Lungs, Heart, Fever..

Lungs, heart, fever…

All that I am and all I am worth hangs around my neck. I have no identity, no name, I am just known by what useful organ pumps through my body. I am no longer seen as a human being, just a heart. Gone are the days of Laura’s, Harry’s, Susan’s or Bennett’s. In truth the latter is not much of a loss, I always found the name Bennett to be too uppity for my taste. It always brought to mind images of sun streaked hair, turned up collars and fancy cars bought for spoiled offspring who would never appreciate it.

All we are now are a collection of body parts, waiting to either be ravaged by the disease that all but wiped out man on the earth. Or taken, to be used as spare parts for the elite, those who’s status and pre plague fortunes bought them a ticket to the above. Safe from the ravages of the disease or the consequences of their “cure”, they live out their lives filled with the tissues, organs and matter from what was once the Laura, Harry, Susan and Bennett’s of this long forgotten and now forsaken world.

As I look out on the ravaged field, filled with scattered remnants of days long past, I remember how it used to be and felt a sudden overwhelming wave of sadness for what was, or maybe more like how things appeared. Alarms at six, the morning coffee and long commute to work, the greasy convenience lunches and drinks with friends at the end of a long day. But like I said it was just how it appeared on the surface. In reality, my life was much darker, punctuated by a series of frustrations and feelings of futility. Once upon a time I was a psychologist, specializing in high risk cases. Every day I heard tales of the most horrendous acts coming from the mouths of citizens. Some cried, some shied away and withdrew, but the worst were the ones that spoke their awful truth in a matter of fact voice, because to them, it was a matter of fact. This was their lives and they knew nothing more, those were the ones that broke my heart and made my spirit ache. It was my job to give these citizens a safe place to feel and be heard, to help them heal. I watched time and again as these innocents retreated into themselves, wishing above all else to be able to offer their troubled minds some peace. There were days when I felt completely helpless…then everything changed.

How it all changed so fast and why didn’t we do something sooner I will never understand? The signs were all there, we just felt it too inconvenient to pay attention. Ignorance is bliss; I remember they used to say. Well now we are paying for that bliss, at least some of us are, with our lives, such as they are.

It started quietly, the disease started with a slight cough; no one thought anything of it. Then, within days the cough worsened, causing blood vessels to burst with the force and blood to be expelled with every painful spasm. If your lungs survived the cough you progressed to the second stage which -attacked your heart. Young vibrant citizens became feeble and unable to exert even the smallest of effort, even the effort of eating became too much and many starved to death with a full pantry of food within a few feet of them. Finally, if you survived the cough and the weakened heart you were met with the final stage of the disease, the fever. This was no ordinary fever, this fever quite literally was like being cooked from the inside, destroying organs. It caused the brain to swell and many citizens went mad from the sheer force of the relentless heat ravaging their bodies. Death was almost seen as a beautiful release to these citizens. But not all of us were released, some of us survived only to subjected to the next horror that was our fate. We were the chosen; we were “the Cure”.

Throughout history there has always been the elite, those few who saw themselves as above the rest of the general population. Those with money, power and influence that had to do little more than snap their fingers and flash some money to have the world at their feet. Now that was quite literal. When the plague started most citizens were completely unaware it was happening until it was too late and the disease had gripped them. However, a few thousand elite were somehow alerted and evacuated to cities suspended in the air, safe for the most part from the disease and the citizens they always held in such contempt. To them it seemed a just end to filthy masses that they deemed beneath them. But not every elite was so lucky and escaped the disease entirely, even their ivory towers were occasionally stained with the blood they expelled with the cough gripped them. What were they to do? They needed healthy organs to replace the damaged ones for the citizens of the new pristine city. Lucky for them the down below dwellers were full of parts, inconveniently located as they were within the very much living bodies of its citizens.

The below dwellers were slowly systematically sorted and tagged according to viable organs left within their pitiful bodies. Each citizen was tagged with a microchip into the base of their skull and that microchip was linked to a locket each citizen was now required to wear by law. If the locket was removed a shock was delivered to the base of the brain and if not replaced within 30 seconds, would result in death. We had become the cattle to the above dwellers, only in place of the plastic clip through our ear, we wore a locket in the shape of an anatomical lung or heart or both, depending on which organ was more viable.

The above dwellers were not completely without heart however, at least in their eyes. The below dwellers were living in poverty, the disease effectively wiping out the civilization that maintained and cared for it. So, they gave the below dwellers a choice. Choose who lives and who dies. Offer up your friends and family to save yourself. In exchange you were given food, clothing and supplies to sustain your life for a little longer, and a guaranteed 6 month exemption from the organ harvest. As a final bonus your consciousness was loaded into the main data base. So your thoughts at least would live on. It was presented as a gift from the above dwellers but really it was a necessity. By uploading our minds they had the tools to rebuild. It was almost worse than the disease to watch families ripped apart by this cruel deal. Mothers, fathers, husbands wives and friends all being offered up to the above dwellers in desperation, most times the offering went willingly, performing this one last selfless act to save a loved one.

This is my life now, and I embrace it. These are my thoughts as I take those final steps up the plank to the waiting airship. The moment before I cross the threshold I look back to see my husband holding our beautiful daughter tightly in his arms as she cries for me. They will have another 6 months and I am giving them a chance to survive. My mind and thoughts will live forever, just in a synthetic universe.

All that I have and all that I am hangs around my neck in that shape of an anatomical heart shaped locket.

Written by Robin Zitaruk