The Heirloom

The Heirloom

I’m having flashbacks of what it used to be like. The weather was warm. The sky was blue. You know, normal descriptions, the air was free.

Ever since the invasion it’s been the complete and total opposite, like a bad dream. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up one day and that this was all just in my imagination. But it’s not. Nothing is free.

After the disappearance of an enormous amount of people missing, society as we know it has been controlled for our protection. Now I can’t buy a single bar of soap without going through a scanner like I’m a barcode on a bag of potatoes-a robot!

Some say it was spiritual and some say it was the government, but most are saying its aliens.

Unless you have been put through the scanner system you are to be exterminated.

Some have escaped to the mountains, and underground bunkers, while others are being brutally asphyxiated.

I’ve just been hopeful of good and followed commands, for the safety and protection of my life.

The process of all who comply is called SRS, Scanner Recognition System, or OIS- Optical Identity system.

Every citizen in the entire world is promised life beyond the walls but only after completion of the “scanner system”.

The scanner system usually is a short week process of having your entire identity surgically inserted into the body.

Anything from life before has been erased. Nothing is a secret or free anymore, but had to be done to survive. Beyond the walls of the compound there’s a new life. In which we enter and buy all of our merchandise through the scanner system. Vehicles cannot be activated without it. Trains, aircraft and ships cannot commute. Any item from before this time has been destroyed. I can still remember what it was like to use a car-key to start my engine, or what it was like to walk freely into a grocery store and purchase items with a single piece of paper. And now, nothing can be bought without being scanned.

In 2043, I was only 17 years old at the time when the government conducted the project scanner. It was always in motion but it wasn’t enforced globally until 2066, in what is now SRS, when the world was invaded. The year of the invasion, when billions of people disappeared. This resulted in a total end to the earth. Destruction was on every corner.

On July 6th 2066, it was a sunny, warm summer day in Richmond Hill, Georgia. I was sitting in my living room having a cup of my homegrown tea spiked with a tad of whiskey with my former beloved husband Joe. Watching the news because at this point in time things were constantly changing in the political word. The news was all we watched back then. When suddenly, the power went out. We heard what sounded like screams and explosions on every corner. I ran outside to see what was happening. A mother ran straight up to me screaming “My baby! My baby! …..My baby is MISSING!!”

As she began to pull me down to the ground in utter distraught, I held her arms and glanced around the neighborhood and saw others in complete irrational panic.

“My kids! My kids are gone!”

“My husband! My wife! My child…”

“They’re missing! “

I looked down at the woman crying and said “Ma’am, it’s okay, we’ll find your child”.

She looked up at me stone-faced, confused in unbelief at even the next words she was about to murmur….. “I was breastfeeding when she disappeared. “

My husband and I immediately got in the car and started to drive before we realized we couldn’t get very far. There were about seven cars on fire just outside of the intersection of where we would pull out of the neighborhood, in flames, while stand-byers were pulling bodies out of the cars.

Joe and I didn’t know if we should get out and help or what we should do but we decided to just get back in the car and get to the nearest place of safety. When we got back in the car we turned on the radio looking for some sort of explanation and breaking through we had heard about hundreds of air planes that had gone down. Into the sea, into buildings, into people’s homes! Hundreds! Not just here in the US, but Malaysia, Honduras, France and Bulgaria, one after another reports were coming in.

I looked over to Joe and said “Is this a terrorist attack?”

Joe responded, “It’s something bigger”.

It is now 2069 and a new society has been established. A holiday in history so to speak.

Where every citizen remaining is now considered scanned.

Settled in my new home we weren’t allowed to take pictures or even bring old photos or really any memory of what life was like before as it may have been a trace for the aliens to keep contact with us. The explanation to why some were taken and others were left is still unknown.

The only thing I was able to make make passed the enemy lines was the antique heart-shaped locket in which my husband gave me when we were on the way to church one Sunday morning. It was a family heirloom passed down from many generations.

Before he was euthanized for not complying in which I begged him to, I’ll never forget his last words, “It was real, it was all real.”

I didn’t know what he meant until I opened the heart-shaped locket.