Dear diary, writing this might be suicide but I just have to do it.
It’s not that I feel a need to avoid being mainstream, I just feel this way. It is of course less time consuming to take a pill instead of sitting down for a meal but I miss the restaurants, I really do. Technically it’s still allowed to eat old food but just because of bureaucracy, it takes time to change laws. I doubt it will stay that way for the next two years unless the government wants to lose the power after the election 2029 tho. Not that it really matters if they do, the government runs the errands of the companies anyway. The companies have the real power.
Sure, no one is going to report me just for talking about old food but people look so weird at me when I even mention how it used to be. I snatched a manual for printing of old food from the company's dump and used my 3D-printer so I can still eat it in secret. I never thought that I'd want meatballs so much, I didn't even like them ten years ago. I usually go to the place where the restaurant where I got together with my girlfriend seven years ago used to be. Now it’s just an alley between concrete walls of a pill production factory and some shady club that I don't want to see the inside of but it brings back so many memories, like our very first kiss and all kinds of clichés. Ironically she left me last year because I was too stuck in the past, as she put it. Of course she meant me disliking these blasted pills.
To be honest I don't know what to do anymore. If the government and the companies got their hands on you, little diary, I'm not sure where I'd end up but it wouldn't be a pleasant place. Although it might not really matter, I'm not sure that my life is that much worth living now anyway. I get up in the morning at 06.59 for the breakfast pills and a glass of orange juice. Getting up one minute before what normal people would set the alarm to is just a weird habit of mine. The juice taste comes from a pill of course but at least I get the water from the tap, I guess it's something. I also take a happiness pill, or anti-depression pill as I call it. Thirty minutes later or so I head to work.
I work at a factory where we produce pill printers. I can't believe there aren’t enough by now but I guess there comes a new pill almost every day and third world countries probably aren’t completely taken over by pills yet. I wish I could move there. I work for four hours and then break for an energy refreshment pill, a nutrition pill and a possibility to chat with my fellow workers for an hour. I rarely do, I prefer going for a walk. I usually jump into my car and let it take me to a place as desolate as possible. My colleagues have noticed but they are happy anyway due to happiness pills so they don't really care. I guess they just think I'm not that social. If they think that they probably wonder why I don't take a social pill tho. Our caring company supplies all the pills we might need as long as we stay in line as obedient servants and don't question anything.
I don't pick a desolate place just because I can avoid people there. I can keep pretend I like the pills well enough when I meet people but I have a habit of singing, and not a song we're allowed to sing. I doubt that it's literally banned but I'm not dumb, the lyrics are dangerous. The song is I feel fantastic by Jonathan Coulton and it is pretty much criticizing taking too much pills. I have no illusions of acceptance for lines like "The steak tastes better when I take my steak tastes better pill.". To be honest I wonder if he is related to George Orwell or something. Together they described the world today, 49 years after his book 1984, so perfectly. I doubt he literally is but you get what I mean.
What pains me the most isn't that I work for what I hate tho, it's that I am part of the reason it exists. I was its first poster boy. That's why I never get rid of my facial hair that has finally come. I can stand talking to the pill lovers alright but if they started admiring me I don't think I could take it. I guess it's hard to believe that I was the first poster boy for Treo, the Swedish company whose advertisement started the trend. It was just an innocent pill against headache and when I got picked for the role from the actor site I was registered at thirteen years ago I was excited. It wasn't my first role, far from, but it was my first as the main character. It was a lot of fun. I was just about to start the university and man did I get attention for it when someone suddenly saw me on TV.
I like being in the center of attention but after I while I felt like I got too much of it. Everyone took a Treo pill before and after every party to avoid the hangover and because it was the thing to do. Apparently it was cool to see an effervescent tablet dissolve in a glass of water. Other larger companies noticed and started creating pills for pretty much everything. At first I liked the taste enhancing pills that were produced but when more and more pills for everything came I turned skeptic and then just disliked it. It felt wrong. The food replacement pills that came three years ago was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.
I told some people that I thought it was all going too far, soon the CEO called to say I was no longer the poster boy. It could be a funny poem, the CEO from Treo calling Leo rhymes well but nothing funny came out of my comment. I lost my job and had to get a simple job at my current printer producing factory to not starve and live on the street. A year later I was asked by my previous boss if I wanted to be the poster boy again, the only requirement was that I made a public apology. I declined saying that I felt like the fame had gotten to me too much and that I wanted more humble conditions. I had just gotten a small promotion as well and that probably saved me from further questions.
In case this little diary isn't destroyed and someone actually reads it I suppose I should continue writing about my day. Who knows, maybe the world has changed the next time this is read and someone understands why I dislike these pills.
Well, I got to taking a walk and singing during the break. After the break it's four more hours to work, not much fun and feels wrong but as I wrote, I have to do it. Then we have a one hour meeting discussing the day, what was good and what was bad. The good part is always that we get treated so well and have access to all the pills we need to be both productive and happy, literally everyone says it. Sometimes someone is creative and says something nice about the boss or a fellow worker too. The bad things? Well, usually someone mentions that they messed up in their work with a machine or so. Of course he or she is instantly forgiven and receives an applause for being honest and caring more about the company and everyone else than his or her own image. I play along and do the same.
After work I often just go home and watch TV or some movie for a while before sleeping, as long as they don't eat anything else than pills in the movies there's no risk and while it's a bit limiting there is usually something to watch. Many old movies are still allowed. If it's Friday or Saturday I head to a bar. The alcohol comes in pills in water of course but sometimes I just need to forget it all and then I just can't bother caring. I avoid talking tho, I might slip up and say something honest. Saturday and Sunday are free and meant as family time, which I don’t have. Instead I usually go to some nature area to walk and get away from it all. There isn't much untouched nature left and I guess that's understandable. With population growth there hasn't really been a choice, material for buildings and other stuff is needed.
Still, there is a bit of nature. I can walk for hours in it, back and forth if it isn't large enough for me to keep walking forwards. My feet hurt a little bit afterwards but then I actually do take painkillers. When a pill is necessary and would have been used ten years ago as well I take it. There are many types but never again Treo. It might work well but I refuse to have anything to do with the company that helped me destroy the world as I knew it, never!
Today is a Thursday evening so a normal working day. Tomorrow I should get up at 06.59 as usual, take my fake orange juice and breakfast pill. Then I should head to work and stay there for ten hours producing pill printers with a break in the middle and a meeting in the end. When I started writing this little diary I intended to do exactly that and was worried about someone getting their hands on this but know what? I'm tired of it! Tomorrow I will wake up, skip the anti-depression pill and print meatballs. Then I’ll put this little diary in a plastic bag to save it from rain and leave it hidden somewhere in my favorite area of untouched nature. After that I'm going to go to the main office of the largest of the food pill companies. Then I will stand in front of the main entrance throwing meatballs everywhere and screaming out that I hate the food pills and all other pills as well, screaming it as loud as I can. I will scream more things as well but I don't think these should be written here. I don't know exactly what they will want to do to me but I'll make sure that they don't get the chance, I'll do it first. I've had enough!