A short novella- Part 1 of 5
Long story short, this is a five part series about a girl rediscovering her love for food and revolution in a dystopian world…
Part 1
Her monthly food prescription was due to be filled but she had had enough.
She hadn’t been able to taste anything anyway- there were sixty pills she had to take in a month and they didn’t taste palatable.
Her monthly assessment was due too and that was what was making her more anxious.
They would find out soon. When they do, she would be dead meat.
It was her new normal. Not just hers, but for everyone she knew.
The reckoning they called it. A decade of this already and there was no way out.
So, much of it she couldn’t remember. But she remembered hunger- the stinging pain from not eating for days. Some days the smell of bomb residue, burned flesh and blood took her appetite away but her hunger, nestled permanently within her belly, remained. Hunger remained her only constant.
She stole, her petite frame making it easy for her to snoop and snatch. She remembered stealing from dead children and dying adults- their eyes open which she would close respectfully. She remembered the taste of bread- the yeasty aftertaste that had to be diluted with drain water so you don’t choke from eating quickly.
A click brought her back in the present, in the spartan chamber draped in white. The establishment was new. Every unit had one centre like this, for now. There were enthusiastic planning around creating more as the repopulation efforts yielded results. The facility was also responsible for it.
The centre was nothing like the hospitals she once knew- no rows of chairs at the entrance, no sea of people waiting or chatting while their numbers came up, no receptionists. No vending machines at the corners, no open corridors. The entrance was heavily guarded, with automatic machine guns placed like water sprinklers. The top floor of the building was cordoned off, she knew the guns were placed there too, armed and ready for fire in the face of even the slightest unwarranted movement.
There at the entrance, the patients queued up in a single line, 6 ft apart as they were called, their identity cards raised. They were thoroughly checked and their fingerprints and retinas were scanned. You had to come alone, on your designated day. Alone being the operative word.
The faceless figures swept past her as always, with their trays and toolboxes.
The droid did a cheek swab, ran the scan and she closed her eyes in anticipation of the pinch. She’d been assigned a new droid this time, the previous one had been a constant for a long while, and this added to the dread.
The measurements were key to people’s lives in the new normal. It gave the regime all information about the subjects in the new normal- their vital stats, their bloodwork, their ancestry, their last cycle, their reproductive health status, their sexual history, their thoughts- everything.
They would know if you were taking the prescribed pills. They would also know if you were eating what you weren’t supposed to.
And she had been eating what she wasn’t supposed to. She was eating pre -war food, cuisine would be the right word as she had been eating a little of everything, courtesy the culinary antiquata.
A cup of a medicinal herbal tea was all that you needed to erase any evidence of the food in your stomach. She had done that obviously, but she was still queasy. Her heartbeat was up, the droid had noticed it, but there was no acknowledgement.
She breathed with her belly, deeply and shakingly. A remnant from her previous life- an essential part of her pre-presentation routine.
The scan was over in a minute, but it felt even sooner than that. The droid was efficient and even offered her a smile of encouragement after examining her results. She thanked in sighs of relief, then quickly collected herself. The pills ripped you off of any excess emotions- only those that helped you reach and sustain fertility.
She threw a cursory smile and left with butterflies in her belly. The tea had worked. She could hardly contain her excitement. Sia and Sal would be elated to hear this. But calling them now would be risky.
She resolved to wait till the next meeting……
Fingers in symphony 