| |
OF COURSE, IT DIDN't start with football games.
Or baseball games.
And definitely not the Beltway.
It had to do with solving terrorism and then spread virally from there.
The same people who brought you the Will-Be-Was drive were working to solve the problem of people being sucked into the weird idea that you could get to heaven by killing people. Terrorism had become the height of hypocrisy.
In the one of the many sub-basements of the Moral Alchemy Revival at Lower Alabama and Georgia Oceanfronts (MAR-A-LAGO), a group was formed called the Metaphysical Anti-Terror Directive (M.A.D. - they also produced a parody magazine and branched into writing advertising during the 60's - you may have heard of these...)
Anyway, these guys were tasked with finding peaceful ways to diffuse the crisis in the Middle East. Once they hit on a solution, they got some government grants with few strings other than getting results.
But then it got out of hand because it went viral. And the end result was messy.
They found that people who are hypocritical tend to implode their lives. Politicians, celebrities, and millionaire sports figures seem very prone to ultimately screwing their lives over. Because they lose their moral compass and life catches up with them. Certain newscasters you may know have also suffered this. Rather shocking at first.
But we are getting ahead of our story.
It all started out as research to help solve the terrorist problem.
It certainly wasn't the experimenter's fault that it went viral.
Anyway, the Will-Be-Was drive was again the solution. More of a universal solvent that had no real container except itself.
Slippery thing, truth. And that is what the drive was built on. Truth being whatever turned out to be the most workable.
The general idea of it held that there had to be Good before it could be turned into Bad. Good tends to be more workable, more constructive. Bad tends to be unworkable and destructive. Something had to be constructed before it could be converted into something destructive. Islam had been a great civilizing influence before it was radicalized into a great decivilizing influence.
Terrorism has been constant throughout the ages. The Southern General Lee surrendered the Confederacy just to avoid soldiers marauding up and down the coast, using the example of the Northern General Sherman, but on smaller scales. It had already happened in Kansas with the Jayhawkers to some degree. Evil can be made out of any good. War tends to destroy both sides that engage in it. (And why money flees the countries that get involved in it. Russia's conflicts have kept its people poor, but the poster child is North Korea...)
The Will-Be-Was actually patterned itself on finding the past and original good that existed and contrasted and compared with any destructive present. That created a flow of energy which then allowed all sorts of applications. Anti-gravitation was one, as well as simple things like endless electricity for a given project. One of the most useful was the apparency of invisibility. The drive worked in extreme cases best. Well-run day cares and nurseries were the poor sources of conflict. Bible schools made the drive almost quit.
The Middle East was an endless flow of power for the drive, as you had the ancient Mesopotamian garden sites (birthplace of humanity) being ravaged, as well as many religious sites being decimated. Just point to a certain positive time in history and then compare it with the present degraded scene. Instant unlimited energy.
I could tell you about the Will-Be-Was drive for days, but the point of this was to get to explaining how your football players and their broadcasters started disappearing, leaving a real stink in their wake.
But we were talking about terrorists.
OK, so one of these experimenters was testing out a stealth platform, which was running on pin-pointed energy flows. No one could really see this thing flying in the air, except for the cluster of little dust-devils under it. The technician was adjusting his dials and seeing what speed he could get out of it, Then some local walked right under it and disappeared. The guy just didn't walk out on the other side.
So they stopped the platform in mid-flight and just had it stand there. Nothing existed where the guy should be. Soon, someone noticed the guy was missing and came out that direction to find him. He also disappeared when he went though the field. All that was left was his Koran and a cartridge belt. These were at the bottom of a hole, about as deep as the guy was tall.
This was alarming to the technicians on board, obviously. They had never seen that happen before. Their platform had been flown over flocks of sheep and schools of fish with no problem. Even over the traffic in southern Texas when you could find some. Semi-trailer trucks carrying pot-loads of cattle had driven right under it. with no problems.
Why, then did these two people just disappear?
Since they were near a terrorist stronghold, it was an obvious testing ground. The government grant they had as contractors gave them a bit of legal immunity. Certainly, there was no compunction in a war zone about human experimentation.
The technicians adjusted their flight path and passed over the city, back and forth, on a grid. While there were some disappearances, not everyone was effected. After the platform arrived at the home base, some communications operators came up and asked them what had happened out there, to see if their radios had been knocked out or something.
About the same time they were flying over the terrorist camp, all sorts of chatter had started up. Apparently, they were missing their most seasoned fighters and top staff. There were reports of a windy day and the guy just disappearing, with a hole left where he was standing. New recruits were spooking as they had no leaders to tell them what to do. Many were deserting and the whole camp was being moved.
The technicians downloaded their research notes and recordings, putting them on the MAD network for analysis.
That's when they developed the first hypocrisy bomb. It was really just a Will-Be-Was battery, set between periods of known peace and prosperity and the present. Then added a small battery to hold the charge in a buffer until it could contact someone hypocritical. They packed some paper-mache around it and painted it orange. To see these come down was like seeing oranges drop mysteriously from mid-air. The platform carrying them was stealth, and the orange globes were dropped by emptying a crate of them over the side.
The communication experts found their new terrorist camp and gave the technicians the coordinates.
About half the oranges imploded in the camp. The rest stayed on the surface. Once some of them had been cut open, they were all shot up, figuring (correctly) that somehow they had caused their fellow terrorists to disappear.
Then the remaining terrorists again quickly picked up camp and fled.
On the way back to base, the technicians came up with the idea for hypocrisy IUD's. This time, they were small and brown and looked like camel dung. These were then gotten into mass-production and started being scattered along the main thoroughfares in towns where terrorists were suspected. Sure enough, there were various disappearances of people along with sudden appearances of potholes.
