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A blue and yellow pill. It was the semblance of being. The semblance of existing as a human and having a simply irresistible joie de vivre.
The year was 2045.
Showcasing emotions was illegal.
Punishable by death. It was even written in the Constitution of the States of America. No longer ‘United’ (removed by another clause in 2020) because of a bloody war that had been raging since late 2018.
Broke from the war, the government issued a pill called Beautitudinem that would make people feel an emotion so intense one could liken it to mania.
Of course, the people didn't know this.
Since emotions no longer existed, the feeling was never properly labeled, it was simply a matter of subjectiveness. The point was that sadness, unhappiness no longer was on the list of feasible emotions.
The President of the States of America an ancient seemingly immortal man simply known by JD was happy living his lavish life in a mansion made of pure gold making the rules scripted verbatim into the Constitution.
Nobody ever argued with or tried to put a stop to JDs madness.
Those with the rare vocational profession lived a luxurious life. The rest of the population worked the ‘undesirable’ jobs such as janitorial, factory or food service work.
JD hated the expression of emotions, he hated art, he hated the media, he hated books, he hated fresh food, he hated health. He spread propaganda that bashed all of these things with messages informing the population that it would make one's brain rot or melt out of their ears.
‘You believe what you want to hear’ was the old saying before the war.
There was no healthcare. Doctors were no longer needed since now there was a drug that could fix everything, from an achy hand after writing three pages in twenty minutes to a throbbing headache. You simply drove your vehicle to the drive through, coughed in a machine and within thirty seconds a drug would appear.
Therefore what was implemented as a solution was Beautitudinem to get rid of emotions.
No more mental health.
All art was banned including classical music, paintings, books read for pleasure or literary purpose (only textbooks were allowed), and films. Collections of books, films and other artifacts in the Library of Congress were torched in a monthly ceremony with pitchforks basked in orange flames.
All food was sprayed with chemicals in the form of planes in the perfectly blue sky that left white streaks in their wake. As for the media, that was an entirely different story.
The only person allowed to report the news was JD himself in the form of a hologram on giant screens that were plastered. The megaphones that carried his drawly, slow voice were placed above. In the beginning, those who protested any of what JD had to say were shot on the spot.
People didn’t even try to protest anymore.
Until they did.
Of course, everything was never as it seemed.
Awake.
Round, cognac-colored eyes opened slowly taking in their surroundings. Sighing against her 100 thread count cotton sheets she rolled out of bed and headed straight for her french press coffee machine.
Four blue and yellow pills to start the day. Twelve down the hatch by its end.
Olive Marigold-Beam lived a life of peace. A lawyer, she served the government and helped send those who didn’t take their Beautitudinem to the Solitary Confinement Prisons.
The prisoners were known by law as SCUM. Most of these people went to the Prisons for crying or feeling sadness, the emotion detested the most by JD. When it came to anger or fear, these were far more detectable and would instantly kill you.
She was one of the last people lucky enough to have gotten a vocational job. Lawyers, accountants, and Professors were in high demand and limited capacity. Olive got paid by being provided a life of luxury.
Most lawyers began to feel what was described in the old days as ‘guilt’ or the feeling that it was abominable to be putting people in the Solitary Confinement Prisons.
Teachers no longer existed, instead, everyone in school until college did their work on tablets. Professors were only allowed to teach out of pre-government approved textbooks. Nothing more nothing less.
Perfectly manicured, blush pink fingernails drummed against the pure white, marble countertop in the bar. Olive sighed as the burn of expensive scotch made its way slowly down her esophagus.
“You know what’s funny?”
Julien the bartender, a man who Olive had become rather fond of, looked up from where he was crafting a margarita.
“What?”
He topped the glass with a little pink umbrella.
“I’ve never had a dream before, sometimes I feel I wouldn’t be able to distinguish that world from reality. Do you dream?”
Julien looked at her curiously, not the reaction she had expected.
“Yes,” he took a deep breath seeming to glitch and have a hard time formulating his next set of words. Olive had to lean closer to hear him.
“I do dream. But I don’t think it is abnormal if one does not.”
Their conversation diminished, Olive pushed a strand curly midnight black hair away from her face.
Awake.
“I want to show you something,” Julien said.
The world was melting away. Colors being sucked out into oblivion.
“What am I seeing?” Olive exclaimed.
“You’re seeing the true nature of reality,” Julien stated blankly as if she had known the entire time.
“This can’t be real! I don’t want this anymore, take me out!” Olive was beginning to sound erratic.
“Shh. You have to see, you have to understand,” Julien whispered to her it felt as though someone was running their fingers through her hair.
“How am I seeing this?”
“It’s an antidote. The world you live in isn’t real. It’s a simulation, you’re simply a pawn in a government game. They poison the water, spray it all over the food.”
As Julien explained he knew she would simply forget.
The world was no longer a place painted in bright primary colors, bright blues, ripe reds, luscious yellows. Advertisements littering the landscapes, faux flowers made out of nonrecycled plastic planted, because the air was so full of chemicals.
Trees were now holograms from the deforestation that had taken place prior to the war. Of course Olive didn’t know that. Nobody knew that.
