i once had to write a first chapter to a dystopia

[Samsa]

In The Beginning
Chapter One: Norm

Norm had been laying in bed for hours, listening to the constant rustle and bustle right outside his window. He was 22 years old and constantly afflicted with some sort of flu. Norman’s flu was in fact tuberculosis, but words like that didn’t exist in his time. The new intellectuals and government officials had long since decided that the crisis at hand was largely due to words such as ‘cancer’, ‘tuberculosis’, and ‘heart attack’. Such words caused people to think there was something unnatural about the process of sickness and dying, gave them the compulsion to find some way to fix them. Other ideas had sprung up recently, so recently that Norm could slightly remember the way things used to be. He remembered being younger and hearing his dad tell him about the laboratories with manufactured livers, lungs, and even brains. He remembered visiting his Gramma in the hospital, saw her lying there helpless and bored and by some miracle of science, alive. Most of these hospitals and laboratories were burnt down during the riots of 2663.

Norm could also remember the days when he’d go to almost any restaurant and his waiter would be electrical and metallic. The same used to be true for movie theaters, gas stations, and grocery stores. Most of these ‘Helpers’ could now be found in various scrap heaps around the city.

The society Norm lived in was a society in remission, a term scientists used in the past when referring to those who had cheated death. The televisions promised change, promised more jobs and more living space. Newspapers rattled off lists of people newly sentenced to death and newly executed. This too was progress. In the past they would have been ‘rehabilitated’ and given one of the few available jobs left for live people. Now, the government had higher standards for exactly who they would allow to live on their soil. Theft, Assault, and Fraud were the three biggest additions to the list of crimes worthy of capital punishment. When live policemen were given their jobs back, they were also given orders to not worry too much about who they shot, or why. After all, they were reminded, when you have two billion people all fighting for space, somebody’s gotta make sure the deserving people win.

Norm was aware of the drawbacks to their new system, but he also knew that he never wanted to go back to the way things were before, with idle men sleeping in the roads and sick men dead in every way except by law. No, that would not be good. He even approved of the new sense of Darwinism this new society had to offer, and fully believed that if he were just careful enough he would be alright. He inspected his processed meat minutely before eating it, checking for signs of blood or any unusual smell. To avoid the new dangers that entailed in driving a car made by a deregulated automobile company, he simply walked. Most people were beginning to do the same anyways; the government had recently started a campaign against any form of transportation, any round object even, and such forms and objects were being phased out of society as we speak.
Norman tried not to think about coughing up blood, and when he did he found a spiritual solace in the idea that his illness, whatever it may be, must not be tampered with. At the same time he knew how disgusting his world was, felt sickened by the filthy crying babies and the whimpering mothers. He couldn’t step out of his apartment without running into illness. He couldn’t wait for all the weak people to die out so that the United States could once again be a great society, so that the world could thrive once again. The newspapers bragged about progress, about the wars going on in Mexico and Africa, the conquests of new land and the elimination of extraneous population. Norman’s government had found War to be the number one solution to all problems. It gave them a reason to tax people and also gave them a reason not to spend any money on social services. It created a class of strong, disciplined men and women, and it was a great way of getting rid of people. They likened it to old practices farmers had of burning out their whole farm in order to make a fresh start for the new season.

When Norm finally got out of bed, he decided he wasn’t in the mood for walking 5 miles to the nearest river in order to bathe. Norman would sometimes hear people mutter about this, people who remembered what it was like when every house had an infinite source of pure water. But these sorts of hidden accusations went largely ignored by the general public, who had a general tendency to, if not trust the government, simply not care. And as time went on, more and more people were growing accustomed to not having penicillin, vaccinations, or clean living conditions. He dragged himself to the icebox and took out a can of crushed pineapple. There were rumors that the government would soon crack down on iceboxes, and some people even said that in the future there wouldn’t even be canned foods. These people would turn out to be right, but Norman had no way of knowing that.

In fact, the government was at that moment in the subtle process of disintegrating. There was a democracy but the only people voting were the government officials, and as time went on these numbers of government officials would grow less and less. One day the whole system would cease to exist, and there would only be people and land.

The government, with an amazing amount of prophecy, was working on preparing its people for the time when they would only have themselves to rely on. Slowly they were eliminating transportation, scientific discoveries, even written languages. All the libraries had been shut down years ago. Soon the newspapers would be gone too, and with a good amount of luck, interpersonal communication would also cease to exist. The whole world was too zoned out or complacent to realize it, but thousands of years of civilization were crumbling around them. The Parthenon had been destroyed to make way for apartment buildings, and at this very moment the apartment buildings were being destroyed to make way for huts made out of mud and straw.

Far from any public outcry about the destruction of convenience and cleanliness, there was a large amount of support for the new jobs that were being created. Men by the thousands were hauled in to help with the process of tearing up sidewalks, tearing down buildings, and planting grass and trees in their place. Women were sent in to gather all the produce from Nebraska and Kansas, children were given the job of packaging all the food, and it was everybody’s job to work on rejuvenating the world’s animal population. The consumption of meat still existed, but not for long. It was yet another product of civilization in the ash heap.

Norman sat on his couch and turned on the one television station still left in existence. There was a Public Service Announcement urging all good citizens to hold back on extraneous clothes-wearing and fire-making. Norman looked down at himself, at his leather tunic and his leather sandals. He bent down, removed his shoes, and threw them into the cold, black stove.

[Samsa]

this girl kept bothering me cuz she wanted to read it we had to write them for english. she wanted to read it for some reason and i wa sal :-/ cuz i was embarased and i was scared she wouldn't think it was good i dunno

[Lie]

She probably thinks you're HAT.

[Samsa]

nah. actually her boyfriend lives in the building across the street not too surprising but it sounds surprising. sort of.