Life On the Other Side

For nearly two years, the government encouraged many companies to cease their operations or operate at only a fraction of their capacity to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus. With the reopening, Tracy suddenly wanted to travel, visit a restaurant, stay at a hotel, and do other fun stuff. Tracy experienced a “Rip Van Winkle” effect after sheltering in place for so long.

After her first airline flight into Las Vegas, Tracy stayed at a hotel with keyless entry to minimize the risk of catching the virus. This allowed her to use her cell phone to bypass the front desk and use her cell phone to open her hotel room.

Despite these restrictions, she felt like a free bird that had escaped her confined existence. Tracy felt conflicted as she wanted to live it up and make up for her prior social incarceration while fearing that doing too much could be risky.

On her first night at the hotel, Tracy ate at a popular restaurant and sipped multiple drinks at the bar. She soon realized that she had consumed too many drinks and stayed out a bit later than she had planned.

This prompted her to schedule her ride using a phone App. As she rode through some sketchy streets, she looked around and realized that people were walking around with a suspicious demeanor. It was a world that she had not seen in a while after several years of sheltering in place.

Even her driver sounded suspicious after he asked her if she was nervous being out so late after settling into the car for her 25 min ride. “Why would he ask me that,” Tracy muttered to herself. Still, Tracy told him that she was staying at a nice hotel and was looking forward to resting in her warm bed. Then she questioned why she would be dumb enough to provide this information to a stranger, even if he was her driver.

Upon her arrival, Tracy felt more comfortable after arriving safely at her hotel. There was nobody around as she nervously entered her hotel using her phone’s keyless app because her hotel locked its doors every night after 11:00 PM to protect its guests from intruders.

As she walked into the hotel, she encountered dead silence as most of the hotel guests were sound asleep. She used the elevator for safety reasons even though her room was on the second floor.

As the elevator door opened on the second floor, she walked towards her room situated about 1,000 feet away with her phone ready to open her door. As she approached her room, she activated her phone app to open the door, but instead of generating a green light that would open the door she got a red light. She nervously looked at her phone app, which said, “try again.” She placed her phone near the door again and got the same message!

Tracy’s heart started racing, “why is this happening?” she gasped. She tried several times and rebooted her phone to see if that would help.

Suddenly as she was frantically trying to open the door, someone tapped her shoulder and said, can I help? Of course not, I got this, she said. I am fine and don’t need any help. But as she turned around to face the alleged “Good Samaritan” her knees buckled after realizing that it was her driver.

Oh no, “Get away from me. Why are you in this hotel stalking me?” She tried her app one more time, and the app instructed her to insert her username and password. Tracy nervously did it and suddenly got three dreaded words flashing on her phone, “Reset Your Password.”

The person behind her smiled and said, “it sure looks like you will need my help after all! I have a key that will open your room. “After reaching into his pocket, a small aerosol can emerged. He then sprayed a fine mist into her face that caused her to become disoriented.

She woke up several hours later in an unknown location. “What is going on?” Tracy asked. “Nothing that can’t be easily reversed, you have been kidnapped, and you will regain your freedom after your ransom is paid. If no payment is received, you will travel to a country and work for a year to earn your freedom. The choice will be up to you and your family,” said the captor.

This was her worst nightmare. She slept for long hours after being heavily sedated by her captor. Sadly, her family said they could pay only half of the ransom demand of $100k. Yet her captor refused to compromise and indicated that his demands were non-negotiable.

After a month of haggling, her captor gave Tracy and her family three days to come up with the money or suffer the full consequences. As the day arrived, Tracy’s family raised their offer to $75k, but her captor did not relent.

Tracy was blindfolded and transported to an unknown location to begin her serfdom duty of 12 months. Her duties required taking care of two young children, doing the laundry, cleaning the house, and cooking meals for the family.

Tracy’s future was determined in a blink of an eye and precipitated by an unfortunate set of events. It could have been worse, but as Tracy admitted to herself, after two years of social incarceration, she traded one blissful evening of fun for one year of misery.

Not her best trade ever while acknowledging that “Life is often unpredictable and not always fair.”