Rain. Acid rain, they called it. It sizzled on the corrugated iron roof of my shack, a constant, hissing reminder of what we'd done to the world.
The neon signs were old and broken, casting a dim, oily light on the flooded streets. Cyberpunk gone to hell, that's what this was. New Shanghai, or what was left of it, was a concrete jungle choking on its own fumes and the ghosts of a brighter, more foolish past.
I sat on a ripped plastic crate, staring at the chipped porcelain plate in my hands. Two pills stared back at me. Red, like dried blood. Blue, the color of a dead sky. Red promised a rush, a manufactured joy that would paper over the cracks inside me. Blue… blue was oblivion.
Most days, I swallowed the red. The red drowned out the memories of my family, vaporized in the Great Fire. The red silenced the whispers of guilt, the knowledge that I was just surviving while others starved. The red made me dance in the rain, made me laugh at the grotesque beauty of this broken world.
But today, the red felt… wrong.
I was tired. Bone-deep tired. Tired of the synthetic smiles, the hollow echoes of happiness. Tired of pretending that everything was okay in a world that was anything but.
The blue pill beckoned. A silent promise of peace. A blank canvas where the nightmares couldn't find me.
I picked it up. The smooth, cold surface felt good against my skin. For a moment, I hesitated. I knew where the blue led. I'd seen it in the vacant eyes of the Junkies, the ones who spent their days slumped in alleyways, lost in the digital dreamscape the blue offered.
But maybe… maybe that was exactly what I needed.
I threw back my head and swallowed the pill.
The world didn't go black. Instead, colors intensified, the neon signs pulsed with a manic energy. My body tingled, a wave of numbness spreading from my toes to the top of my head. The acid rain felt warm on my skin.
I walked out into the street. The flooded pavement reflected the distorted city lights, turning the world into a kaleidoscope of shimmering colors. People brushed past me, their faces blurred, their voices a distant drone. I felt detached, a ghost drifting through a landscape of ruin.
Then I saw her.
A girl, no older than ten, huddled in a doorway, shivering in the rain. Her clothes were rags, her face smeared with grime. She looked up at me, her eyes wide with hunger and fear.
Normally, the red would have kicked in. I would have danced for her, pulled a stupid joke, anything to distract her, to distract myself, from the reality of her situation.
But the blue… the blue didn't care.
I walked past her. Didn't even meet her gaze.
The numbness intensified. It felt good. Glorious, even.
I kept walking, deeper into the city, further away from the girl and the shame that threatened to surface.
I found myself in a crowded arcade, the air filled with the scent of stale synth-noodles and hopelessness. I spent the last of my credits on a virtual reality game, strapping myself into a vibrating chair and immersing myself in a world of exploding spaceships and screaming aliens.
Hours passed. I lost track of time. I didn't eat, didn't drink, didn't even think. Just pure, unadulterated escapism.
When I finally stumbled out of the arcade, the sun was beginning to rise, painting the sky in bruised shades of purple and orange. The acid rain had stopped.
I started to walk back to my shack, my head pounding, my stomach churning. The blue was wearing off, leaving me raw and exposed.
And then I saw it.
Lying on the pavement, right outside my shack, was a red pill.
I picked it up, my fingers trembling.
Suddenly, a memory surfaced. Not of the fire, not of the hunger, but of something far more terrible. A memory of myself, years ago, standing in a sterile white room, a doctor in a crisp white coat smiling reassuringly.
"This is the new protocol," he'd said, holding out a handful of pills. "Red for happiness, blue for… compliance."
Compliance.
My blood ran cold.
I remembered the fire. I remembered the hunger. But I hadn't remembered the mandatory medication.
Because the blue pill… it didn't just numb the pain. It erased the things they didn't want you to remember.
I looked at the red pill in my hand. It seemed to pulse with a malevolent energy.
What was really in it? Was it just happiness? Or was it something more sinister? Something designed to keep us docile, to keep us from questioning, to keep us from remembering?
I gazed up at the city. I saw the neon signs blinking on and off. The buildings looked old and falling apart. And I noticed people walking around who seemed sad and without direction.
And I realized that the real apocalypse wasn't the fire, wasn't the acid rain. It was the slow, insidious erosion of our memories, our thoughts, our very selves.
The question wasn't what was in the pill.
The question was, what were we becoming?
I clutched the red pill in my hand, my knuckles white. The rain started to fall again, cold and unforgiving.
I didn't swallow it.