Miss McLaughlin's Year 10 English class were set a creative writing assessment in which they were given the freedom to present it in whatever format they liked. This is Poppy's short story.

'Better Now' a short story by P. Johnston-Coates

Details of The Virus have always been common knowledge. By the time we study it in school, everyone already knows bits and pieces. Today is Discovery Day, the 30th anniversary of when human kind first identified and named COVID 19.

On this day, we are sat down on our living room couches and expected to watch as Government officials repeat the same speeches and silver tongued words that they feed to the public every year.

And the promise. The promise for a cure.

But today’s a little different.

“Tensions are high as fabrication continues to spread about the possible conspiracy of the American Government. As today marks the 30th year of this still incurable virus, citizens are losing hope for a safe, healthy future. People asking ‘How much longer must we hide?’, ‘How many more must we watch fall ill without hope for a treatment?’ and ‘Is a remedy even on the way?’.”

At this, the unfamiliar reporter on the TV screen is replaced by footage of a government building. Police are stationed in the doorways and a makeshift fence is barely keeping back the hordes of angry citizens. This shot gives way for more. A different building, then a house, a library, all in the same condition. People yelling, police everywhere, utter chaos.

As the slideshow of these scenes begins to play, the reporter’s voice begins to talk again.

“Officials have been promising one thing since they first began studying the coronavirus in a lab - a cure.” They pause as the video cuts to old footage from the early days of the pandemic, early 2020’s. Crowded hospital halls, standing room only. “But as years turn into decades with still no such cure in sight, rumors start to spread about the true intentions of the Government. Was there ever really hope for a cure? Or have we been eating lies all these years?”

With this final foreboding line, the screen cuts to black for a moment before displaying the familiar face of the president.

We sit in confused silence until the end of the annual announcement. It’s not until an advertisement for $46.99 hand sanitizer begins to play, that my mother moves to cut the power.

She turns to my father, “Lupin? Do you know what just happened? It looks like an ordinary news report, except…?”

“The government would never allow this. It seems that the cameras were hacked into. I knew that there were uprisings, but not that they had become powerful enough to risk something like this.” My father trails off, then seems to come to a realisation. “If the riots were bad before, something like this could throw the entire nation into turmoil.”

When I was younger, I would insist on a story every night. Stories of the past, back when my parents were just children. I’d sit there in my bed and cling to every word as they described gatherings of hundreds and the freedom that is no longer a possibility.

It got to the point where my parents had run out of memories to share and had begun creating the stories themselves. Tales of tremendous theme parks and wondrous adventures. While my father talked of great walks and beautiful cafes in which you could order anything and never fear for your health, my mother favoured the more fictitious side. Bedtimes with her were filled with tales of flying with the birds and magic that was taken away by the Virus but would surely return someday.

As I grew up, I also grew out of these tales. I realized how pointless these fantasies were and focused on life as I had it.

Compared to the lower class, I had it pretty good. My parents both have well paying jobs, my father as a lower government official and my mother as a Journalist for People’s Planet News. Both of their jobs rarely require them to leave our house, so the Virus poses almost no threat to our family. When we do leave the house we are in full PPE gear.

In the back of my mind I know that life wasn’t always this way, but this has been ordinary protocol since long before I was born. Don’t leave the house unauthorized. Don’t bring others into your bubble unless absolutely necessary. Don’t spread the Virus.

People in less fortunate situations are much more at risk. Those who have had to turn to jobs that force them to leave their bubble. Working as janitors, rubbish collectors, and driving the few buses that still run. It’s them who are in the most danger.

Sometimes I wonder how much of a threat we are actually in. Occasionally, we will hear of a breakout. One careless individual and an entire community is dead. This is the information that keeps us vigilant. As we hide from an invisible enemy, what was once a temporary lockdown, has become the protocol of everyday life.

***

I read over that last line and smile. I always did have a dramatic streak, one reserved only for paper. I remember exactly when and where I wrote that. On my bed, 21:00, January 11, 2050. It was the first entry in a diary I never filled. The only entry.

It had been a school assignment. Write a diary entry explaining how the world is now, compared to how it was 30 years ago. Include how you want or wanted the world to be.

It was only when Discovery Day came around that I was inspired, but it didn’t end up handing this one in. I later wrote a simpler entry which I handed in. Writing something like this would have had officials knocking on our door.

Today is January 11, 2070, exactly 20 years after I wrote this.

I remember the weeks following that one day. The riots and chaos that persisted. The realisation that, indeed, the government hadn’t ever started on a cure. I would sit in the kitchen during my mother's work hours and listen through the wall as she recorded her reports, trying to find the truth out for myself.

The Government lost support, people started speaking out, and everything changed. For a short while, it got worse, riots and looting were commonplace and unemployment rates had skyrocketed. But as they say, “It must get worse before it gets better.”

That saying must hold more truth than I had thought, because not long after all that, a new Party took over, and life began to get better. They began studying the virus in a lab again, and a few years later, found the cure.

I look up from the Tablet. It’s times like these when I feel most aware of how life has changed. In the distance, my son plays with the other children, enjoying the childhood I never got.

“Yeah,” I say, as I lean back against the tree behind me. “Life’s better now.”