Imagine waking up to a world where the simple act of inhaling deeply is limited to the privileges of the past. The once teeming cities, a hub for bustling life, have mutated into a scene straight from the pages of your darkest science fiction — choking on the meager remnants of oxygen as a result of relentless environmental degradation.
In this ghastly vision, Oxygen-Starved Cities dot the landscape. Planted firmly within our urban centers, the weight of the dystopian sky presses down on the weary populace below. Buildings stand as rusted gravestones, stark against the sun that no longer warms but sears, and the air is a toxic quilt woven with fumes and fine particles. Here, the act of breathing has become a calculated risk, a gamble where every lungful carried the potential for harm.
‘To breathe is to live, and to live is to suffer,’ whispers an old man from the streets of New Delhi, once vibrant, now a sepulcher of smog. Schoolyards lay barren, the laughter of children replaced with the hiss of oxygen tanks and the muffled sobs of those struggling to draw breath. Blue skies are a fable told by the elders, while children paint the firmament in hues of brown and gray.
The Oxygen-Starved Cities are no illusion; they are the tangible proof of humanity’s folly. Economies crumble as the workforce becomes lethargic and the streets less navigable. Weak from hypoxia, people are reduced to mere shadows, haunting the dilapidated public squares. Food production wanes as plants, too, succumb to the lack of air, curling upon themselves in a silent testament to extinction.
Doctors and researchers provide bleak forecasts — as the air quality plummets, a spike in respiratory illnesses has been noted. Each breath draws the curtain closer on our existence, as we’re mired in a fight against an insidious foe that creeps into our very homes – our own contaminated atmosphere.
‘Breathe Easy’ clinics have sprung up, a perverse joke on neon signs, offering temporary respite in exchange for currency that holds no value against a backdrop of despair. They nestle alongside markets peddling masks of dubious efficacy, promising the dream of clean air that we, in our hubris, have squandered.
Yet, in these suffocating times, a perverse form of innovation emerges. Urban dwellers have begun erecting homemade air purifiers – a chimera of fans, filters, and desperation. They cling to these contraptions like life rafts, a band-aid on the gaping wound we’ve inflicted on our environment.
Our cities, our civilization, finds itself at the nexus of a self-wrought calamity — life in Oxygen-Starved Cities is a cruel mimicry of existence. We pass down the cobbled streets, avoid the gaze of the nebulous sun, and pray that our next breath will not be our last. As the dusk settles upon this stark reality, one cannot help but ponder — can there exist a dawn where we may breathe freely once more? Or is the air too poisoned by our own making, our legacy written in soot and gasp?