the eccentricities of the organisation, the habits of her new colleagues. And now, weeks after the other city states, Yrcalla had announced its ban on travel. The government was still not shutting off the electricity supply, as the other cities had, still hoping to find a way to defeat the voxsola without giving up all the luxuries of modern day living. Many homes and businesses had reacted to the government’ s slowness to act by taking matters into their own hands. Those that could had nailed wooden boards over their plug sockets, dug under the gardens to cut the supply to the mains, started adapting to a life without electricity.
Sylvia was unsure what to do. She had never bothered installing a phone line in her bedsit apartment, it felt unnecessary in the age of the internet and mobile phones. She anxiously checked the plug sockets on the walls multiple times a day, so far there was no tell-tale tendrils peeking out of the socket, but she had walked past Chicken Pox Prospects the other day and had seen a neon street sign glistening with white strands of mucous, a pub door pushed off its hinges by fungal growth. Now that the voxsola was in the city, it was surely only a matter of time before they had no choice but to cut all electricity.
After speaking with her grandmother, Sylvia fixed herself a meal, once again thanking her luck that her apartment still had a gas supply, unlike so many newer buildings in the city. After eating, she flicked idly through a collection of Ligotti short stories, but for some reason felt unable to concentrate on her old favourites. She put it aside and picked up the copy of Shelley’ s collected poems. For some reason, she found herself increasingly drawn to Shelley’ s Prometheus Unbound. Though the story of Prometheus breaking free from his bondage was in some way the opposite of her life,
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