The Purification Locket

Dear Diary…

Today was a great day, I cycled through the local market on my way to work with a smile on my face and...

…Have you noticed that in the movies, the End of the World is always dramatic…environmental disaster, alien invasion, zombies, time travelling killers, destruction at the hands of God. You can choose your favourite apocalypse but the underlying formula is the same…huge cataclysmic event followed by the collapse of society, billions dead and the world left in ruins.

When the apocalypse did happen, it was quick, quiet and to be completely honest with you… it was uninspiring…the dice roll of our demise were said to have been rolled in 2022 but I personally believe that the doomsday clock had begun ticking when humankind came into existence, it just took billions of years to count down until finally the apocalypse occurred in the winter of 2024.

Between 2022 to 2024, the world endured two years of complete chaos. Climate change, food shortages, fuel crisis, animal extinctions, war…the news was dominated by events and acts of humankind that only grew worse with each passing day. Faith in the government was dwindling as they kept failing to deliver on their promises of creating a safer and greener world, a new prime minister seemed to be elected every two weeks as no one wanted to try to reign in the charging horses that were pulling us closer to the end. The vanishing of the royal family was the first sign that the collapse of society was imminent. A proud and strong monarchy that had endured for hundreds of years, gone without a trace overnight. Riots began breaking out across the country as the desperate population began scavenging for supplies and weapons, friends became enemies, families turned on each other and the death count spiked as the laws of justice fell.

London collapsed in early 2023, the financial district was the first to go as money had become obsolete back in 2022. The only currency now was violence or the trading of supplies and weapons. Gang warfare erupted on a titanic scale as the districts were carved up amongst them and then fought over. Guerrilla tactics were employed in attempts to eradicate each other, DIY car bombs, landmines, rocket launchers and flamethrowers seemed to be the choice of weapons in the gang’s arsenals as the bloodshed continue on the streets.

The Underground Inferno was a particular achievement of urban warfare. In an attempt to weaken The Bromley Barrows Gang, a central line train had been packed with enough home grown explosives, when it detonated it achieved three things…The first was setting off a fireball that cascaded throughout the underground and incinerated anything and anyone in the tunnels leaving behind only skeletons that had become fused in whatever position their previous owner had left this mortal realm in…The second was causing the streets above to crack wide open from the force of the eruption as manhole covers were blown skywards that caused anyone out in the open to run for shelter unless they wanted to play a game of chicken with the steel covers that were crashing back down again. The manhole covers were affectionately called The Manhole Bells of St Paul’s afterwards as the cascading ringing as the covers hit the street again had mimicked the ringing of St Paul’s bell…The third was completely eradicating The Bromley Barrows Gang who had made their base of operations in St Paul’s station. When restoration had begun in the station in May 2027, they were still finding pieces of skeletons around the wreckage in October as the force of the explosion had scattered them in all directions including one gang member’s remains that had been blown 4 feet deep into a nearby wall.

2023 remained fairly constant in terms of the now daily violence that plagued the country, communication with the rest of the world had stopped so there was no way of knowing if the rest of the world had turned on themselves or decided to finally push that Big Red Button to nuke their enemies into oblivion as the ashes of a nuclear winter settled on their empty husks…

Now I know this sounds like that huge cataclysmic event that kick starts the Apocalypse party bus rolling but the final death bell of humanity never rang out. Nope, instead it arrived silently one day in winter 2024. The day has started like any other, wake up hungry, pack your belongings if you were lucky enough to have not had them robbed during the night, check your weapons and move on to try and survive another day. The only difference to this day was it became known as Purification Day Zero…This was the day that the lockets were dispersed.

