The Polarity Jake Kornmehl '24
Winifred lies on her bed. Her eyes are glued to the metal ceiling above. Suddenly, her eyes focus on a minuscule, curved crack resting between the perpendicular white walls. She picks herself up from her rough, incandescent white pillow and crawls forward, her hands gripped tightly to the railings along either side of her bed. Winifred peeps through the tiny crevice. “Winnie!” a gaunt woman shouts. The woman’s face hides in a radiant blue scarf and large goggles cover her oval-shaped head. Winnie is not as unfamiliar with the situation as she was last time. Yet, she opens the locker above her bed and pulls down a rack of children's masks, worn to prevent disease. This is no normal time. Winifred climbs down the ladder of her bunk bed and runs to embrace the woman standing in her doorway. She follows the lady down the sparsely lit corridor into a dining hall with thousands of other girls her age. Menacing posters with various mandates line the walls, and middle aged men and women stand in front of them wearing electric yellow hazmat suits. One massive 666” at screen television is mounted in each corner of the vast room with sixty-six foot ceilings. As usual, the anchors spout the “news,” which is both hyperbolic and misleading. Winnifred gazes at the screens only to hear unending propaganda describing the fraudulent bene ts of division. This is a typical evening in Complex R-843272.
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A new empire arose from the age of COVID-19. One that promised a world of safety and compassion but brought the opposite upon Earth's children. Unlike before, unprecedented medical biotechnology should have prevented the current epidemic. Yet, the new political climate paved a path for insanity. The
