The Day The World Ended | ONC 2024 LONGLISTER

10| once upon a time

There was a time when Novah loved science fiction. She had whole collections of books stacked up on shelves in her room, movie posters pasted on the wall and sometimes carefully rolled up posters and pictures when there was no more space to put them. There was a time when Novah was obsessed with TV shows that had teenagers with superpowers and scientists who created superhuman babies. There was a time she fantasised about living a life full of excitement and adventure rather than just going to school and coming back home.

Then she took that last train home—only to never return home at all. She was scared, yes, but she would be lying if she said she didn't feel even a tiny bit of excitement at being able to experience something she had only seen in books and movies. It had always been something impossible; something unrealistic. It was like a fever dream. 

Then came the bridge. She fell to her death—or she thought she did. She would never forget that moment of cold dread when you felt nothing under your feet and you could feel blood coming out of your stomach and then you are falling, falling, falling. It was the longest ten seconds of her life. She could still see the sky getting farther and farther away from her; the bridge becoming just a white shadow in the distance. She could still remember the blackness seeping into the corners of her vision; the sound of water becoming louder and louder beneath her. She was barely conscious by the time she hit the water, the force feeling like a stack of bricks falling on top of her, crushing the air out of her lungs. 

Then she woke up in an empty white room, dressed in white clothes and strapped to a bed. The white had hurt her eyes so much she wanted to burn the place down just to see another speck of colour. It was a strange feeling—waking up after thinking you were going to die, only to realise that a fate worse than death awaits you. 

There were people in white lab coats—both men and women—and they had asked what her last name was. Not her name, not who she is, not how she was feeling. Her last name.

"Joshi," she had said.

They had said that she would have a new name. J023. That would be her name from that moment. Not Joshi, not Novah. They even tattooed it onto her wrist so she wouldn't forget it.

She remembered the strange machines and their beeping. She had a vague memory of the feeling of a blade sinking into her temple. She didn't know what they did with her brain. She didn't want to know. It was better to not know sometimes. There were times when ignorance was bliss.

There was a collar around her neck that sometimes beeped or sometimes blinked red. And it sometimes shocked her when she couldn't do what they told her to do. First, it hurt her. Then it didn't. Maybe it did but she no longer felt it or no longer cared.

There were others like her. Many others. Men, women, teenagers and children. They had the same black collars as her, and different numbers tattooed on their wrists. They never got to talk. Sometimes she saw them being escorted to their bare white rooms, just like her. Occasionally, she passed them in the maze of corridors, going back and forth between their rooms and those small glass prisons that made her want to throw up, cry or murder people. Sometimes she saw them on the surgical beds next to her, hooked into machines and wires the same as her. 

Sometimes she saw them being wheeled away—covered in white cloth from head to toe—one by one. 

They were wheeled away until there were only eight of them left.

It didn't take her too long to realise that those people in white coats had given up on them. Whatever they wanted them to do—whatever they thought they would do—they were not doing it right. They were a failure of an experiment.

That was when she met Jordan. The whole group had been put into a large cafeteria-like room and had been told to do whatever they wanted to do. Jordan—or R265 as his tattoo read—was the only surviving subject in her age group. He was almost a year older than her and he just wanted to float around until something interesting happened.

They got to know each other—all eight of them. Novah wouldn't say they were friends. They were more like allies—or acquaintances—who just banded up together for the sake of their survival. She saw no wrong in that. At the end of the day, it was just you, wasn't it?

One of the older ones found a map of the building they were kept in. He didn't say how he found it and they didn't want to ask him either. They had a map. Who cared how they got it?

It turned out that the place was underground and that one of the buttons in the elevators led upstairs. So they just had to get into the elevators without getting caught.

They planned for weeks. It was easier now that no one was pestering them to move things with their minds. But Novah could tell that they didn't have much longer. She could sense the calm before the storm. The people in white coats would kill them eventually.

They found their way into the weaponry. They had to steal the uniforms of the guards. Those two steps were the hardest. One time they almost got caught. 

When the time came they ran. They didn't care where they ran to or who they were running with. They had weapons and they had tasted freedom after six months of being stuck in a building that barely had any colour other than white—a building full of people who wanted to poke and prod at their brains. Freedom made people do stupid things.

Somehow, Jordan and Novah ended up on the same path. She had no idea where they were going. Everything had changed. Nothing made any sense anymore. They didn't care about the guards they killed. Sometimes they helped people get more food when they had nothing else to do. Once or twice they crossed paths with their old friends from that damned building. 

The last time they did, they almost got killed. The other two were shot dead but Novah and Jordan got lucky again. She sometimes wondered what happened to Mellie and Simon. Were they alive? Did they save that woman? Would they remember her?

Novah remembered every bit of those six months like that was yesterday. Sometimes it felt like more than six months had passed; sometimes it felt like it was less than six months.

Once upon a time, Novah loved science fiction. But not anymore.

Total word count 12,153