This started out as one idea, about all the people who don't want to go to work in the morning getting their wish, and being stuck forever in a frozen commuter hell. But it changed on me. Sometimes things work better when they do that.
Headlines (940 words)
Mid afternoon. Gunshots, screams; an explosion, not nearly distant enough.
I’m pissed. Dulls the edges. Reduces the concentration. Not that it helps – maybe if the whole world got pissed, stayed that way for a week...
When did it start? No-one knows, any more than you can pinpoint the first ever case of anorexia or AIDS. Perhaps there was a time when we could have stopped it; but by the time we realizedit was happening at all, it was far too late.
See, when we began to be human, we were scattered tribes, all with different ideas about the way the world worked. A storm darkened the sky and thunder rolled; was it the roar of a jaguar, the beating of giant wings, the breaking of the jug that holds the rain? They believed, but they believed different things.
But we bred (boy, did we breed) and made cities, and began to live in big, big groups. Still there’s a wide range of ideas. So even if you've got, say, a million people all going, "the world is flat...." it won’t be. Something, some essential force, keeps it round.
The rise of literacy. All very civilised, I'm sure…but it was another step. Eventually, there’s the rise of electronic media, and we were half-way to fucked. English became a universal language. Even the French gave in – how I wish those arrogant bastards had held out. It might just have saved us. But now, you don't even need the pathetic level of literacy required to send a text message. If you can say it, pretty much everyone can understand it. Charities getting cheap computers to the third world. Universal communication, baby. Deadly.
There are lots of theories; I’ve heard them even though I don’t watch television or go on the net any more. Or talk to anyone. But you can’t avoid the information. That’s what did for us. Some think it was the population hitting some kind of critical mass; some claim it’s the Apocalypse – or they did. Last thing I saw on the news was that newsreader. He looked like guilt had him by the guts and was strangling his sleep with them. The arsehole on the discussion panel starts raving about how it’s the end times, and just what we deserve – and the newsreader up and shoots him, right there.
The two politicians and the sociologist on the panel just blinked the blood out of their eyes, and then they applauded. Not that it helped, but hell, all of us felt a little better for maybe five minutes. Because things were bad enough without the Four Horsemen joining the frigging party. The newsreader shot himself, too.
Plenty of people blamed them; the media, I mean. The journalists, the gatherers, and those who just passed it on. But I blame us too, because we bought it. We guzzled up those screaming headlines and the shocked reverent tones of the pundits. I read somewhere that we're hardwired to respond to threat, it's in the old lizard hindbrain; if we see something that yells danger we have to pay attention. But did we have to believe it? Did we really have to buy it all?
I think the thing that finally did it was the switch to World Time. It was supposed to save us from sliding further into recession – don’t ask me, I don’t believe economists really knew how the economy worked even before everything went to hell. But that was the Big Idea, that was going to save the world. World Time. All the markets operating at the same time, not a minute of financial grubbery wasted. Which meant, for the first time ever, pretty much everyone was awake at the same time. Thinking at the same time. Hearing stuff at the same time.
Believing all the shit we got fed.
We hit critical mass about a year ago. Consensus reality, they call it. Civilisation’s hanging on, somehow – though some parts of the world are worse than others. There’s a great smoking hole where Utah used to be.
Everywhere single mothers lie in the streets, babies crawling from them – two or three in an hour, sometimes. The babies grow up right before your eyes into feral, hooded teenagers. Still dripping with birth-blood, they develop clothes and knives, band into packs, and start attacking passers-by. And then there’s the terrorists. You can’t go out in the street without some screaming bearded guy with a rucksack appearing from nowhere, shrieking about Jihad and then exploding. They all look identical, of course. Paedophiles – always solitary, slightly grubby men in ancient brown coats, with shifty eyes and dirty fingernails – whisper in alleyways, offering sweets and puppy dogs. I mean, there’s like ten of them in my street.
There’s only one thing that offers me hope, if that’s the word. Before the shit hit the fan, there were rumours of a pandemic. A virus that would wipe out a huge section of the population. The rumours kind of got swamped in all the other stuff.
But if enough people believe it…well, you see where I’m going with this. If we can only make it true for long enough, there won’t be enough of us left for the consensus to work any more. This fucked-up reality we’ve built will fall apart.
It does mean millions will die. Possibly including me. Cynicism’s no defence, as I’ve discovered. But it might just be the saving of us.
All the information networks, somehow, they’re still there – maybe because we believe in them so much. So terribly much.
I’m going on the net now. I’m going to start a rumour.
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