Writing Challenge: 500 words max of speculative pessimistic autobiographical writing

23 February 2027,

Today is my 70th birthday. It’s also the 7th anniversary of the night I went out with friends for a live performance of Gounod's Faust at the Sydney Opera House, followed by dinner at Mr. Wong, one of my favourite Sydney restaurants. How were we to know then, 7 years ago, that it was to be the last time we go to a live performance and the last time we eat out at a restaurant?

I still remember how we met at the northern gate of Sydney’s Botanical Gardens and jokingly asked each other if we’ve caught the ‘coronavirus’ as everyone called it then. Two weeks later it was no longer a joke, someone we all knew was in intensive care at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick. 

Not that taking the pandemic seriously helped. We all religiously followed the government’s directive in the first few months and we joined with everyone celebrating Australia’s capacity to ‘flatten the curve’ (one of the early obsessions in the first year of the outbreak) only to realise by the end of 2020 that we are dealing with a wildly oscillating pandemic where flat curves were mere moments of respite in the virus’ intensity of circulation. 

The virus accentuated one of the worst contradictions of our era: the more it was clear that the world was inevitably interconnected the more people acted as if each nation was an island. The illusion was easier to maintain when your nation is effectively an island. But this has not stopped the virus from continuing to spread in all kind of ways.

I was forced to retire on my 65th birthday 5 years ago. For this birthday, I received last week my category 7 medicare card. This indicates my new 70+ age group and the medical care one is entitled to get for that group. No one says it openly, but everyone knows that, as the health system is struggling to cope, the card indicates that you are not a priority. You are expendable. 

More than 7 years since I have seen, let alone hugged, my daughters. Who would have thought that Australia will return to being something like a penal colony again. We used to say this metaphorically sometimes. But there is nothing metaphoric about it today. Australia is for all practical purposes a heavily policed prison for its inhabitants. It is not just that we cannot leave the island. It’s illegal to even try. When tracking apps were introduced, some lefties were worried that the app will be used for political purposes to hunt leftist dissenters. It was much worth than that, the app was used to just keep track of you regardless of politics.

Still we know that we are better off than the people of the United States where, because the elections of November 2020 could not happen and no elections was possible since, Donald Trump, who was president before those elections, and already becoming visibly senile, is still in power - in the role of a so-called care-taker president. we are no longer sure what exactly is happening there.