It has always been this way, keep yourself to yourself, and your opinions locked tightly inside your own head. Speaking out means you are strange, weird, a mental case. Being too friendly makes you different.
No one wants to be different, not in this society. A place where, to be happy, sad or have any emotion at all can lead you to being locked up in the asylum where They claim to make you better, They say they are helping you to be the best self you can be. They don't. They turn you into one of their mindless drones, destined to be emotionless forever, doing the manual labour for Them. Or They don't.
My rule, keep your head down in public, be the person They want you to be and you will stay safe. Do whatever you want in the privacy of your own home as long as it's quiet. If They hear you then you might as well die. It's not worth the struggle to live if you are destined to do nothing but Their wishes.
People are so removed from each other that your own mother is as likely to turn you in for illegal behaviours as your worst enemy. We can't have friends because that just makes one more person who is likely to get you admitted. One more person who will break your trust just for the credit with Them, the small extra ration that is a mere piece of extra bread a day. That one piece of bread is enough to turn neighbours on neighbours, friends on friends, family on family.
Make friends, They say.
Enjoy yourself, They say.
But really what they want is for you to forget what trust is, what kindness, empathy and compassion are, and to think that everyone has wronged you and the person needs help from Them. No one remembers what life was like before them, no one remembers it was better. Everyone believes that the treatment in the asylum is for the best, that it helps, it makes you better. They don't realise that it is only being done because the population is too big, we can't sustain people who know what is going on for much longer. It is far easier to keep a population going when everyone is a mindless drone, not knowing what it is like to eat more than once a day, to sleep for more than an hour. But of course, they don't need food, or sleep; the treatment made sure of that.
I am the last one, the last of the rememberer's, and I know, I am next to be treated.
YOU ARE READING
what we hide
Научная фантастикаWe all have secrets to hide. Like it or not it is true, they are different for everyone but we all have them. About others, yourself, an event, a place; they are all secrets, secrets we hide. Sometimes the secrets have to be told.
