Death

by Hyun Choul Kim

them on notice

  News reported that the bill had passed that made government officials, members of national assembly, and politicians with stage 2 symptoms leave their jobs despite of strong opposition of many politicians. Although the current president still has his term remaining, he had to resign because of the law, and we needed to prepare for an upcoming presidential election. The vice president will be in charge until the next president.

  6Hunting

  I'm running. I finally came to my senses and consciousness "Why am I running?"

  A truck filled with people was chasing after me. "Ah, the grandalpha hunters."

  The government isolated grandalphas who had stage 2 symptoms, and sent the ones with stage 3 symptoms off to the farm. People knew there were farms nationwide, but nobody knew what people exactly do there. The government said that they would pay a certain amount of money to the grandalpha hunters for every grandalpha they seize. I didn’t know what they do at the farm, but my instincts told me that I shouldn't get caught, so I'm running.

  I've been running so much that I'm running out of breath, but I had to keep running because I heard gun fire. Many other grandalphas around me were all running, so I guess we were all in one place. One person next to me falls down. He probably got shot by the electric bullet. Now we're going up the mountain. The hunters are on trucks, so they don't follow us when we go up the mountains. This is possible when I'm thinking and conscious. I'm conscious now. I go up into the mountains and hide when I'm conscious, but I wander around when I'm not conscious.

  I thought I couldn't run anymore but I am still running in the mountains. A couple of other people were running next to me, and they are saying no one is chasing us. I looked back. I saw the lights of the truck. The people were dragging something and loading them on the truck. They kept doing that and then left the mountain behind. I survived today.

  The person who escaped from the farm said that the hunters use electric shock bullets, but once in a while they use real bullets. The hunters bet often to collect money and give it to the person who kills the most. This was because the government gives them money even when they take dead bodies back.

  I'm hungry. I can't live like this. Should I kill myself? I can't kill myself. I don’t have the guts to give up my life.

 

  7Farm

  My arms hurt. I woke up in the morning, and my whole body is in pain. I don't know if it's morning or night. I don't get any sunlight even during the day. People next to me are sleeping. I didn't think 'how long did I sleep?' but that I need to do something before I lose my mind again. I checked if I had to go to the restroom. I didn't. I checked whether I was hungry. Yes, I'm hungry. That meant that it's been a time since I ate.

  I walked down the path between beds and checked the food tray with my number on it. There was food. I ate the food.

  My arms hurt. I woke up and my whole body was in pain. I thought if I needed to poop. Yes, I did. It is cleaner to take care of it while I'm conscious. I went to the restroom. It was full, so I decided to wait.

  I was working when I woke up. Yes I need to work. I need to think before I lose it again. Just think about anything.

  I'm in the farm because I have stage 3 symptoms. I’m not just staying here but actually working. They provide us room and board, and make us work. We clean the roads or we move bricks and other materials at construction sites.

  I'm not conscious for a long time. I just do what I'm told to do for most of the time. I can't do complicated things. We only do simple work. One time I was told to dig for building a road, so I was digging. When I woke up I was digging up the farmland with crops in it. I was getting beaten up. When that happens, I want to just lose my mind again, because it wouldn’t hurt as much.

  I don't know what day it is. I wake up in the morning, eat, and then work. There's no lunch. I get dinner after work.

  When I gain my conscious, I think about my wife and children. My older son is has passed away. I lost contact with my younger son. I don't even know if he's alive or dead. I just wish that I die fast and I get unconscious.

  The production and sales of Shield is banned now, and there are no more grandalphas made. Only the ones who are getting reinjections are left now, like myself. However these types of people still take up about 1/3 of the total population. About 30% of them have stage 3 symptoms. I learned of this by reading the newspapers that was thrown out in the farm. I tried reading them because I don't know what's going on in the world and if I don’t even read this. Well honestly, now who cares what happens in the world? But I still read to think.

