Science Fiction

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Alpha Cohorts. That's what they're calling the groups of students allowed to attend in-person school.

I am in Alpha Cohort A-K. Tuesdays and Wednesdays will belong to us. 

We will be screened upon entering, cotton strings sewed tight through smiles, aisles, elastic, lanes, stops and go's. My last handshake was with the English coordinator. The last place I went mask-less was Barnes and Noble, and of all things, I bought 1Q84. A dystopia chronicling how a fictional year exists in parallel with a real one. Plastic shields, and everything will smell like bleach//latex//alcohol, and it is here, in this miniature of the big wide world, that we will grow. If it all seems a little surreal, it's because it is. This is the merging of a fictional year and a real one, and I'm quite curious as to what Murakami thinks about it. 

One thing I'm excited about is the inevitability of what I like to call a Capulet-Montague complex. It's high school, after all, so naturally there will be loves and friendships and acquaintanceships between Alpha Cohort A-K and Alpha Cohort L-Z. I wonder how they'll be strained. I wonder how they'll strengthen. For lack of a better word, this will suck on the individual level, but boy oh boy, will it make for some good historical fiction in one-hundred years. I hope I'm alive to read it.

Uncle Anthony is our new Uncle Sam. COVID - corona/ virus/ disease. CO - Colorado/ VI - Virginia/ D -dachshund. A topsy-turvy government with its very own stupider, oranger President Snow. More concerned with entertainment (Tik Tok, the Hunger Games... this is a stretch, I know) than real societal issues. She, say her name, her, she I/ breathe, I can't/ breathe/ knees and badges and beatings/ gas drifts hazily over the fires, tinging everything 

bloody-red.

Dead in bed. 

Why do we need to be shocked to call for change? 

A biological holocaust on news stations instead of widescreens; blindly stuffing our mouths with paper squares and gels instead of popcorn. 


'I will find my way, I will social distance."

- Hercules

'Floating lanterns in the Kingdom of Corona."

- Tangled

'A metal pot and a metal pan and trumpetsong.'

- Balconies Everywhere

'Virtual PROOOMMMM!'

- John Krasinski


Why am I sixteen? 

What is sixteen? Because it certainly isn't Molly Ringwald or Heath Ledger or bright lights in tunnels. 

This is your coming of age story, mine, your country's, mine, your world's, mine, ours. 

//Creeeaaaakkkkk//

Did you hear that? 

That was George Orwell rolling in his grave. 



Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash

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