COMPENDIUM 2020 – STORY 22: THE CONSPIRACY THEORIST
The world is run by a cabal of lizard people. I read it online. Share this and spread the truth. The pandemic isn't real. Do your research. Big pharma created the pandemic to make us weak so we have to buy their drugs. The stats have all been faked. Here's the proof. Follow this link. The Sheeple will follow anything. The world governments are all in on it together. It's all faked. A Plandemic. Project Fear. Deep State. Ancient cults rule our world. Aliens are among us. Nothing is real. We're all doomed. Don't vaccinate. We must rise up and topple our oppressors. Don't believe scientists as they're in the pocket of big pharma. I have found the truth. Click here. Click here and be enlightened.
*
Cedric sat back in his sumptuous office chair and wove his fingers together as he watched today's feeds. The Right was raging. The Left was arguing back in disbelief. News outlets gave conflicting reports, with just enough nuance in them to suggest something far more sinister.
He brought a chat window up on his screen. “Overseers, we're operating at maximum. It's going to be a good day on the farm,” he said in his nasal whine. The Overseers replied with an acknowledgement sigil and closed the window.
Cedric checked his To-Do list while scratching the thin wisps of scraggy beard on his young chin. New content was due to go live within minutes that would set more wheels in motion. The global pandemic may have been engineered. Rogue doctors have found a structure in the virus that has been designed by man to focus on the weak and the old and the infirm. Another screen showed a video from Henrietta Ashworth, whose Conspiracy Theorist rhetoric was taken at face value by gullible millions. It would be shared and cause havoc. Her act was convincing. Along with the revelation that the world's governments were setting out to kill millions of people, evidence would be revealed linking world leaders to shady organisations intent on overthrowing the human race.
He reached to his keyboard to create further diversions and misinformation, sending new assignments to every crackpot on their books.
Gunfire stopped him. Alarms followed, their piercing rhythms echoing through the hall that surrounded his cubicle and the hundreds of others around it. He grabbed the gun from the emergency case at the side of his computer and checked it was loaded.
*
They were silent. Well trained. All eight were clad in black body armour, their faces hidden behind black skull masks. Their weapons blazed at the hundreds of Theorists that were emerging from their tiny workspaces. There had been more than eight at the start of the mission, but some had fallen during firefights on their way through the labyrinthine complex. The losses would be mourned, but right now each of those deaths was a marker along the way to the truth.
One of the intruders raised a mic to the grille of his mask. “Theorists,” he bellowed, his voice amplified and booming. It ricocheted throughout the grand work hall and all fell silent, wave upon wave of Theorists clambering to aim their guns at the party of interlopers.
“We are here to shut you down. You've done enough damage,” the man's voice boomed through the huge expanse of the underground complex.
“Dad?” came an unexpected answer.
Silence fell as Cedric pushed through the throng, aiming his gun at the leader of the masked intruders. “Dad, stand down. You can't stop this. It has to carry on.”
“Cedric?” came a softer tone from the skull mask.
Stupid move. With his guard down, he didn't notice the scrawny man and his squad of middle-aged snipers atop a steel gantry raise tranquiliser guns and fire.
*
“Wake up, Dad,” Cedric called out as he threw a glass of water at his father's unmasked face. His parent snapped awake with a yell, immediately realising he was tied to a chair. A quick look at his surroundings told him he was in a storage locker of some kind. Several sleek cameras peered at him from shadowy corners, like robotic eyes encased in coloured glass domes.
“I knew you'd got caught up in this, son. I can help you. I can get you out of here. We can get you help. Get all the conditioning out of your brain. Untie me and we'll get out of here.”
“I'm not untying you, Dad.”
“Where are the others?”
“They are being interrogated,” Cedric answered coldly. “I requested to question you.”
Dad took a moment to process this. “Son, come on, is the poison in your head really that strong? This is madness. What you're doing here... you're messing up the whole planet. The entire human race is believing nonsense this facility creates. You and the others here have got billions of people arguing over what's real and what isn't. You've got people believing lethal viruses were made to control the population. There are people out there that even believe that crap about the lizard people!”
“Deflection,” Cedric said. “Distraction from other matters. Control the loudest of the herd and the others will follow. We don't tell people the world is run by monsters. We place suggestions into the global social psyche and allow human nature to make those suggestions into a new truth.”
“Why?”
Cedric smiled and
leaned closer. “The Overseers made the decision.”
“Who the Hell are they, son? Are they really more important to you than your own father or the safety of vulnerable people out there?”
“Theorists place the truth in plain sight, albeit the truth as distorted through the lens of the weak-minded. In all of the crazy thoughts people have in this world, somewhere in there is the truth. You came here to break the facility of the Overseers and reveal them to the world. Let me tell you, Daddy, that doing so would cause a global catastrophe the likes of which you couldn't even imagine.”
“Damn you, Cedric! You've twisted the world out of shape! People all over the planet are going insane, thinking vaccines cause autism, that the Earth is flat, that the Illuminati are behind everything! What the Hell are you hiding?”
“Equilibrium,” he said with an unexpected smile. “The conspiracies and outlandish lies are so powerful that just by reading them, those gullible enough to believe them are subdued.”
“What about everyone else?”
“Everyone else carries out the work that pushed the world forwards and helps to progress us as a species. While the lunatics are arguing about lizards and making their stupid claims about flat planets, they are not contributing to society. The others are, and they build a stronger foundation for the future as a result. Think of it like Natural Selection but for brainpower. Intellectual Selection, if you will. Eugenics.”
“Keep the crazies busy and they'll wipe themselves out? What for?”
“The Overseers will decide what for.”
“Who are these people?”
Cedric smiled. “Nobody and everybody. Now, I have work to do, Dad. If you will excuse me, I'll leave you in the capable hands of my colleagues.”
Cedric walked to the door and stopped when he touched the handle as his father called his name.
“What'll happen to us, Cedric? To me? We came here to help people. We wanted to make people see that they're being lied to. That their conspiracy theories are literally the conspiracy itself.”
Cedric turned back to him, and the cold smile on his son's face was chilling.
“Click here to find out about ordinary men who vanish without a trace. What became of these normal fathers? People will be debating it over their breakfasts tomorrow. Thanks for visiting, Dad.”
He left the little room, and his place was taken by two Theorists in surgical garb, one carrying a cranial harness, the other carrying the steel bolt that would be hammered into the brain of their captive. They closed the door. Other similar doors were locked beside that one in order to silence those who wanted to raise their voices above the noise.
They would never know that the noise itself, be it truth or lies, was keeping them all alive.
Cedric returned to his cubicle. A sigil of approval flashed on his screen. He nodded to the camera that watched him and began to type.
====
About Compendium 2020:
Compendium 2020 is a project from author Andrew Hawnt that consists of 52 original short stories, flash fiction stories and vignettes given away for FREE in 2020. Featuring science fiction, fantasy, horror and more, this began as a personal quest and due to the weirdness of 2020 has become an ambition to provide free distractions for anyone who needs them.
About Andrew Hawnt:
Andrew is based in Nottingham, England. Known for his music journalism career, comics writing and film critique work, Andrew is a prolific writer and is the author of a growing stack of books, including the cult hit VHS Ate My Brain. He made the movies The Demon And I and The Demon And I: Birthrite completely in lockdown with cast members filming their scenes remotely, and new films are coming. Andrew is also the creator and presenter of the YouTube shows Planet Hex and Turn One Shock as well as the video versions of the Compendium stories.
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