The funny thing was that there wasn't any noise, really. Just a sort of soft pop as the hypocrite disappeared. And it didn't get them all, just the worst two-faced and resolute propagandists out there. The people who were mostly, but not always, hypocritical just got very ill and tended to both throw up and empty their bowels at the same time. Very smelly scene.
Once some of these got delivered to a government building for inspection. The results were quite interesting. Because they were in an always-on state. The battery just held the charge that the circuitry was always generating. With a fully charged unit, the chronic hypocrite would disappear. With no battery, handling the device would make them immediately foul themselves.
Needless to say, there were quite a few soiled officials before they found out what was causing the disruption.
Of course, they were soon labeled dangerous ordinances, and had to be packed in enormous boxes to keep people (meaning: long-time and high-ranking officials) from getting close enough to be affected.
Unfortunately for them, we now get to the part of the viral effect.
When some contractors found out what was happening to their higher-ups, particularly those who had disapproved their financing, the circuitry found its way into various gifts, such as flashlights, electronic picture frames, and even electric staplers. Once these were turned on, they could make fatal disappearances, but just delivered in an unplugged state to offices would make several people nauseous as they handled them.
It wasn't long before the circuit was out on the Internet as a gag toy. Integrated circuits were printed about the size of a tiny battery, with self-adhesive. It didn't have to be hard-wired into the machine, but could be simply pasted inside the battery cover or any inconspicuous spot on or in it.
Toy bears with electronic pull-string circuits became poo-poo gifts. Several versions of "honesty" testers were developed, all powered by the people themselves and "no batteries required." Someone funded a program to get wooden pens gifted to every member of Congress and all their staffs. A month's supply of toilet paper ran out in a week. (The starting date for the circuit was when the Constitution was ratified.)
Soon people were finding new ways to create great gag gifts for relatives. Favorites were when they put it into sports team items.
And that is where the football and baseball players started disappearing.
Because they put them into LED buttons with patriotic displays, such as flags. With the battery in them, anyone who was putting on a lapel or hat button might just implode with a quiet poof.
TV shows who highlighted their pre-game protests found them filming holes in the sidelines or on the benches. And the lucky ones ran for the locker rooms. Often delayed the game. (How many millions in salary those players were getting didn't help them, except for stocking toilet paper.) Executive suites in the stadiums had more bathrooms installed, with a TV in them. Didn't help. Made it worse, actually. Some team owners found they had to sell to get a complete cure. Many ESPN shows did not go on-air as scheduled (or at least not shown unedited or live.)
And a religious TV interviewer found out that his button would affect his guests in different ways. He found that asking the person if they had ever taken money to throw a game, there wasn't any reaction. The circuitry wouldn't work on a bald-faced lie. But by asking pointed questions, such as "What they felt about people taking money to throw games?" That would get them leaving the interview quickly, and for obvious reasons. He later found out that he could root out sexual predators by asking how they thought people who sexually harassed others should be treated.
He found great popularity with his "Truth Detector" show. Wrote some great books on how it all worked, and how to expose hypocrisy in the workplace as well as government.
The circuit became known as the Do As I Say, Not As I Did bomb. Because it wouldn't go off on what they had done.
Eventually it calmed down. After a series of stories started telling how the circuit worked and explained the rise in stock of the adult diapers. (It was even rumored some of those manufacturers had installed the circuit into their product to increase sales.)
As for hypocritical politicians, they soon disappeared from public life (literally or figuratively).
This circuit never worked on purely bald-faced evil, unless they tried to be something they weren't. So criminals were still around, and the worst terrorists had to be dealt with by conventional means. However, their new leadership now had to be excruciatingly honest about their new recruits probably winding up in Islamic hell instead of getting all those virgins. And that wasn't a big recruiting tool.
All the Beltway lobbyist groups got very honest. Some, like HSUS, got out of lobbying altogether and started spending the bulk of their money on actually caring for animals for the first time. Planned Parenthood went through several sets of executives as well as policy changes. All national and state political parties of course had very difficult roads to travel. Clever reporters could expose any hypocrisy in full view of the camera. They would borrow EPA sensors to detect smells (pheromones) for that interview. Of course, their shows had cute titles: "Does Your Elected Official Stink?" and "How Long Can They Last: Interviewing Our 'Pampered' Officials".
Needless to say, special elections were required to fill vacant seats from sudden resignations. The Mark Twain quote, "Politicians and babies should be changed often. And for the same reason," took on new meaning.
And there was a big turnover among the un-elected Deep State employees. Staffers found they actually had to do their assigned job, or spend most of their day indisposed. Devoutly religious and strictly moral staff started replacing the die-hard hypocrites. Government workers started earning their pay, and there was more of it to go around.
Construction companies, the honest ones, got a boost. Major renovations needed in the Beltway area (something to do with massive sinkholes being found all across the D. C. area.) As well, New York soon became too expensive a city to broadcast from. Corporate media insurance rates skyrocketed from self-inflicted repairs to sets and bathrooms. CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, and news shows had to replace most of their talent. Finally, reporting on dog-shows and equestrian events became "safe" news to cover, along with local festivals and actual charitable events. G-rated movies became a gold mine for movie theaters.
Las Vegas boomed as soon as they started advertising truthfully. Seems some people liked Sin-City just the way it was. As long as they also stuck to the mantra of "what you do in Vegas stays in Vegas" when they went home.
As people began to "see the light", integrity classes became the rage. Of course, the payment had to be made in full. And porta-potties lined the halls of the exhibition centers where they were being held.
A new era of honesty and compassion had begun.
Sometimes the truth hurts, and sometimes the road to finding it stinks.