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THE ROCK, THE VULTURE, AND THE CHAIN by Gregory Owen
AWE CASE FILE #8986:
The following is a transcript of a comprehensive series of recordings made by an unnamed male, possibly late-30s to mid-40s, hence referred to as John Doe. Certain portions are transcribed here as accurately as possible, but may be limited due to damage to the recording itself. Included with the recordings was a damaged hard drive containing video files as well as written entries, printouts, and other documents that are described by John Doe at different points during the recordings, apparently gathered by one Ronald Atkins, an associate of Doe, and provided to him. It was attempted to preserve everything in hopes to understand what is henceforth referred to as the Apex World Event, or AWE.
::Recording begins::
… I don’t know if this will reach anyone… if I don’t make it… at least there’s some kind of a record… to show I know what… what happened—what’s happening. Ronnie trusted me… trusted me to do this. I don’t know if anyone’s left… I don’t think… I know I won’t make it. If anyone is out there and sees this, understands it, do what you will. I’m uncertain if I can call it a warning, because…
::Break in video::
Um, my name… Shit, does it matter? Don’t know if there’s anyone out there to see this as it stands. Um. I’m… I’m here with my girlfriend and her sister. We’ve been here for the last month… couple of months, maybe… secluded, hiding. Running out of supplies. Don’t know what’s going on… out there… I… Uh… I guess I’ll go ahead.
::Break in video::
Ronnie left this along with all of the other information that I’m sharing… so I guess I’ll start with it. Um… according to Isaac Asimov, “Any technological advance can be dangerous. Fire was dangerous from the start, and so was speech. Both are still dangerous to this day, but human beings would not be human without them.” Yeah, Ronnie… I think there are… worse things, and inhuman is a more appropriate word now…
::Break in video::
You know, my father always told me… he said that when the world ended, we’d face God’s judgment. Good people went to heaven, the bad were punished, there’d be paradise for the worthy, all that. Maybe it’s true, or maybe it’s all bullshit. I… I wonder what Dad would think now. There’s no good or bad—not like we’d think. Not even sure there’s a God here anymore—not in the traditional sense, anyway. Apocalypses are for movies and comic books, even if all cultures have some idea of what Doomsday looks like. None of them looked like this, though.
I’m sure I could easily say that it was mankind’s hubris that did all this, but really, I have, heh… I have no fucking clue how—or why—any of it happened. But what I learned and do know… and everything Ronnie’s given me, everything I’m about to discuss, either confirms, tells, or reinforces it… is that all of this could easily be traced to an intimate relationship people have had forever since they first discovered fire, and it’s only gotten stronger with time. I mean… I… I can’t stop thinking of my dad here—and I’m sounding just like him—but it was our relationship with technology, and the weakness we developed because of that obsession. Our weakness was the drive to advance. That… that drive became over-reliance, then over-indulgence… and it was exploited not in a way that destroyed us without our knowledge or input, but one in which we willingly gave our consent.
Jesus, it’s funny now… we were so deep in our connection to technology before everything… and just as disconnected from each other. More things change, the more they stay the same. Right, Miranda? Heh, yeah, I know, bad timing for a joke…
All this… it can be traced back to October 6th of last year: release day for the long-awaited Apex-9 Omega smartphone. This thing was the latest in a prestigious lineage of devices as the most intuitive, the—the most advanced, and the most coveted piece of technology since Man created the wheel. “The last new tech you’ll ever need,” the company’s motto was. It was state of the art, top of the line, all the bells and whistles. Not only was this thing sophisticated, but it was affordable. Before this model’s release, Apex brand phones were reserved for those with richer tastes; certainly not for lower classes buried under mortgages and student debts. But this one, this one was made so that everyone could get a taste of the future. This… this shit was the future, all right. The Apex-9 Omega could connect to basically anything in our modern lives—with permission, of course. Other phones, laptops, smart cars, smart houses, garage doors. But just the modern stuff, not obsolete tech, apparently. Maybe this was part of the marketing strategy in the beginning: get a phone that can connect to everything advanced, and buy the advanced tech to get the full experience… I… I don’t know.
Now, see, right there… right there, you should already be thinking, “something hooking into technology used by most people in the world, that could be a problem.” But everyone turns their head to anything problematic if there are any positives, right, and this had more than its fair share of benefits.
