Inspired by a Zega & Evans song, released in the 1960s, called ‘In the Year 2525’.

The 2525 Pilgrimage by Samantha “unextraordinarybint” Harris

Centuries since Corona Virus Alpha hit Earth devastating our population, I sit here using a rusty blade, scraping marks in hope that I won’t be discovered by our monitors. We use this ancient fridge for storing clothing; working well for keeping moths out, my up-bringers and I sharing it. Now, it will bare these words for history.

At school, we’re told our ancestors used the fridges to keep carcasses fresh. It was a time when humans battled with each other, spoiling the planet with poisonous weapons. A time when people murdered Earth’s other inhabitants; selfishly eating animals, using them as a source of protein, they’d manufacture products from their carcases and enjoyed wearing animal skins, even using bones for medicinal broths and industrial glues.

I’ve never known a cold fridge. The harnessing of electrical power was outlawed for humans in 2050. For our safety, AI automatic droids maintain our planet’s electrical grids. Distribution and supply is strictly rationed to Necessary For Life organisations and not squandered by people.

I’m told my ‘need to create’ is an escalation of my illness, so I must be cautious. I’m a committed New Beginning Believer but the evilness of bad mental health remains. Managing to physically scrape one word a day has taken discipline. My addiction craves more, risking raising my heart rate to a detectable level.

Weeks after the Corona Virus Zeta variant attacked the planet in June 2030 a cohort study showed how vulnerable humans became when out of their homes. As a major medical discovery it saved billions of lives but had not been welcomed by all. Deadly violent protests spread across the world faster than the virus, destroying cities and towns, cutting utilities and leaving land scorched with fire.

It is history now, how it was necessary for AI to oversee human health for The Common Good and the protection of our species and our solar system. Our homes, for our safety, had to become human cages.

Robots now distribute our care, limiting human error. Armoured vehicles travel streets delivering water tablets and nutrition, monitoring our vital signs so we rarely starve if we are viable. Thankful, we watch through holes we’ve piped into the hives on our windows.

Foxes, snakes, sheep, wolves and deer roam outside our homes on cracked tarmac. The grass verges, left to grow naturally, encouraging wildlife, are now host to the genetic insects released to combat stray humans carrying disease. Building nests and hives around us they are able to monitor movements keeping AI informed of our well being.

State television transmits a basic program service with special entertainment on Saturday nights. Generally television informs us of how the latest health programme progresses, which locations are expecting the Build Back Better vaccination robots and the daily birth rate over death rate graph.

International Communications are impossible for most since the satellites were, for our safety, reconfigured using the same space drones that humans had invented for mining exploration. Anti vaccination terrorists had to be stopped from using the networks to organise resistance and had been blocking The New Beginning Faith broadcasts.

Automatic trucks collect human waste weekly from each street moving it to a collection point where it’s transported by crane into giant airships run on biofuel. These craft transport the sweet smelling load to the ocean where it is released for the marine life to feed upon. Diet, controlled by AI, allows us to now produce nutrient rich waste which is useful until our deaths.

Few natural humans, other than royalty, can safely move around outside. We don’t have the genetic makeup. Crane drivers have outside protective freedoms. Having a skill AI can’t master, they bare witness to how the Build Back Better system is working. I’m assigned a crane operator as my lover. I pray we’ll be fruitful.

Gratefully, I’m able to leave home once in a lifetime. I’ve been researching my Life Pathway Journey on the battery run Ethernet computer. It will be so exciting to see The London Eye. One has to be patient as the current female pilgrimage age is the first month after one’s fifty-fifth birthday.

I pray I will still be considered worthy.

The End.