A zombie in the 23rd century (completed 11/11)

My story

UN ZOMBI EN EL SIGLO 23

Capítulo 11: My story

Although it sounds like a male version of rayita, I woke up the next morning with the sunshine coming through the window and the singing of the morning birds. I would have stood up and sang a song from Frozen's film, but I'm not rayita. Besides, my throat hurt as much as the side of my tongue.

Hailey wasn't by my side, but I didn't have to wonder about her absence as she was entering the room just then.

"Good morning, Vladimir. Good thing it's a holiday and my parents are sleeping late. It is best to leave early because there will not be a lot of staff at the hospital for friends."

"Good morning Hailey, you're right, let's get going."

Maybe it was the fact that these days I was walking around like a zombie, but I felt my right knee hurt, something like that had never happened in my life.

I tried to keep the pain and fatigue away by thinking about other things, and indeed I had arrived at the hospital earlier than I had expected on "autopilot". Unlike the last time I was here, I didn't enter through the front door, but my friend took me around the hospital and we arrived at one of the back doors of the medical center.

Hailey put the palm of her hand on a kind of panel and then her eyes stopped focusing on what was in front of her. Somehow she was hacking into the door security system.

"All right, we're good to go."

Our goal was to find a bio-neural scanning machine to find out what was happening to me. It was important to be careful that the doctors or other staff did not discover our presence.

"Well, I'm looking at the map right now," Hailey said to me, looking right at my face. As she explained to me earlier, her brain was a computer and her eyes operated like a monitor.

"We have to go up to the third floor and go to the radiology room."

Since our goal was not to be discovered, we didn't go down the corridors and stairs of normal traffic. Instead, we took the emergency stairs and reached our destination.

"This is it, let's go in."

"Are you Sure? there's no sign here that says this is the radiology room."

"Yes, I'm sure" she confirmed it, and then hacked back into the door security system.

We just walked in and I realized that this couldn't be a medical machine room, more like a clean, catalogued drug store on their shelves.

"Hailey, this can't be the room we're looking for."

"I know, but I'm sure the doctor is in the radiology room and I'll be able to find a bio-neural tracking device here. It doesn't give as full a scan as I'd like, but we can start there."

Hailey asked me to sit facing the door and to be on guard in case a nurse came.

So I did, but I was tempted to turn around and see my friend, but I heard a couple of steps coming down the corridor. Two men were approaching the door. As tense as the situation was, my heart was calm.

The guys went into the front room.

"That was close..." I said as I turned around. A hypodermic needle of enormous size was aimed at my jugular.

Hailey put all her strength into injecting me with God knows what, but I held her arm tight to stop her from continuing.

"Hailey, what the hell...?"

The girl did not give up, in one quick move her free arm avoided being grabbed and then scratched my face.

Because of my uncomfortable position, we both fell to the ground, however, the struggle did not end in the least.

Even though I was a soldier, I couldn't get the girl off my back. When I saw her eyes, I understood.

Hailey's pupils were very dilated, abnormal amounts of adrenaline rush through her body.

"Hailey... What's wrong with you? Stop it!"

In the struggle we both kicked the shelves and several medical samples and drugs fell on the floor making a lot of noise. This, however, did not diminish Hailey's mortal desire.

As the tip of the needle penetrated my throat, the door opened and the two paramedics, alerted by the sound of the front, proceeded to hold Hailey.

"No, don't take me away from my beloved again!"

More paramedics arrived and holding on tightly to my friend who kept yelling, took her away from me.

.

.

Hailey's parents arrived and I finally found out the whole truth. She had some kind of schizophrenia, which is why Hailey didn't want her parents to know about me. She thought I was real... a real person.

Remember what I told you about zombies being somewhat aware of their environment? Well, that's exactly what happened to me when I told this story. I am a zombie and was once a soldier, that and all the fiction movies like Terminator and My boyfriend is a zombie, created a kind of "reality" that came to fill in the gaps in my mind regarding the perception of the surrounding reality.

I'm over a hundred years old and I don't decompose, the reason? Well, it all goes back to World War III, which I spoke of in the beginning. The radiation that was spreading around the globe threatened the existence of the human race. However, a solution was found: Nano-machines that could absorb the radiation.

The atmosphere was purified, but the majority of the world's population was already dying of cancer, so the use of nanomachines in humans was approved.

The nano-machines did what they could, in fact they are still struggling today to cleanse our bodies of radiation. They constantly regenerate the cells every day, however it is not as effective in regenerating the neurons.

Yeah, those are the zombies. The common people of the 20th century, people who no longer read the newspaper, but believed in the false news of the internet; people who did not listen to good music, but dedicated themselves to listening to the perreo, hip hop, or cumbias villeras argentinas.

Yes, those are the zombies, people obsessed with watching the cell phone screen 24 hours a day or taking selfies; people who mumble against the government, but yet don't have the courage to kick the crap out of those who govern us.

Mario Vargas Llosa said that we live in the "civilization of the spectacle", this also leads us to live in the culture of indifference and wait for a messiah to come and save us, when we ourselves are the ones who have always had the power to change the world for the better.

Very few people were saved from the radioactive apocalypse, and their descendants now make up the normal population of people on the planet.

The doctors are coming to examine me, they'll assess all the damage that Hailey did to my mind. I don't hold a grudge against her, despite the drugs or manipulation with VR May... I just hope she's okay and her life is back to normal.

My name is... was Vladimir, and now I say goodbye, I hope that everyone in your hearts will consider me your "friend".

FIN