0800 Hours [slash]

0800 Hours: Recording #011

Click.

"0800 hours, two days since the Mangosteen Revelation. Because I am a man of my word, we went down to the Co-Op to look for some cans of the shitty fruit. Didn't see any, but I didn't really expect to anyway. I'd never even fucking heard of a mangosteen. Cye says it's native to Southeast Asia, and that it was banned in the US. I don't know if that's true though. Like, why would you ban a fruit?"

"Asian fruit flies."

"Jesus! Give a guy a warning if you're gonna sneak up on him."

"I'm not sneaking up. I'm making breakfast."

"Since when are you helpful, you freeloader?"

"Do you want porridge or not?"

"...Yes."

"Shut up then."

The exchange is silenced by pots clanking together tinnily and the soft sound of oats rattling inside their cardboard container like maracas. A shrill and weary shriek escapes a traditional gas kettle when the water instead starts bubbling and hissing.

"That'll be the kettle."

"Thank God you're here; I thought it was the air wick."

"Ugh, I seriously need to kick you out."

"Oh please, who else would listen to your inane eight a.m. ramblings?"

"Um, maybe the next generation of humanity? I'll be like Samuel Pepys."

"And why, exactly, would they want to listen to your monotonous routine of eat, sleep, fuck a packet of digestives?"

"Excuse me! I absolutely would not fuck a packet of digestives. Especially not the Co-Op knock offs."

"That's your biggest issue with the idea of sticking your dick in a packet of digestives? The brand?"

"Fuck off. I record myself because I want to leave something behind."

"...Why?"

"I... I want to leave tangible proof of my existence, I guess. I don't want to be just another statistic. I want to leave something behind that people who're born long after this can listen to and go "Oh, so that's what it was really like during the Infection". You know how history books in school kinda gloss over everything with dates and figures and crap, and you never really get a feeling for what it was actually like to live in the past? And the only people's stories who get told are the rich and the famous and the revolutionaries? I want to make sure there's at least one thing that commemorates how the Infection hurt everyone else."

"... I get it."

The response is soft and thoughtful, the speaker's voice thinned from it's usual tone like a block of butter spread thin on toast.

"Yeah. I kind of figured you would."

"Mm. D'you want me to put canned peaches in with the porridge?"

"Fuck yes."

Click.