No, the fact that the Apex-9 Omega could do that didn’t seem to deter anyone, really. The worldwide fascination with this new device made it certain that no one noticed, either, when multiple suicides started happening in China, where the Apex phones were mass produced. God… it… it wasn’t a big deal to anyone in the rest of the world when upwards of two-hundred isolated instances of suicide occurred within a week in the Forbidden City. It’s apparently customary for that many to take their own lives. Hanging themselves, blowing their brains out, running into rush hour traffic, jumping from buildings… my God. Sorry…
::Break in video::
Not even when it was revealed that all of the people, all of them, were Apex factory workers. Every single damn one. But—but no one outside of the Pacific really seemed to care… after all, Apex Industries stocks weren’t affected by the deaths. Sales weren’t affected, either. Miranda and me, we think if this knowledge had been more widely broadcast throughout the world when it happened, maybe we wouldn’t be where we are now. Ronnie thought so, too. Hell, Ronnie Atkins is why I know all this in the first place… why I’m doing this. He sent me all he had discovered.
Before I go on, let me tell you a bit about Ronnie… while he’ll likely be considered a terrorist at present due to his actions… he considered himself a patriot… but, I guess, don’t all terrorists consider themselves as such? Anyway. I knew him before… before everything. Good guy all around, you know, but he had his faults, especially in regards to his paranoid tendencies, which started to rear their ugly heads not long after news of the Chinese factory suicides broke and seemed to be promptly thrown into the proverbial basement. He had his theories about what happened, most of them you’d consider raving crackpot, but the man had conviction, the kind only reserved for true believers. He was a regular storyteller and could convince you of anything if he wanted.
Terrorism, he said first. Then the Chinese government… then puppet masters working behind the scenes to control the world. Sad shit is… we still don’t know for sure… just that it’s something more sinister…
While it didn’t seem to mean much to the general population, the CEO of Apex Industries offered his sincerest condolences for the families of the suicide victims in China, of course. A smooth-faced, smooth-talking young twenty-something named Joseph Calder appeared in a video stating his deep remorse for what unfolded in their Beijing-based factory, and wanted to extend that while the cause was being investigated, that it seemed to be contained. Don’t worry… keep buying our products, you know…
None of this seemed to slow the phone’s rampant success. Within six months after their release, the Apex-9 Omega became the bestselling electronic device in history, and the most sought-after smartphone available on the market. Demand was high, but the supply of these things never seemed to drop… and if it had, none of that would’ve mattered too much—advertisements on television and the Internet for businesses, corporation or small, offered sales, trade-ins, you name it, to ensure the whole populace had their Apex and wouldn’t be left out. Sold everywhere. Christ, the damn thing sold so well, other major phone companies saw their stocks plummet faster than an overstuffed bird with clipped wings.
::Break in video::
Did I get an Apex phone? No. Never been a huge fan of modern tech… despite…
::Break in video::
The Chinese suicides weren’t important until hindsight came along—absolutely—but what got everyone’s attention, made them start questioning everything, heh, but asking the wrong questions, were two… two fucking monstrous acts… of violence… and both had one common thread tying them together, a thread tied to the deaths in China.
The first was a girl, Corrina Delmont, aged twelve, blonde hair, rosy cheeks. Nothing in her history would’ve clued anyone in on what would happen. Honour roll, softball and gymnastics, well-liked by teachers and friends. Loved animals, wanted… wanted to be a nurse when she grew up. Her father, Louis, came home to the scene. The preteen girl was found in her bedroom, covered head-to-toe in her mother’s blood. Allegedly… her mom, Sally, felt she was spending too much time on her phone, her grades were slipping… and she took it away as punishment. The Apex tablet was found wedged down Corrina’s throat, stretching it out like an overstuffed trash bag, easily identified by the glittery pink case with the white daisy decals… also stained with her mother’s blood, of course. Investigators ruled it a murder-suicide. Corrina had gotten her phone back, and made damn sure no one else would take it again… but not before taking her mom out of the equation…
Most major media outlets dismissed this as some freak incident, something not that important, but Louis Delmont, in his grief, demanded answers… I mean, who wouldn’t, right? So, in what I assume was considered a controversial decision, he requested an autopsy on Corrina, since it was easily determined that she was the culprit… not sure if it was intuition or anything, though, but he requested a focus on his daughter’s brain in the procedure. The findings would take time, but the American media had something they would deem more important to occupy their time: about a week after the bizarre Delmont murder-suicide, there was the first of what would become a string of public school shootings.
