Chapters 1-2

In Chapter One we are introduced to Issy, a seventeen year old girl who lives in Bath, England in 2014. In Chapter Two we meet Peter Harrison, a man living in Bath, England, in 2034 in a world much changed from the one Issy lives in but more like our current 2020 climate of lockdown than we might feel comfortable believing.

If you prefer to listen, the audio is here too.

Chapter One Autumn 2014 Isabella

I roll over and hit the alarm.

I pick up my phone and type my morning status the way girls used to apply makeup. ‘Awake’. I select my clothing, typing ‘Alive’: my second update of the day. Before I can decide what mood I’m in, I hear a call for breakfast. I walk downstairs, pressing the screen on my phone as I go. ‘Already in a state.’ Third. ‘Test today.’ Fourth. ‘Smells like eggs.’ Fifth. ‘Hang on, since when do I get called for breakfast?’ Sixth. ‘Since when do we have cooked breakfast in the week?’ Seventh. ‘I think-

‘Happy Birthday! I’ve cooked up your favourite.’ Shit. It’s my birthday. Of course it’s my birthday. I dive back into the screen. It’s running slowly. I hit refresh. Loading. Come on.

‘Well then, dear. Sit down.’

Loading. God. Loading. Argh. Loading. ‘Happy birthday IBHighLife’. Relax. I see them. Only fifty so far, but it’s early; I’ve only just got up. That’ll be fifty from the night users. Not bad really. Last year I only had around twenty by this time, so it’s looking good. I feel my body again. I must have been tense because I feel my back unknot and my brow unfurrow. I slide into my chair and take in the room. Mum looks at me expectantly, so I take a mouthful. It actually tastes pretty good. Mum’s a terrific cook when she has the time to be. We order in a lot, which is OK I guess. But I have to admit that I like it when mum has the time to cook. I decide to stay in the room. I tip my phone upside down, so I can’t see the screen.

‘The eggs are terrific, Mum. Thanks.’ My brother mumbles a similar sentiment amidst a mouthful. It is a bit like we haven’t eaten real food in a while. I mean, take out’s all right but all that grease and sugar! Sometimes I think I’m on drugs the comedown’s so hard.

IBHighLife: that’s me online. That’s me in my phone and me on my laptop. IB for Isabella. HighLife for all sorts of reasons. I like it because the reasons change, and it still makes sense. When I first went in I was just Isabella. I used to just chat with my friends and organise where to meet up and what to do at the weekends or after school. But pretty quickly I realised that there was more to it. I became IBHigh for a joke. I thought people would think I smoked cannabis or something. I don’t think drugs are cool or anything stupid like that, but it sort of started to create a bit of mystery and it was pretty funny – it must have been, because people I didn’t even know started to message me then. That’s when I went for IBHighLife. It still had a bit of the drugs mystery, but I didn’t want to only attract delinquents or anything shady like that. I thought the HighLife bit could be like highbrow. I like that I do well at school and know a lot, so I thought this started to say the right sort of things. And the drugs bit was still sort of there and stopped it from being too pretentious. It means something completely different now. People grow and the great thing about IBHighLife is that it grows too. It’s mine and no one really knows what it means so no one really knows me – not unless I tell them anyway. But I don’t tell people just like that. It’s not right if you just tell people what you’re like. It’s too, self-aware or something. I don’t know: it just sounds so fake. Like, all these people having existential crises just because they turned thirteen and someone reminded them that that meant they were a teenager now and they had to act like it. People can work out what IBHighLife means though. If they read my blogs and ask me about movies and books and stuff I like to do. The more we chat when we’re in the more people can get to know me. But I’m not the same as Isabella, or IBHigh or even IBHighLife when she started. I’m me and people can get to know me. But not at school or anything like that.

Sometimes Mum gives us a ride to school – me and Art, Arthur, my younger brother. He’s just started at secondary this year, and I’ve just started lower sixth. She gives us a lift today and I can’t help but hear what’s on the radio; I try to stay focused, but I have to put IBHighLife down until the ride to school is over. The programme is an interview with this American musician who used to take loads of drugs and drink too much but is mostly clean now. He’s being interviewed about the writing process; what is weird is that he’s really old-school about the whole thing, even though he sounds quite young and rough around the edges – what with the drink and drugs.

