Jealousy Plagues

• Darcy Blasic, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2014

I am awoken from my slumber by the shrill ringing of sirens. The community wake up call. It sounds every morning at exactly 6am and signals the beginning of a another new day. My curtains open automatically and I am left with the depressing sight of a stark, grey wall blocking my view out of the window. The wall belongs to the next residential block over, housing adolescents like myself, whom will be waking to an identical view as my own. You see, the residential area stretches for kilometres, unchanging, everyone with the same garden, or lack of one, same furniture and same paint, until eventually the business area begins.

I rise reluctantly from my bed and dress quickly, an easy thing to do when your entire wardrobe consists of one outfit. It’s always the same drab, grey slacks and a loose, grey shirt, rounded off with plain, grey shoes. This is the standard outfit worn by every citizen throughout the entire city. Sometimes I wish for something different, for something unique to set me apart from the others. I long for the liberty of choice and yet I know deep down that that will never be the case.

Once I am dressed, I make my way down to the community bathroom. Every male in my residential block shares a single bathroom; our government’s way of showing that nobody has anything to hide. Which is true, considering they have already taken away what little shreds of privacy we had left by installing citywide surveillance cameras. And when I say citywide, I mean that quite literally. In the bedrooms, eating halls, schools, parks, offices and factories. Every single corner of the city being video and audio monitored. Every conversation, every action. There is no such thing as privacy. The only exclusion being in the bathroom, where there are definitely no cameras, but nobody quite knows whether conversations are recorded here or not. All I know is that the government will see if anyone disobeys them, and that we all fear what will happen to us if they do.

I brush my teeth and tidy my hair at a leisurely pace, enjoying the freedom away from surveillance. I linger in the bathroom for as long as possible, until the sirens begin to sound again, calling everybody to breakfast. We silently gather up our things and pack them away, before filing out into the corridor and walking in an orderly manner to the dining hall. Breakfast is always the same serving of dull porridge and watery juice, and I am always left hungry and unsatisfied. Nobody speaks. It’s not technically a rule but nobody sees the point anymore; we would have nothing to talk about anyway. Our lives are all identical and nothing exciting or surprising ever happens to discuss.

It’s been this way since before I can remember. The government says that jealousy was the root of all evil in society before they took over, and that erasing all traces of individuality is the only way to prevent jealousy from plaguing the world once again. At least that's what they told us at school. But if that's the truth, then the government doesn't seem to realise that by eliminating individuality, they’re also taking away any sense of freedom or life. After all, when you eliminate one problem, is it not simply replaced by another?