Remember

Did it even happen? What went wrong? I should have prepared more.

These were the questions going through everyone's head.

It happened two years ago, an unknown virus came to our country.

The world shut down, people in fear started locking themselves in and the world out. Businesses closed, cities became deserted, and jobs were lost.

Caos became the norm.

We had little to no advocates of those with low income, the unemployed, or the homeless, our world became a dark place. Even darker than it has ever been before. If only we had known the other horrors going on beneath the virus.

In past disasters, the news and media would let everyone know. "Freedom of speech" The paper, television, even the word on the street would let you know of anything and everything that was happening not only in our country but worldwide.

But as time passed and more corrupt people started buying their way into positions of power the news and media started to become censored, filtered, and watched. Instead of talking about the secret wars going on under our noses, we were told to worry about how to get our kids to school on time or planning the right holiday menu to please everyone.

Now people are wondering where they are going to get their next meal, wondering how they will afford even the cost of traveling to work if they're lucky enough to be employed.

People have turned against each other, become selfish, you can't trust anybody.

The virus came killing hundreds of thousands of people. It still is, we've all just gotten used to it. We've gotten so used to hearing about death it doesn't even affect our children anymore. If you work you risk getting infected and bringing it home to your family. Your family, the only ones you feel you can trust anymore. But you have to. You have to work otherwise you're damned.

The fear on the streets is crippling, people don't feel safe anymore. There have been riots and uprisings, buildings have been burned to the ground, cars stolen or vandalized, kidnappings, killings, and once-bustling cities are now deserted ghost towns, even the pigeons have left.

People are angry with our people in power, our governments, our rulers. They feel we've done nothing to try and stop the spread. Some even feel we created it.

My father is in our government. He doesn't tell me anymore about how his day was, he hasn't smiled since the virus came. The virus took my mother, she was one of the first.

We were out of the country on holiday when we found out about the virus that had come to our country, my father was called back to the capital, immediately we traveled home. It wasn't long after that my mother became sick and passed only a few days later. Everything she had or might have touched was instantly taken away. I was quarantined in my room for a fortnight, not seeing my father or anyone for two weeks. I was alone. Alone with my only remaining connection to my mother. A locket she had given me for my 10th birthday.

It was a heart-shaped locket with our pictures inside. On one half were my mother and father smiling at the camera. On the other was me smiling along with them with my hand in the air waving at the camera. Unknowing about the darkness that would descend upon our earth in 8 short years.

It feels like centuries since that picture was taken, centuries since my mother died.

Things are very different now, I haven't seen anybody I used to. Schoolmates and friends have all disappeared. The family I have seen or talked to only through technology. I live in the capital building with my father. He works all day in his office while I study university online.

I, like many of my peers, have been drafted into the war of medicine. We have to fight, we have no other choice. Our medicinal soldiers need recruits.

I want to fight. I want to fight in memory of those who like my mother needed somebody fighting for them. To possibly prevent some other little girl from growing up without her mother. To help provide some rays of light in the dark world in which we live.

I write this record now as I start my journey to defeat this evil.

I write so we will never forget those whose lives have been taken so cruelly from us. Those who have dedicated their lives to saving others and losing them in the process. Those who have taken this opportunity to grow or those who have descended to an even darker place.

But most importantly to never forget the days before this dystopia we now live in.

To remember playing in the schoolyard with friends or going on holiday with your family. To remember the loved ones you saw daily without the overpowering thought of giving or receiving the virus.

To remember my mother and the days my father smiled.

To remember the friends I've all but forgotten.

To remember our world without the virus.