2222: A Novel (With Graphics), page 1
2222
A Novel
(With Graphics)
Felix I.D. Dimaro
2222
Written by Felix I.D. Dimaro
Cover Artwork: Rosco Nischler
Interior Artwork:
Carlos Angeli
Yosafat Catur
Adam James
Zach Horvath
Rosco Nischler
Typography and Graphic Design: Courtney Swank
Copyright © 2021 by Felix I.D. Dimaro
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Presented by
For the people stuck in crowded places
“The superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice.”
“The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.”
“I do not know that any writer has supposed that on this earth man will ultimately be able to live without food.”
– Thomas Robert Malthus
1945
The
Begging
Beast
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
– Marcus Aurelius
Berlin, Germany
April 30, 1945
Minutes after 3 PM
All of a sudden he was in the mood for murder. He had his gun out, leveled at the man before him. In front of him, this man whose uniform was pressed and in pristine order, the medals on his chest declaring his bravery, his honour, this man cowered. Begged.
The man with the gun saw these medals and the lies they represented and wanted to spit. Wanted to do much more than that. And the person he had his pistol aimed at knew it. That person was standing with his hands out in front of him, trembling, palms up, showing that he had no intention of reaching for the pistol at his hip, pleading instead for this not to happen. For him not to be hurt. This vile and lowly begging man.
No, not a man, the one holding the gun thought to himself. Not a person, but a beast.
A monster dressed in human skin.
This monster fell to his knees and began to plead more fervently. Though even as he begged he attempted to retreat, to scuttle back into the room he had emerged from.
“No!” he shouted as he was dragged forward, a strong hand gripping his collar and wrenching until his uniform was no longer so pristine. He was thrown nearly the length of his body to the middle of the sitting room, landing partway between the man who had thrown him and a pale yellow, patterned couch. A couch upon which sat, slumped, the dead body of a woman.
He backed up until he hit the couch. His head swivelling around violently as if looking for a place to go, wanting to be anywhere but here, in front of this large, dark man holding what seemed to be an even larger and darker and unwavering gun.
The man holding the gun was conflicted. He knew his instructions were to go back to this point in time and get this creature. Emphasis on ‘get’. The second half of those instructions had been ‘do not harm him, whatsoever’. Emphasis on all of those words. But now, while in the process of completing his task – the thing he had worked toward for the last two years, the thing that would get him back his family, get him an actual life – all he wanted to do was shoot Adolf Hitler in the face.
It would take a second. And, yes, it would change everything for them. It might even mean the end of him. But he was a soldier, a man of sacrifice. He, his team, so many others, would be happy to sacrifice themselves if it meant their time hadn’t wound up the way their time had wound up. Nourishment Patches instead of food, manmade islands where bodies were piled atop each other and told to live that way. And the never-ending conflict that this monster had championed, still felt even three hundred years later. Desmond could end it all, the pain and suffering – maybe – if he pulled the trigger right then and there.
He made his decision.
Gun pointed at the monster’s head, Desmond Drew walked over to Hitler…
2220
Satellites
Memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all... Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it we are nothing.
― Luis Buñuel
The Wolf Institute, Telesto Isle
Satellite 2 of The Nation of North England
April 4, 2220
His very first memory was of waking up, screaming. Screaming because he didn’t recognize where he was. Screaming because he had no memory prior to the one he was creating at that moment. Of waking. And screaming.
He was in a small room contained by pale peach walls with nothing on them. Below him was a white tile floor. More immediately below him was a small bed that he knew belonged to a thing called a hospital. He knew this word – hospital – but had no associative memories he could attach to it. No recollection of where he had learned the word, who had taught it to him, who he had visited in a place with that word affixed to it. He only knew the word. Hospital. Knew what its function was. And understood that he was likely in one now.
The grey, nondescript door opened into the nondescript room and a pale white man with a thick shock of silver-white hair walked in. He wore brown slacks and a white shirt beneath a well-worn white laboratory coat. The man’s steps, as he proceeded further into the room, seemed to be a bit stiff. The man as a whole appeared slightly rigid.
This must be the doctor, he thought to himself regarding the person who had entered the room. Except why would a doctor be carrying that?
The pale man in the faded lab coat held in his right hand what looked to be some sort of pistol.
“Settle down, please, Mr. Drew.” the new entrant to the room said calmly. His voice was nonthreatening but clinical. If he had meant for it to comfort the man with no memory, he had made a miscalculation. However, the man with no memory did stop shouting. He became very quiet as he gritted his teeth, rose to his feet and took a shakier than expected step toward the person he believed to be a doctor, who, in response, raised the pistol in his hand and aimed it at the approaching man’s chest before saying,
“Mr. Drew. Please. I would prefer not to have to tranquilize you again. We would only have to go through this once more when you woke up. Can you please return to the bed? Your body needs to rest. I will explain what’s going on and then we can figure out where to go from there, alright?”
