The Jab - Chapter 4

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
 - Simon and Garfunkel "Sound of Silence"

I was overwhelmed by the common thread within those articles that I had found: We had been slowly slipping into a world where we could only hear and speak that which the elites wanted to say and hear.

This may seem obvious from what I had said before about the regulations against independent journalism, but to the frog, he doesn't realize that the water had reached a boil until it is too late. And, as I had just realized, we were all the frogs.

It had turned out that, in all likelihood, there really was no vaccine.

You see, we had received an invitation in the mail to receive the vaccine. Seemed ordinary enough since the news had been saying that vaccination was going to be determined via lottery. However, in the dark web articles (DWAs as I will refer to them from here on), they pointed out that it wasn't by lottery at all.

The government knew everything about us through the information farmed by the giant corporations. These corporations were not entirely separate from the government; they were in partnership. It was a workaround so as the government did not have to violate its own constitutional restrictions. If the corporation gathers metadata on you, that is perfectly well within the law, especially since they inform users that they are doing so (by way of an End User License Agreement that no one reads). The government simply buys the information from the corporation. Nothing illegal there. Now they don't have to do the legwork themselves to find out every intricate detail of every citizen's life.

Well, unfortunately for us, we fit into the criteria that the government was looking for. What were they looking for? People who were living beyond their means, and had no way of financial escape. Mind you, the government forcibly shutting down our business was the reason for our predicament, but why would that matter to them?

Most of the people that had owned the businesses in our neighborhood fell into this category. Joe and Sally on the fourth floor had been hit harder than us, but I hadn't spoken to them in nearly five months. I vaguely remember that they had received the invitation to get the vaccine a couple months ago. It was time for me to find out if they still lived in our building, and if not, where they were now.

The information that the DWAs provided let me know who was being selected, but it didn't say for what. We had always been taught that the government was acting in the interests of the people. Protecting us and lending a helping hand in any way that it could. As such, my hopes was that this was a targeted debt relief system developed by the government, but why were the military in the Hospital if that was the case?

I knocked on Joe's door. It was 6am, so he'd probably be getting ready before heading off to his job. The door opened.

"What do you want?" It was a gruff looking man in a white wife beater. I typically don't use that term for the shirt, but somehow that seemed like the better term to use in this instance.

"Oh, I was looking for Joe," I replied quickly and a bit confused

"There's no Joe here," the man said while slamming the door in my face.

Well, that was a dead end, so I turned to social media, but his and Sally's profiles had both been at least deactivated, if not outright deleted. We had lots of mutual friends, so I started sending out feelers to see if anyone knew where they had gone to.

"I hadn't heard from them in a while. I hadn't noticed when they deactivated. Their statuses had stopped showing up on my feed several months ago. Why are you asking?" replied Jane to my message.

"Just curious. They were the first friends who had gotten the vaccine invitation that I knew of. When we went to our timeslot things seemed weird."

"Huh, well, I wouldn't think much of it. I mean, they've been telling us that this is the way we can move forward and open our businesses again."

"Yea, but I've seen some articles on the dark web that hinted that they're targeting people with financial problems. I mean, Joe and I both were hit hard by the shutdown, and frankly, he spiraled out faster than I did. So, if they were selecting people like us, it makes sense why he got his invitation first."

"Oh my GOD. Do not start talking about this conspiracy theory nonsense. I've read about those articles in the newspaper. They brainwash people into believing crazy shit like 'dogs can talk' and so forth."

I could tell that she was more than skeptical, to put it lightly, so I sent her some article links.

"I'm not going to those webpages."

So I sent her some quotes and videos showing what they were saying was correct.

"You're a FUCKING IMBICILE! GET OUT YOU PARANOID FUCK," she replied and instantly posted that I was a conspiracy theorist. Wonderful.

The chatter on her post was horrendous. It became a crucifixion of my character. My knee jerk reaction was to reply, but I decided not to bother. She and I only had a handful of mutual friends, so I didn't think this would hurt my reputation too badly.

This repeated with two more acquaintances that I knew. I no longer am willing to refer to them as friends due to the fact that they had reacted so harshly. I guess no one wanted to hear something that would pop their little bubble, but I decided to make a few posts anyways. They were not taken well, but at least I wasn't getting unfriended and blocked. Then, after a few more posts, no one commented on them anymore. I don't think they were even seen.

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