For me, slumber is not what it’s meant to be anymore. These echoes are recalcitrant, ceaseless. They won’t budge…

{8^hrs: 07^mins: 42^secs: 097^{DEVi millisecs}  a.m}

Kyniaon, DEV

MaDe Day, July 7^th, 2075

Mumbling, as I got up from my morning ‘rest’ and ignoring Flectra’s (my electro bed) greeting, goodness knows what truly woke me today; the alarm, Flectra’s breakfast prep routine, my unflinching heavy thoughts, or the clamour of the MaDe Day celebration. The options are vast. Who would have thought the Kyniese community could be this loud? Well, it is indeed a ‘celebration of new life’ as they say, you know, the day the Mass De-compactor was unveiled, ‘a beautiful day’. That’s what many seem to think though, I sip my coffee, and the fluid went hard down my throat, as hard as my heart sank, well, not me.

And the first brooding emotion sets in; sadness. Am I really to find happiness and true peace with this new life, let alone celebrate it? Indeed, I joined the bandwagon to DEV as I thought Earth had become much too inexorably entangled. It had turned into a constant suffocation which I knew I had to escape. I wanted to survive. I wanted to live. But this isn’t life. The world itself is in chaos and there are still innocent souls being killed in the gruesome game of power and global politics, humans suffering from causes they know nothing about, poverty, genocides, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, yet what we deemed the solution to be; is to leave. Simply abandon and desert. This constant thorn on my conscience, of me turning my back on my kind, cannot be shaken off, not even with the warm hands of this world. My spirit bleeds and I can feel each drop.

Our world, our life

This is our love

A perfect paradise

To live on and on

Never to crumble, never to fall

Our land, our home

Our DEV…

Hmm, the song of the joyous atmosphere was nearer now, much clearer. As the elated voices began to disappear into the zephyr, the line caught my attention: to live on and on, never to crumble, never to fall. The words ring in my head, loud and sharp like chapel bells, and yet again, my mind is caught in another web of heightened feeling, stronger, more intense; fear.

I don’t believe it. I don’t, and I cannot pretend as if I do any longer. The idea that DEV remains forever as we live “on and on” and become no less than immortals, has over time morphed into a mere illusion for me. Everything revolves around a beginning and an end, and I believe Development’s case, is no different. We only live in temporary deception, and this uncertainty is eating me alive, munching on every last bit of my resistance. My fear, however, doesn’t just revolve around this uncertainty, but also the possibility of what we so deeply dread- destruction, such that our voices earnestly reverberate, …never to crumble, never to fall. Well I’m afraid, sooner or later, it might in fact fall.

Pushing the thought away appears to be unachievable, quite literally. I mean, our beloved Negasi said, years back, “we can’t destroy the world if we don’t live on it”, and he is in fact correct. But THAT’S the point. To be human, they say, is to be selfish, wicked and evil. So by nature, humans, in mind, body and soul, are threats even to themselves. We might have left the world, but it is only a matter of time before our new ‘perfect’ world becomes a nightmare. And with the way things are going; the slow-burn mayhem, the hegemonic and oppressive system slowly blooming, Development does not stand a chance.

For now, nonetheless, I’ve consciously entrenched myself in a gruelling battle with fear. A fear I fear might drown me. One that I ran so far away from, yet the voice echoes, much so malignly; you can run but you can’t hide. But I want to run, I want to hide, yet my legs are failing me, and no corner seems comforting. Maybe there really isn’t an escape for me. Earth or Dev, it’s the same. Or maybe, just maybe, there IS a singular escape; a world whose only transporter isn’t Negasi’s beloved MaDe, but much more intense, much more complex, much more…well…sure. It’s a warm, beautiful death, a choice which I might unfortunately have to make. This misery cannot tarry.

Written by Azeezat Taiwo