COVID: A Nightmare

By Shahil Magar

Negev was out at the flaxen cobbled square in bleak autumn. At the centre of the square, a digital epigraph made up of stainless steel was right below the 40-feet high Gundam-like statue. The numbers kept rising exponentially. 

‘It is sad,’ he thought;  ‘I don’t feel sad.’

He turned around to go back when his back faced the inscribed words: “Cover your face at all times.”  He was wearing a vizard of transparent plastic.

The camera on the eyes of the Gundam kept vigil of the desolate square, except on Negev, whose movement was similar to that of a microbe on a microscope. Zooming in, the visual showed Negev Astrim walking out of the square with messy brown hairs and a pale long face with blue irises and red-threaded sclera. “Immune, 23 yrs, 6’0”, bio-hacker” displayed on top of his head. He represented an entire civilization with his black nylon hazmat jacket and a pair of trousers. 

I inject myself with chemicals but what I feel is superficial. A junkie with a plastic face! The absence of emotions is so palpable to me that it has become a presence. Why don’t they understand that the numbers are corks for emotions? Let them flow out. Billions of lives have been overshadowed by this huge computer atrocity. It looks as if it’s following you; it’s not merely an illusion. Also this damn vizard! I will die instead of having this thing plastered on my face all the time. 

After walking about 8 minutes along the same textured road, Negev reached a dusty old conjoined apartment and beeped Ozios Castrer, his neighbour, with his watch. The apartments were identical—a single floor, unpainted wooden walls, no porches, and a translucent white slide door. The rightmost of the two doors opened. Oizos was a chubby figure covered from head to toes and his audibly heaved through a gas mask. The holograms on their watches gestured in unison. Contrarily, his hologram represented a handsome stout man. 

They went silently through a hallway, oblivious of the reeking chlorine. Negev observed Ozios. A “prone to contamination, 35, 5’10’’, and a video-game streamer” hanged above the latex-covered blobbed head.

When they reached the musty office, the ultrathin glass computer on the redwood desk was displaying something. They sat down in front of the screen. A metallic rectangular coffin was being lifted by a robot that was dumping the heavy object into the grave with such smoothness and easiness that the pair were in awe. They couldn’t see Ozios’ mother. Conversely, you could see the process from different angles and vantage points. 

During all this, the robot was playing a humanesque voice: “Dear Lord, we are so grateful that you have made us all in your own image, giving us gifts and talents with which to serve you…Amen.” 

Negev looked at Ozios to see if he was crying.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” 

“Thank you for coming.” 

A puff of air through the gas mask followed. After the earth had been refurnished following the burial, the screen switched to the news: “Yet another Asian apprehended for spreading the plague allegedly in south eastern Europe. The locals have kidnapped  one, Dr. Xin Zhao when he went to some houses to treat patients there.” 

“That’s right. It should happen more often to those chinky bastards. They are the ones who started it,” said Ozios excitedly.

“You shouldn’t say that.”

“That’s what I should do. I am a streamer. I comment on things.”

“No, you don’t. You just spew conspiracy theories and defame the Asians.”

“Piss off, you work for a libtard government and advise me about what I can’t do on the day my mother died. Get the f- out, you are an orphan! What the hell do you know?” Ozios pointed him out.

Negev had been struck with a spear of cold ice in his heart freezing his chest. It was ensued by the raging heat of his brain. His angry lion-like expression terrified Ozios for a moment. He got up and left without speaking. He reached his apartment next door. He entered his study which was full of equipments and boxes, and sat on the ground. He couldn’t process his feelings: rage or dejection, revenge or forgiveness? He stood up to ask the computer. The computer, measuring his hormone levels, produced an illuminating image. His mother was in a bright white robe in a hospital bed. She looked eerie just like him. He saw her natural bright face devoid of any mask or plastic tubes. She was pure and evocative. She was angelically speaking in a soothing voice: “Honey, I am sorry that you are alone. You weren’t supposed to be like this. I am always watching you. Always be with you. You are special. Help others and make your mama proud.” 

