in Fiction
THE MEASURE by Nikki Erlick
https://www.exlibrismeis.com/en/?p=6789
What will happen if one day everybody in the world who is at least twenty-two years old will receive a box? The box, the same size and the same material for everybody, will have not only the name of the receiver but also the same line (translated in the mother’s tongue of each person):
“The measure of your life lies within.”
Each box contains a piece of silver fabric, and underneath it lies a string, and the length of it depends on the receiver’s name.
“The measure of your life lies within.”
Each box contains a piece of silver fabric, and underneath it lies a string, and the length of it depends on the receiver’s name.
“The researchers had amased the measurements of thousands of different strings, down to the mere fragments of millimeters. They had concluded, based on the earliest data, that the length of one’s string did not, in fact, equate with the time left to live, as someone initially posited.
The measure of the string held instead the full measure of one’s life.
The measure of the string held instead the full measure of one’s life.
From the beggining until the end.”
From now on, people would be called Short Strings and Long Strings.
How we would behave if we were Long Strings:
- Would we be OD-ing on painkillers?
- Would we try asphyxiation for pleasure?
- Would we give up our long-term partner because he was unlucky to get the short string?
And how we would behave if we were Short Strings:
- Would we start to steal?
- Would we start to beat people?
- Would we finally start revolting against totalitarian regimes that we have been living in for too long?
“…the latest news out of North Korea, where all boxes were now required to be turned over to the government. Anyone who hadn’t yet opened their box was no longer allowed to look inside, and every new box received by those turning twenty-two was to be handed over to officials unopened.
The directive was rumoured to be the result of bubbling unrest and a fear among the supreme leader’s circle that a few impassioned short-stringers with nothing left to lose might foment an insurrection.”
What about the government’s attitude toward Short Strings: they will stop giving them medical assistance, or they will stop helping them financially?
What about corporate companies: they will fire the Short Strings despite their hard work until then?
What about corporate companies: they will fire the Short Strings despite their hard work until then?
For me, this story was touching, especially after I experienced the Pandemy. And I asked myself what I would do if I were a short or long string, but I realized that no matter what answer I gave myself is not honest. Because I am not under real duress…
But I chose the learning written by the writer Nikki Erlick:
“That the beginning and the end may have been chosen for us, the string already spun, but the middle had always been left undetermined, to be woven and shaped by us.”
Kindle, 2022
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