Who Remedies: A World With a Singular Purpose
You are surrendered into this world without much of a choice, your eyes flutter open, your lungs take in their first breath of worldly air, and your voice is shaky but it beckons in your new life with every sound that escapes it. A truly magical moment for everyone involved, well except for you, I suppose it’s rather traumatizing for you. I would like to be the novelty that remembers their first waking moments in this world. I think it would be nice to know how it felt to know nothing of the world, to not know what the world might offer you. It sounds peacefully unpredictable to me. My life is anything but that. I am the pinnacle of predictable.
Okay, okay, enough of that for now. Maybe before professing my entire inner dialogue to you, I should start with an introduction. Ease into the disturbing formalities of my life. Right?
Right. Ease into this, just as Dr. Azrael had prescribed.
Hello, my name is Star. Yes Star, just Star. I decided to relinquish my last name as it doesn't really serve me much purpose anymore. A last name connects you to your ancestors, your family, your heritage … blah, blah, blah. You get justice. It doesn't hold much purpose when it’s just you, a sovereign (so I'd like to believe) person with no known family, no findable ancestry, with death looming its predictable head around the corner. So it’s just Star. I like it that way. It's the only thing that is unique about my situation, I believe.
It’s the year 2056. The collapse of medical development as we know it. Well, not me I guess, maybe you. This is the world I’ve always known but maybe you’ve known a different one. Millions of kids are born each year, millions more than before because the dangers of overpopulation aren’t a matter of contention anymore. Women have been forced into their gendered roles of existence and men, they are doing what men do best. Pardon me, what they are good at maybe. Making decisions based on ego, starting wars, and depositing their genetic replicas into, well anything that will take it.
In case you haven’t noticed by now I’m not fond of our world as I know it. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had the chance to devote my life to the home, to my children, and to perfecting womanhood, for the men who so graciously protect us… yeah, no never mind I just got nauseous at the thought of that. I’d rather be in this hospital bed, in this stark white room for the rest of my days than live as a woman in 2056.
I think by now it’s obvious that I ramble and lose sight of things easily, let’s blame it on my lack of social skills, or that I’ve been deprived of any life outside of this hospital and Dr Azrael's office. Anyways. Context, context, context.
It's the year of 2056. Men rule most of our governing powers, women are caregivers, and childcare and the military are everything. It’s been like this since the elections in 2032, a couple of years before I surrendered to this world. Wars broke out all over the world over resources and because of that borders closed and militaries took over. It’s my understanding that a lot of research, people, and infrastructure were lost in the initial year of The Estrangement. At first with all the bombings and violence it made sense for some that the military take charge, as that’s their expertise, However even after the wars had settled down they didn’t exactly relinquish their power. Military and government became one. After the alliance between both the government and the military was formed, the reallocating of resources began. First to go was the formal education system then it was followed by the medical system. It was done under the understanding that the newly founded government didn’t have enough funds to support its endeavors of war and resource supplements. Now that men were in charge the enforcement of “ natural roles” in society took over. Along with war, other responsibilities of the men became population control. It was to their understanding that they needed an army and with the protection of the reinstated natural gendered roles, it was their prime responsibility to create one. Yes, we are talking about mass repopulation without a funded education system or medical system. Thousands of children were born that year and the next and the next. Many died in war, at birth, or shortly after. The more that died the more men found a purpose in spreading their seed. It became common practice to create life when needed. You can only imagine what happens in a society where the goal is war and creating life without care for sustaining it. We became weapons or machines, nothing else.
You might be wondering where I fall into this mix. Well, I was born eight years after The Estrangement for the sole purpose of helping create more life in the future. That was my parent’s goal I believe but I was born with a birth defect that for lack of boring you with medical terminology I won’t go into much detail on. Except for the basics that you might find valuable for context. I am pretty much like many children born nowadays bedridden, have been since I was born, and was given fourteen years to live. I am sixteen today so you can imagine how that goes over every morning I wake up and still have to stare at the same white wall I’ve stared at since I can first remember. Not the most motivating thing in the world. But what is motivating nowadays?