Eddie Kayser was a sixteen-year-old loner at Lebanon High School… New Hampshire, Miranda? Yeah. So, average student, not too special or unique or anything, but definitely not a problem for anyone. Kept to himself, but one day, lashed out at his Civics teacher, Travis Conrad, when he was asked to put his phone away during class… an Apex-9 Omega. The school rules for phones in class were, according to Ronnie’s research, first time is a warning, second time results in the device being taken until the next day, kept in the teacher’s locked desk. After that, if it escalated, the device would be submitted to the principal. Anyway, some classmates spoke out on the exchange when interviewed later about how Conrad moved on Eddie, and the teenager was screaming:
“You can’t take my fucking phone! You’re just a lame-ass teacher and you don’t know dick! You won’t take my stuff, you piece of fucking shit!”
Result, phone was taken—Travis Conrad was a no-nonsense type—and because Eddie had an outburst, a disciplinary referral was written. He could’ve gotten the phone back peacefully the next day since it was his first “offense,” no big deal. Those were the rules. At the end of the day, everyone went home.
This was a Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Eddie Kayser entered Lebanon High at 8:00 AM with a mission that included more than phone retrieval, and by 8:20, he had executed twenty-two of his classmates and three teachers, including Travis Conrad, injured six others, all with a specialized AR-15; at the time, the news couldn’t figure out how in the hell he got it. It was learned later that he bought it online… no background check, nothing, almost like he was allowed to get it with ease.
Recorded footage sent to the news stations showed him moving straight to Mr. Conrad’s room, 105, opening fire after kicking the door open, but of all of his victims, he expresses the most… hatred… toward Conrad. He shot him… Christ, seven times. Four to the skull. Chaos erupted as Eddie, standing over his Civics teacher’s corpse, fired on Conrad’s desk lock—it was a small bike lock—and took his Apex-9 back, shooting anyone who came near; that was how nine of them met their ends. There were kids scrambling under tables, behind desks, running to restrooms, as Eddie then moved down the hall toward the gymnasium. Oh, and there ended up being about thirteen different sources of footage of this goddamn massacre playing out, you know, all from cell phone videos. Funny how bystanders neglected to do anything to stop this boy, or help others, since there… there were people lying on the ground… bleeding out, crying… pleading. No, don’t help them… just film it. Already mindless, unfeeling… long before everything…
Once in the gymnasium, Eddie Kayser barricaded the doors with some nearby metal chairs… not like anyone was coming after him in the madness. He put the gun down, took out his phone, snapped a picture of himself, and set himself ablaze. Apparently, as he walked to school that day, he carried a full gas canister and soaked himself with it once he reached school grounds. The social media post of his last photo showed his face, his right cheek and chin speckled in bloody backspatter from who knows what victim, as he kneeled down and brandished a lighter. He was… at peace.
The post’s caption read: “It told me too, and i did. #Kill.them.all.”
Was he bullied by his peers? No, no, he was left alone… not exactly popular, but not a wallflower, either. Was he mentally disturbed, or did he have a history of mental illness in his family? None, but he had acted strange for the last weeks before his act and suicide. Was it racially or sexually driven? No. And just who was Eddie referring to in his post? Who told him to? That was the million dollar question, and like the mysterious circumstances of Corrina Delmont’s case—which was somehow nationwide news after the Lebanon shooting—there was no answer… but that didn’t stop the speculation.
Like anything else during the… well, the last decade, the first arguments focused on the Second Amendment. Guns kill, and the Liberal agenda is always… heh, if something is bad, don’t deal with it, just get rid of it. Same kind of assholes that throw away an entire pasta dinner if one single noodle is undercooked. The shooting just added fuel to that fire, and it wouldn’t go away with what was coming… only be added to many other ideas. While different news agencies debated the cause of the Lebanon shooting, as did politicians and anyone with a Wi-Fi signal, the results of Corrina Delmont’s autopsy were released. Nothing out of the ordinary physically except for… a small tumour… about the size of a ping-pong ball, found around the nucleus accumbens of Corrina’s brain. It was… it was malignant, and according to the surgeon who performed the autopsy, it seemed to feed off of dopamine.
