The city feels dead. I have lived here my entire life and I never thought I would be able to sit outside and not see a person for so long, see only a handful of people in a few hours of sitting outside. I have walked an entire street's length without passing another soul.
I have been too tied up in the hospital to notice how the people, the lifeblood of this city, have been ebbing away. At the hospital, there is always a crowd but even that is different compared to before. The hospital used to be bustling with life even on less busy days. Now, even though there are always hordes of patients, the atmosphere is stagnant. I guess that's because previously, people used to go to the hospital to live. Now, they come there to die. Previously we used to remedy all sorts of ailments. Now, we prescribe only one cure to all, whether they be healthy or unwell.
The first wave happened in the 21st century, when I was young. I have to dig in the furthest reaches of my mind to recollect how through a child's eyes I had seen a city rife with poverty. The indicators of a country where inequality was at an all time high could be seen all around as the unemployed and the homeless clamored on the streets. Then, all of them were caught, rounded up like stray dogs and forced to spend the rest of their lives in a Virtual Reality.
I have a unique experience of having seen one of the old fashioned technologies the generations before us used for entertainment: movies. In these "movies" whenever they portrayed a character being fully immersed in a Virtual Reality, where they get no more input from the real world, they have a body that they can completely control in the new, virtual world. How archaic! In the new world, we consume content by having feelings directly fed to us, hormones released directly in our body, knowledge coming not with the remembrance of having experienced but with the aftertaste of the brain being heavier with data. IT is much more efficient, I daresay.
But even in our new time with technology far more advanced, there is something we have in common with the bygone era which is the precept that it is cruel to force someone to live their entire life in VR. At least the 24/7 VRs of the 22nd century are more humane. In the 21st century, the solution of eradicating poverty by getting rid of the poor was nothing short of torturing the less fortunate by trapping their brains forever in a hallucinogenic, feverish prison just for daring to not have enough wealth. But, no one spoke out.
No one missed them. No one mourned them. People are so easily replaced with machines.
While one could step into their reality to check on them, they had no relatives in the real world to see how they were doing. They may be suffering but no one in the real world cared to speak out for them, no one wanted to listen to the horror stories, no one tried to improve their conditions.
I came of age in a world where the cities were shrinking up. I studied to become a doctor in a time when the most common practice was doing procedures to send people into a VR. I earned my degree in a place where no one any longer ventured out of the cities.
Now, it is a new century and I am an old woman. I sit here after the first real break I've had in over a month as the third wave has started to slow down. I will die out here in the real world while my children will most likely transfer into a VR. Most of my family already has. There are going to be whole generations of children born without a mother's womb and cadged in the VR.
I gaze upon the blue sky where some divine artist has painted textures of white. The sky slowly turns orange and my throat chokes up. My breathing becomes heavier and I have to look away as my vision blurs. Meela, My daughter! I wish I could have saved you. I wish I had done something. Now we're all going to die!
I hear a long, animal scream so alien that I cannot believe it has emerged from my throat. If we had just saved the poor people from being rounded up back then, then maybe we could have saved ourselves now. No one thought that we would be the ones who would be later forced to give up our lives in the same way. What is happening now is divine retribution. It is retribution on all the children that dared to be born in the cursed wombs of us sinners.
I hurriedly gather myself up and stop my tears.
"It is all right," I repeat the lie, "This is not death. Our body is still alive and it is just our mind that goes to a better place."
The tip of the sun leaves the horizon. I get up. I have to get back to the hospital.
Aarav
The doctor goes over the list of remaining patients for the day.
Anish
Faizal
Agastya
Devi
Noor
Sanvi
Her eyes that are still red from crying bug her so she stops for a moment to put in some eye drops. Then she continues.
Vihan
Rohan
Dhruv
Aarav
Her eyes pause at the name of this famous personality as she contemplates the irony that this activist, such a vehement opposer of VRs has been brought down to his knees and will now have to do the one thing he hates most: live in a VR. A sigh escapes her - soft, weary, laced with unspoken thoughts. She wonders if he will resist until the last possible moment or surrender quietly, worn down by the inevitability of it all. She hopes defiantly for a moment that somehow he will find a way. Then she immediately shakes it off. There is no room for sentimentality now. The world moves forward, whether willingly or not. She resumes going over the list.
Advika
Riya
Anaya...