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Rise

And Shine

By Matthew Vandenberg. Writer of a massive story over 10 years in span. Free Latifa is notable for being a choose-your-own-way book. West. is notable for being a series of reports highlighting global issues. Find all my books on Amazon Kindle.Published 3 years ago 6 min read
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Rise
Photo by Shane on Unsplash

I need to open my eyes because some green light's getting into them, like traveling at the speed of an even brighter one, through my eyelids. On the bright screen before me are the words: you now have the green light to walk, so please tread carefully.

No alarm bells are sounding because I'm deep inside a Japanese capsule hotel. The sound could wake sleepers, though I find that hard to believe: most people here have probably been out cold for weeks. I must have been asleep for two (perhaps also asleep ENOUGH for two) because the last time I checked there was a fortnight to go before I would be allowed to venture out into the world at large. Now I seem to have the green light to.

I almost sit up, but hit my head on the low ceiling.

'Ahhh,' I say, lowering my volume while I do so. I mustn't lose my green light. It's been a hell of a ride through life to earn it. I certainly wasn't born with a green light. Most people born today will only actually live around 100 days, rather than their life. Sure, they'll live to the ripe old age of 100, perhaps, but they'll only actually be awake and moving about for 100 days of those 100 years. The liquid they give us is state-of-the-art: a perfect formula to stimulate structures and imagination, scientifically designed to ignite in us the will to sleep soundly over truly living much of our lives, OVER much of our lives. We can, of course, dream about the countries we can never visit, but most dreams are born only of scant information gleaned from ash-like history books splayed out on splayed sills, as readers get understandably distracted by the reality at hand; hands shaking as they look down at streets they may live on but see merely once in a blue moon; a moon perhaps figuratively CYAN if they're also seeing a green light.

I inch out of the capsule to finally sit on it's edge, like ready to bungee jump from the Verzasca Dam in Switzerland: I can stand to[o]. I accordingly stand up. Others may read history books, but I can't do things by them. After all; it's best not to repeat actions that are yet to get our human race anywhere new. But you need to know rules in order to break them, and you need to be powerful enough to have a voice in order to say what you're doing. Personally, I just want to meet people; something so casual from an early-21st-century perspective. But, being 2040, meeting people is like being in a party of Martians: can there ever be some NEW life of the party?

I jump up and to my feet that I refuse to put up like hanging them out to dry. This is hard, given I've been asleep for weeks, but I have no time to waste. I exercise my right to life like a fetus stumbling out of a womb. People actually look up to me. I'm actually famous, and in my very important present time. I'm living the dream many others have: though, ironically, their dreams surely last longer than my times awake. Importantly, I am one of the only people who can show others how to live a life that was once standard but is now exemplary: a truly social life.

I walk over to the nearest window and gaze down at the street below: Sydney's Pitt Street: once a thriving artery of Australia's largest city, for moving goods to people, seemingly for good, distributed by people with good hearts in the heart of such city; but now something like a vein that cannot even service BROKEN hearts but, instead, sucks the life out of people for what is deemed a greater good: the welfare of despots in charge. They watch, intently, every waking person in order to figure out how best to use him or her in strengthening their own power; how to employ them as unwitting lackeys to cement and increase the power of said 'spots; and now I see spots below like they're hardened criminals. The despots ultimately want us to SEE them; to MEET them. I declined such an offer. I decided to use my fame to explore liberties others cannot.

And now I have the green light to walk; some kind of green mile perhaps. I just want to find someone to walk with, but I know that this could be a long shot. It's unlikely that there is someone out there famous enough to have been granted such rights as I have been, and, further (so further), so near to me. When I walk these streets alone, then all the green lights, alone, will sadly be mine: I will have no one to stop for. I will have no one to greet. As always, I will have no obvious friends. The city will be mine but, given I'm no despot, I don't even want it.

I step away from the window, then make my way toward the stairs to the ground floor. Should I wake anyone else up then I may immediately be blacklisted and stripped of my green light by intelligence that may not be so artificial given my status. So I walk like I don't usually run with bulls, though I certainly know how to. I tread carefully, as the generic message I woke to highlighted - in green I suppose - the need to, as though written with myself in mind. Maybe it was.

I open a door and enter a stair[ ]well. It's hard to do THAT badly, unless I fall through a broken step. Nonetheless, I take the steps down to the foyer like wanting to buy them so that I can make an entrance. There is obviously no one here to greet me; no one here to take a bow for having ensured my comfort for weeks as I slept.

So I walk out onto the street.

Rain begins to fall from artificial clouds the color of grass, that light reflects off like sound waves, as I hear a booming voice: 'proceed immediately to the stadium.'

I won't lie: part of me is imagining a slaughterhouse. Am I a sheep being led to a final pen? Will the Grim Reaper be my personal guide? There's no pen being put to public paper in this sorry scenario; sadly, private papers would cover the pen, like silencing voices.

But, in truth, I know where I'm headed. Today's dates - for elsewhere in the world it is a different day - are incredibly significant. I'm a global sensation going out, and all eyes are on me like I'm Big Brother. It's incredibly hard to imagine getting close to someone, for real, for the first time in close to 20 years. It's incredibly hard to imagine life before the pandemic.

There is no life, without connections. I know this all too well, for if I were not so powerful then I would be dead. But any people can be connections, really, and we all need them[,] to live happily, like we needed them[,] to live happily ever before the pandemic. Some AFTER seems so far away.

There's no one in sight like one to behold. I've waited so many years to finally meet someone special and it seems as though that wait will be extended for another time it takes to traverse the space between myself and the stadium, like it's OUTER, when I long to be in someone's PERSONAL.

There are no restaurants open enough for me to visit. These dates will be like none I have ever known; against a backdrop of one of the greatest shows and stadiums on Earth.

It's now that I spot a camera and gaze up at its lens.

'Thank you for watching DATING STAGE,' I say. 'Follow me to the stadium where I will formally kiss a woman, as no man has done in close to twenty long years. Dream big. This can be our new reality. Life can return to normal.'

fantasy
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About the Creator

Matthew Vandenberg. Writer of a massive story over 10 years in span. Free Latifa is notable for being a choose-your-own-way book. West. is notable for being a series of reports highlighting global issues. Find all my books on Amazon Kindle.

Writer of massive story over 10+ years.

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