I never thought I’d live in a world where wearing a watch could mean the difference between life and death.

Most people have an alarm set every ten minutes from five o’clock onwards. Each one acts as a reminder of the impending curfew. It’s become near impossible to lose track of time. Between the hourly mass text alerts from the Angel Intelligence Agency and everyone’s personal alarms, if someone doesn’t make it home, it’s typically because they’re dead.

It was hard to adjust to at first, but now the nightly routine has become mundane, as if the song that sings when the mechanisms tick over isn’t something new to this world. As if the world before never existed at all.

The sound of locks ticking over and sealing shut every window and door in the building rings through our apartment.

I turn the dial on the radio to drown out the reality of the new world. Every night at six o’clock and not a second later, each residence in the city shuts off to the world for their own protection. It’s a necessary evil, the only way we could find some normality. Some feeling of safety, however misguided it may be.

As usual, I’m tucked away in the kitchen, listening to the reruns radio station, which is currently playing one of my favourite songs.

The melody floats over me while I dance and sing, every thought of curfew quickly slipping away. The smell of marinara sauce fills the air, one of our weekly meals on rotation. There’s not a lot of choice when it comes to food any more. Things are better here in the city now that they’ve built hydro farms to keep producing natural foods, but humanity hasn’t had the taste of meat since we shut our borders.

I haven’t been past the border of the city in over two years. There’s been no need since the lockdowns were introduced and we stopped fighting. I’ve heard rumours of how bad it still is out there, but nobody has seen it and lived to tell the tale.