Lonely Unity: Future, Jaya Emery

Future

If God existed, would He sleep? And if He slept, would He dream? Hastily, Sophia tried to dispel those thoughts from her head, for questioning the unfathomable ways of God was distracting her from planning her escape. She knew how to get away, but did not yet have the resolve. “God is the only one who can save me now.” Sophia silently repeated the mantra, over and over, wishing that somehow the constant iteration could make a miracle occur and they all could go back, go back and excise the year 2020 from history.

Still, even though she had more pressing matters on her mind, Sophia could not shake the ostensibly worthless questions from her head. She imagined that God would sleep, but in the process of sleeping He would still be consciously engaged in the world and its tribulations and its misery. What about dreams? Sophia supposed that God would not dream, for the purpose of dreams was to tell you something, and God, being omniscient, did not therefore need to know anything that dreams could tell. Dreaming was left to mortals like herself, who were constantly haunted by nightmares as punishment for causing the virus and the war. Sophie shivered in the glacial air, and shaking thoughts of dreams from her brain she broke into a jog, eager to get back home before dusk.

Getting home after dusk meant that she would risk beration from the guards, and, depending on who was on duty, a penalty. Luckily the Second Gate had not closed yet - she could still see the monochrome houses that lay behind its open doors, and not the insidious gleam of the Gate’s shut doors. That night Sophia’s dreams plagued her. All through the hours of darkness she waltzed through a house, not the sort of house that they had nowadays, inhospitable and oppressive, but a grand house reminiscent of the past. In the ballroom Sophia watched an emotional God weep before bewildered souls, and then in the dining room she looked upon a hospital devoid of doctors, which was instead run by an apathetic deity, drenched with a passivity that prevented him from sympathising with his victims. In this hospital the virus roamed around the patients, infecting and reinfecting them - this however did not affect the hospital’s inhabitants, for in Sophia’s nightmare they were already dead.

In her lessons the next morning the purpose of school once again dripped out of Sophia’s head as she chose to ignore the history teacher. “In 2020 both the threat of Covid 19 and the discussion raised by Black Lives Matter protests appeared to obstruct world leaders’ rationality, as they all entered an impossible war.” The teacher’s dissonant voice rattled into Sophia’s defiant ears, as she wondered once again why they were learning about something that everyone already knew about. She longed to learn about something more compelling, perhaps what lay beyond the Gates.

“The Gates are there for your safety, they will keep the virus out.” Her mother’s warning voice echoed throughout Sophia’s head. Sophia knew that the Gates were there for safety, yet every time she saw all ten of them, constantly manned by armed personnel, she could not help but wonder: are the Gates there to keep it out, or us in?

Sophia did not understand why there was so little information about what lay beyond the Gates. She felt fatigued by the lack of true information, and wretched from the pointlessness of life inside the Gates. All she knew was that she could not go there, or else the virus would kill her. If that did not terminate her existence, then starvation would, or the cold, for she had been told that beyond the Gates lay nothing but devastation. Yet everyone knew that this was not the whole story, for people had gone out there. The way out was simple, just through a tunnel, it was just out of fear that people did not leave. The last person had escaped so long ago now that their face had blurred into forgottenness in people’s minds, yet rumour of their actions had not completely faded. “God is the only one who can save me now.” Sophia realized that she did not believe in that statement anymore. She wondered why anyone would. If the world was a broken cage with an unlocked door, it was God who indicated that the door was not shut, and it was up to her to do next. God would not free her, but He would show her where the exit was.

Sophia was going to escape. She had to see for herself what lay beyond the Gates. She had to know whether the world had really been destroyed by the virus and war instigated by protests, or whether there was something out there. There had to be. This insignificant place of nothingness and insincerity could not be all there was left in the world. As Sophia walked towards the tunnel, she gazed at the stars, glistening against the unforgiving blackness of the sky, seemingly crying at her departure. As she neared the tunnel, a conversation that she had had with her mother entered her mind. “Why did God make the world such a miserable place, leaving us to exist in uncertainty and suffering?”, Sophia had wondered. Her mother had replied slowly.

“If the world was not so tragic Sophia, no one would look for God.”

Jaya Emery