LITTLE PARADISE

The Year 2030

I usually can't recall my dreams, but this one I will always remember. The images and people in that dream seemed so real that I could almost feel their presence beside me, including the cyborg's. Although I had had the opportunity to see real cyborgs when I worked for the Polish military, I had never had the chance to meet them closely, nor to work with them. To be frank, it seemed better that way. Their expressionless faces made me uneasy. Wasn't there already enough human indifference in the world? Did we really need to bring the indifference of technology to a world already so poor in humanity and compassion?

I was relieved to live on a continent that hadn't embraced the technology rush due to a lack of financial resources. They could always acquire the financial resources, while humanity and compassion were unfortunately in decline in Africa too. In the West on the other hand, algorithms, cyborgs, smart devices and artificial intelligence were spreading everywhere: in streets, roads, schools, hospitals, banks, offices, care homes, high schools and universities, stores, shopping malls, sports and entertainment centres; everywhere ...

In a tropical landscape, on a beach that I didn't know, I was standing, wearing my military uniform. A few metres away, my mother was sitting on a wheelchair, her gaze lost in the distance, a small smile on her lips. She looked calm and content. A dark-haired young man, dressed all in white, stood beside her, pale-faced and smiling.

I started walking towards them. My steps felt heavy with the sand. The young man was the first to notice me. He turned to greet me with a gentle nod. His gaze looked strange, a bit like people who suffer from strabismus.

"Mrs. Leszczyński, look who's here," he said in Spanish, leaning towards my mother to place a light hand on her shoulder. My mother looked up at him first as if pulled out of her daydreaming before turning to me.

"Borys," she said with a wide smile on her beautiful wrinkled face. "How are you?" She continued in Spanish.

"I'm fine," I replied in the same language, crouching down next to her to take her hand. It felt as soft and frail as the last time I had touched her two years earlier.

"You'll take care of your sisters, promise me, Borys?" She told me.

Iwona lived in the United States and Ania in China. Poland has always generously given its children to the other nations of this world. My sisters were both married with two children each. We communicated by videoconference, social media, telephone, and e-mail. However, I don't know why in my dream I asked my mother:

"Yes, mum, but where are they?"

At my question, my mother's face darkened with a veil of sadness, then she slowly raised her hand to point at something behind me. Intrigued, I got up to turn around and see what she was pointing at. A great shiver ran through my whole body when I recognised the place.

I had never known this place myself, but I had heard of it and I had seen the black and white photos in history books. The naked men and women, so skinny that their shoulder blade bones stuck out of their little bodies like scars. Their dark, terrorised gazes seemed to challenge the camera saying: Did you see that? They tried to exterminate us, but we're still here, standing, alive.

Tears clouded my eyes as I raced towards the place where my sisters were being held, probably with their families too. When I arrived at the portals of human calculating cruelty, instead of barbed wires I found myself facing a large glass window. On the other side, I saw Ania and Iwona in their pyjamas, walking in line with their heads bowed to their mobile phone, completely absorbed in their device. They were heading straight for a gas chamber from which thick smoke was coming out.

"Iwona, Ania!" I screamed on top of my lungs, banging my fists on the glass window, but they didn't hear me; they couldn't hear me; they were prisoners and me on the other side, I had to go on living, survive like the original purpose of my birth and the sacrifice of my father's life.