Story: Merdeck
Once upon a time in an urban city called Merdeck was a series of high-rise office buildings all collectively situated together in a large rectangular pattern if looked from above. One of these buildings outshone the rest with made of pristine white marble and a large amount of modern décor surrounded the lobby of the building. One such person working in this area was a person called Sarah she parked swiftly and then opened the car door of her Toyota skyline and walked as fast as she could towards the Capita office complex. Step, step, step was the sound of her high heels as she walked frantically into the revolving office doors and into the reception.
“Hello; Amanda can I please check in? I am sorry for the lateness, but I have a meeting at around 9am and it’s now 9.15am where is it?” Amanda looked extremely disappointed despite Sarah’s apologetic look; she quickly waved towards the lift. Amanda replied curtly: “This is becoming typical of you Sarah! If you keep this up, you know what the boss will think; lift on the right; 3rd floor; meeting room F”. Sarah motioned quickly to the lift and pressed the call lift button. As she got onto the lift her phone started buzzing. Buzz, buzz it went; she looked at the phone and saw the name “Paul” the name of her husband; he didn’t usually call when she was at work; and as a result, she couldn’t answer the phone; she clicked the phone down button and sent a quick text saying “Hello honey; is everything ok? Xx”. Approaching the meeting room F she quickly; as if on a snowboard; slid into the meeting.
Inside the meeting room was a lot of different people; around 15 people of different ages and a mix of both male and female. It was a typical office conference room with a whiteboard on one side and a projector screen on the other. On the other side, adjacent to the whiteboard was a window that was transparent and looked out into the wider city of Merdeck. The cars were very tiny like ants below as this floor was quite high and the other high-rise office buildings were stationed in a uniform pattern in the local vicinity.
“Hello Sarah; you’re late again; what happened” said the manager of Capita: Rose. Sarah said, “I’m very sorry I got caught up in traffic; I promise this won’t happen again”. Rose said “well it better not now, will it? We have talked about this before; try not to do this again please”. The meeting continued at the time people were on zoom on the projector screen with people tuning in from the Capita offices from Malaysia as well as India as people were talking about the various projects at work; from IT consultancy goals and project deadlines.
As the meeting ended people stood up from their chairs and made their way out of the room. As Sarah made her way to the exit Rose stood behind and said to Sarah “we need to talk”. They both exited the conference room and made their way to a different room marked “Room F”. Rose and Sarah entered, and Rose said “sit”. Sarah frowned and then sat down on the chair with a thump. Rose then proceeded to say “do you realise what is going on? This isn’t the first time this has happened”; Rose exclaimed. Sarah looked back in a horrified look and said “I couldn’t help the traffic could I!” and pointed at Rose. Rose said “right that’s it: you’re fired. Put your lanyard back on your desk and your belongings from the company”.
Sarah looked completely shocked as she looked at Rose in horror and realised that she was about to be fired. In fact she was already fired and proceeded to look at Rose in scorn as she realise what’s happening. She walked back to her desk and proceeded to pack away our belongings into our back. As she did so someone walked up to her and said, “I’m sorry to hear about this Rose is right you have been late a lot and deserve punishment for your wrongdoing”. Sarah looked at the person crossly and furrowed her eyebrows. She packed everything left her LAN yard on the desk and proceeded to go to the car.
She opened the door quickly of the car and sat a rapid pace onto the car seat cushion. She drove home like a maniac at a really high speed. She managed to get into the house and when her two children came home she broke the news to them and they all started crying together as they wondered exactly how to pay the rent or how to get food on the table as Sarah was no longer working. The next day Sarah started looking on the Internet for new jobs a website such as indeed and so on. With no luck and no money she began to be increasingly desperate. She opened up the mobile banking app on iPhone and realised her bank balance read zero. If things didn’t change they will be homeless within a week.
Homelessness was not something Sarah was wise with she never knew anyone or anyone else she knew that was in this predicament, so she didn’t know herself what to do. At the end of the week the rent wasn’t paid so the landlord proceeded to file an eviction notice to Sarah and her family. One bright sunny morning Sarah had door knock. She opened the door: in front of her was the landlord in desperation she begged for the landlord to be able to keep them in this property. With no luck she took her kids and her suitcase out into the street.
She stood there looking front of her and didn’t know what to do she looked at her suitcase and her kids and a sense of alarm and panic was building beside of her. She roamed the streets and found somewhere to sit with her kids. Sarah said: “I do not know what to do and I don’t know how to help myself or you guys”. The kids said, “I want to go home!” Of which they both said spontaneously and simultaneously. Sarah looked at them and thought what a mistake she had been at work turning up late all the time putting stress on our finances and ultimately leaving them destitute. As she sat down somebody walked up to them. He laid out a hand and said: “do you want some of these” he said quietly. Sarah looked to whom the suspicious look and set “yes I might as well, I lost everything, and I want to get something back” so she took it and gave some to her kids and all swallowed it.
