Untitled Short Story Draft (Work in Progress)

'''A ray of sunlight lanced across a musty, tenebrous passage which had been so long devoid of the sun or any thought of sun that its occupants had nearly forgotten the concept of light altogether, and were therefore left quite addled as their eyes were suddenly forced back into use. They peered out at the light - the most sharp-eyed of them barely made out two dark, blurry silhouettes at the foot of the one and only staircase leading into the passage, who began to slowly walk along the passage, glancing briefly at the doors that lined the passage - inspecting both the small panels next to them and the inhabitants of the rooms that lay behind them. At last, they came to a halt at the door marked OD-0408. There was a sharp rapping of knuckles on metal, at which the hunched, decrepit individual inside the room, woken from the deep slumber of thought, raised his head to look directly at the representatives of those who had so unceremoniously thrown him into the prison - and a prison it was, despite their efforts to prove otherwise. '''

'''After the Great Famines and the Seven Wars, the remnants of human civilization had been taken over by a corporate group known only as the CORE. They had quickly formed a totalitarian government, and which began to slyly take over the minds of its citizens, bit by bit. All was done in the name of helping the citizens - the centralization of healthcare and food supply, the deployment of countless surveillance drones across the planet, allegedly for security, and the development of a virtual reality that all were required to use - but had much more sinister purposes - the alteration of the citizens’ minds to become more subservient to the state, the ‘filtering’ of their eyes to make them only see what the government wanted them to see (most notably, the removal of the eye’s ability to see color due to an underground movement that communicated using patterns of colors), and the ‘removal’ of all dissenters. The severely aged man in room OD-0408 was one of those dissenters - a learned professor who refused to comply with the government’s requirements due to a fear of controlling substances, and then watched in horror as all those around him lost their individuality and ability to see color. Eventually, the government found out that he had been avoiding them through the use of their surveillance drones, captured him, and threw him into what they called a ‘retraining facility’. Now, he was the only remaining citizen who had not come under the control of the state, and, he presumed, they were annoyed with him. Extremely annoyed.'''

'''The shouting of one of the people in front of the door jolted him back into the present. Piecing together the words his failing ears could still pick up, he inferred that he had received the news that the other occupants of his prison seemed to dread the most - he would be put to death the next day in a public execution, to serve as an example to the other dissenters that no longer existed. Soon after delivering the message, the two representatives left the prison, obviously dissatisfied with the reaction that they had received - as soon as they stopped talking, the old man had lowered his head again and had begun to snore rather loudly, showing no interest or fear whatsoever. As soon as the sound of footsteps receded into the distance, the man cautiously cracked open a single eye (for the state had grown too comfortable over the years, and so had failed to realize the obvious ruse), and saw that the shaft of light had disappeared - darkness reigned once more. It did not matter. He knew that he would not need his sight in the last few hours of his time in the prison - the others could not truly see either, even if there was light, so it was little use. No, his voice, not his sight, was his best weapon.'''