::Break in video::
Ronnie’s research says, and I believe it, that this tumour was… is… just the start. The users get enjoyment, pleasure, from using their devices… relaxes them. But… the side effects. Headaches, lethargy… hallucinations…
::Break in video::
Now, across the country, two students at UCLA, Shaunda Martinez and Billie Watkins, were the next subjects of more sensationalized journalism, less than a week after the release of the Delmont results. Only one died, so this time, there was a… well, a “witness” to the madness going on. Reliable, not really, but it was something. So, here’s the deal: normal college party… you know, beer, karaoke, light drug use, unprotected sex… and out of nowhere, these two girls start attacking each other with kitchen knives. Slashing at each other, but focused on their faces. They take turns cutting the other, and then doing it to themselves. Like, what’re they called…? Glasgow smiles and shit. They were… giggling through the pain. They then started amputating… fingers… and Shaunda went all Mr. Blonde and cut off one of Billie’s ears…
Other party-goers finally stopped the two, but only when… when the girls started breaking apart electronics and forcing pieces into themselves… not sure why it took so long… they called the police. Shaunda, mutilated and barely recognizable, died of blood loss before the EMTs could get there, but Billie survived. Sometime after she became stable after multiple surgeries to remove the metal pieces, skin grafts, and began recovery, she was questioned about what had happened. Through what was called psychotic ramblings, Billie made the understandable claim that a popular “web influencer,” Allisha Neumeier, username AlliNew, told her fans—including Billie and Shaunda—to mutilate each other. For fucking kicks.
“We watched her cut off and peel her own face like an orange,” Billie Watkins said. “She said that it felt so good and that we should all do it… and then she opened up her phone, took it apart, and forced parts into her… so we wanted to do it, too…”
The news learned later that not only were there other “victims” throughout the country who died via similar circumstances, but Neumeier, who was seen slicing off her face online, was perfectly fine… and the recording that went live for everyone to watch… well, there was no evidence of it. None at all. In fact, she had no idea what anyone was talking about in interviews.
But that’s not the best part. No, the best part is that Billie underwent numerous tests and scans… and an MRI showed that there was an abnormal growth in her brain. A tumour. Just like what was later found in Shaunda Martinez’s autopsy… just like Corrina Delmont…
These findings were, at first, seemingly blocked out by the escalating incidents. Other schools were attacked in shootings like Lebanon… one in Houston, one in Fort Lauderdale, then Chicago… random homicides, which seemed like random acts of violence, didn’t seem so random anymore. The earliest thread found most curious by everyone was the fact these incidents all seemed to involve youth in some way. They’re usually the most affected by everything, right? Aren’t they always? Didn’t seem to affect the elderly at all or adults from twenty to fifty-five, but the latter would change in time, as you’ll see… You had “experts” from all ends debating endlessly on the news, on social media, on everything. It’s guns. It’s video games. It’s Internet forums. Sex and violence on television. Mass hysteria was what most politicians, who were looking for a soapbox since it was an election year, believed. We live in difficult times, they’d say, the President included.
That is, until the studies conducted on the autopsy subjects were released to the public officially. Sure, I’ve said everything so far… that should tell you that people picked up on what was going on, you’d think… but they didn’t. Not sure if it was a cover-up… what, Miranda? … I think it was, too… somehow. And so did Ronnie. But this is where another power player in this whole… this whole shitshow came into play.
I mentioned the President: Daniel P. Rook, former businessman turned politician, Republican, outspoken, avid social media user. God, he knew how to fire people up. He had an outspoken opponent of many, chief among them who I referred to as the “power player”: Natalia Conti, former House speaker, Democrat… and was a backer of Rook’s opponent in the previous election. Now, I’m not certain if she started this as a crusade to attack Rook, but she helped spearhead a new stance by revealing the findings alongside numerous medical experts.
According to the tell-all on CNN at the time, the “breaking story,” they shared everything I already told you. The brain growths apparently fed off of dopamine… in layman’s terms, to use the Apex phone brought stimulation, enjoyment, and growth to the tumour. At that time, the largest was located within a teenage boy’s skull, a D’Andre Thomas—he had beaten his little brother to death with a crowbar before setting fire to his house, trapping his parents inside, and was killed in a shootout with police—and this… this tumour had, fuck, had increased in mass so much that it was ingrained within and around his brain like a coiled, blackened octopus.
But they didn’t know it was the phone… not for sure! No. But I do, Ronnie did… you do, now. Somehow, it turned them into fucking drug fiends, basically. Everyday drug fiends, but more… sadistic.
