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No FutureChapter 78 free porn video
Sick and Sore
Iris
2059
Although Iris missed living in London while she was living in Oxford, she hadn't really felt ready to return there from so soon. However, the Biotech Lab was one of the first businesses to shut down when Sheep Fever struck the nation. And now she was effectively evicted from the city along with everyone else who didn't have an actual job in the city and didn't have the good fortune to have been born there. The authorities could only extend the charity of quarantine to a limited number of people.
Sheep Fever was such an innocent sounding name for the devastating pandemic whose progress across the world from the Republic of North America to Europe, Africa and Asia had been tracked with such anxiety by the English government and the world's media. The other name by which it was known—White Death—was a melodramatic echo of the ancient mediaeval plague that expressed rather better the dread and horror evoked by mention of the disease. It was an especially nasty disease that had very little to do with sheep beyond having originated in agricultural land where few humans lived but was still home to unfussy livestock such as sheep and goat. Amongst the symptoms were high temperatures, coughing fits, sickness and diarrhoea. The time in which it took to die was interminable. Despite the frantic efforts of pharmaceutical companies all over the globe, no cure for it had yet been found.
Although the English government was happy to dispense well-meaning but not especially helpful advice, it had no grand plan to avert the worst affects of the White Death as it spread across the Midlands and Home Counties. Like everyone else nowadays, when Iris ventured outdoors she always wore a surgical mask around her mouth or held a handkerchief to her face. She wore gloves in public places and conspicuously avoided shaking hands. The most common means by which White Death was spread was by touching a surface on which someone had coughed or vomited.
The Government of National Unity was definitely in its element in discovering novel ways in which to restrict the freedom of movement of the populace. The Kingdom's border controls were tightened yet further. Tourists were only permitted into the country if they'd booked to stay at an approved hotel. Any lorry transporting goods into England was obliged to leave them at the dock or airport for English workers to carry onwards to their destination. The railway tunnel between England and France was now bricked up to prevent anyone bringing the disease in from the continent, even though it was actually more widespread in England than anywhere else in Northern Europe.
Draconian restrictions to free movement were imposed across the whole of England, although Greater London had somehow escaped the worst. This was mostly thanks to the improvised defences and barbed wire that had been raised around the inner circumference of the M25 motorway. As a resident of Uxbridge, Iris benefitted from this extra security. The London Borough of Hillingdon had effectively imposed martial law on its council tax payers. No one could walk far before being stopped by a quarantine officer and having their eyes scrutinised for the small white spots in the pupil that was the earliest sign of infection. There were several occasions when Iris witnessed the haste in which those suspected of infection were escorted away by nurses in white uniforms for further examination.
Iris' attitude towards such a stringent policy was mixed. There was a very high death rate from White Death. Barely one in twenty victims survived once infected. Although she had a great deal of sympathy towards the victims of the plague and, of course, their family and friends, she was secretly pleased to see them dragged off to a place where they were less likely to pass on the disease.
On the whole, it was actually rather boring to live in the midst of the White Death. Because they were forbidden from commuting, most people were unable to get to their usual place of work. Only essential vehicles were allowed to travel from one London borough to another. The exhaustive checks required when getting on or getting off public transport resulted in more time being dedicated to such business than was actually spent travelling. Nonetheless, getting to work was the least of Iris' concerns. She was unemployed and had to live off what was left of her savings. Even if she had a job in Central London, where most of the opportunities were, she'd never be able to get there to earn a salary. Iris initially relied on the basic food and provisions made available as emergency aid, but as the weeks became months and the White Death kept its grip on the country such generosity became more than either the London Borough of Hillingdon or the English government could any longer afford.
"It makes sense though, doesn't it?" said Iris's housemate, Eustace, as they queued outside the labour exchange. "There are jobs to be done and we're able to do them. The roads aren't gonna get cleaned by themselves."
"Or the bodies burnt in the incinerators," gloomily remarked Yolanda, who'd been dossing down on the sofa in the shared house ever since she'd been evicted from Leyton Buzzard. "Or the barbed wire fences guarded. Or the sick and dying sorted from those who're gonna live."
"That's all true," Eustace agreed. "It's all gotta be done. And, anyway, what else would we be doing now? I mean, what I ought to be doing is working at my desk in Holborn, but with so many businesses suspended during the crisis, what else can I do? And we get to do our bit to help our country in its time of need."
Iris felt a bit weary as she listened to her housemate echo the propaganda being broadcast on Fox News UK and, with noticeably less enthusiasm, the EBC. It wasn't that she disagreed with the essential message that the best way to get through the White Death was for people to work together for the common good. What troubled her more was how the government had somehow made the crisis fit its xenophobic, business-friendly, insular agenda. Not only had the barriers between nations been strengthened, but every possible way to monitor, interfere and marshal the population was being applied. And ultimately to what end? And to what extent was it simply to keep Sheep Fever at bay?
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