dystopian serial fiction

Fortune 8

2020

This Christmas Day was turning into a very a Long Day. Every fun thing Lucy had planned for this day was already finished; her hot chocolate, her movie binge, she had opened her presents. She walked her typical 4 miles and even put on a dress. Make-up and earrings! She checked the News 3 times. This last activity was not as fun as it was compulsive. The News said everything was the same or getting worse meaning more deaths, more sickness and lost jobs – didn’t these doom mongers take a night off? Lucy wondered. She had always enjoyed the quietness of a shuttered retail sector during the holidays, the irony now was that most of the stores had been closed for the entire year. The quietness of the day was not exceptional or spiritual, it was mundane and lonely.

And she missed her boyfriend. He was one of the last people she was able to have contact with before the ban on all “non-essential contact” went into effect, which allowed only married couples and parents and their minor children to interact “within a 6 foot perimeter”. He had disappeared in June and she later found out that he had died from the virus. Found out snooping around on Facebook.

She prayed that her internet connection wouldn’t go out before the show came on, her final “fun” activity for the day and something she had been looking forward to. There had been ominous signs that there might be disruptions; the yule log video on Netflix had been stopping and starting and when she face-timed with her son the connection was bad.

Lucy felt like she was living on a different planet these days, all the fellow humans turned into hostile aliens, everything familiar become a little odd and possibly dangerous. “The Planet of the Apes” popped into her head and she considered the plight of Charlton Heston and his crew and also the Star Trek episodes where they had explored alien planets. She felt sorry that she had condemned them for being silly cowards! She had lived in the same state her whole life so didn’t even know what it was like to move far from home. What intergalactic wizard had come and replaced the ordinary world with this cruel facsimile?

Lucy checked her notes again and OH NO, that YouTube show was on at 6:30, but was that eastern time? The time zones previously had had little impact on her life, but with all the online activity those details really mattered now. OH NO.

She hurriedly dragged out her lap top and brought up YouTube, punched in “Watch”, (in a panic realizing she didn’t know how else to find it) and suprisingly, a QR code came on the screen. It was 6:25 and she wondered what in the hell she should do now.

She slumped back and stared into space. She picked up her phone and thought about calling her son, but for some reason she didn’t want him to know she what she was trying to watch, and she really didn’t want to call him again, having already texted him several times and facetimed with him as well. How far could she strain the familial bonds?

Her phone opened to her photos so she started scrolling absent-mindedly. “A memory!” Her phone chirped at her. Christmas, 2018. She looked at the photo and saw it was of herself, smiling in front of a brightly decorated tree. At her parents house, where the whole family had gathered, and Uncle Cy had gotten into an amiable drunken argument with everyone else, and there had been food, and presents and people. Happy people. Fairly happy people.

She continued scrolling backward from that point and then a photo of another QR code with a series of numbers under it. From what or where? Why was this here? She vaguely remembered a piece of paper under her windshield wiper, she remembered crumpling the paper and then for some reason, smoothing it out and taking a photo.

“What are the chances!” Lucy said aloud.

She knew more about technology than she did two years ago, so she aimed her phone at the screen of the computer and waited to see where she would be taken.

This is the 8th installment of the series FORTUNE

Fortune – 7

2018

Sitting in traffic to get to a coffee shop on the other side of town. Ridiculous! But Lucy couldn’t afford to live in the coffee shop’s neighborhood and she wouldn’t give up going there even if it took 20 minutes to travel 10 miles.

Going out for coffee seemed like a break and an opportunity. A welcoming destination. She could focus on her writing better than sitting on her bed, it was a chance to drink coffee and maybe see someone she knew. Have a random encounter, overhear some gem of an observation, watch other people do whatever they did when no one was watching.

Sometimes after getting her coffee and securing a table to herself, she played a game she enigmatically called “How do I know I can trust you”. Pick a person at random and create a backstory for them, complete it with a fact from your own life creating the illusion that you have something in common. In a mysterious way this game made her feel more connected and after she played it several times she felt like she belonged in the world and was one of it’s true participants.

