FICTION
The Last Human in the Milky Way —6
Excerpt from Chapter 6 The conspiracy theorist
6
A few days passed. The internet was still down, and he walked around the rooms in the house, feeling slightly desperate. The situation was disturbing, not good to live with. And yet, he knew, it was exactly what he had to do. He had to live with the new situation, without having the opportunity to read news reports or watch news videos, and without getting to know what had actually happened out in the world.
Still, he was a little relieved now. For several days he had been thinking about these changes, these almost invisible changes that happened in the Milky Way.
He was relieved because he was sure. Something unexpected had happened in the Milky Way. Fundamental changes had taken place here, there was no doubt about that. And those changes, they happened because of something that happened out in the world. After what he had found out in the last few days, he was now sure that it was something very big, and also very serious, not only for himself and the people in the Milky Way, but also for people all over the world.
The fact that he had come to this conclusion, this certainty, somehow eased the pressure inside him.
To know more or less certainly what the situation is, is always better than walking around and being unsure. Not knowing, being uncertain is the same as having to walk on tiptoe, waiting for something unknown to reveal itself. It is the same as being held down, in ignorance. Then it is better to know something and feel a little more certain about the situation, about what the condition is like.
He thought about what he had heard about climate change on a television show one evening. It was almost two years ago now, but he could still clearly see the face of the man being interviewed, a well-known conspiracy theorist who for years had built an online money machine by constructing and spreading conspiratorial theories to a growing audience about the secret, hidden game played by those in power, governments and politicians.
The followers of this man never seemed to get enough of the terrifying, “ultra-secret” and sometimes macabre stories that he told on his online “news” platform about social leaders, politicians and their allies keeping small children captive in the basement under a pizzeria at a specific address in a named city.
According to the most extreme details of this conspiracy theory, the prison guards killed children they captured and ate them.
Journalists who investigated the case soon discovered that there were no basements under the named pizzeria. The well-known conspiracy theorist gradually changed the address of the pizzeria premises, but the story had long since fulfilled its intended function and disappeared more and less from the news headlines.
The man who was invited to the studio had a slightly overweight, stocky body. When he spoke and wanted to emphasize a point, his voice was powerful and confident. Occasionally, when the presenter tried to stop him and get a question in, he would talk in and out, and there was a couple of times a cacophony of the voices of the two men fighting to have the floor.
When he got excited or wanted to emphasize a point, he raised his voice and almost shouted with a jarring emphasis. When he became eager, he spoke more quickly, but included occasional pauses where he let the words hang in the air between those in the TV studio.
“Climate change,” he said, “this so-called climate crisis, all this talk, it’s just a fabrication, a false flag operation carried out by the government.
Collusive politicians, governments and social leaders all over the world — they have invented this to deceive us. They manipulate us, quite simply! 9/11 — what was that? I’ve said it before!”
He spoke with large hand gestures, to emphasize his words. He raised his voice, slammed his hand on the table confidently and convincingly, to make it very clear that what he was saying was the truth.
“Yeah,” he said, slapping his hand on the table confidently, “that, it was a staged attack, a giant cover operation set up by this global, covert, conspiratorial alliance of top brass, governments and politicians, with the help of a bunch of actors and directors. — And climate crisis, you say? — Ha-ha! Haven’t there always been storms and floods, maybe! Haven’t there always been forest fires! Yes, it has!”
The other man who was invited to the studio, an expert in social economics, was a slightly older man who mostly stood quietly and listened to the counter-debater. He showed little facial expression, but experienced human connoisseurs among the TV viewers could probably detect certain emotions on his face as he listened to the explanations of the counter-debater.
While the first one spoke, he raised his hand a couple of times and signalled that he wanted to answer, and when the first one, after a long stream of coherent words, stopped to catch his breath, the talk show host signalled that the second one could speak.
“You don’t need to look around very much,” said the social economist, “to see how the state of the world is today.”
The man on the other side of the table shook his head and grimaced.
“The truth about our world, society today,” the economist continued, “the truth is that our politics are failing. And this is not something I just make up and think. It is an empirical fact.”
He stopped, looked into the camera and continued:
“From pandemics and climate change, heat waves, global warming and rising sea levels — right down to simple questions about managing the economy — it’s a big, global crisis!
This is really serious! Our politics are literally failing, both in relation to existential and everyday challenges.
Yes, you can only look more closely at the conditions here in our own country. And in almost all other so-called up-and-coming, democratic societies. It is a fact that today we have very few countries that we can point to and say that they are “well-functioning societies”.
If you try to make a list of names of such countries, the list will be very short. And you should be grateful if you are lucky enough to live in such a country. All over the world, on every continent, riverbeds are dry, crops are failing, fascism and extremism are on the rise, and governments seem to have little or no plans to meet the enormous challenges.”
(…)
The author is currently reviewing, rewriting, and editing the manuscript for the novel The Last Human in the Milky Way. Excerpts from selected chapters will be published as previews on Medium.
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