It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13.

Winston Smith emerged from his sub-suburban home, his face clean-shaven and streaked from droplets of anti-viral rinse. Both the shaving and the rinse were required by the state — the shaving to ensure the accuracy of the facial-recognition cameras in every building and street corner, the rinse a precaution required after the supervirus terror attack of 2013.

The attack had caused excruciating stomach pain in almost a quarter of the population of Virginia Highland, Ga., and nearly two-dozen deaths before it was contained. Though the attack was 21 years ago, Winston could still envision the images of children and old women moaning in agony in their quarantined hospital beds — all captured by the several CNN employees stricken by the virus.

President Ridge had given a courageous speech to Congress, vowing that evildoers would never again cause such hurt. “These perpetrators attacked the American way of life,” he had said. “Bioterrorism, like all terrorism, is an attempt to play God with people’s lives. But we will not pay homage to their god of pain; we will fight him, and we will triumph.”

Winston started his gas-powered car and exhaled loudly as his anti-depressants kicked in. The faces of agony melted away, as they always did. The surgeon general had recently published an in-depth study of afternoon visions and strongly recommended that all Americans increase their dosage of morning antidepressants.

Unlike his neighbors, Winston had yet to take the surgeon general’s advice. He knew he should, for his own well-being — he might turn to illegal drugs like marijuana or destructive behavior if he didn’t, just like the surgeon general warned.

Not that he could find marijuana if he wanted it, at least not very easily. America had declared victory in the drug war long ago, the new facial-recognition cameras and intelligence databases discovering erratic behavior and bringing the users to justice. Under a compromise plan, they were all sentenced to a little prison time and given anti-depressants.

These new anti-depressants proved so effective in treating these drug users’ addictions and psychological pain that they soon hit the general market under the name Tranquility. Parents hoping to keep their kids away from alcohol and narcotics bought them up like crazy. Winston was 23 when he first started Tranquility, after his fianceé left him.

Coming up to a stoplight, he tried to recall the pain of the incident. He couldn’t. An olive-skinned man strolled in front of his car in the crosswalk, his face resembling the faces of those villains he read about in history books who had engineered the supervirus.

He tried to be afraid but failed. No terrorist could enter the country with its vast web of cameras, and even if he did, the rinse would protect him. They said it would.

He turned right on Patriot Avenue and pulled into the lot for the cinemaplex. “Saving Private Ryan” was playing this afternoon on the classics screen. The crowd was always sparse.

Winston remembered someone telling him that the owner was middle-aged, in his 60s, and could actually tell the story of the terrorist attack in New York in 2001. The sub-suburbanites suspected him of never having taken Tranquility, and some swore they had even seen him cry at the end of one of the classics. Winston had not seen anyone cry in years.

It was after hearing these rumors that Winston began frequenting the afternoon classics, perversely hoping to catch a glimpse of tears welling in the old man’s eyes. Winston never saw him there — he probably watched the movies from the booth or had gotten tired of them or maybe didn’t exist at all — and, after a quick scan of the darkened theater, saw that today was no exception.

Winston sat in the back, like always, and soon looked upon some of the most grotesque footage he had ever seen at the theater. Loud sounds of bullets and cannons firing, bloodied bodies washing up on shore, screams of the wounded.

Good God, thought Winston, was this what war was really like? He tried to relate, to put himself in the position of Tom Hanks as he stepped over bodies to get to safety on the beach. All he felt was emptiness.

Halfway through the movie, Winston jumped from his trance. He sensed movement; someone sat three seats away from him — far too close for total comfort. He studied the new patron in the shadows, noticing deep lines upon his pale face. It was he; it was the owner. It had to be. Winston felt his restrained heart test its bounds more forcefully than any time in memory.

Winston kept glancing at him but could not discern the man’s emotions in the darkness. Tom Hanks died, the film ended and the other moviegoers filed out. Only Winston and the owner remained as the lights went on. Winston looked again and saw the owner’s eyes were wet.

“Powerful, isn’t it?” the man said to Winston, suddenly turning. “Is that why you don’t want to leave?”

“The cinematography was impressive,” Winston said. “But, well …”

“You want to know why I’m crying,” the old man said to the screen. “I know you do. None of the younger people can understand. Do you think you know?”

“Is it because it reminds you of your old life, how everyone had to live with pain and fear?” Winston guessed, wondering if the man was one of those few remaining Americans with psychological trauma from the past.

“You know, you have nothing to be afraid of anymore. That can’t happen today. We’re safe now; there are cameras everywhere, and computers check everyone’s files for dangerous material. These Nazis would’ve been stopped in their tracks.

“You know, Tranquility might help you …”

The old man looked disappointed, and Winston wondered if he’d said the wrong thing. “Yes, it’s quite a world you’ve all created for yourselves. Quite a triumph. A regular Garden of Eden.”

Winston recognized the old man’s reference to the president’s words. “You think the president wrong when he said this was the new Garden of Eden?”

“No, he was right,” the old man said, then his voice became a barely audible whisper. “But Adam and Eve fell for a reason. They fell for a reason …”

Winston felt an irrepressible pang of doubt and confusion. He reached into his pocket and looked at the small pill, pink and shiny. He thought, just for a second, then closed his eyes and swallowed another dose of Tranquility.

Matt Lynch ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in English and political science.