All people born before (with the exception of JD and his group of old white men who followed his every whim) had their memories of life before the war forcibly wiped.
The only events before the war they could remember were things such as the birth of their children. These memories were called designated memories.
Most of the war was fought through nuclear warfare, drones, and robots who also controlled submarines. The submarines had to be controlled by robots since these days the ocean was made of trash. Not that Olive or anyone else being brainwashed ever saw this version of the ocean.
Little mundane tropes that humans once took pleasure in were now too dangerous. Most were designated toxic wastelands.
Instead, as the colors faded away before her eyes, the world Olive knew as her reality was now a cold, dark, desolate place. Everything was black and grey, blue and white.
Olive looked around, the bar was now a dusty warehouse. Skeletons and bones were melded with cobwebs, dust, leaves, and rats scattered about.
It smelled of rotting corpses. People that bled for their cause.
Death at its finest.
“Hello?!” Olive’s words echoed back in a sharp pitch, she winced, doubling over and covering her ears.
Nobody answered. Not that she expected any different, it seemed as though Olive was the only person around. Walking outside it looked almost identical to the bar.
A large bomb crashed into the building in front of her and exploded. Any ‘people’ ran off, they paid her no mind and were intent on helping themselves.
The desolate space faded into an empty white room. Olive held something close to a bemused expression on her face as different scenes appeared before her eyes.
A woman had an upward quirk at her mouth while she rocked a baby.
An elderly man kneeled at a church pew as liquid escaped from his eyes.
A man and a woman spoke in loud voices, both of their faces flushed molten red.
“I-I don’t understand.” Olive reached out and tried to touch a woman who was dancing in a field of real three dimensional flowers, not flat holograms, a little bit of color here and there appeared. The touch bounced back like an invisible barrier.
“They can’t see or hear you,” Julien’s voice wafted over to her.
Suddenly, the world was coming back. Color returning pieces slotting together like a puzzle. Small glimpses of this living hell until she was back.
“Why did you show me that? It isn’t real. You drugged me!” Olive accused Julien.
“I gave you an antidote so you can see the world for what it truly is.”
“Can you see what I see?”
Julien shook his head. “It’s all incredibly fuzzy, things fade together. I am resistant to the antidote.”
“Why did you pick me?”
Julien didn’t respond.
He said, “I want you to think back to when you were a child. Did your parents seem different to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I need you to think about it,” Julien poured her another two fingers of scotch and went over to wipe down the other side of the bar.
Olive closed her eyes. Born two years before the war, she couldn’t remember much of her life before it occurred. Olive’s parents Jean and Walter, both artists and activists were shot and killed for protesting JD shortly after her twentieth birthday.
Before the war, Walter often would just sit in his favorite black leather chair and cry. Sometimes for three days on end. His face became swollen bright red and blotchy the blues of his eyes were emasculated by red, she would poke at it with her chubby little fingers.
Olive did not understand what was happening both being a child and never knowing what an emotion looked like.
One day Walter abruptly stopped crying and simply began to stare at the wall.
Jean on the other hand slowly went crazy.
“The day we go to war will forever be known as the day the moon fell,” she mumbled this so often it became the only sentence she could verbalize.
One day Walter believed there was a plot to have them murdered by the government for knowing too much. He believed that the memory wipe had not worked on either of them.
Walter was not wrong. Yet the government did everything in its power to stop anyone from finding the truth.
“How are they different?”
“You don’t see?”
“No, please tell me,” Olive drained the fresh scotch that was placed in front of her.
“You have a chip in your wrist that prevents feeling,” Julien pointed down at her right wrist to which Olive grabbed it defensively.
“You’re mad! I don’t have any chip. I would’ve felt it. I would remember if they implanted a chip in my wrist for goodness sakes.”
Julien clicked his teeth.“Can’t say you would have. The government did it at some point whenever you got anesthesia, flu shots, blood tests. Anything involving a needle or an IV they took advantage of to implant the chip in your arm.”
“Can’t you take it out?”
“I would if I could. I can promise you that. It’s not that simple, people die from trying to do it.”
Nobody ever tried to do it.
Julien got lucky and didn’t have one.
“I would die if it meant saving people from this.”
“So you believe me then?”
“Not exactly but I don’t think I have a choice, do I?”
“No darling girl you don’t.”
Olive was continually given the antidote. She never remembered the next day what it showed her. The chip was constantly wiping her memory.
One day, she couldn’t get out of the white room. No pictures showed up. She banged against the ‘walls.’
“Hello?! Julien? Help me!” As she screamed and felt an emotion for the first time, she began to bleed out of her ears, her mouth, her nose.
“I don’t want to see this.
“This isn’t real!”
And with that, a small trickle of salty liquid spilled out of her eyes.
Not a moment later the old emotionless, expressionless men who resembled skeletons came to take her away.
The emotion was too noticeable.
“Okay team you’ve done a good job.”
Julien took the electrodes off of Olive’s forehead and covered her body with a sheet. He had only wanted her to understand the significance of the world she was a part of. A world that in all fairness was not canny to understanding, but someone had to do it.
If they ever were going to get out.
If they were ever going to see the real sun again.
“Who’s next?”