So, he says he always writes on an old Remington or Olympia typewriter and never a computer. He’s rich so he has a whole bunch of typewriters – a backup for a backup for a backup – his words, not mine. He says he never uses a laptop because the blue screen is too absorbing and gives people tunnel vision, which isn’t conducive to the creative process: when you use a computer and you want to look up a word or check the thesaurus, you just open a new tab and stay in the screen. He says he uses the Remington, so he can position it on the desk in front of the window, and even when he’s focused on the paper, he can still look right through it – at the view and the weather and everything. And if he wants to look up a word he has to get up and move across the room, pick up a book and flick through lots of stuff he doesn’t need until he finds what he’s looking for. Sometimes he stumbles across the right word he isn’t even looking for, just because he had to flick through first. He says that the walking bit opens up opportunities for original thought that wouldn’t exist if he just stayed in the screen. I have to listen, because something about the story resonates with me, but I can’t work out what. I like the screen. I think it’s efficient to have all the answers in one place and more information online means there’s more information to consume. I think that’s better than a random thought whilst walking to a bookshelf. Anyway, the story ends and I’m able to focus again, so I go back in, but there isn’t much time before we get to school. I feel pretty tense again.

There is this stupid rule at school about phones being out of sight, out of mind. Of course, I do whatever I can to break the rule when I don’t need to be listening, but I hate the fact that there is a rule. I don’t need a rule in Mr Harrison’s class. It’s a bit like the radio programme: I can never concentrate on the screen in Mr Harrison’s class. I gave up trying after a term and decided to just stay in the room and listen. Actually, I wrote a blog about something he said last night.

When I leave the car, I walk straight through reception and into the main courtyard. I’m locked in but I’m an expert now at negotiating around at the same time. The world outside hums on the periphery of my consciousness – there but not entirely here. Someone bumps into me. Nothing severe: they just brush my shoulder. It’s not enough to draw me out but it irritates me. This is not their space to invade. They are not welcome here and yet, they’re here. My attention, pulled away for that brief moment, has disorientated me; the slightest inaccuracy and my pre-laid path is displaced, and I am forced out. I find myself facing the wall of the Cafeteria. This is where the sixth form congregate before the day begins. I turn right and lock back in. My periphery is now green with edges of brown - the sports field, surrounded by autumnal trees. It reminds me of that radio programme from the drive in. I shake the disorientation and focus.

When the bell rings for registration, I have to pull out, leaving IBHighLife for now. When I arrive, I’m surprised to be greeted by Mr Harrison. When he says good morning, I think of that radio programme again.

‘How are you today, Issy?’

‘Oh, fine sir. How are you?’

‘I’m very well thank you.’

It’s all quite formal at our school. It’s not a private school or anything like that but it’s on the good side of town and because the school’s good some of the rich parents still send their children here and save on tuition. I like some of the formality. Sometimes what teachers say and what students say back to them doesn’t really mean anything, but it’s nice just to be polite and get on. The phatic talk is quite easy but with the best teachers, like Mr Harrison and Mrs Bridges it’s sometimes a bit different: like they can be formal and everything but still sort of mean it. They’re just really nice people I guess. Sometimes students get confused when they see teachers outside of school and say things like, ‘Sir, I saw you in town on Saturday!’ like it’s a revelation that teachers live near school and go into the same town that everyone else who lives here goes into. I sort of get it because most teachers are so formal that you can’t picture them saying anything like what people say in town. And it’s not like Mr Harrison and Mrs Bridges don’t have the same register as every other teacher here, but still, when they say ‘Good morning. How are you today, Issy?’ it seems like they mean it.

By the way, it’s not like I fancy him or anything. I don’t have a stupid crush on him like I turned sixteen and was reminded that you have to have a crush on a young teacher so that in twenty years’ time you can look back and be all nostalgic about how you had a crush on this really cute teacher. It’s just nice that he means it once in a while, and so does Mrs Bridges. And anyway, teachers are just normal people and it’d be completely gross if they actually had crushes back on students; so all the girls who fantasise about it are pretty stupid; what they’re really doing when they fantasise about teachers is fantasising about paedophiles. So, no, I don’t fancy him. It’s just nice when someone means it once in a while, and when someone isn’t just like every other someone in their social category.

Once everyone is in, Mr Harrison invites us to sit down and explains what he’s doing here.

