text: Pigs in a Pen I was awoken by the ear-piercing screams of missiles soaring over my head. It was an alarm clock for me as a barrage of missiles flew by every morning at 7:30 am. Even though it was still pitch black outside due to the smoke covering the sun, I could tell that it was morning. I sluggishly shuffled down the stairs; there is nothing in this barren city to care about. Finding another human being in this devastated excuse of a town is as likely as seeing pigs fly. Daily, via television, the government briefly informs us that it is illegal to go out of our homes due to the danger the war poses. The houses all over the country are resistant to most forms of weapons, or so the government says. I open my computer and start trying to contact my friends since the only sources of entertainment nowadays are shows on the television coming from countries not involved in our affairs, and the other source of entertainment clearly being computers as I can access the Internet and contact others in the same situation as me, as I previously stated. Anyways, you are most likely somewhat confused about the current situation I am in, and I have not introduced myself yet either. My name is Samuel Haft and I am 54 years old, I lack friends in the sense that I do not have any friends in real life. My hobbies are eating and spending time on the Internet. Every home has a food generator that takes pictures of food from the Internet and produces it. I am not sure how it works since none of us are well educated due to the constant occurrence of wars. Within the 54 years, I have been alive, there has not been any excitement whatsoever. Every single foolish day I am on this planet I wake up, and by noon, the level of boredom I reach begins to hinder my ability to perform everyday tasks. I walk around my home every day contemplating my life decisions and simultaneously, I decide my next meal. After ages of mindlessly walking like a baby sheep following its herd, I found my desired meal; Eggs and bacon. I did not wish for a complicated meal; something as simple as eggs and bacon seemed fitting. I dragged my feet along the floor until I reached the food generator in the kitchen. I hooked my computer up to the generator and searched for “eggs and bacon”, I anticipated the arrival of my food and focused my gaze on the food generator until I hear the familiar “ding” come from the food generator signifying that the food was ready. By the time my meal was ready, I had already planned what I was going to eat for my next meal. I am never truly hungry and most of the time, I am just yearning for something to satisfy my taste buds. I always eat my meals before I am hungry, therefore, I never get hungry unless I eat too little in my previous meal. Food these days taste different from how they tasted when I was in my childhood, or at least that is what I recall. One of the reasons I like tasting different foods from all sorts of cultures is because about 20 years ago, when the war that is going on currently started, the food generators were introduced, and that is when my hobby of tasting foods from across the world started. Similar to the present, I had nothing to do at the time and I was still not accustomed to the boredom of staying home 24/7. Over the years, It slowly occurred to me that the food was starting to taste unusually similar and more and more tasteless. Earlier this year, I actually looked further into the predicament by conferencing with my online companions. It was not only me who found the food peculiar, one of my friends who claims to have aided in the creation of the food generators revealed that artificial flavours, colours, nutrients, and another ingredient he refused to disclose were mixed together in the machine and in a few short minutes, the food would be printed out onto the plate. I had no other information on the food, thus I had to trust this stranger who is technically my friend. 2 years later I continued my daily routine of waking up, eating, surfing the web, eating again, watching some television, eating on more time, and sleeping. It has been a whole 2 years since the last time I came upon interesting news, and for the past 2 years, it has felt like I was hypnotised by and was zoned out for all this time. I had stopped contemplating life and began to mindlessly entertain myself with whatever content was on the Internet; just like how the government wants us to do. Only now have I started to wonder if the government was lying to us the whole time and there was no war. What if all of the sounds coming from the outside were fake and the thick, reinforced windows were modified television screens? I seem to have broken out of the trance that I was put in for 2 whole years. Could it be that the government found out about the conversations I had with my online companions? I hoarded all my current knowledge and all my conspiracy theories I formulated, found the connection between them and thought about it. I layed there thinking about what all this could mean and in the end, I concluded that I should try going outside. I browsed the web for hours on end trying to locate others who had the same train of thought as me. Eventually, after searching for people, I found one person who wanted to explore the outside with me. He said that his webcam was shattered so I did not know of his appearance. We both had the same ideology on what we thought the government was doing and settled on roaming around the town until we met since we did not have any knowledge of our towns geography. This anonymous figure who I still barely knew told me that if I gouged the floorboard in front of my sink out of the ground, there would be a full body hazmat suit in a grey box. He then advised me to put it on when I headed out tomorrow in case the government was not deceiving us, it was simply a precaution. The very next morning, I woke up with a grin on my face for the first time in 22 years. I was going to set myself free from this accursed building that I was locked up in for 22 years. I bolted around my house searching for something to use to smash through the walls. Finally, I settled on a sledgehammer that rested behind the hazmat suit under the floorboards; I guess the man I spoke to yesterday forgot to inform me about the sledgehammer lock away in the ground. I pulled back and swung with all my strength; the force was enough to tear a jagged hole straight across the wall. After what I saw what I could do with the hammer, I proceeded to shred through my wall like a trigger-happy gunman in a swarm of people. A look of ecstasy flushed over my face as I looked outside through the now absent wall; The outdoors almost identical how I thought it would look like. I felt like I was reliving the faint memories of the outdoors from I was but a child. For the first time in all these years, I did not walk by dragging my feet across the ground, I did not feel any boredom on the inside, and I finally had something to do in life. I wandered around the town trying to remember the roads so I could return home when I needed to. The ground looked like not a single soul had set foot on it before, I continued my expedition to find this other man who had also found the darkest secret of our government. I continued my stroll till I noticed a sound, the sound was the missiles! I about to panic, but then I realised it wasn’t real and the government probably had speakers on the houses creating the sound. Slowly but surely, the sound of missiles was getting louder and my ears started to hurt. I plugged my ears with my hands and I collapsed and leaned against the wall of a house trying to prevent my ears from exploding. As the sound got louder, I noticed blue robot hovering towards me, that idiotic robot was generating all the commotion. The robot identified me as a human and turned off the sound and came over to me, stood there for about a minute or so, and out of nowhere it shot something through my chest, unbearable pain erupted throughout my body, my chest was burning and all my strength started fading away. I could not move a muscle; I felt paralyzed. But, for some reason, I did not feel any emotions, only pain. I accepted my fate and as soon as I thought I was about to die, the blade-like object inside me spun like a weed wacker and started moving. My flesh was being eaten by this robot, yet I no longer felt pain, I stopped paying attention to the robot and soon after my arm fell to the ground. A realization that the robot was cutting me up into pieces hit me strong, I was being cut into pieces like I was a pig at a slaughterhouse except I was still alive to witness myself be cut up starting with my limbs. I am now certain that the object that impaled me was laced with a painkiller and that the anonymous person who I spoke with was lying about shattering their webcam. That person was probably the government luring me out of my house to have me killed, and there are 3 reasons that the government would want to kill me for. Those reasons are either that I am now old and the government wants to kill me off, the government wants to kill me off due to my knowledge of what is actually going on, or because we are all like pigs being raised in a farm and I am now ready for consumption. That might explain why my online friend refused to disclose a certain ingredient that food generator uses to create food; it was most likely human remains. As I lay against the wall with a robot slowly dissecting me and removing my organs, I begin to lose consciousness, and due to the severe blood loss I suffered and am still suffering, I died the very next minute. At the age of 56, I died a pointless death, locked up in a house with no windows or doors my entire life like a pig in a pen raised, only to be eaten.