“Is this death?” asked the man full of burns.
There was a failure in the main generator which had caused an explosion which lead to eleven casualities and twenty four injured. The man was one of them. It was seemingly hell out there, and in the absence of the chief medical officer, it was only worse. The destruction of the main generator had resulted in the reduction of power by fourty five percent in a world where there was only the power for basic needs. The communications were destroyed by the explosion and even the medical equipment rarely work in the way it is supposed to be, due to the lack of sufficient power.
“I will die, won’t I? The only question is about what is taking death so long. I have thought about it throughout my life. I would have committed suicide if it was not a crime. There was never a point in life, for mine was full of pain. Forget the mental stress, but the physical side! I had abscess all over my body and each and every attempt to heal them has resulted in another problem. Science has failed me. The doctors have said that it doesn’t matter how many surgeries I undergo, it shall come back again. I have understood that it gets only worse with every surgery and time has acted as a catalyst to my pain, my life lost cause and now this. Death has been my expected saviour for a long time” he continued.
“No, this is not death” replied Christian. “Believe in God, for our Lord will save you. There is no death other than not able to reach paradise. There is no loss other than failing to become a saint. Please pray and believe. There is still chance”.
“Do you have any idea how much pain I am in right now? There was always the pain of the abscess, and it has taken from me my confidence and everything positive. It made me pessimistic. I kept myself away from everything, and I never had fun for the last fifteen years. I had to switch off my phone and run away to a world which had no human being around; sometimes it was my room and at other times, it was just a randomly chosen place where nobody could reach or an abode not that easy to find. My life is a collection of missed opportunities about which I lament every second of my life. It has burned me throughout, and now this burn which is slowly taking the life out of me. I have died in life throughout, and this is the eventual hell for me”.
“Do you really need to think about that now? Everybody has the highs and lows in their lives, and sometimes it is the latter that has the upper hand for a very long time”.
“It was the new fast food culture. There were negative health effects, and in my case, it was worse. There was no liquor, drugs or smoke, but this one was more than enough. Fast food chains might have had more money from me than anybody else. From the 2060s, the neo-augmentation process by those giants might have increased the quantity available for the same price, and has surely attracted so many more regular customers. But for me, it was more because of the fact that the options were less, and I was no risk taker. I went with the flow, but I lost myself in that powerful flow as I was weak, and was buried in everything bad. There was still no risk for obesity, and there was no cholestrol or diabetes. They could have stopped me. Why did they evade me? I wish there was a return to what I used to be, about eight or ten years ago. There are things I need to change, and there are things which I have to make right”.
“Forget all of them, and turn to God; you have this chance which not many had. Just turn your soul in the right direction and miracles shall happen, in this world or the other”.
“I had a dream, a few hours before this happened. I can’t say that I saw the dream, because I rather felt it. There were spiders, cockroaches and scorpions on my bed. There was a huge number of these insects and I fell from the bed. The spiders seemed to eat the rest and they got bigger. I felt that it was real, and even after regaining my senses, I could see those creatures. I waited for a long time for them to disappear; I washed my face and even tried pinching and hitting myself. But they wouldn’t go. Finally, due to the weariness, I decided to fall asleep on the chair. I still could not stop feeling the presence of the insects. When I finally woke up in the morning, there were none. Was this a sign? I could feel that I was sick in the morning. Or may be I am mentally unwell too”.
“Why do you bother? They are of no significance. Put your trust in God and close your eyes”.
He closed his eyes. He reminded Christian more of Count Ladislaus de Almásy from Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. He even has Herodotus’ Histories with him. He wished that the similarities ended there. But what had actually hit him was nothing other than the dream of the spider, the eight legged long thing which was the symbol of the Northern Bloc’s corporate group. He always gelt that it had made perfect sense for them to use that logo, as they also weave webs and catch their prey. Those were surely powerful and wide-spread webs, as not many are known to escape from the same.
To be continued…
Tennyson
The Divine Epic 