lemon boy & me

chapter 1

There's no happy ending to this story.

I just thought I'd get that out to you right now, better sooner than later. They're going to clean my memories soon, so I need to say this now. It's too late for me to make things right, but the least I can do is to tell you what really happened.

I remember that day when the first broadcast was sent out, about nine months ago. I was just sitting at home, sipping a lemonade, when an alarm blared through the glass walls. Before I could leave my living quarters, there was a click, and the door locked itself. Even the glass walls were suddenly covered by a metal sheet, and daylight was taken from the room, the dim orange lights around the ceiling flickering on. The piercing alarm had stopped by then, but the television screen lit up with red, and I immediately recognized it as an emergency broadcast. Of course, I had never experienced a real emergency before, but they taught us about them during training. The broadcast was quick, and it almost seemed fake at first. Red flashed on the screen for a couple seconds, before cutting to black, as white words scrolled across. A robotic voice read the words. The message was simply:

EMERGENCY. LEVEL 3.1 THREAT DETECTED. PLEASE STAY IN YOUR LIVING QUARTERS AND REMAIN CALM UNTIL FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. EDEN ASSURES YOU-

And then the message ended abruptly. No one ever knew what the rest of the sentence was supposed to be. EDEN assures you... Safety? Luck? Health? Sanctuary? Trust? 

After the message was broadcasted, the screen clicked off, and dead silence hovered in the room. The door stayed locked, and the metal sheet, blocking off my vision of the outdoors, stayed put. For the next whole week. Of course, it wasn't a struggle or anything to stay locked inside my own living quarters for a week. I still received the daily packages of food and medicine, as did every other person in my building, I assumed. Communications were blocked off, so I spent the week sitting in bed, sipping lemonade, contemplating. It seemed to last forever. Then, in the middle of a show I was watching, the screen turned to red. Just like the first broadcast, a message appeared.

EMERGENCY. LEVEL 3.5 THREAT DETECTED. PLEASE STAY IN YOUR LIVING QUARTERS AND REMAIN CALM UNTIL FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. EDEN ASSURES YOU-

Once again, the message ended abruptly. The only thing different about the second broadcast, was that the threat had apparentally increased from a 3.1 to a 3.5. A solid 5 would be the highest level threat, and considering no one even had any idea what the threat was, it was fairly concerning. There was never reported a level 5 threat in the entire history of EDEN.

Another week passed. I decided to trust EDEN. "EDEN assures you-" played in my head over and over again throughout the long days. EDEN would remove the threat. EDEN would make good out of the bad. That's how it always was with EDEN. Any slight concerns that popped up in my mind were quickly shrouded by the thought of EDEN. Humanity had come this far to become a utopia, what could end it now? EDEN was untouchable.

But then another message arrived.

EMERGENCY. LEVEL 3.9 THREAT DETECTED. PLEASE STAY IN YOUR LIVING QUARTERS AND REMAIN CALM UNTIL FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. EDEN ASSURES YOU-

Another week went by. My door stayed locked and the metal sheet still hid me away from daylight. I fell deeper into the security of EDEN. "EDEN assures you-"

EMERGENCY. LEVEL 4.2 THREAT DETECTED. PLEASE STAY IN YOUR LIVING QUARTERS AND REMAIN CALM UNTIL FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. EDEN ASSURES YOU-

And yet another week. The threat level kept on steadily increasing, yet the message remained the same. "EDEN assures you-" rattled constantly in my brain.

EMERGENCY. LEVEL 4.6 THREAT DETECTED. PLEASE STAY IN YOUR LIVING QUARTERS AND REMAIN CALM UNTIL FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. EDEN ASSURES YOU-

I was almost going insane as another week passed. I couldn't even turn on the screen anymore, in blatant fear that the message would come back, with an even higher threat level. It always came back, no matter what I did.

EMERGENCY. LEVEL 4.9 THREAT DETECTED. PLEASE STAY IN YOUR LIVING QUARTERS AND REMAIN CALM UNTIL FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. EDEN ASSURES YOU-

A week. I lost any grip on time. I yearned for daylight, human interactions, any proof that this wasn't just some nightmare set on repeat for me. For hours I sat stiffly on my bed, staring ahead at the metal sheet covering the glass wall.

And then it finally happened.

EMERGENCY. LEVEL 5 THREAT DETECTED. WATCH OUT FOR THE VIRUS. AVOID ANY CONTACT WITH THE INFECTED. BE EXTRA CAREFUL WITH HYGIENE. STAY INDOORS.

The door unlocked itself with a click, and the metal sheet over the glass walls suddenly moved away. Natural light burst into the room. I shot up in my bed, blinking hard as I stumbled over to the glass.  The sky looked oddly clear. There was no sun, no puffy white clouds, no vibrant blue color. It was just white. Blank. My eyes traced down to the field in front of my building. There was a single person crouched over the grass.

No. Wait. Two.

The grass around the people was stained crimson. In comparison to the white sky and the white buildings and the white uniforms, it was vibrant. Almost fascinating. I must've surely gone insane during those weeks I spent locked away, because it took me a second to actually process the situation. It was blood. I couldn't clearly see the second person, as the first person's body was crouched over them. I saw a hand and a leg though, jutting out from under the first figure. Motionless. The first person was moving slowly, their head bobbing up and down and their arms shuffling around as they leaned over the other person. I squinted, pressing up a hand against the glass wall. Blood trickled down the first person's hands. Before I could draw any conclusions, the first person stopped for a second, and suddenly turned around. In that instant, I saw how mangled the person's face was. They barely even looked like a person anymore. Man eating man, I finally realized. I wish I had never looked out that window on that day. I wish I had just stayed in. I'll spare you the rest of the gory details, as I really don't want to relive that moment nine months ago.

As my hands shot up to cover my mouth, I staggered back, away from the glass wall. As far away as possible from the monster. Tears began to form at the corners of my eyes. Red continued to flash on the screen, and the voice of the message returned.

AND REMEMBER,

I wished for the metal sheet to come back and cover the glass walls. The metal sheet that had seemingly driven me so insane in the past few weeks. I didn't want to see this. Not now. Not ever. This wasn't EDEN. This wasn't the life I had been promised.

EDEN WISHES YOU LUCK.

That was when the apocalypse first started.