The Proposed Prophecies

The next morning at ten am she waited at the exit door just like her schedule had told her to do. There were five other women also there. A guard came and placed handcuffs on them. Joann had told Liv the previous day that they all had certain jobs assigned to them but she wasn’t sure what was hers. She quietly followed the guard with the five other women into the elevators in the middle of the circular hallway. She could still smell the mold and old water. The other women didn’t look like they had noticed. Maybe they were already used to the smell.

In the elevator they went up to the forty third floor. When the doors opened, the floor appeared to have the same layout as the hospital floor. Even the smell was same except the concrete floor. All five women seemed to know where to go and Liv followed. Everyone was quiet, only the sound of their footsteps could be heard. They stopped at room number 1222. Once the guard had opened the door, it looked like some kind of office. There were twelve desks and six men dressed in blue uniform already sitting on some of them. These men must be from the blue zones. Perhaps the men had their own zones, just like the women did.

All five woman sat down at a black wooden desk with a chair. There was only one left. Liv assumed this was for her. No one talked and she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to so she remained silent. The chair felt hard and uncomfortable and there was nothing inspiring about the room in general. It was empty besides the desks and chairs. Each desk had a laptop on it. She looked around to see what she was supposed to do and saw everyone turning the computer on when a tall female walked in with papers in her hand. The sound of her heels echoed around the empty room as she walked around and handed out the papers. She stopped at Liv’s desk and looked at her. “You must be the one who was in coma. I have heard a lot about you. Here, you can start writing.” She handed Liv the papers. Liv realized that this lady was wearing the same exact white dress as Eve. Even her grey high heels were the same. She wondered if they were forced to dress that way and were not allowed to choose any other color apart from white. She wondered how the woman even knew about her being in a coma. She must have been close to Eve since no other Alters had mentioned it.

“I don’t understand. What am I supposed to do?” Liv asked as she went through the papers given to her by the woman. They looked like some kind of instructions and outline to a story.

“No one told you? You have the most important job ever. You have to rewrite the history of human kind based on these outlines.” She smiled, making chills run through Liv. Her smile looked mean and her teeth were so white that they must have been fake.

“To rewrite history?” She looked over the notes and realized that the new history included Alters, but as far as she was aware, no one else from the bunker knew about the Alters. Carmen said that everyone had been told that the guards were regular military people and it was a government operation to keep them safe from the virus. But now it felt strange to her that suddenly history was supposed to include them. According to her instructions, she was meant to write a version of history that described the Alters as being the ones who had helped human kind to survive. And there was no mention of the virus, it said that people started a third world war and the Alters stopped it. The world was supposed to be described as a land covered in radiation and poison, basically a wasteland. It all sounded strange and misleading.

“This is stupid! I want to get out of here.” Suddenly one of the men started to scream and throw his laptop against the wall and it shattered into pieces. Liv saw the guard taking out his gun and aiming at the young man who appeared in his mid-thirties. He had longer light brown hair and reading glasses covering nearly half of his face. The gun was fired. Her ears popped. For a few seconds she could only hear a beeping noise. She saw few more Alters walking in and taking his body away. The white wall behind his desk was splashed with his blood. Suddenly it didn’t feel so empty there. The red blood gave a color to the room. Everyone else remained in their seats but they looked terrified. Liv watched the man being wrapped in white sheets just like the infected man at the motel or Carlotta once Jake had shot her.

“Anyone want to follow?” One of the guards asked but his voice still sounded strange as the beeping sound overtook her hearing.

“Great! We lost another one. Couldn’t you just shut him down?” The woman with the papers looked at Liv and rolled her eyes. “Oh I did shut him down as best I could.” The bold guard laughed. His laugh was loud.

“My grandfather never mentioned the rewriting of the history in any of his diaries. I was wondering what that meant for human kind and what Eve’s plan was.

Each person in the bunker knew that Earth was not as bad as the Alters wanted me to describe it. Carmen said that people in the bunker did not even know what Alters were or that the Proposal existed, but for some reason this new history was supposed to include Alters and make them appear like they had been the saviors of human kind.

I started working on rewriting the history with eleven other writers but at the end of the month there was only eight of us left. The rest of them were shot for not being able to cooperate or when the guard simply said they had looked at him strangely. The office smelled like dry blood no matter how many times those walls were cleaned and repainted.

A whole month passed by and there was no sign of Jake. I was worried he would never come back, just like I had been worried when he had left us at the house during the virus. The days went by slowly and each day was same.

A loud female voice used to wake us up through the monitor each morning exactly at seven. The time for eating was limited and those who were slow stood hungry as the food was limited to begin with. The lines for food were long but there was not enough food. I thought it must have been because the Proposal had been started earlier than planned. According to my grandfather’s journal these events weren’t supposed to happen until 2020 but as everything had happened so quickly, nothing was fully prepared for survival. I knew there was no way we could exist like that for the next five years. We would die from hunger before the end of the first year if everything was to continue as it was, and the fight over food would surely increase.

Each habitant of the bunker was assigned to a certain job that needed to be completed, just like Joann had said. Some of the jobs required people to get out of the bunker and into the upper part of the building. There were many roles that needed fulfilling: scrubbing the toilets, caring for those that were sick, teaching and drawing new architectural designs for the new world that supposed to be better and more efficient. There were people from all professions and with all types of abilities housed in the bunker. The bunker housed the perfect group for the perfect new world, said the female Alter who handed out our assignments on weekly basis. I thought people adjusted to the daily schedule pretty well. As I lived among the people in the red zone I overheard many of them actually being grateful for being there and those who didn’t were easily spotted among the crowds and shot by the Alters.

Joan worked with about thirty teachers in the school on one of the upper floors. She fed back information on how Ashley and Tommy were doing. Joann said that they both did well and they were brave. I think it made them feel better that they knew at least Joann, who was took good care of them just like she had in Miami.

Carmen washed and sorted through laundry on the thirty seventh floor. The job made her aggravated and annoyed. She always proclaimed that doing laundry was not a job that suited her, but just like the rest of us, she had to do it. There were groups of people appointed for each job and supervised by one guard. No group was left alone, not even for the blink of an eye. Each time someone broke a rule, they were either shot or taken by the guards and they never returned.”