He was hypnotised in an array of emotions he had never felt before. The existing grief turned into love. The transformation made him enlightened. Negev began to write in his journal:

Ozios is a dumb, indoctrinated waste of mass that believes everything should be mechanized. Everything is and should be taken care of by a machine. The disease, the climate change, education system, science, ethical dilemmas, relationship decisions, religions suitable to your personality, diplomacy and war, career paths, etc. You could ask anything to the AI and it would give you a perfect answer supported by the data collected through quadrillions of surveys. Every consequence is predetermined. You need not think. You could have your life map in front of you with just a couple of questions answered. That is why Ozios is a streamer; he doesn’t know anything other than playing video games and politicking. He is a non-essential life form. Just a gas mask atop some flesh. He hasn’t felt lucid emotions. I must help him.

It was 5:00 pm. Negev went to the next door putting on the curviest drawn smile. He beeped him. Ozios came out with a resentful and apologetic face. 

“Sorry about that earlier. I was just sad from my mother’s death.”

Yeah, the mother you have never visited. Exhaling lies.

“No worries at all. I just took this pill I have worked on. My whole anger receded.”

Negev’s tone and pitch almost resonated with Siri but Ozios didn’t notice. 

“I don’t know. What if the government finds out?” 

 “Trust me. They don’t know. It’s an independent project.”

“Ah, what do I have to lose? Pretty much nothing.”

They went to his laboratory room which resembled a garage from the past. Ozios was bewildered by the fancy tool-board, dusty shutter and the clean olive-green metal desk. The room looked as if it had just been opened for him. He sat in the floating chair that was in the exact middle, after being directed by the hand gestures of Negev. The bio-hacker handed him a bright red-blue pill. Ozios swallowed it instantly. He felt a surge in adrenaline and fully believed that he had become strong. He bade farewell to Negev with gratitude. Negev smirked, “No, I am thankful to you.” 

Negev went into his office, poured some water into his glass cup from a bottle and sprinkled some brown pungent dust. He settled down in his armchair smelling the sweet coffee with a grim smile and switched the screen to the cafeteria. At 6 pm, Ozios was squeezing himself in the line for the pill. “Ready to infect,%%,##” was displaying over his head. The closest you could get to a person physically was at this moment. It was basically a riot. The pill lowered one’s ghrelin level and increased dopamine and serotonin. It was also updated with counters to new viruses as well. Every townsperson arranged in lines. 

Negev saw Ozios right in the epicenter of the whole scene.   

Negev signaled to the hologram and the pill bisected. The virus blipped a very high frequency sound, not traceable to human ears. Alongside, the computer played Lacrimosa by Mozart. Ozios removed his gas mask suddenly and portrayed utmost terror and expression of fright on his round face full of zits and lumps. He then turned 180 degrees frantically and snatched the vizard of the woman right from her face, almost tearing her long nose. The woman unbeknown to the pain instantly did the same to her successor. The cycle continued resembling an undulating centipede. Ozios, in his true form, turned back and repeated the same procedure to his predecessor as well. He and everyone present there now shared the mutual ideology with Negev. The police bots from every department tried to intervene but they were wirelessly turned off in their tracks. Water cannon and tear gas were thrown at the scene but the chaos couldn’t be contained. It spread like a wildfire.

Negev was waltzing in air with his eyes closed, back in his cozy office, over the appalling scene in the rhythm of the music. There was calmness in the way he moved—not the one before the storm but the one during the storm. He was the composer of this symphony. The orchestra had begun.

Finally, finally! The climax of my life. I don’t care if I am killed by the police or by the virus. I will feel the emotions I am bereaved of. I can now die peacefully with satisfaction. Ozios, my friend and neighbor, you have done humanity a favor: plunging me into the dark so I can see light. Cleaning my gritty vizard to see my crystal clear goals. 

Negev beheld his creation. He had seen the expression of emotions more clearly than ever. Beautiful naked faces tearing, screaming, spewing blood through nostrils, coughing out chyme. People falling from the roofs shouting, cutting off their nose to numb the smell of ammonia. Bile and blood on the streets. Sirens going off. Torn masks and clothes flying off the bodies. Buildings imploding with fire and shrapnel. Derailed trains submerging into the oil-spilled ocean. There was pure despair, pestilence, grief and the utmost mayhem. Purity in actions. No layers; no deception.

Negev had removed his vizard. Water came to his eyes. At last.

[Shahil Magar is a twelfth-grader at St. Xavier’s College, Maitighar, Kathmnadu]