The man said nothing. He glared hotly at the doctor but followed his instructions, not so much sitting back on the bed but rather plopping down upon it in a huff. Exhausted from the effort of standing up and taking that one step.
He looked around the room again as though it might somehow have changed. As if hoping the plain walls would now give him new information he hadn’t seen before.
Mr. Drew, he thought to himself, ruminating on what he had been called. It sounded vaguely familiar.
The doctor placed the tranquilizer gun into one of the pockets of his coat and stepped toward the man he had referred to as Mr. Drew, but stopped when his patient gave him a warning glare to come no further. Then his patient spoke for the first time.
“What… what is happening? Why can’t I remember anything? And why did you tranquilize me in the first place?” Mr. Drew asked, his voice nearly as shaky as his body.
“You have been the victim of a terrorist attack. A gas bombing on parts of the two Englands and three of their satellite cities less than a month ago. Chemical warfare. You have been unconscious for some time, but not entirely inactive. You thrashed and cried out but would not fully wake for much of this past week. That is why we had to restrain you.”
Mr. Drew contemplated this for a moment. Thought back to his very first memory. Of waking and screaming just moments ago. He wanted to scream now, though purely out of frustration. Instead, he took in a deep breath as he processed what he had just been told.
“Where am I?” he asked. Paused. Thought hard before swallowing uneasily. “Who am I?”
“You are Desmond Drew of the island of Miranda, a satellite city belonging to the nation of North England. You are currently on Telesto Isle, another of North England’s satellites. You are… were… a Soldier of the People, a title bestowed on any number of occupations considered hazardous to most: law enforcement, healthcare, emergency response and the like. Specifically, you worked in Miranda as a member of law enforcement in that municipality. As part of a force called the Guardians of the City. With Miranda and the other satellite cities that were attacke–”
“You keep saying that. ‘Satellite city’. I don’t know what that is. Why don’t we start from there?”
“Oh my.” The doctor peered at Desmond carefully while running a hand through his thick white hair. “Just exactly what do you remember, Mr. Drew?”
“Nothing,” Desmond said without hesitation, knowing there was no point in being indirect. “I don’t remember a thing.”
“How do you feel otherwise?”
“My head hurts. And I feel… not quite right.” He thought again of that shaky step he had tried to take toward the doctor. He had meant it to be menacing. He may even have gone to disarm the man, but Desmond wasn’t sure the doctor would have needed the tranquilizer gun to have subdued him. He felt weak.
The doctor pressed a button o
“We’ll have something here for your headache in just a moment, Mr. Drew. You said you don’t feel ‘quite right’. What else are you experiencing? Muscle aches? Pain anywhere in your body?”
“I’m a bit sore… But honestly Doc – I’m assuming you’re a doctor – I just want to know what’s going on here.” Again he looked around as if hoping something in the room might magically change and give him the answers he was seeking.
“Yes. My apologies. I was so thrilled to see you awake and animated, and I’ve been monitoring you for so long, it slipped my mind that you do not actually know me yet.” He chuckled but Desmond heard little humour in the sound. “My name is Dr. Henry Wolf. I am a physicist and biochemical engineer, and I am in charge of tracking your progress here at the Wolf Institute of Physics and Biotechnology.” Desmond ignored the obvious air of pride the doctor took in stating the name of the place.
“So you’re not a regular doctor then?” Again, he knew the word and what it meant. Doctor. But there was an emptiness about it; a familiar word with nothing of significance attached to it. He tried to remember doctors from his past and drew more blanks.
The door opened behind Dr. Wolf, and a younger, shorter man entered the room dressed in pale blue scrubs, wearing medical gloves and a protective shield over his face. He walked over to Desmond, who watched him carefully, and set a tray down on the bed beside the man with no memory.
“I’ve never much cared for being referred to as ‘regular’ when it comes to anything, Mr. Drew.” Dr. Wolf said with a smile, “So I will happily say no, I am not a regular doctor. But I have successfully cared for you here while other doctors outside of this institution would certainly have failed you… I hope you trust when I say you don’t have to be defensive or suspicious. What Nurse Johns here is holding is not as bad as it looks. Sit still and it will be over momentarily.”
The nurse began to sort out what was on the tray he had placed beside Desmond. He first lifted from the tray a metal instrument that looked like a smaller, more streamlined version of the tranquilizer weapon Dr. Wolf currently had in his lab coat pocket. There was a needle at the front end of it, and an empty slot along the top of the gadget. The nurse then produced a vial. Some sort of vibrant blue liquid in a small glass tube. The liquid looked highly viscous and cloudy, and Desmond was indeed suspicious.
