Secure (written August 2023)

It is raining for the first time in weeks. Late August and the skies have been filled with smoke for two weeks now. I’m unsure if the rain is mostly water or some form of acid-water hybrid from the polluted air. I saw a video the other day on my “People Are Watching” feed of someone’s front yard being pelted by tennis ball sized gelatinous blobs with the comments section full of warnings not to touch any of it until the Chemical Regard could identify the level of risk. If you could suspend belief it felt like a child’s imagination of rain filled with soap, bursting into larger and larger bubbles as it collected on the ground.

We hadn’t gotten acid rain in a couple of weeks but in those weeks the drought took hold of what vegetation has managed to survive this long. Mostly weeds and invasive species that consumed the native foliage, but we’ve found the hard way that it’s just as flammable. It felt useless to worry when environmentalists started talking about the potential risks, if it wasn’t highly flammable ground cover it was some other once in a lifetime probability of happening natural disaster.

Two years ago, after the first summer we’d had days under 110 degrees outside, an unpredictable, unprecedented storm pushed over our country and got caught in a cycle they called ‘The Circle of Terror’ offering a Russian roulette of surprise terror to each region on rotation. One week the north would have raging fires at the same time a flood hit the south and tornados in the east while a tsunami lambasted the coast in the west. Mix in a few other anomalies like hurricanes and earthquakes in places they’d never happen then put that on shuffle and that’s how the fall and winter that year went.

About the time of The Circle of Terror’s reign I couldn’t figure out the point anymore. All the life changes, and cutbacks, and sacrificing for one another didn’t seem to reduce pollution enough to return our world to some sort of balance. Personally, I’d given up even thinking about a possible solution and rather just cared to know how to not make it worse. Despite most people being on the same page, that we should keep it the same or work towards making things better it didn’t push the scale enough. 

A ping sounded on my VR work screen, standard issue nonsense, nothing too fancy. I liked to keep things average, in line and order, control over the things I could control. I’d only been sitting a few minutes, but the new sensors are rather touchy, making sure management knows within five minutes or less if you’re displaying behaviors deemed to reduce productivity. I figured the ping would belong to a message from management about my daydreaming about the climate. Instead, it was a social notification, specifically one of the types disabled while connected to a work hub, which scared me, I didn’t want to be blamed for turning my social notifications on and breaking policy when I am sure I didn’t.

Panic like prickly heat spread up my arms, both numb and tingly, my least favorite signs of anxiety taking over. I couldn’t afford to be docked for social notifications again, the last time it’d happened was when the policy had just gone into effect. I hadn’t realized there would be an actual punishment when they installed the tracking and my company had enrolled in the program to “increase employee attention, integrity, and efficiency” by some percentage or something. 

Some big wigs invested other’s arms and legs to sell the software to the government and supposedly want to make that back tenfold for their effort, at least that’s the anti-government talking point now. Regardless, the entirety of my paycheck is already spoken for, bills and paying back coworkers in the never-ending cycle of transferring the same $100 back and forth to avoid overdraft fees when the noncancellable autopay withdrawals wipe us out. I can’t afford to pay rent and be deducted for a social programming sidestep. 

I only opened the app to turn off my notifications and save my paycheck but then I noticed the “People Are Saying” feed. It’s normal for the most common work hour posts to be from corporations, the only people probably not being tracked by the social software other than those considered part of “the undesirables”; they already have deducted approvability scores, the people we don’t see on our feeds anyways. The posts are all from corporations as expected but they all say the same thing:

“They’re lying to you. We make less, work more, and have less freedom than our founders. Go outside now.”

I haven’t been outside in weeks, there’s no need to put on my layers, oxygen mask, and goggles if I don’t need to. The air hasn’t been breathable raw in at least five years. A lot of people still don’t wear masks, wanting everyone to know they’re contrary as their lungs reject the rancid air with heaving coughs every few minutes.

Wanting to see what it was like I had gone out about a year ago without a mask, no supply of oxygen to counteract the lack of oxygen in the actual air. I couldn’t last more than five minutes. The air had weight to it but a steaming, burning weight. Like campfire smoke you can’t see that still creeps into the back of your throat to singe your windpipe. It’s obviously much worse but few things before The Shift happened compare to life after it.