The radio played a song that was popular when she was in high school and her mind wandered. Communicating with strangers had begun to feel strained, archaic. She often felt like she was trying to use a tin can on a string to talk with others, the distance felt that tangible and clunky. She would second-guess a witty remark that then would fall flat and seem inconsequential. She might interpret a silence as awkward and try to fill it with too many meaningless Ummm’s and stutterings.

She had left her job at Costco recently to write her memoir, to live off her savings and drop out of the retail world where she felt like a gladiator facing off to a herd of lions. “What was a group of Lions called?” This unemployment further isolated her but actually gave her something in common with a lot of others. Many were working this way now, consulting or contracting themselves, not dependent on a day to day wage slave at a building in the city.

And she used to love to talk to new people! Lucy was the kind of woman you’d see at a party flitting from group to group, leaving the sound of laughter in her wake. At this point in her life? She was finding it difficult to know how to reply to a cashier’s “How are you today?”

The cars were starting to move and she felt a twinge of shame. She would be a more important, interesting person if she had a tech job and was able to live in a beautiful apartment in the neighborhood instead of commuting. And she’d walk to the coffee shop, saying hi to the fascinating neighbors and the local small dogs, and nonchalantly walk by the graffiti and the other city life she would pass every day. Her everyday exposure to the “aunthenticity” of the city would somehow make her a more “real” person.

Another thing, Lucy pondered to herself, another thing that was disconcerting lately – she had seen some kids in the university district wearing face masks. It made her wonder what they had that they didn’t want to give away. Or was it something she had that she was infecting others with?

She’s ask someone she decided.

Maybe she was just imagining things.

this is the 7th installment in the serial fiction Fortune

Fortune -6

2020

Lucy sat in the intense December sunshine listening to Santa Baby on the radio, a vague uneasiness humming underneath her peaceful idle. She wondered why she didn’t feel more lonely, more distressed as the holidays in an ordinary year typically brought on those moods in abundance. There was a sense of loose expectancy in the air; things could go well or really wrong.

She was set to see her parents later, which made her feel lucky as not everyone was cleared to see their families. She had put in her permission slip at the grocery store a month ago and had found out that she had been approved! They would all still be required to wear masks of course and be seated in different parts of the house while they visited. But the favorite streaming service of the moment would help them communicate even though they were literally feet away from each other and could have heard each other loudly whisper.

Berta, Lucy’s mom had told her she was to sit in the former living room, now stripped of furniture and covered in virus-repellant, santized plastic sheets. A comfortable chair would be set out for Lucy, and a tv tray, with a seperate table for the laptop. Maybe they’d add a tiny Christmas tree or some holly to the decor! What fun!- Lucy wasn’t good at pretending to be happy when she wasn’t.

She told herself to be grateful for what she did have – some were spending their holiday in those horrid sounding virus camps, trying to rehabilitate their wasted limbs and their hopeless souls through rigorous computer games and “track-walking”. It was said that catching the virus could lead to a debilitating sense of ennui and self-loathing. But that might have also been a rumor.

No one knew anymore which news outlet broadcasted truth or fantastical tale, it seemed to be a competition as to who could rile the most citizens. Everyone Lucy knew had their favorite source and they believed in that and only that and would only take that outlet as gospel.

And later she had that show to look forward to, although it would probably be a bust, and she’d open the presents she’d gotten for herself. If her best friend hadn’t disappeared in August she would probably have FaceTimed with her.

The sun was bright but not particularly warm or comforting. She contemplated that her strange sense of peace was due to a complete dislocation of herself in this current reality. All of the old mile markers had become unimportant. The future was uncertain and vague. There had always been more guard rails up in life and this was the most altered reality she had ever encountered.

She was pretty excited to use her new hair straightener tomorrow.

this is part 6 of a 6 part series