The nurse loaded the liquid-filled tube into the empty slot of the injector gun and was bringing the instrument toward Desmond, who now had his fists up, ready to fend off whatever it was this person was intending to do to him with that device. The nurse stopped his advance when he saw those two raised fists.
“What is it?” Desmond asked the doctor. Neither he nor the nurse moved, both waiting to see what the other would do next. “What’s in that fucking needle?”
“A special serum. It’s for your headache. And for other symptoms, some which you may not yet be feeling. I must remind you that you have survived a terrorist attack, Mr. Drew. One of the worst in history. A gas bombing as well as several munitions attacks simultaneously launched in both North and South England and three of their satellites, the worst of the damage done to Miranda Isle, where you lived and were stationed. Over twenty million were injured or made ill, and over a million died. Thankfully, Telesto was spared of these attacks, making our work here more vital than it has ever been. What’s in that injector, Mr. Drew, is the only thing that prevented you from joining those million dead.”
“Fuck.”
“Indeed.”
The three were silent as the nurse injected Desmond in his right arm. He hissed as the needle pierced his skin and the injector shot the serum into his shoulder. The nurse removed the empty tube from the injector and placed it in a bright yellow biohazard waste bin against the wall not far from Desmond’s bed. Then the nurse scurried off, exiting the room in a hurry, seemingly thankful to be away from the patient.
Desmond looked down at both of his arms and saw that his brown skin was purple in spots. Injection bruises, he surmised. He counted several large bruises along his right arm, several more on his left. This newest shot would leave yet another mark. He wondered how long he had been laid up while this doctor pumped him full of God-knows-what.
“How long was I unconscious?” he asked. But between the beginning of that question and its end, his demeanor had changed. Desmond couldn’t hide the fact that his headache had already begun to dissipate, and he suddenly felt stronger than he had only moments before.
“Bloody hell. That serum works quick!”
“Things are quite advanced here.”
“How’s that?”
“Just that… as far as scientific and technological progress goes, our capabilities here at my institute are beyond what one might be accustomed to in the satellite cities such as Miranda. Or even here in Telesto, outside of this compound that is. Unfortunately, none of our advancements have been able to reverse the impact of the chemicals from the attacks. The damage done to the hippocampus.”
“Hippo…”
“The region in your brain that deals with memory – particularly long-term memory – has been, seemingly, irreversibly damaged by the chemicals unleashed upon millions of citizens of the Englands and the Union. We believe the terrorist group behind what happened is called the ‘Sons of the Swastika’. Or at least that is one of the many extremist, white supremacist, pro-population control groups suspected of inflicting this attack.
“The gas itself was designed to be a political statement. To wipe the minds of citizens this group considers to be brainless, thoughtless and useless sheep. To create millions of vacant minds. And to help cull a population that, admittedly, has grown wildly out of control. Hence the existence of this island we are on to begin with.
“It truly was a sad affair. The official reports say over a million have died, and I repeat this. But in truth, everyone whose memories were impacted by the chemicals unleashed upon Miranda and the Englands died in some way. I am someone who believes that a person’s life is in their memories, and therefore the death toll the government keeps is somewhat inaccurate. Lives ended due to these attacks, even if the bodies which had contained those lives still continue to breathe… I apologize if that sounds harsh given your condition.”
Desmond wasn’t concerned about his feelings being hurt. He was busy wracking his brain, trying to remember any of this. According to the doctor’s story, Desmond and millions of others had been attacked weeks ago. Could he really have been unconscious for that long? He strained to recall anything, but could not. He sat there trying to absorb what he was being told, praying it wasn’t true.
“Wait.” Desmond said, suddenly realizing something he should have realized a while ago. “You said we’re in… Telesto? And the attack happened in Miranda, was it? What about my life in Miranda? Do I have any family I can speak to?” Desmond did his best to search his memory again, to the point that his head began to hurt once more. But he couldn’t remember anyone. Not a mother or father. Not a wife or kids. Not a single friend in the world.
The doctor walked over to Desmond, placed a hand on the man’s shoulder and said,
“There is some more unfortunate news, Mr. Drew. In this circumstance, you may be relieved that you cannot access your memories.”
Dead.
That was what the doctor said of Desmond Drew’s wife and children. They had died in the attack on Miranda.
The doctor had informed his patient of this curtly, though not unkindly. Dr. Wolf went on to tell Desmond that he had no siblings, and his parents were also dead. Though they had died years prior and were not victims of the terrorists.