I make my way over to the window to see if anyone else has seen the messages and gone outside, and maybe what they’d find by doing so. The smog layer is so heavy today that I can’t see past the third window below my own all the way up on the twentieth floor. I try to squint my eyes into better focus to see if anyone in the buildings around my own has also pressed their face to the window, looking out like a turtle from their shell. There’s nothing, and no one. 

I can only see drawn metal curtains and in the windows with open curtains the only discernable thing is the glow of whatever tech they’re using in their own home. Since it’s working hours I’m not surprised that barely anyone has noticed the feed. I open my device again to see if anyone has left information on the social feeds about what could be going on. Nothing.

I should get back to work, I can hear the pinging in the background but I can’t imagine focusing on anything but this mystery until it’s solved. A few years ago I would have immediately gone outside without hesitation just to be a part of the action in the city. Now, I don’t feel like myself anymore in any social sense of the word. Now the idea of having a conversation with a stranger that doesn’t have an immediate background check approved profile that pops up on my goggle feed makes me nauseous with fear of danger. 

My hands have already broken out in an anxiety induced sweat and I can feel my socks dampening in my shoes with the same. My tongue itches and I can’t tell if I need to shit my pants or puke or both. I haven’t felt this level of emotion about anything happening in the real world since I don’t know when, I hadn’t noticed I’d stopped until just now. 

Screw it, I’m going outside. By my door my closet is double enforced to keep any thieves from taking my gear. SOME INFO ABOUT PUTTING ON GEAR.

I take a deep breath and put the final piece, my oxygenator, securely on my face. I close my eyes and pull the door back. The only time I open my door anymore is to get deliveries of my allocated necessities. I can see my neighbor two doors down, who I’ve never met or even seen, has their own delivery on their stoop. They must be new, most necessities are hot commodities and don’t last long even amongst neighbors.

Untitled Mini (Unknown Date)

Cotton candy pink and artificial raspberry blue starting to fill the sky, dancing together while the light fractures through the clouds, smoke rising into the air around me. My chin lifting without my command or conscious acknowledgement, the sky filling so quickly started to disrupt my view, if only I could become taller or higher to see over. I can feel that I am not meant to see this but that thought feels distant and deep, the ones on the surface about breathtaking beauty.

Elements with names I have never heard before mix together so beautifully I forgot why this is happening, the chemicals and the explosion now something separate from this view. I need to breath, I need to remember why—I suck in air that isn’t air at all. Charred oxygen and ash sucked into my throat and down into my lungs. The smoke is tangible inside of my body, dancing among the capillaries with brutal clarity of it’s purpose. I can feel my lungs screaming and wanting to separate what little oxygen is left in the air from this sedimentary like compound that is now floating visibly and otherwise.

Already flared nostrils automatically suck in scorching burn that instantly turns my previously mucus coated nostrils to desert dry wastelands, chemically damaged beyond use. My nose rejects the air along with my lungs, stomach seared with pain that doubles me over. I read about fibrous smoke in textbooks but what to do or how to survive doesn’t exist in my brain at the present. I’m here and I’m nowhere at the same time, observing myself and experiencing this all at once, I hope it isn’t a side effect of the gaseous explosion.

Nostrils and eyes now coated in grit of dead skin and chemical sediment they are of no use, eyes now clenching shut in attempts to protect them. Tears start streaming out of my closed eyelids, burning my damaged skin with the salinity. Now bent in half clutching at my organs that are trying to survive this assault of force, combustion, and body altering chemicals.

Even if I could use my eyes to take in another look of the sunset I can no longer open them and doubt with the heaviness of the air now that it would even be visible through this smog. I can imagine the pinks are now reds and oranges, ominous rather than soothing. Seeing them wouldn’t make a difference now, I can’t imagine caring about a sunset ever again.

Lack of oxygen or breathable air restricts my lungs, clawing at them like a demon crawling out of the pits of hell, knowing I need to stop myself from sucking in more but my automatic reactions trying to take over and keep me alive.