The Big Ask

Pandemia, the bord game: get the disease and win!

 I’ll be honest with you, said the subterranean traveller when we met on a municipal park bench, one of the few places left where we could still see each other, his slender torso turned into the path of conversation as if he were breathing his truth. I am wanting people to die. I know, it’s not cool to desire such things, but I feel I’ve done my bit to save humanity and now that nobody wants to listen I should at least be left in peace. So I need people to die to create a different dempanic among the public. I need them to realise they’re all going to pass away soon and some faster than others but only few really slow. Quite a collective adventure coming up. I want them to freak out and go angry and overthrow their corrupt governments, finally. The traveller smiled. And us, clever dickies, get to profit from that. Can you feel me?

I let nature have a break fill, listening to pigeons and parrots fighting over breadcrumbs fed to them by an elderly unmasked gentleman. Yes, I can feel you, I said. It’s not the greatest of feelings, though.

It isn’t. But I do need to think I made the right choice.

Again I needed time to persuade myself to respond in the affirmative. I guess you are entitled to your own survival.

Well, yes, one would say so, but it doesn’t seem quite as straight forward in the real world.

 

The subterranean traveller let go of a deep sigh as if returning to his essence, the rant a tad out of character. I know I shouldn’t be thinking like this, he confessed again. But it’s hard, you know, I don’t want to die. Not yet. Life is good in the moments I can still feel human, when I am together with my neighbours or friends and feel love streaming through my body. I perhaps enjoy these episodes more now they are becoming farther in between and the in-betweens more tedious by the week. I cling to life, sabes? I may have appeared aloof to you at times, and over-engaged at others, but I guess that’s because life itself was never in question. It was there for me to experience it, with a sufficient level of freedom to create one’s own reality. Be who you want to be, that kind of thing.

 

In silence I asked him to let the camera of our attention have another pan over the parkland surroundings, breathing in the rich, post rain air, let the birds once more sooth our ears, and he acquiesced. Then he was all over me again: now that the right to life has become debatable (as in believing there should be no such thing) and your life itself being something the powerful get to play with, I realise how little I have prepared myself for my earthly goodbyes. I have reached an age where terminal disease may strike quite suddenly, if one is to follow earlier examples, with life becoming a bit of a lottery, and I have entertained fledgling thoughts on the probability of afterlife, as any serious person should, yet taken all together I still believe in plucking the day. So how am I going to continue this avaricious lifestyle of mine if I need to show death jab compliance to simply have a beer in my local hang-out?

 

You use big words, amigo, I managed to interrupt the traveller. I just want the freedom to decide what I put into my body and what not, he countered from the baseline. I don’t feel I should have any remorse towards other people’s suffering, as the death numbers are still low. I am healthy, on average. I take care not to endanger anyone. I feel I have every right to save myself and keep humanity going for a while longer. After quite a long silence that I felt I had compelled him to, I said somewhat disinterested: I second those words. The subterranean immediately volunteered to fill the void my voice was leaving. I fear strongly I will not be allowed to exercise my right, he put in gravely. I fear I will be forced towards the fringes of a society that is evermore acceptant of being run by the interests of a ruling class who are not at all interested in the fate of those they do not deem to belong to their circle. What’s going to happen to me and all those who equally want nothing to do with this obvious and utter madness that is keeping western countries in an iron hold? Will we be murdered in the end? I think this question should be asked and I for one am not too optimistic about the winds we’re sailing.

 

Winds? I served fruitlessly. Yes, winds, my friend, or should I just call you my editor? the traveller came on pretty strong. Anyway, I’m looking for a change of hearts. I need people, the people, every single individual or at least a sizeable number of them, to wake up from their hypnotic state and start creating change. No more fear, no more bullshit swallowing, no more betraying one’s fellow man. We know this, don’t we? This has been played out before. Who says it can’t be done again? Yes, they were different times and circumstances, but the helplessness of the public in the face of radical and violent change is quite similar. Compliance is what this is called. They go along to get along, all of them, some at least convinced there must be a truth hidden in the obvious lie – one I haven’t found yet – but the majority don’t even give a flying fig’s. It is like it is, so why care? The public have never won. The public have never been attacked on quite a similar scale, is what I say. This is not just one people getting murdered. Well, you could say it’s only the white countries that are being done, but their populations are not all so white anymore and anyway, it’s a hell of a lot of people threatened with extinction at the same time. I’d say they may have underestimated the chance people will unite across borders and quickly create a worldwide movement. Remember, most countries around the globe are sufficiently represented in the West to get something going back home.

 

He definitely had a point there and I almost rejoiced. So, I need a reaction, the subterranean continued, I need an atom bomb. I need people to wake up and resist. Stop compliance. They’re murdering you, slowly. But you’re not listening, so I need a lot of you to die first. Or horribly injured. Only when enough people are dying will the rest of you get angry. Only then will you understand you are being lied to, and not for the first time. Only then will you see it took just a handful of players to bamboozle a professional class only too willing to be important in the cause. Only then will you realize you’re walking around with a ticking timebomb in your body and that it might be a good idea to restore public healthcare to answer your collective needs. And away with those priests of doom, everywhere, the politicians, the medical authorities, all those bureaucrats who find rules more important than people. This is what I need you to do ‘cause if you don’t, I will be devoured by the mad system you silently support. That’s why I need you to open your eyes. What do you say?

 

It’s a big ask, man.