Reality Anew
A David Sands Competition story by Elle
An entry in The Sands of Time Writing Competition
20 February
They have asked me to write a diary. It’s for some researchers connected with the university and while it’s not the sort of thing I would normally do, it seems simple enough and maybe could help the cause of Science in some way. Of course, I’m not so narcissistic to think that my ramblings are important enough to anyone to actually read in the midst of the worst disaster the world has ever known. They’ll probably apply some robot tool to it, I would imagine.
And so I can write freely. They say writing is good for making sense of a chaotic environment and so maybe there will be some personal benefit too. A lot has changed in these last few weeks, but I and my partner have at least a home and a computer and a dodgy internet connection. We can watch broadcasts from around the world. We have food.
27 February
I suppose in a diary you should start with some context. How did we get here? I’m not ready for that yet. And anyway, as is so common these days, my memory is still quite fuzzy in places. So I’ll write about the here and now.
We get our food parcels every Tuesday. They are somewhat designed to account for individual tastes and needs – ours has peppers instead of tomatoes for instance - though there’s a fairly heavy reliance on dry staples, like flour and rice. There are confinement recipes online: suddenly irrelevant celebrities demonstrating how to make pasta bake for the first time in their lives. For many, it’s like cooking is a newly invented activity and they are now giddy with the prospect of making a Victoria sponge every day.
I used to go to work. But there’s no need for a Commuter like me to clog up the public transport system to act important in a soulless office block. So I stay at home with my partner, K, and we find ways to pass the day. The flat is very clean, though the intermittent electricity outages mean the floors don’t get vacuumed as much as I would like. We keep the windows shut as instructed. Sometimes my old colleagues share memes. And mostly we stare mindlessly at the devastation on our screens punctuated by automated broadcasts and reminders to stay indoors.
15 March
K thought he had a rash today. After some googling and panicking, we diagnosed him with hypochondria (and sunburn).
“How can you get sunburned from inside?” K marvelled. I looked it up and was able to report doubtfully that this could indeed be possible.
“Though it might not be a trustworthy source.” I do try to apply some sort of quality filter to things I read online, though it’s difficult when social media is your main source of connection to the world outside.
Social media has lots to say about life today. Lots of it is angry – with our government, with the system, with other people. Much of it is also well meaning, though often bordering on saccharine: poems in support of essential workers, pledges to check in virtually on older neighbours (all forgotten within a few short weeks), outpourings of support for homeless people, who were stepped over by the very same people just weeks ago who now celebrate them. “Healthy debate!” the press calls it, as they lazily extract opinions from social media and serve them up as the mood of the nation. I steer clear, but I am bored, truthfully, and a little light relief goes a long way in these times.
20 March
A few weeks ago I discovered K’s old guitar in the loft space of our top-floor flat.
“I’m going to teach myself!” K was dubious, but showed me a few chords.
“Does it always hurt like this? The strings dig into my fingers especially where the ridges are.”
“Frets,” said K, mildly.
“Hmm?”
“The ridges. They’re called frets.”
It was a time when my social media feeds were full of people excited to finally find the time to start new hobbies, get fit, write that novel, whatever. I started looking up some videos online, but the Internet cut out and I never quite went back to it.
Meanwhile, I’ve been reading a bit, cleaning the kitchen, calling my sister. I’ve been trying to cut down on watching the news, since it’s so distressing and seems a world apart from what we’re experiencing. There is official advice to switch off for the sake of mental health and yet every channel is filled with pictures of people on makeshift beds, blood oozing lazily from their bodies while relatives are ushered firmly behind barbed wire fences with “go home” messages blaring from loudspeakers. I can’t say I feel better for not knowing.
27 March
It’s not the first plague of course. The Black Death in the fourteenth century killed up to half of Europe’s population. People knew about quarantine; they had lived with the fear of disease their whole lives. Nowadays we live in such sanitised times where bad things only happen far away and to others, that we can’t quite comprehend it; we are completely unable to capture that sense of life as fleeting and precarious, where tragedy can befall any one of us with no warning.