‘Mrs Hemsworth’s father has taken quite seriously ill, so I’m going to be taking over as your form tutor for the foreseeable future. Now, I teach some of you already, but I don’t know all of your names yet. I’d like to set you a tutor time task today, so take your pens out.’

This isn’t the norm at all. Usually Miss just takes the register and we sit about talking for twenty minutes. Mrs Hemsworth isn’t a pushover or anything; we still have to talk quietly, and if she ever hears anyone talking out of line she doesn’t pretend that she hasn’t heard like some teachers do. She goes royally mad. Well, as it happens, we only ever experienced this twice. Once on the first day in lower sixth and once when someone joined two weeks after the start of term and didn’t know how mad she got when someone was too loud or said something out of line.

I liked that though. I hate it in the classes when teachers sometimes pretend not to hear or see when someone is being out of line. I mean, all it really does is let the bullies get away with bullying half of the time, and then no one knows when the teacher’s going to explode, so I’m always pretty tense, because you can never predict the eruption. I mean, you wouldn’t want to live in a house at the foot of a volcano, would you?

‘I want you to keep a diary. You only have to write in it once a week and you only have to write in it on a Monday when you’re in here with me. I’m not going to read it, but at the end of the year, or when Mrs Hemsworth is back, I want you to read back over every entry in order and write a composition on what you notice when you read it through. You have twenty minutes once I give you your book to start filling up the space. Write about anything you like. I won’t read it, so just write.’

It’s a pretty strange task, and I’m not sure I get the point of the bit we’ll do at the end of the year that he’s going to read, but I guess it has a point, because the thing about Mr Harrison is that he’s seriously clever and never tries to set corny tasks that are obvious, but in the end it always turns out to be pretty profound, so I think I’ll take it seriously and just go with it. I like the silence anyway. Well, it’s not really silent because what I decide to write is actually pretty resonant. I realise that I’ve been tense again because when I start writing I feel that knot in my back loosen and my brow unfurls again but I didn’t realise it was furled. What I write is familiar. I decide to write up what I wrote on my blog last night about Mr Harrison’s sociology lesson yesterday. Like I say, he’s pretty profound sometimes.

The blog had already got around forty hits when I checked it on the way in this morning, and some people have even re-posted it on their own pages. It looks good on other people’s pages, but still my words, not changed at all:

So, our sociology teacher, Mr Harrison, gave us this lecture today. Even though he’s probably barely 30, he’s terrifically stuffy, but I kind of like that sort of thing. D’you know what I mean? I don’t mind it when the others fall asleep. They don’t get it. It’s their loss but if they don’t get it they don’t get that it’s a loss anyway. I like it because it makes the classroom peaceful when they fall asleep and no one’s messing around. The lecture was on this film about a man who was born like a million years ago but stopped aging at thirty, so he’s been alive ever since. Halfway through he tells a small group of friends his secret and that he was actually Jesus and that everyone misinterpreted what he was saying and one of the people he is talking to gets very offended. I don’t know if I would want to live forever. I guess never being older than thirty would be good and you’d get to see a lot; everything in the text books – all of history. I wonder if you’d realise that you were experiencing something important. I mean, as important as we think it is now. I think I’d go insane if I lived like this forever. That’s why it’s good to go senile at the end – so all the crap in the world doesn’t get too much. I mean, after seventy years of seeing one disaster after another, senility saves you from topping yourself. It would me at least. But being thirty, in your prime, seeing all of the hatred, all of the wars repeated for the same stupid flaws, over and over again!

The lecture was good – I liked how we didn’t have to interact. Like it was ok for us to just hear what Mr Harrison had to say and could think about it for ourselves. I didn’t really want to know what Bobby Peters thought about it anyway – he was asleep most of the way through, so it would have been a waste of time sharing. And anyway, I don’t like to share my ideas all the time, especially not the important ones. Words are cheap sometimes. D’you know what I mean? Like, we can feel these really important things and get carried away with them, but then we say them out loud and the ideas get corrupted. You sort of start to choke them out because they don’t sound right and halfway through you think they should stay down but, even when you stop, part of them has gone and what you’re left with isn’t the same. And even when you get the whole thing out, because you know it’s really important, nine times out of ten it gets lost in translation. People only hear what they want to hear most of the time, and then it’s them doing the corrupting. They take that idea – which is really like a piece of you that you let them borrow and they should be more careful with – and they twist it; they bend it to what they think. And then it’s gone. The ideas just float away. They evaporate, and each particle is silly on its own. So, I like lectures, and I like it when no one else is listening. Because that’s when things mean something, and I can hold on to them and stop them from sounding silly, being stolen or floating away. That’s what keeps me grounded. D’you know what I mean?