I don’t remember when I was born but I can imagine with the medical system underfunded and the state of society it probably didn’t come to much surprise when I was found ill. Like I said, many children died in many different ways but the most common was because of illness. Making me extremely predictable again. With the repopulation efforts and mass production of children, things get messy. I am a part of that mess. Usually, children get diagnosed with illnesses and get abandoned almost immediately because of the lack of resources to support ill children. To sum it up nicely we burden our families with our formalities and hinder the success of their missions. Pretty depressing, no?
My family abandoned me when I was born and I was left in the care of the few medical professionals still working, in a half-abandoned hospital. I do have a therapist though. Lucky me. I received minimum education from the nurses who watched over me and taught me how to read and write using leftover medical textbooks.
Now you know my life story minus the boring details, you get it just though. Hopefully.
I'm an orphaned sixteen-year-old waiting for death to take her out of this miserable world in my own opinion. Whose life has consisted of ramblings and inner dialogue that have kept me wondering even in this tragic room. My therapist Dr Azrael has prescribed me a cure for my time. This or you, I guess. Journaling my inner dialogue away until my fate takes me.
Just between me and you though I think she is just tired of my ramblings and discussions of the world that I haven't even seen or heard of. When the nurses were attempting to give an education of sorts they used to assign me projects. For example, when I was being taught about what plants existed outside these walls, my project was to draw up my version of what I thought the planets might look like and create my own “scientific textbook”. You however are my final project though. This journal. I know it, the nurses know it, Dr Azrael knows it. She says it will help me conceptualize my life, and put into words my feelings but again in my opinion there's not much to conceptualize. I'm just a girl who was born into a family and society that didn't want me, and that had no need for me. There's not much more to say. I have no control over anything and unlike the rest of humankind, I feel at peace with that, maybe because I was forced to but maybe because I was meant to.
Every time I visit Dr. Azrael’s office there is a graveyard of journals covering her desk, and her floor. It sometimes makes it hard to maneuver around them, especially in my condition. I've never found it alarming because that's how it's always been. Now that I think about it, the journals are all the same. They look alike to each other and they look alike to mine. Some you can tell have been filled with wonderings and others have just begun. I wonder what mine will look like when it's retired to her graveyard. I'm not even sure she reads them. Why would she? Ramblings of sick children right before they die, what does that have to offer? Surely not anything of much use today.
Hello, it’s Star, it's been a couple of months since I last talked with you. Dr Azrael has been nagging me about it nonstop. I apologize if that offends you. It's not that I don't want to talk to you, it's just that things are happening and well I don't have time to write them down. You are probably wondering what could be happening to me when nothing even remotely exciting has ever happened to me, let alone something that would actually occupy my time. Well, I've been reading. It occurred to me after one of my visits with Dr Azeal that those journals that looked like mine were just sitting there and I was almost sure Dr Azeal was not going to read them, so I might as well. I might as well immerse myself in the lives of dead children. At first, I was surprised by the nuances of these children's lives even if they resembled mine so similarly. Each had unique accounts of the Estrangement years and the years that followed. I found some curiosity in this. I thought that I was predictable, that I was just another sick kid that was waiting to die and in some literal sense I am but these children had thoughts and ideas that could change things as we know it. This might be my final project. Not that you aren't enough. These journals could prove our worth in this world. Prove that we can have more purpose. I can have a purpose.
Dr. Azaleas Note: This was Star’s final addition to her journal before her long-expected passing. However, i want it to be noted as it’s published in The New World Order that Star was the linchpin for it all. Star's curiosity and insight into the world helped start the rebellion. After her passing, I became committed to publishing the accounts of the children in the hospital. In a world that has been hard-wired one way, the ideas and accounts of these children who had nothing but time to wonder about our remedies paved the way for The New World Order. Their publications have helped open many eyes to the problems of our society and how we can rebuild.