At the start there was a mood of something close to euphoria when public places began to close. Relief, certainly, that someone was taking control of the situation and had a plan to help us avoid the worst of what befell our close neighbours. But also excitement – something was happening! We would be part of History! – that brought us closer together alongside others we could not see and whose trials we could only imagine (and see beamed onto our screens all day, of course). And for most, an end to the drudgery of work deemed “non-essential”, as we’d always believed. The old rules were thrown out of the window. Holidays? A thing of the past. Shopping? Your meals will be delivered by drone. There was a chance to build yourself anew. Throw away the pressures of real life.
Some people were fatalistic of course. Many were anxious, and with good reason. The tolls of the dead are never far from our collective minds. And yet, when I try to remember how I felt when it all started (and what I did?), the memory slips away from me, like a chosen ripple in a muddy pond. In fact, pre-Plague life feels ultimately unreal, foggy and dull.
That’s normal though – I read it in an article.
10 April
Some light today! The automated public health message says we can go outside. For 15 minutes only, for exercise and mental health. There are strict rules – no stopping, no talking, no dawdling, masks and gloves on at all times. An app gives you a slot when your neighbours are told to stay in so that you won’t make contact with anyone.
K and I took it in turns. It was hard not to stop and gaze at the blue, blue sky, hanging serenely above us as if nothing had ever happened. The trees and bushes were all in full spring growth, almost obscenely healthy and thriving from the drop in pollution caused by the precipitous drop in travel. I remember reading that soldiers in WW1 marvelled similarly at nature’s ability to ignore humankind’s brutality. In fact, the Battle of the Somme was held on a beautiful July day, with birds chirping in the gentle breeze. It’s not the picture of war you imagine. And yet the horrors happened anyway, nature making no allowances for the folly of man. Sometimes I have to keep reminding myself that we are in the worst crisis the world has ever seen. Sometimes it actually feels…peaceful.
14 April
I had a brain scan once as a participant in a research study at the university. I can’t remember how long ago it was, but I think it was about autobiographical memory. I certainly recall being asked to think about my friends and family and recent conversations while clicking a buzzer on some instruction. There were some other parts too that I can’t quite recall.
It was a strange experience; hot and stuffy inside the machine with the pounding of the hammer echoing in my bones. But it was not altogether unpleasant. That feeling of being cocooned from the world outside, like it was on mute, like the only reality that existed was here in the chamber with me; that’s how it sometimes feels today. The streets are empty and eerie, the knee-height grass untamed, the junk food wrappers advertising competitions long since pulled. The signs that flap on the doors of shops are out of date, advising shoppers to keep their distance from each other or visit other outlets they erroneously claim are still open.
The intrusion of private companies into the realm of morality is unsettling. There are adverts for beer which tell us all to stay at home. Car makers celebrate nurses. I told K about this and he agreed, showing me some video about a high-end restaurant chain which is donating posh tomatoes to the newly unemployed.
“We should get them,” I said. “We’re unemployed. Everyone’s unemployed now.”
“You don’t like tomatoes,” he pointed out. “Anyway, not everyone. Essential workers can go out to work. All the nurses and so on.”
“You know what I mean.” My temper is short these days. “And,” I said darkly. “It’s not like we ever see any nurses is it? Only on the TV. How do we know they’re really there?” It was an old joke of ours; the tree falling in the forest with no-one to hear it.
“Count yourself lucky you’re not seeing any nurses,” he responded, equally darkly.
5 May
I watched some videos of animals today. Apparently nature and wildlife videos are a popular pastime now there’s not much else to do. You could spend all day watching the internet’s repository of videos and while it seems the electricity cuts out every time I try to send an email or make a video call, it is remarkably stable when showing films in HD.
