The Jab - Chapter 3

"You'll never guess what I just learned," I said to Sarah.

"Baby, I keep telling you, I don't want to hear about it. We have enough going on in our lives right now to worry about all these other things. I keep telling you, we need to figure out how we're ever going to afford to get out of this place."

She was right, you know. We were living in an apartment that we could barely afford in the middle of a less-than-desirable neighborhood. We were both working two jobs, and we were still fighting to make ends meet.

How'd we get into this mess? We moved into this apartment a year before the neighborhood went south, and foolishly renewed the lease even though we saw things were in steady decline.

The neighborhood was nestled in what we had considered the "golden zone." We loved going out to eat, and there was a restaurant district in walking distance. Best of all, our jobs were within walking distance. Every place that we wanted to get to on a regular basis was either in walking distance or less than a 15 minute drive. Sadly, golden wasn't just a description of the perks, but also the price.

It was amazing how fast the neighborhood had disintegrated, but it was far from surprising. When the spread of the virus was at its peak, every single business in the district shut down. That was ten months ago. Do you know how long it takes for people to leave an area that has no open businesses? Neither did I, but it takes less than ten months.

You might be looking at those numbers and wonder, "Did the businesses shut down before or after they renewed their lease?" Well, that's the twist of the knife. We renewed a month after all the businesses had shut down thinking that it was temporary. That means that it happened before the demand had fallen enough to lower the prices. Foresight, I do not know thee.

Another issue that you might bring up is: why would you sign a lease where you both have to work two jobs to keep it. Aha, you make a good point, fine sir! But, I didn't tell you this little secret: we owned one of those small businesses that was shut down. When our business was open, we could afford to live luxuriously, so we did. When the business closed, we didn't have enough emergency funds saved up. We used them all trying to keep the business afloat thinking that it would open "any day now."

If you've ever used that phrase, you know that "any day now" never comes. So, we got jobs to stay afloat while keeping the business alive. By the time we realized that the business wasn't coming back, we also realized those "temporary" jobs weren't going to sustain us, so we took on jobs that we could fit around our already tight schedule.

But, if you still remember what I was talking about before my tangent, I had just found something that would be life changing. I had discovered a treasure trove of curated news on the dark web. Yes, that's where I ended up.

Now, you might ask, why would news be on the dark web? That's because independent news was, for all intents and purposes, forbidden. In our current society, news organizations must obtain licenses prior to distributing any information in any mass-consumable format. They worded these laws and regulations in a way that didn't limit people from gossiping privately, but if you were to even start a chain email, you could be in hot water.

Though, as amazing as this was to find unfiltered news, that didn't mean that I had found a clear and concise source of information. Many of the authors of these articles were self declared geniuses. If you have ever read anything written by someone who wants to appear more intelligent than they are (I can feel your accusatory stare), you know that their ramblings are utterly incoherent. The usage of words betrays the fact that the thesaurus is the most used book that they own. A word to the wise: make sure you read the examples before using the new word that you just learned.

Regardless of how convoluted these articles may have been, they were treasure none the less. I knew Sarah wasn't going to share my enthusiasm about this find, but she had never stopped me from any pursuit, and this one would be no different.

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