A Year of Stories (Collection Two)

Waking Up on the Wrong Side of History

This is a thought experiment, your responses are being monitored.

That shouldn't worry you by the way, your responses are always being monitored, the only difference is that we have chosen today to tell you about it.

We were feeling a bit frisky, and things get boring around here.

We have also chosen today to increase your dose of Correctall. We've found that it opens people up to the message, makes them a bit more honest. We suggest leaning into it, it will make things much easier.

By the way, your restraints are on a timer, they'll open after we're done here. If you choose to struggle anyway, they're set to give you a mild, electrical inducement.

Don't ... struggle.

With that out of the way, down to the experiment.

Imagine you have the power to give over the keys to the world, and one day you woke up and found yourself on the wrong side of history.

Everything you have spent your life believing is suddenly wrong. No, not wrong, evil. You are evil and the values you have built your whole life upon are demonized.

You know the car you drive? Evil.

That colorful language you use? Evil.

That thing you said about that one guy from that place with all the wars? Evil.

Anyway, in this world, when you try to stand up for those beliefs, those values, those principals you thought would never change – you're pilloried.

Full on rotten fruit on stage pilloried.

Laughed off of the Internet and out of polite society, pilloried.

Decades of your strongest held convinctions are seen as a punch line and you, my newly ostracized friend, are suddenly the vector for all of the social ills of the world.

Just to bring this stew up to a boil, let's change a few things about your background.

Do you know that fancy College you went to? Didn't happen, you barely graduated from High School, and have the salary to match.

You've spent the last few decades working your knuckles to the bone – dead end job after dead end job, for bad pay and in bad conditions. Whenever you complain, someone points out that you and your tribe rule the world.

You don't rule the world, we rule the world, but that's beside the point.

Even though you struggled and clawed your way through this system just like everyone else, you're supposed to feel bad about your convictions, your beliefs, yourself.

All in all, it's a bad situation.

Now, for the turn.

What if we sent someone into this mess on a diamond-plated stallion who would tell you that you are good, that you are right, and that everyone who disagrees with you is the monster.

He would have plans, big plans, big scary plans to your enemies, but to you they would sound pretty OK.

He would be brash and bold, just like you used to be. He would say things you've always wanted to say, things you haven't been able to say since you woke up on the wrong side of history.

But he can say them, he would be the voice that you thought you lost.

You don't know if he really believes any of it, if anything he says is true, but it would be your truth, and for the first time in decades, you would feel good again.

You would feel like how you felt before – before the crappy jobs, before you became a demon – before history brushed you aside.

His biggest promise, the one he would scream the loudest, would be his claim that he can turn back the clock. That he can make everything right again. That he can give history back to you!

You who feel yourself and everything you once knew slipping away, would have one final chance to make it right.

All you need to do is give him the keys.

If you were this person, and we sent this man, would you do it?

You have ten minutes to decide.