AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the prologue of a story I'm writing. As you may guess, this is a dystopia, so tell me if the symbolism is a tad heavy. My, I haven't written serious ficiton in a while! And I know, I know this is like a story I have on . I really like this character, though! Well, read and enjoy... I hope. And of course, review, review, review!

I don't know how this is going to end.

Routine was a funny thing, Dr. Melanie Mortimer mused. Her daily round of the psychiatric ward was at a close, with plenty of paperwork pending. Not that anyone read paperwork, anymore. Death had proven itself the only eternal thing; taxes were no more. Sadly, this also meant funding for the hospital was nonexistent. The staff had to work with next to no new equipment. Still, Dr. Mortimer fought hard to keep Megalon Hospital open.

She sighed, moving into her dingy office. The walls were painted purple, her only guilty pleasure in a world filled with shortages. Filling out medical reports had never been Dr. Mortimer's favorite activities, and now she wondered if she should not simply scrap the endeavor.

But no. If she neglected this duty, who knew what other order her life would lose? Order was already precarious enough.

The new patient was a puzzle, Melanie Mortimer thought to herself, making notes on her medical pad. Uncooperative, uncommunicative, unresponsive. Possibly autistic. Or just stubborn, the doctor mused.

Life is empty for me.

She moved to the wall of rusty filing cabinets to file the report, moving to “U” for “Unknown.” The boy had given no name.

Something about him unsettled the doctor.

Nothing makes sense.

Her work done for the day, the patients in bed and the entrance to each ward locked, Dr. Mortimer prepared to leave, gathering her old coat and hat, moving down the emergency exit stairs to the fire escape outside the building, to prevent having to lock more than one door on her way out. All the rest of the staff had already left for the day, and though Melanie Mortimer usually slept at the hospital, today she needed to get out a little, to see how the world was faring.

In the distance she could see smoke curling from a rooftop. It must be another bomb. She was careful never to speak out against anything, nowadays, herself. The hospital couldn't afford a bombing.

The world has gone mad.