The Great Silencing - Our Dystopian Future

I bet you'd give anything to go back to The Matrix now.

**EDIT**

I originally wrote this as a dystopian doomsday challenge for a platform called vocal, and the story needed to involve a gold locket. That's why you'll randomly have that in there. But the truth is, this is not fiction to me. What I wrote is one of the possibilities of what I believe our future will look like, should we continue down the road we are on: the road of Big Tech censorship, the road of global and medical tyranny, the absolute shit show going on in Australia right now that will likely hit our shores within 18 months from me writing this, and the deterioration of our society as we divide ourselves into pathetic little tribes controlled by the mockingbird media.

For now, enjoy the "story". Let me know what you think.

THE GREAT SILENCING

I always knew I was born for this, but I never knew the price I’d pay. Before the Great Silencing, when things were “normal”, I despised it all. Society, the rat race, narcissism and social media, it all led to this. No one was paying attention…except for people like me; those constantly plagued with nagging intuitive feelings and dreams of total societal collapse, which clearly manifested, in spite of everyone rolling their eyes at what they thought were conspiracy theories at the time.

I don’t feel much for the billions of lives lost. My rage turned cold and now the only time I feel alive is in chaos; going toe to toe with the Grim Reaper himself. That's why I knew I was meant to live in these times, but I could've never imagined what living in this wasteland would take from me.

I tried to protect them. I had enough water, guns and ammo for all 10 of us, eight of which were children. That was my first mistake. I should have had more than one grown man on board. I wonder if things would be different had we picked up those stragglers on the road and let them stay with us. Would they have fought alongside us during the ambush, or would they have brought that fate upon us even faster?

They came at dawn, as we were loading the truck. The government had already wiped out the militias, and those of us inside the walls had been without food for days. We figured we could make it out into the wasteland before they sealed the border. The sirens had been going off all night from people escaping. Unfortunately, our idea was not unique, but having a working vehicle was.

I only remember hearing the first shot.

The rest blended together. Noise until I heard nothing. I remember the smell of sulfur and iron. I remember the truck backing up without us inside. I had just given the people who were now speeding away in our truck three cans of food the night before. When they left, I saw what remained.

Everyone was dead.

Streams of blood formed a river, staining the gravel with the evidence of stolen souls. As for me, I’d been shot twice in the back, but unfortunately nothing lethal. If I could have one wish, it would be to die with them. But I live. And I live for one thing. Revenge.

Aside from guns and water, I carry the numbers of that trucks license plate in my mind as if it were the only thing in existence, and most importantly, that once golden, now blood stained heart shaped locket around my neck.

My students got it for me on the last day of school. A class picture given to me in the morning, only hours later to have no graduation, but a complete shutoff of all power grids in the United States. Then came the unmarked vehicles. Then the riots. Then the bombs. Then, silence.

Every voice that worked to warn or protest conditions leading up to this were first to be killed, along with anyone affiliated with them. Well, they missed me somehow, but they’ll find me eventually. I’m on borrowed time. But I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I had to take my students and run into the dark, take them as far away from the the fire as I could. I was able to return most of the children to their homes, we snuck in at night and luckily their parents were there. The eight I had with me though, their parents were gone. Either gunned down by those in the tanks and black vans, or taken to the internment camps outside the wall. So, the plan was to find the camps, find their families and somehow get them out, and find some food while we were at it, since they stopped dropping the MRE’s days ago.

But the mission failed before it had a chance. There are no children to bring to a mother or father anymore.

I suppose it is mercy that they no longer have to live in this world. They exist now only in the locket, stained by the blood that bonds me to the vow I made to avenge each one of them; every lost soul on that sinister sunrise.

I live only to find the ones responsible for stealing the lives of the innocent. Once I get what I am searching for, my work on this earth is close to done. Close. After that, I will find the ones working to free those in the internment camps and join them. But that is not all. Justice must be dealt to every single person who allowed and even applauded the Great Silencing to come forth. The censorship, the killings, the disappearances of dissenting voices, the brainwashed ‘lord of the flies’ mentality that took over our society, creating utter chaos and violence, the people who created and fanned those flames, they gave the government the perfect opportunity to do this. They are an extension of the machine, and did its evil biddings willingly. It was a mark of virtue. Looking back, its almost like the government had it planned the whole time, and us lunatics, us dumb narcissistic petty folk, squabbling over our differences and stepping on necks to get a bigger piece of the pie, were just pawns that performed to such perfection that I almost respect the puppeteers. It was flawless. It got to the point where the social conditioning worked so perfectly, that you could not speak any words outside of The Narrative without your own family coming after you and wanting you dead. They’d even turn you in. The walls of every building and street corner had ears and eyes, always on those keywords, always on you.

Thats why I don’t care that they’re dead. They weren’t doing anything but creating chaos and hiding in plastic utopian bubbles, thinking they were making a difference in the worlds problems by putting a sign up in a yard of a house in a gated community. I suppose that sounds a bit hypocritical saying all they did was create chaos, given my premeditated homicide confessions, but whatever.

I don’t believe in a God or karma anymore. If they existed, this world wouldn’t. So I will embody karma and I will deal what must be dealt to balance the scales. Maybe the freed people from the camps can build a better world. After all, they were the only ones trying in the first place. Thats how they got in there.

Before the Great Silencing, you could only repeat what your TV told you to think. Now, the only noises I really hear are gunshots and the sirens from inside the walls. Eventually that turns to white noise and I go back to hearing and feeling nothing. Ideal conditions for executing my mission.

This is why I wanted to live in apocalyptic times. There is something so simple and pure about “kill or be killed”. No bills, no routine, no clocking in our out of a soul sucking job, no debt, just survival. Water, food, guns, ammo. It’s very simple. If you can dim the light on your conscience and understand that our old sinful concept of murder is really just subjective, all you have to do is be willing to eradicate anything standing in your way. That’s it. It feels like this is how we were always meant to live, before we constructed those man made concrete matrixes we once called cities.

I always knew I was born for these times, I just never knew the price I’d pay to live it: the lives I was supposed to protect falling through my hands like sand. So I clutch my bloodstained heart shaped locket, always hiding it when it rains, because the blood makes me feel like they’re still here. It’s the only physical evidence of their existence. So I clutch my locket tight, keep extended clips, and am forever on the hunt in this wasteland. And once I find the ones who killed my people, once I help free the ones in the camps, I will return to the walls. I will return to the heart of the Great Silencing, and I will shatter their eardrums. I will burn that place to the ground, along with everyone who sold their soul and their minds to live in a state of false security, at the expense of the ending of humanity as we have ever known it.

The freed people from the camps know how to build a better world. After all, thats why they got in there.