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I write this to you, because maybe you too will doubt yourself like
I did.
I write this in the hopes that you are living in a reality where your
future is safe, despite the relentless attempts to tear it down. I leave
you with my experiences and my life, because maybe you can
distinguish what’s black and what’s white from the world I live in
that is tainted by a hazy grey.
Before I continue though, may I ask you a question? A simple
hypothetical situation. Say I presented to you a switch, and I told
you that if you pulled the switch, half the population of the world
would die immediately. Would you pull the switch?
If I look, outside the window is a towering scape built of glass and
steel, held together by faith and ignorance. Ignorance is bliss, and
perhaps that’s true because peace has settled. War is non-existent,
poverty has been eradicated and old fears of a dying environment
are gone. I suppose this era, in the pure and righteous Republic of
Elysium, could almost be considered a paradise. Almost.
In this city of glass, we often forget how only fifty years ago
humanity was on the brink of annihilation. The future that occurred
was the version everybody denied, because truthfully, nobody
wanted to believe it could happen. But it did, and denial couldn’t
hold it back. The morning sky was technicoloured: a different shade
of poison every morning. Burning rain streamed down the cracked
tarmac like the Earth’s veins, swirling with bile, blood and sewage.
Wheezing breaths pulled at constricted lungs and bony fingers
desperately clawed at their flesh trying to reach the blazing fire in
their veins. Pale bodies spilled out of the congested hospitals,
clogging doorways and alleys, disease pulling their skin taut and
casting delusions in their wide, yellow eyes. Another week and those
yellow eyes would be staring blankly at the ceiling, at where the stars
might have been. The living became the dead, and the dead looked
so peaceful in their sleep that many others simply lay down beside
them and never rose again.
They called it the Purge and it reigned over the Earth for years,
striding relentlessly through cities and stretching its shadows into
the furthest recesses of the country. Nobody knew where it came
from, how it started or why. Some people blamed the crumbling
environment, others blamed nuclear war or an uncontrolled
experiment. Many blamed fate or a greater power who sought to
The Mortal
State
Gillian Lim
11