I write this blog instead of going out and buying fancy clothes now. I know there are people reading it because my page gets about fifty hits a day and I only refresh it about ten times. I wonder who reads it. I wonder if they think my questions are rhetorical or if they want to reply but don’t know what to say. I like that people read it. It’s far better than talking at school anyway. This is what I write in my composition book for Mr Harrison. Maybe I’ll do it the other way around next time and write my composition as a sort of warm up for my blog.

When tutor time ends, and the bell goes, I don’t realise. I don’t even hear the bell. Mr Harrison pulls me out and I rush off to my first lesson.

I don’t go back in too much after that. I like to listen to most of what the teachers say. It’s only in lesson five that I lock in. Mr Bennigton can’t control his hair, let alone a class of teenagers. It’s a joke really, when lower sixth are uncontrollable at a school like ours. But he pretends that it’s tactical and spends most of the lesson distracted and just chatting with the class about politics. Well, at least its politics and not football. But he’s a Maths teacher! I lock in for the whole hour and he doesn’t even notice. Or he tactically ignores. I make sure I check what chapter we were supposed to be covering though, so I can do it safely at home tonight. I like to know things and I don’t like to think his bad lessons will hold me back.

Oh yeah. It’s my birthday. I’m up to one hundred and fifty. I wonder which ones read my blog.

Chapter Two Autumn 2034 Peter Harrison

We’re not supposed to be out at night.

We’re not allowed to be out at night.

It is forbidden to be out at night.

The night is bitterly cold, but we have not dressed to stay warm. The late autumn air is blissful, washing over our exposed skin. Too much time inside, under artificial climate control and you forget what it feels like to be cold and crave the warmth. The warmth of our indoor lives is not the same. This night, we run through the parkland outside of town, in the countryside which no one experiences anymore. I make sure to run as fast as I can to feel my heart racing, my lungs burning, the cold air beating me to the brink of submission. We make sure to look up, to look down and to feel as much as we can. The moon is vast tonight. Smoky wisps of grey-white cloud thinly veil the beautiful orb. It is low in the sky and despite the smoky hue, the white light radiates, and I can see our destination ahead. We are racing, flat out and ready to collapse. I plunge one leg in front of the other. I beat my arms back and forth. I push up from the ground, unwilling to allow my lactic legs to sink as they so crave. The open moors stretch out ahead, but a small hilltop grows closer as I run. Soon I mount the incline. My muscles adjust to the new gradient and I continue to pound the earth, racing to the finish line. I am first to reach the summit and collapse onto my back, laying still, but for my chest rising and falling as I insatiably inhale and exhale in huge gasps, sending ice cold, visible air into the night.

We choose to be out at night.

We choose to be here at night.

We choose to be free at night.

As I’m joined by my friends, I try to speak, amidst the huge gasps.

‘Not so fast tonight, James?’

‘Just taking my time to enjoy the view.’

‘Slower means colder. I prefer freezing numbness to burning my lungs,’ gasps Janine, as she arrives.

‘But it’ll be bliss to feel my legs still burning in the morning.’

‘Perhaps, but at least my way I won’t still smell like a pubescent adolescent in the morning too.’

‘Don’t you? I thought that’s exactly what you smelt like every morning.’

‘Don’t they sell that on the market place? Pubescent Adolescent: the ideal fragrance for no one else to smell’

‘Yeah, it’s under ‘Who cares, no one will ever know; they’re not here.’

We don’t really laugh, even though we were joking because the sad thing is that James’ final comment might as well be true. We are not allowed out at night and we barely go out by day now. Visits to the outside must be absolutely necessary. Most people haven’t experienced what we’re experiencing now for years and it’s not long before you start to forget what you’re missing and then start to demonise what you have forgotten you used to know.

James shakes us from our sad reverie with a recital:

"Fools," said I, "You do not know –

Silence like a cancer grows.

Hear my words that I might teach you.

Take my arms that I might reach you."