I have to say, it was quite compelling. It was a video of some monkeys and it was clear that they organised themselves into a society, with some leading and others following. Dissent that threatened the hierarchy of the group, was immediately stamped out by the leaders, fatally if necessary. I felt for the juvenile males, needing to make their way up the social ladder, but being firmly pushed back into their place. I watched videos all morning, never quite being able to walk away thanks to the auto-play software which removed any possibility of active choice. K wandered in once and murmured something before going away to another room for the rest of the morning.
I remember visiting monkeys in the wild. It was a trip to India that K and I took shortly after we were together. The monkeys lived alongside the people, darting in and out, stealing food and being shooed away by the villagers. I have never seen as many people concentrated in one place as I did on that holiday. Maybe I never will again.
14 May
My world has become very small. I know this is the case for so many people, and I feel for those who are completely alone. Yet sometimes I wonder if it always was like this, and Plague has just magnified reality. Sometimes it is so hard to recall what life was like before. Presumably I met friends - perhaps those people who send me funny videos on group chats – yet it seems so far away and fuzzy in my mind. My sister agrees, on our infrequent and often curtailed video calls, that quarantine can make you feel a bit crazy. I’m glad that she’s there whenever I call, even if the internet can’t take the strain.
23 May
It seems ages since K and I talked properly. Oh we talk about the Plague of course. Speculate on what’s going to happen. Whether we’ll ever be able to resume normal life. But his edges have been dulled. It feels like somehow he has more of a personality in my memory than he does in real life. I suppose I must be the same.
It’s all normal though. There was a TV programme on this just last week. Partners thrust into close proximity find their relationship can shift, according to the camera-friendly psychologist, whose overblown credentials were trumpeted repeatedly and unconvincingly. The programme was accompanied by a series of inane tips mostly amounting to “Stop stressing!” I suppose that’s as good advice as any, when the world is crumbling around you.
14 June
There’s new controversy in the media. We’ve spent weeks (or is it months?) singing for the essential workers, praying for the less privileged, recalling some illusionary wartime spirit to sustain us through stodgy mealtime fare, and for some, the feeling of being cooped up has finally outweighed the ever-pervasive fear of disease and death. “We’re not dead yet!” shriek some of the confinement breakers, colonising the otherwise empty beaches, tearing tape from park gates, in the still simmering June sunshine. The weather is important I think. Civil unrest most often breaks out in the summertime, when people are hot and bored and get a taste for revolution. It’s different if you have to take an umbrella.
“Idiots, all of them,” says K, dismissively.
“Yes, idiots,” I agree. But inside I am envious. The fifteen minute jailbreaks are no longer enough for me. I have forgotten what the world outside my immediate neighbourhood looks like.
“That’s why we have TV to remind us!” jokes K.
But I don’t tell him that that’s not the only big gap in my memory. That I’ve also forgotten what my workplace looks like. The holiday we took last year. That if it weren’t for the grainy video calls with audio distorted and delayed, I might have forgotten my sister’s face.
It’s all normal, I’m sure.
4 July
I think I might be losing my mind.
3 September
It’s been a while since I’ve written. I only know the date from my computer screen, though the electricity is out more often than not now. Sometimes it feels like whole days have passed without me noticing.
K is similarly subdued. We don’t talk much, just exchange judgements about our neighbours – “I saw a man without a mask on my walk!” “People should be punished for breaking the rules that are there for all of us.” There’s a reporting line to dob in your enemies or get vengeance on neighbours for long-running arguments about unruly hedges. I rang it once out of boredom. There was an automated message and then music. I gave up after half an hour. Fortunate really; I don’t know what I would have said if someone had answered.
It occurs to me that I haven’t spoken to anyone else for real for several months. I get occasional group texts from colleagues. My social media feed is still full of people showing off their new confinement hobbies and gushing gratitude to our brave essential workers, whom they’ve mostly never met. Even my employer called to update me (“There’s no news I’m afraid”), though I couldn’t concentrate on his voice, distracted as I was in trying not to reveal that I had no idea who he was or what I do.