As they swallowed it they realised it tasted a sort of metallic, rusty flavour and in desperation Sarah realised that it wasn’t food that was taken. She shot an evil look towards the man and shouted: “what… what is this?” As she said this she was suddenly very nauseous and so the next moment: pitch black.
It was quite a while but eventually Sarah came to her sense. She looked around and saw a white insular room. She was unsure what to do, with blurry vision coming back into focus she saw – she was in some sort of prison cell beside her was another prison cell with her children it. She was very scared indeed. As she wondered what to do a person dressed in a lab coat approached the cells.
This person said: “Hello, you must be wondering where you are and why you are here, my name is Richard”. He looked like he was pondering, but in a moment he said: “You are somewhere deep underground, so escaping is virtually impossible. Also, your phones have been disconnected and thrown into the trash can; so that contact with the outside world is also impossible.” Suddenly a soft muffling noise appeared in the background. Sarah said: “Please don’t! I don’t want to die!” Sarah continued crying and suddenly her children also started crying as well.
Richard continued: “I hope you understand the fact that you’re not dreaming. We need you guys alive; I hope to explain soon what will take place”. Sarah glared at Richard: “Why am I here; I don’t understand”. Sarah wallowed in pain and distress as she wondered what was happening. Richard then carefully explained that the plan was to bring them here in order to protect them from a very grave danger currently happening in the streets outside.
Richard said: “There is currently a pandemic happening on the streets outside; it is highly contagious and the resulting consequences are a severe mental illness being developed”. Richard continued: “As a result; people end up carrying knives and weapons almost becoming zombies unable to control their own actions. I have put you here to safeguard you from this outbreak”.
Sarah couldn’t believe what she was hearing; a pandemic; a pandemic affecting people’s mental health? Is this a thing; she wondered what to do or what to reply with. Sarah exclaimed: “You’re lying! How could you do such a thing; keep us imprisoned here!” Richard replied: “I assumed you would think or say that; so I will give you something; I have the virus in capsules and will give it to your children so that you can see what it turns out to be like; would you like that?”
Sarah was very distraught and upset and said: “Please don’t! Please don’t” she took the prison bars in her hands and rattled them to and fro. Richard said: “here you are”. Out of the 2 children Sarah had: Lucy & Will; Richard proceeded to give Lucy the pill in a forced way; forcing her every ounce of her life to have the capsule with the water provided. As a result; Lucy suddenly had glazed eyes and started screaming and shouting and banging her head against the side of the cell.
“Please don’t do that! Lucy; no!” Sarah remarked. It was clear Lucy was fed some sort of unusual drug as she slowly warped into a completely different personality. She looked horrid with her glazed eyes and her curled hands; almost like a zombie. Sarah and Will looked completely astounded as they realised what had happened. The outside world now wasn’t what they expected; and they were now trapped in this place; but the question was; was it a safe haven or a prison?
Sarah looked around once more and realised that there was no hope here; she was soon going to die or lose her mind in this place. Suddenly there was a large sound and a beaming light; a massive crack formed in the side of the building. Richard shouted: “Oi! What is happening here? What is going on?” He wasn’t sure what to do when suddenly a car crashed into the middle of the lab causing chaos and confusion. The car alarm sounded and the raging torrent of turmoil and anguish swept through Sarah and in this moment she realised that you could never tell who is on your side and who isn’t.
Surprisingly the car remained intact and the driver stepped out of the car into the laboratory. “Hello Sarah, I’m here to explain what is going on” said the Grey man. Sarah replied: “What is happening; are you here to rescue us?” The grey man exclaimed: “yes and no I will explain later but please now hop into the car”. So Sarah hopped into the car but then followed up with: “wait, my children! One of them has mutated Lucy is not well but will is still okay!” The grey man said: “unfortunately it is not possible to save Lucy but we can take Will along with us”.
Sarah replied back with: “excuse me, I cannot just leave my child here”. As soon as she said this the grey man pulled into the car pushed the door closed and pressed the lock button in the car. As this happened Lucy in a wild rage proceeded to scratch and screech at the car and bash it. As this happened the car started moving.
A few minutes later the car was on the road and looking all around her Sarah could see a very different landscape than what she saw before the local grocery stores and supermarkets were all derelict and old and the people walking around were doing unusual actions such as hitting themselves in the head and walking around like zombies.
As she walked around it was clear to her that there was no way that anything decent could occur here. As she did this she said: “whoa, what is happening here?” She saw a big car proceed to crash into a house. This house was big and square in size, yet it was a significant size and very white porcelain. As the car crashed into it, the house quickly toppled over and was no more.
This was a scary situation as she didn’t know what to do except to break down in tears and try to explain away what just happened. Why didn’t she know what to do? What was to be done? These were the questions that were firing away in her mind.
Suddenly a lorry out of nowhere crashed into the car where Sarah was. Sarah suddenly woke up in her bedroom and realised that the last few hours have been a really bad dream, but it has taught her to place her family first and not to trust strangers. Sarah exclaimed: “thank God that was a dream”.
She proceeded to look around and saw that it was exactly at 7 AM; so she got out of bed slowly and managed to see the sunrise and to see a new glorious day in front of her.
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