Cascading Joy

It was a long day in the heavy rain, but it was my purpose. Hauling water from the stream that was over a kilometer away from the shelter was my job. When I look back over my fifty-three years I can’t remember when I didn’t have a job that didn’t involve water. As a child I watered the horses and then as a teenager I was a lifeguard at an amusement park, in college I watered the plants at a garden center, and finally I worked in IT for a bottled water company. Until three years ago all those jobs were hard work, but they were never lonely or desperate work. Now everything is lonely and desperate.

The few of us who had been sent to the island when the eradication of intelligence and invention had started all had lonely and desperate lives. Most of us did not speak the same language. We had very little knowledge of any survival skills. We certainly were not a group of people that you would have seen as the save the world types.

Our first days were spent in a cloud of confusion and despair as communication was limited and we were absorbing our new reality. Oddly “they” had provided us with some basics like clean water, shelter, and fire but it was of no comfort. From day one it was as if any joy had been stripped away and there would be nothing to look forward to except the next minute and the next breath. It felt like we were being held under water until our lungs were going to explode and then we were allowed only the shallowest breath.

I say “they” provided us the basics, but I don’t know who “they” are. I don’t even know how we all got here or when. Marking the days, it has been three years, but I am getting the sense that it is not real time. We have established a basic language and have taken on our daily tasks. No longer do we get weekends off, go on holiday, celebrate birthdays or anniversaries. We just exist. I have memories that become more like murky water every day. Sometimes a chill washes over me and I remember my dog playing in the pool, but it just causes my breath to catch. It is not a part of this reality.

Memories for us are like reading a clinical textbook. I know about my past water jobs because I read about them. In the shelter we found a book for each of us in our own language. My book was bound in deep azure cloth that was covered in waves. In some ways it was a story of where I had come from and partly it was an instruction manual. Reading it was a task that pieced together the fragments of memories I had like building a small life raft. The book offered me a thin tether to the shore of my sanity.

The main instruction in the book was for me to oversee water procurement and consumption. There was a map to the stream and directions for water containment. The clearest instruction was that I was only to ever work with water. I was never to do any other job or there would be severe consequences. All of us received our orders from our books. Some were in charge of fire and some were in charge of food, and some were in charge of digging. But, no one was allowed to do anything other than their assignment. For me that was easy. I am not naturally the helpful type. Mostly I just wanted to do what I had to because I had no heart for anything else.

The ones who were helpers by nature really struggled with only doing their job. The same went for the ones that thought they could do someone else’s job better. But punishment for going outside of your assigned job was swift and terminal.

On a particularly hot and dry day one of the firekeepers, a helper by nature, tried to help with water collection. They went to the stream and collected a jug of water and brought it back to the shelter. You could see a tiny bit of joy creep into their face as they had helped with something other than their assignment. Joy was not allowed, and the punishment was harsh. You see, they shared the jug of water with another firekeeper, but the water had turned to acid. We silently watched as they drank from the jug and they were both burned from within. Death seemed to be their preference, but it was not their fate. Although they suffered searing pain it faded quickly. Now they suffered because they could no longer speak. The message was clear. We were not allowed to feel any joy or share in joy with anyone else. That was completely forbidden.

We lived joylessly with no desire to create art or to invent things to better our lives. Other than our individual books there was nothing to learn and no stories to tell. We had no love for one another and no desire for anyone either. This was an unrelenting life but in the absence of all of that had made us human there was no longer any pain.

How long had we really been existing like this? Did I lose my heart for life after we got here or before? Why was I suddenly thinking about this and asking these things? I had just drawn water and drank from the highest part of the stream, and I had this prickling sensation. It was like sharp raindrops all over my skin. For the first time since coming to the island I was shaking with fear. Memories were flooding in and I was drowning in my own tears. I remembered the smell of the horses at the water trough as they drank deeply after a long ride. There was the memory of the child coughing up the pool water after I saved them from drowning. I was at the garden center watering the prize-winning roses. At the bottled water company my team invented a way to distribute clean water freely to the most remote places.

Trembling I peered into the jug of water I had just drawn. There was a heart shaped locket. I opened the locket and found a tightly folded paper. It read:

Purpose served

Heart restored

Return

Ignorant of this test

As I sit in front of my computer and see the images of the joy that clean water provides, I can’t help but shiver. I am washed over with a chill that seems to threaten the warmth of my heart. I wonder if it is time to change jobs and get out of the water business altogether?