Today I sat on the floor and stared out of the closed window at the still blue sky. Even the weather seems unreal. Was it ever this hot, pre-Plague?
27 September
The strangest things focus your mind. For me, it was a conversation with my sister. I was feeling more than usually contrary and when a boring conversation about confinement breakers arose, I lost it.
“Maybe they’re right,” I said militantly. “We’re being told what to do by a bot. Nobody can think for themselves. Maybe we should all break confinement and spend our last days in the fresh air, feeling the breeze on our skin.”
“C!” she exclaimed. “You don’t mean that.”
“Maybe I do,” I replied. “Maybe I should just walk out of here and see what’s really going on.”
“But you know what’s going on,” she said. “You’ve seen it on the news-“
“The news!” I spat. “How do we really know? Have you seen anybody yourself? Has anyone you know been sick? Have you felt ill yourself?”
She mumbled something about the relative of a colleague. I brushed it away. “Are you OK?” she asked. “This isn’t like you.”
It wasn’t like her either. It hit me. This wasn’t my sister. My sister was brave and funny. This was just a trace of my sister, a two-dimensional facsimile of her. It didn’t even look like her, it was so grainy. Why had her hair not grown? Where was her husband, her son?
My mind was made up. “I don’t know who you are - “ I started, but the picture disappeared. The internet had failed again. I got up.
“I’m going out,” I called to K.
“What?” he started in horror, but his voice had already faded by the time I had made it through the door.
I marched along the road, not stopping to marvel at the lush plants, my smartphone insistently bleeping, “Go home. Go home. This is not your allotted exercise time.” I could just make out the curtains twitching, as my neighbours looked on curiously.
I was unafraid. Diverging from my usual route, I strode along the main road with the shuttered shops. It had been eight minutes, as the bleeper reminded me, though I was more and more able to block out its insistent tones. The world was becoming fuzzier and I could hear my blood pulsing in my ears.
“Don’t faint!” I told myself sternly. “You need to find answers.”
I found them. As I rounded the corner at the end of the road, a sudden feeling of weightlessness gripped me. I looked down and realised there was no ground beneath me. There was no road ahead of me. The town ended at the end of the road, and nothing at all lay ahead. Behind me, the world was already starting to fade. I felt the blood rush to my head
…and suddenly I am back in that MRI machine, with the clanging and the crashing, and the soporific voice of the experimenter, and suddenly I understand everything and I am filled with horror at the duplicitousness, that my entire reality is not what I thought, and I lean back into the cocooning darkness as the world breaks up into tiny pixels that float away like dust on the wind.
5 August 2025
Josie groaned in frustration and took off her headphones.
“Another Enlightened?” Her desk-mate, Toby grimaced in sympathy. “Well at least you got a read on the date of confinement breaking for this one. You know what they say…” He pointed cheerfully towards the banner above their heads: “Every data point counts in the Pandemic Preparedness Centre!”
“Nah, she figured it out again,” Josie responded, staring at the screen. “I’ll have to dump the whole thing.”
“You could try upping the social contact?” Toby suggested. “I think Alison has some more “colleague" memes you could introduce on the next try.”
“Maybe,” said Josie. She sighed and stretched. “I think it’s lunchtime anyway. Fancy trying that new place on the square?”
“Sure,” Toby stood up and started to gather his things. He paused. “You think they remember? You know, the sims? What they signed up for when they took part in the research?”
“What, to steal their consciousness, you mean? It’s meant to be programmed out of them. They don’t know any different.”
“Yeah,” said Toby slowly. “Yeah, you’re right.” But he couldn’t stop his eyes being drawn to Josie’s computer screen as they exited the lab.
Household 379: Participants C and K
Simulation 5684
Status: FAILED
Elle is an avid St Mary's fan, sharing her first science fiction story.
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I enjoyed it. Very unexpected twist - nicely rounded off. Chilling too.
Very dark, but a very possible scenario, great writing