But my words like silent raindrops fell

And echoed in the wells of silence

We all take up the words and proclaim together:

And the people bowed and prayed

To the neon god they made.

And the sign flashed out its warning

In the words that it was forming.

And the sign said, The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls

And tenement halls

And whispered in the sound of silence.

We finish with:

‘We are dedicated to whisper louder and louder and MAKE MORE NOISE’

We shout the last three words. We added the last line. The mantra comes from an old folk song that knew what was happening before it was even really happening.

We spend as much time out as we can. In December the sun rises too late to stay out long enough to see it. I’ve not seen a sunrise for five months. Before the change I don’t think I’d seen a sunrise in years, but now that we’re kept in, it’s become symbolic. We all wear a sunrise pendant under our prescribed clothing. It would be too dangerous to show it, and in any event, it is not a statement to others but one for ourselves that reminds us of what we live for: the dawning of a new day filled with the simple clarity and awe-striking beauty of the physical world. Now that almost all meaningful physical stimulus has been taken away from us, our emotional and spiritual responses, those that were so fuelled by nature, have been dulled in the absence. We wear our pendants lest what is dulled becomes dead.

Tonight, Janine and I hold back from the group, as they return. We risk being seen, but we’ve not been together for a few months and it’s hard to predict when we will be again. We sit under the arms of an ancient oak not far from the foot of the hill we raced up. I lean against the tree and Janine leans against me. I wrap my arms around her against the bitter cold and we feel real warmth enter our bodies. As Janine starts to speak, I see her breath released into the night.

‘I’ve been having a recurring dream since I last saw you. I dream that I’m halfway up a mountain and the weather turns stormy. I’m walking in low clouds and rain is pouring from yet higher clouds above. The wind is hard and cold. I can’t see anything clearly and have to stop. I’m engulfed in a world of cold, wet, beating, swirling grey. But I notice a small overhang of rock, just big enough for me to crawl under if I lie on my side and curl up hugging my knees. I tuck my head close to my chest. And you know what? I feel so content. I feel warmth despite the blistering cold. I feel comfort despite my loneliness. And I feel almost spiritual, like I truly exist and am part of the earth. I feel like I understand the physiology of the mountain and it gives me a sense of self awareness. And then my perspective changes.

‘I’m looking down at myself, curled up under the crag and I start to zoom out and I slowly lose sight of my body as it becomes smaller and smaller. I realise how insignificant I am – how small I am and how vast the world is. But still, I feel comforted and safe, and remember how nice it was to be curled up under that rock in the middle of that storm.’ She finishes in a soft, melodic voice, like a song fading out but never actually ending, like it’s you that has left the song, and as you fade away from it, it is still playing somewhere else. There’s nothing to say in response. Her dream has said everything. But the image reminds me of something.

‘Your dream, it reminds me of a painting that my English teacher had up when I was at school. The Wanderer above the Mists. That’s right,’ I go on as the memory grows. ‘It was a painting of a man, standing above the misty clouds on a rock that seemed like the protruding tip of a great mountain range. I always thought it was like he was looking out over all of his fears, and that by seeing them he escaped them; on that rock, gazing out at them, he knew that they were still there, and that to get to the next mountain top in the distance, he would have to descend into them and wade his way through to the next summit. But I always thought that he looked like he was ready, and even looking forward to it – his next great adventure, come what may.’

We sit for some time absorbed in the image of our dreams. Sat here, in the cold, embracing Janine, I feel almost normal. It is as if it is ten years ago and nothing has changed. I don’t know how long we sit here but suddenly I realise that the dream I’m thinking of is becoming real. I pull myself back to reality and open my eyes.

‘Shit. Janine, wake up. We fell asleep. We better get back quickly, or we’ll be caught out.’

We start to jog back through the night, retracing our steps of just an hour or so before. My legs are stiff and slow to get going, having fallen asleep in the freezing night so soon after racing here. As our legs get used to the motion of running, we pick up the pace. Full sunrise won’t be for some time yet, but it’s not as dark as it was when we fell asleep and we can’t afford to be out in a dark any lighter than this.