They fell from the sky, glinting like crystalline droplets of rain, the only difference being that rain only has one trajectory, cloud to ground and no deviation. The lockets on the other weren’t moving towards the ground, they were heading towards us. The lockets had been designed to seek out humans to attach to in order to begin The Purification Process. This is the huge cataclysmic event I mentioned earlier by the way. There was no giant asteroid plummeting towards earth, no archangels descending from heaven to take away the righteous to paradise, no subterranean species rising from below the surface to claim the world back…

There was simply nothing dramatic at all about it. As the lockets found a target, it would come to rest of that person’s chest, the heart shaped design pulsing with a red light that got quicker before turning fully red. I remember the quick piercing sensation that followed as the metallic spike reached my heart and implanted itself deeply into it, surprisingly not that painful I must say. Even as the small cerebral connection tendrils snaked their way up my veins to latch their hooks into the soft tissue of my brain, it still was not that bad, a weird sensation indeed but not painful. What was weird was the overwhelming sense of happiness that flooded my being, it was indeed as if my body was being purified of all negativity, I have never taken drugs but I can only describe this feeling as addict who gets their next fix.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not shake this happiness now infecting my body, my face now had a smile etched onto it that refused to yield. Whatever this locket was, it was clear that it had been designed to provided the host with an unending sense of euphoria. The Apocalypse had arrived, claimed its victims and society was changed forever, it just wouldn’t become obvious until years later. Unlike the conventional End of the World scenarios I mentioned earlier…this one had come swiftly and silently.

All around, I could see the lockets finding their hosts and infusing themselves into a primitive machine/human hybrid. I could see the happiness taking over them, their eyes widening as all negativity was purged from them, the smile slowly taking shape on their faces as we all stood rooted to the spot as if we were figures on a game board waiting to be moved by the players. The now common sounds of gunfire and explosions soon started to fade as the downpour of the lockets moved away from us, soon all that was left was silence….

The next few years were somewhat of a blur, we moved mechanically, our actions guided by an unseen hand. We began rebuilding London first, moving with a hive mind mentality, always aware of each other’s action yet never speaking a word, just smiling happily while offering pleasant compliments at everyone around us. It took about 15 months to clean up the wreckage from the gang warfare that had ravaged the city. Areas of farmland had been cultivated on the outskirts of the city, where crops where being grown to feed the hive workers and to begin stock piling food for the winter months. The work was hard but we were happy, always happy, no matter how tired or sore our bodies got, happy and smiling, never thinking a negative thought…just happy.

By 2028, society had clawed its way back from the cliff of extinction, natural species had started to grow in numbers and pollution levels had started to decline as methods of petrol based transport had been forgotten in favour of cycling or walking. Not that all transport had been scrapped however, trains were still used for cross country journeys but were now limited to 2 trips a day. Money was still obsolete, everything was considered equal now, we were all one big happy society, wake up smiling, go about your day smiling, head home smiling, go to sleep smiling…just keep smiling and thinking happy thoughts…I must admit every now and then I would catch sight of those heart shaped lockets and I could only think about how happy I was that they fused themselves into us because that’s all I could think, nothing but happiness all the time!

You know what, I don’t have much time left so I’ll skip to the main point of this entry, every 18 months, the lockets need to be recharged, so for one hour a day, we are made to sit at a desk in our homes as the locket connects to the charging station and when the locket switches off…not entirely I must add, we are rendered immobile from the waist down while the battery is charged to last another 18 months.. the happiness vanishes instantly and all those negative thoughts and feelings flood back, once again like a drug addict suffering withdrawal symptoms after their high has gone. The first time it happened, the screams echoed around the country as thousands of people unleashed 18 months of anger, rage, sadness, madness, sexual repression, murderous intents and cries of pain as some tried to pry the locket from their flesh unsuccessfully.

At some point after the first recharge, I had placed a diary and pen on the table where I could fill it with daily thoughts of enforced happiness but subconsciously I knew that once those 18 months were up, I could fill it with an hour of my true thoughts about these new happy fuelled nightmare utopia in which I now lived.

I only have a couple of minutes left now until the recharge is complete… Soon, my thoughts will return to the euphoria that this heart shaped locket provides and I will once again go about my life with smiling from ear to ear as my jaw muscles ache under the constant strain of smiling 24/7 and all my so called “dirty thoughts” are pushed down where they are made to fester until the locket ends its hold for an hour…

I mean…I suppose its not all that bad, pollution is down, there are no arguments, no wars, no rapes, no murders, there is enough food for everyone, I’m a lot healthier due to the cycling to work and back and natural species are thriving…still no Royal Family thou, I do wonder where they went, perhaps they’ll return one day.

I mean as for an Apocalypse event, it wasn’t that bad, we could have been torn apart by Zomb…

…Miss Breckett gave me an apple from her stall as I passed, what a great start to another happy day!

The End