I stood at the entrance staring at the magic before me when a hand rested on my shoulder and said: ‘lots of flowers blossoming today, isn’t it beautiful? Before I could say anything he started telling me how lucky I was to be working here and to never share my experiences with anyone. He was a talk man with black hair, he was the second black haired person I’ve seen on the dystopian. He looked like a foreigner, maybe American.
At the close of duty time, the black haired man told me he would give me an assignment, I was curious. He said he would let me take one the flower pots to my chambers and I was to stay up without sleep to watch it blossom.
I asked him why and he said I looked like I could use some hope; things aren’t all bad, you’ll see.
I immediately remembered where’d I’d heard the word ‘blossom’ before and I became even more confused.
I wrapped the flower pot with a thick grey clothe and headed back to my chambers.
I didn’t watch the little flower blossom but it did blossom by the time I woke up. It was raining even heavier, the sound of the rain has successfully drown out the voices of the others, I lit my cigarette and weed, took a drag and imagined being out in the water as it carries me to little corner in my mind where everything feels calm and safe.