I had gotten a terrible cough.

I had been waiting for a subsequent appointment to visit my doctor for months, but he would repeatedly reply, “Long wait times. Sorry.” The floor of my drab, miniscule apartment was covered in a field of tissue papers, stained with my crimson red blood, akin to the delicate, red camellia flowers that used to bloom in the snow every winter. I began to cough violently, pain suffusing through my body, and tiny scarlet globules spewed out of my mouth haphazardly, landing on the field of soiled tissue papers. I donned on a reusable mask in my pocket, frayed at the edges, its once pure white slowly but surely turning a shade of ashen gray, culminating with the dull, maroon shade of dried blood. I clumsily opened the creaky door of my apartment, and the enervating heat made me wish I stayed home. The sky was grey as usual, and everyone was donning on masks of different shades and colours. I rubbed my eyes that were itching intensely due to the dense layer of dust barely moving in the air.

When the pandemic finally ended in the year 2030, I had lost my job. had been working under a company for several years, living a lavish, extravagant lifestyle, until everything I had worked so hard for and sought to achieve suddenly came cascading down into a bottomless pit. A major international company in Manchester made headlines globally after it switched to fully automated factories, relying solely on robots to curb the spread of the pandemic within factories. One after another, other major companies began to follow suit, replacing humans with robots. Like a row of dominoes, it killed off the livelihoods of individuals and their families in its destructive path. When the day finally came, my colleagues started their slow, torturous descent into eventual madness and hysteria after they were requested to leave the company. They are now quiet and six-feet under, taking their pitiful lives as they had lost their sole purpose in life. However, mining for metal for these robots globally resulted in extreme pollution that has since engulfed our world in an eternal haze.

Today is the day I’m visiting my doctor for the first time in a year. I marched down the dreaded corridor towards the only elevator serving the entire block, as if for the first time in a while, my life had some semblance of meaning to it. I walked past eerie flats with shuttered windows and doors bolted shut to contain the other vermin that call this place home. As I walked past #24-27, as usual, an ethereal operatic aria “O Mio Babbino Caro” sung by opera luminary Maria Callas was on a never-ending loop. The song would reverberate through the corridor, and I would hear it even as I entered the elevator and the flat disappeared from view:

O mio babbino caro

Mi piace è bello, bello

Vo’ andare in Porta Rossa

A comperar l’annello!

Sì, sì, ci voglio andare!

(Translation:

Oh my dear father

I like him, he is so handsome

I want to go to Porta Rossa

To buy the ring!

Yes, yes I want to go there!)

Exiting from the elevator, I continued my path down the avenue littered with used masks, the path cracking and full of potholes, before eventually ending up just opposite the large and imposing building labelled “Ministry of People Placement”. It was the only building that was so brightly lit that it could be seen even in the infamous smog. Pathetically short plastic plants bordered the building, a grim reminder that Singapore once had a whimsical, far-fetched dream of becoming a “garden city”. I decided to try my luck finding a job, not that I was optimistic that I would find one, but simply to pass the time. I walked in only to see the usual long, snaking queue of people, lining up to the different counters. At the exit, the same two stoic-looking, heavily-armed guards were stationed there, standing motionlessly.

“You idiots! I don’t need your empathy! Get me a damn job!”, screamed an unknown individual from the opposite end of the room.

An audible gasp could be heard, and the guards sprang into action. They shoved the crowd to the side, and the man seeing the menacing guards let out a desperate cry for help, before his face was deformed by the excruciatingly painful smack of a rifle. The guards emerged from the crowd once again, manhandling a feeble yet muscular man, battered and bruised, before roughly throwing him out onto the street. A trail of blood followed him. All part of a day’s work. The crowd shuffled back into the queue, and every once in a while, someone will be thrown out again. A crowd would form, the guards would do their job, and people would fall back into the line after the defenseless victim conceded defeat and the guards would throw them out. The guards moved like clockwork, like a routine. Eventually, after an hour in the queue, I gave up. After all, none of us would be getting any job positions available anyways. We are simply placing false hope on a bunch of mediocre pencil pushers who know nothing about our plight. They are hope-givers merely doing their job, their distant smiles that are supposed to comfort the aggrieved party.

I walked down the street from the employment agency towards the dilapidated hospital. At the entrance, a large holographic sign, stating “Patients: At the Heart of All We Do”, was once again a reminder of the once state-of-the-art healthcare that Singapore used to offer. Now, the healthcare system has been prioritized for the corrupt fools in power. I walked into the crowded hospital, chock full of people dressed in torn and tattered clothes, who looked like they were about to die at any moment. I went to the receptionist to ask for a Q-Ticket, and as usual I got the same response.

“1 hour wait time. Wait at the benches. Don’t ask me any questions. There’s a long queue today.”

I decided to try my luck once again.

“But my doctor said this time it’ll be fast. Can you…”

“Sorry but I’m not your doctor. Sit down Sir.”, the nurse replied curtly.

After waiting for an hour, the holographic screen on the wall finally flashed the number for my appointment. I walked into the room hastily and eagerly, as if I was excited to receive for sure what would most definitely be dire news about my condition. The doctor, a thin grim looking man, greeted me with a wry smile. He was clad in a cream-coloured lab coat and on his bony finger was an oversized diamond ring. He looked really ill-fitting in the grotesquely dirty room that was his office. He sat me down and his mood switched instantaneously. In a fantastically ill-conceived attempt to feign sympathy, he said solemnly, “So I checked it up. You seem to be in pretty bad shape. I think it’s cancer. Judging from how you look? 3 months give and take. Unfortunately, chemo is still reserved for priority patients, and treatment would probably cost you an exorbitant amount. Sorry I can’t help.”

He escorted me out of the room almost immediately after telling me my diagnosis. I tried to plea for help, but it was no use. The doctor had already bid farewell to his dying patient.

Our last farewell.

I stood outside his room, for I was too appalled to say anything else. Then all of a sudden, I caught myself experiencing an incredible, newfound sensation. At the top of my lungs, I damned the entire system of the country that I once had an immense sense of pride for. I damned the corrupt rich fools who treat the lower classes as untouchables, I damned the stupidity and foolishness of people who think that they can get away with such blatant classism, for God is always watching. The hospital fell to a pindrop silence, and I could hear the thunderous boom of the guards’ boots coming to smack my head with their rifles. Well, why should I care? I am going to be a rotting, decaying corpse in a matter of months.

What remains of my life after I die?

I will just be forgotten in this vast sea of nameless people.

What would people do at my funeral? Will they sympathise with my horrific plight?

No, they have their own lives to take care for. They have no time for this mindless, endless condescension.

I will die like that, forgotten by all,

For it is my fate,

For this is how I will end,

For I will be a rotting, decaying corpse in a matter of months.

Mi struggo e mi tormento!

O Dio, vorrei morir!

Babbo, pietà, pietà!

Babbo, pietà, pietà!

(Translation:

I am pining, I am tormented

Oh God I want to die!

Father, have pity, have pity!

Father, have pity, have pity!)