  The government is hiding it, but the government can remove the shield implanted in our body. However, they're using us to recover the fallen economy as side effects of the Shield and how economic activities stopped. We work as long as we eat and sleep. This is cheaper than any other labor force, and we do simple work. We even go into dangerous places to work. How wonderful is that? There is no problem when we die on site. It's better for us to disappear anyway because that was what the society wants now.

  Our labor force is making goods for the normal people in power now. The ones with stage 2 symptoms work in factories. They are fixed to the chairs so that they don't get hurt when they fall asleep while they're working. They work for free. The government tells the factory to secure the laborer's human rights, but the factory doesn't care. Everybody knows about this. I worked at the factory before I came here. I wouldn't get food if I made defective products. They would put me in a cell with no lights and no sound for weeks, but the factory was heaven.

  I can’t control myself anymore. The old me that was intelligent would have said that 'in the physicalist's view, I am me since the body and the brain are mine. In the soulist's view, I am me because my soul is still in my body. Any proof? I have the same soul when I'm conscious and not conscious. In the personalist's view, I am me because the memory, desire, and expectations are me. I'm sure now that I'm no longer me.'

  If I were me, how can I do the things that I'm not aware of, how can I sleep with the people I don't know, eat, breath, poop, and work? I work for free. It's like the dog I used to have. I would feed him, give him a place to sleep, and beat him when necessary. A philosopher once asked. Do "I" have the privilege to my life? or does my 'body'? If it's the 'body' that has the privilege to my life, then I would have to give up on my privileges to my life. If it's 'me', do I have the privilege to my life?

  Stage 4 symptoms are different from ours. I'm currently with the people who are just starting to have stage 3 symptoms. The ones with stage 4 symptoms cannot work outside because they cause trouble outside. They stay within the farm and work. I'm not as bad, but I'll be soon like them.

  I passed out as I was thinking about my children. When will this end? I want to end it. I tried killing myself when I was conscious, but I passed out not knowing what went wrong and then I woke up again. How many times did I experience this? I want to die now.

  8Zombie

  I have blood on my hands. I have blood all over my body. My face and mouth probably looks the same. The blood is dry and dark, so I guess it's been a while. I don't know how long it took for me to wake up this time. I'm a zombie now. They call people (?) like us zombies for a simple reason. We eat animals and humans whenever we get hungry.

  The farm knows about this, but they don't care as long as we do well in farming. They don't care what goes on in the pen (this building we live in is called a pen). When I wake up in the morning, I see leftover bones and clothes of humans on the floor. Someone was hungry and ate up a zombie, and then other hungry zombies ate up the rest of it. This is the perfect scene for the 'humans are wolves to humans'.

  In some novel, a corpse is not buried or cremated but just left on the grassland. A young man asks an old man the reason. The old man answers, 'the grassland people killed so many to eat meat for their entire life. They're sinful. That's why they return their bodies to t
he grassland when they die. That's fair, and that's how their soul would be pain free and go up to Tangry.' I don't know what kind of a person he was before he was eaten by the zombies, but I'm sure his soul is free from pain. Although he was not eaten by the wolves but humans.

  When a zombie dies, the manager appears right away with stun guns. They make the killer zombie and other zombies get out of the way and remove the Shield. They're trying to get the Shield injection. I don't know where they use that, and I don't care.

  ‘This refers to the corpse that was magically revived by a voodoo bocor in the Western Indian Empire of America. It has the look of humans but it may be rotten because it is a dead body. It is completely under the magician's control, so it cannot listen, has no free will, and almost all zombies are used as slave-laborers in the farm. Zombies stay inside the graves in the daytime and come out at night to work. They can see in the dark, so no light is necessary. Humans with high sins are told to become zombies as a punishment.' If this is called a zombie, then that's exactly what we are.

  We're alive because of the drug. I sleep all day and don't remember most of it, and we're living without any will. We work for free at farms. One difference is that we work day and night. We have sinned. The sin was to go