alternative futures: fall 2028 -- living after the days of covid-19
16 Mar 2020note from lawrence: i write to process my thoughts, fears, and dreams. i weave them together in ways that surprise even myself. do with them what you will. also, i tried to do too much with this story. there are many open ends... maybe i'll close them someday... maybe i won't. :)
fall 2028
i was only 15 when it hit. back then, we were still called ourselves the united states. but as everything fell apart, it became real clear how very little united we were.
i’m 23 now and getting ready to graduate from my organizing academy. my rite of passage is next week and i’m scared as piss. i know i’ll either pass or die… and either way, at least i’ll be through with it!
who are you and how did you come across vijourn?
[camera turns on and begins recording]
well, i’m glad you found this; i honestly didn’t know if anyone would. i have wanted to tell someone for forever about how the formerly united states turned into what we have to today… which definitely isn’t perfect but is a helluva lot better than that shithole)
so you’ve heard of covid-23, right? well, before covid-23 was covid-19. it was a virus like no one had ever seen before. even the multinational NGOs were stunned at the spread and calamity. a few countries, the ones with more collectivized systems got things under control pretty quick. the other ones, the neoliberal ones, the ones that mostly thought they were better than everyone else, got wrecked.
i’m living in what we used to call new england (which is a fucked up name that should have been changed decades ago, to be honest), one of the few watersheds that’s still mostly intact. nowadays we call covid-19 “the dream that turned into a nightmare” and covid-23 “the nightmare that turned into a dream.” we learned a lot but it all started when the last president of the united states instituted marital law. the internet had been taken down, fresh water supply was tight, and the hospitals had been mostly taken over by the wealthy…
words / writing / post-processing
251w / 13min / 4min