We have been out of the city perimeter, running through the countryside, because that is what has become unofficially forbidden. There is no law in theory which prohibits us from doing this, but the patrols ‘encourage’ us back home when we find ourselves outside and the consequences of ignoring these suggestions are shrouded in rumours of dark rooms and flashing lights. People always turn up again in a month or two, but they turn up with an overflowing delight in ‘The life of the promotion of socially safe communion amongst men’ or SSC, Socially Safe Communion as it is now plastered all over the walls of our world inside. There are few stories of dark rooms and flashing lights now. The deterrent has done its job.

As we approach the city limits, we slow our pace. There are no physical obstacles apart from the patrolling EEOs. It stands for Encourage and Enforce Officers though Encourage through Force would be more accurate, and we few, who wear our sunrise pendants and run the countryside when we can, are careful to remember it.

Janine and I enter the estate nearest the city limits. We both live close to the edge and close to each other, although, but for these stolen moments, we might as well live poles apart. I hold up my hand to halt Janine. We hide in the shadows of a high-rise council block and wait for the EEO to turn a corner. We run to an alleyway opposite, our feet accustomed to making little sound as we move. At the end of the alley we pause. This is where we say goodbye for we don’t know how long. The walls of the alleyway rise so high that the sky is a barely visible slit above us. We are shrouded in darkness. As we embrace, a gust of icy wind rushes through the alley. The cold night air that penetrates our hold is our last moment of physical bliss. I am reminded of Janine’s dream and of the sea of fog before The Wanderer in mine. We separate, and I make my way undercover through the few remaining blocks to the east, as Janine does the same to the west.

I am lucky to have an apartment in an old Georgian building; it is one of the farthest from the Georgian hub of the city before the encircling post war suburbs that lead to the countryside. There is something in the workmanship of the old buildings that holds on to history – that somehow speaks of the past. There is a stark juxtaposition between what I own and the building in which it is placed. But there are moments in the quiet when I sit on the floor in the corner of the room, where one wall meets the other at the right angle, and I push back into the meeting point to become part of the room. As I survey the props of my existence from this vantage, the objects are rendered lifeless and it is they who are out of place within the building, and I who fit into its fabric.

I enter my building as silently as I can. The old door creaks as I open it only wide enough to slip through. Then the old floor boards creak as I slowly make my way along the hall and up the first flight of stairs to my floor. Once within the safety of my apartment, I feel myself breathe a sigh of relief, as if I had been holding my breath since we left the protection of the oak tree and hadn’t realised I was holding it. I survey my room, which sits still, exactly as I left it. The objects within are minimal and almost all prescription metal furnishings: the desk, the bed, the computer screens, the wardrobe containing our prescription clothing. And yet our apartments contain our entire lives and it is from here that we send and receive every thought we think and every feeling we share.

I sit at my screens in front of the window. The screens that we are allocated are large and form a long horseshoe curve. The positioning means that when I sit down I am almost physically in the screen. My room is beginning to grow lighter now, though my curtains are thick and shut. All rooms are fitted with artificial sun lights that simulate the daily cycle of the sun, rising and dimming to mimic the season outside. Like running the countryside, we are not officially prohibited from opening our curtains, however, in practice it draws unwanted and dangerous attention to us if we do. I have, however, managed a small act of defiance. There is in my curtain the smallest of holes, almost undetectable unless the eye is trained to see it. It is this smallest of holes that prevents me from ever being fully in. As I spend long days and nights within the blue glow of my screen home, I am able to steal my eyes away, and look through that hole, at just a spot of the sky and the true light of the sun. So long as I have that slightest of views I am connected with the old world, the world that still lives and breathes out there, and I don’t forget. And though my name has changed since the change, I can still remember who I was, and in those moments, looking through that infinitesimal space or running the fields at night with Janine and the few others who resist, I am still who I was.

We have been stealing moments like the one we stole tonight for five years now. Before the change, Janine and I were married and lived together. But the change redefined the way marriage works, and I believe that almost all marriages have now dissolved. The world inside was a new landscape for all communion and the idiosyncratic way that relationships worked outside did not transfer into the new medium.

Life inside is like looking at a painting through tinted glasses, and unless we are able to remove the glass and experience the painting directly, we can never really know if we are experiencing it in its true form.

So, Janine and I have no attachment to one another inside at all, and the only times we are together are in those moments like tonight when we slip outside and run in the dark as our true selves.

I decide to rest my eyes for a couple of hours before I go in and begin my day. I walk over to my bed and sit down. My legs burn as I bend, and I breathe a deep sigh of relief as I feel them.