1EYE
A week ago I found a deadzone.
I thought it peculiar at first, as I was just worried as to why my phone had dropped a call. When I realized what I stepped into, I was in a state of disbelief.
There hasn't been a deadzone on our planet since before I was born.
Pops used to tell me that there was a time when you could go anywhere without having to be plugged in. He said he'd take Mum and go out camping in the open air and the trees didn't have fiber optics, antennas, or cameras.
Cameras are everywhere... everywhere except this place.
The Public Safety Act was passed when I was still in diapers. I grew up with cameras in my toys, sensors in my pillows, and infrared in my toilet. My parents did their best to put up with it; I just didn't see anything wrong with it because I was raised in it. Pops would always go on a good rant when Mum would suggest a holiday or a camping trip.
"It's no holiday if the goddamn PM has to see ever'thin I do. I can't even snog m' wife in peace without some damn one-eye recording the whole act... It's hard enough for me to even kiss you if the bleedin' dog is watchin'! If the Queen were still alive she'd agree that nobody needs to know how you pass your lunch. It's a damn shame that her kin just let the Prime Minister stick his fat nose in everyone's business!"
He gave his word on the subject nearly once a week. There were times it was so much the same as the previous rant, that Mum would finish his sentences when he'd lose his place. By the time I was finishing primary school, Pops couldn't handle the world anymore.
While I was away at university, Pops spent nearly every day in the bathtub. Mum would deliver his coffee and transcribe his news feed to a notepad. He felt the less our government could see of him, the better his life would be.
It only made it worse.
My old man didn't leave the loo until four weeks before he died. Public Safety Officers took him out of the tub because they said his mental health was a danger to his family and the community. He may have been angry, but I don't believe he was actually insane until he was cooped up in that holding cell with all those one-eyes pointed at him. The amount of surveillance was a bit excessive, but they said he needed to be under constant supervision for his own good.
At barely twenty-seven days in holding, Pops died from a heart attack.
That was ten years ago and since then I've had his ashes in an urn, wrapped in a blanket, in a cardboard box, in a safe, in my closet.
It was the least I could do to respect his memory.
Today his memory is free. Today I took Pops to the deadzone and I mixed his ashes in the freest soil that exists in the world today.
Tomorrow I'll bring Mum and she can read him the news feed.
