“It occurred to me that this could all be just the beginning. That it wasn’t a matter of taking a temporary safety measure, but rather that long-term business models were being established that wouldn’t be scaled back any time soon …”
With brutal kindness, facts were created …
“One morning I woke up and felt paralysed …”
Voice over: I was unable to move. As if I had been cut off from my entire inner self. Only slowly did I become aware of my transformation. I suffered from emotional congestion, or rather, I felt an absolute powerlessness and inability to express myself adequately. I wanted to intervene with all my means. But I simply could not get myself going, rather I remained in my immobility. I forced myself forward only in the smallest steps and adapted to the new circumstances of life … The fear and the threat of an invisible enemy was omnipresent. On the streets there were large posters reminding people of the danger, on the platforms and in the trains of the capital repetitive announcements appealed for compliance with the rules.
I still couldn’t believe that I had managed to leave the capital. Before that, I had gone through a bureaucratic hurdle race. I had to enter all my personal data digitally at a private company. Then I was tested in the central laboratory. With friendly brutality, I received unmistakable instructions. A double-protected employee pushed a chopstick deep into my throat for a few seconds. The test result could now be retrieved digitally. I was negative. And so I was allowed to travel. ––– Perhaps all this was just the beginning. This is where long-term business models emerged to capture and perfect the digital identity of travellers.
On my forays, I discovered the huge crater rim and the large research station. The road to the rocky massif was closed off and secured with laser barriers. Day by day, I became more distant from the conditions in the north from which I had fled, even though I still followed the news. The steep canyons of the island seemed impassable, especially when the clouds drifted through quickly. But the inhospitable beauty of the island also filled me with melancholy. I felt a painful separation from my familiar surroundings and the people who had stayed behind. At the same time, I sensed that it would never be the same again as I remembered it.
Information reached me that entire regions had been virtually sealed off and even train traffic had been stopped in between. Other sectors had been declared test areas and were subject to the strictest regulations. There were demands to refrain from every social contact – preferably in voluntary “self-isolation” – and to maintain as sterile an environment as possible. According to official surveys, a majority of the population seemed to agree with all the measures. But already new, even more dangerous mutations were on the horizon. I became aware that there was no real escape even on the periphery. Suddenly I feared that I would not be able to get out of the red zone after returning and would be trapped.
Gradually, it became more and more clear that the goal was to maintain the state of emergency at all costs …
“Again and again I came across caves and niches that strong tree roots had created above the volcanic rock, hardly bigger than a cupboard bed. And then I imagined myself lying down in them. I wanted to be prepared. For my own transformation. So that I could also start my last journey without any regret.
They wanted to keep us away from this dangerous underground, to take us out of these unpredictable hiding places and subject us to the predictability of the digital world. ––– Everything was done to put us in fear and panic by painting death as the greatest possible evil to be assumed, which generally took place in a sterile intensive care unit and under artificial respiration. ––– Not the healthy human being was the aim, but an object that had to be constantly controlled for its own safety, an optimised bio-unit and commodity that could be exploited.”