And this led to others coming out and claiming that smartphone tech was a possible cause. Sounded fucking ludicrous, sure, at the time. Some people were putting it together, conspiracy nuts like Ronnie, and were stepping up, talking about symptoms people had claimed… hell, even had public polls, results from surveys. Do you experience headaches? Do you have hallucinations or lucid dreams? Murderous thoughts? Shit like that. Either way, Joseph Calder, the Apex CEO, did take the time to respond to the accusations:
“While all of the recent deaths and heinous acts of violence have been nothing short of a tragedy, we at Apex Industries can assure all people that any of our products, and most especially the Apex-9 Omega smartphone, are safe and reliable. Have no fear with our devices… they’re yours to help you.” Right…
After Conti’s statements and the medical reports that acted as the beginnings of her crusade, all of which were obviously attacked and shot down as a farce by Rook and his supporters, several medical officials began running experimental detox clinics for people with technology addictions, even going so far to advertise them on television and online. They functioned similarly to normal clinics that deprived addicts of drugs and alcohol, even providing counselling… but what’s funny is how, like the typical clinics, not all of the subjects were volunteers… yeah, some people began dumping off their phone-addicted kids, relatives, spouses, you name it. And as we figured out, and you’ve no doubt picked up on, there was a disturbing trend… people were addicted to their phones specifically, the one piece of tech every-fucking-body seemed to own, and you guessed it… the records showed that the phones owned were Apex-9 Omegas. What was worse… taking them away from their phones… if they couldn’t use their devices, they’d go into a homicidal rage and harm others or themselves.
As with most of the true information that was released, more violent incidents continued, but one sent American into a goddamn frenzy… at least, for a time…
Okay… I… Miranda… I need a break…
::Break in video::
Miranda? Miranda, are you okay? O… kay…?
::Break in video::
… A police officer gunned down three people, one an African-American named Malik Fallon, on a sunny afternoon in Charleston, South Carolina. Emptied his entire clip from his police-issued Glock. Peyton Baker, a six-year veteran, had something of a nervous breakdown that day and, in an altercation that was conveniently filmed by multiple people, murdered Paul Wallace, Ariel de Sousa, and Malik Fallon. Appeared almost random. Eyewitnesses… they claimed that Baker drew his weapon on Wallace, and Fallon intervened… de Sousa was killed in the crossfire or when she tried to run, depending on who you… you listened to… Baker was swarmed and beaten down by a mob when his gun was dry… he barely survived.
But no one listened to the cop’s words after the fact.
“They were monsters,” he’d said. “I saw them! Didn’t you see them? They were gonna kill me! Black eyes, skin falling off… monsters!” Oh…
::Break in video::
Malik Fallon’s death itself drew the most rage from a country already boiling with civil unrest—this compounded with young D’Andre Thomas’ death, too—and the media jumped on it. Baker was fired immediately, the police chief resigned. Everyone saw the incident as racially-motivated, an abuse of power by police… and while that’s been a problem before, multiple times, there was more here. It was easy to do that, though, what with the state of the world before all of this… but… but this was the one time that… that it wasn’t the case. Especially when you realize that, like so many others, Baker came from a well-financed middle-class household, and every member—he, his wife, his three kids—all had Apex-9 Omega phones, and smart tech all in the house… and… again, hindsight… that Paul Wallace had only hours before murdered his own son in a manic rage after watching a program on his smart television… which was synced to his Apex…
Riots broke out… businesses burned down, homes invaded, law enforcement agencies bombed… social media, television, everything aflame with anger… people fighting, brawling with words, fists, killing each other. Protesting racism, fascism, misogyny, all the evils in the world except the one that was killing them. Conti tried to reveal in vain what medical experts had said, alluding to phone addiction being a problem… but no one listened… little did she know how close to being right she really was at that time…
::Break in video::
God… people, up to that point, thought that all of the insanity was contained in the United States… but… but like the Beijing suicides, we paid much of what was going on no attention, focused either on ourselves or nothing at all. Shootings, bombings, suicides, mass murders… Jesus. The earliest non-American murder-suicides, which involved the restriction of the use of a certain cell phone, all started popping up outside of the U.S. not long before the Baker shooting. First in the United Kingdom, then Japan, then Brazil… at least, heh, the ones reported, anyway…
These coincided with more U.S. deaths, though. Fort Bragg saw a violent outbreak resulting in almost thirty deaths when a trainee turned an M16 on his sleeping comrades. Hollywood star Christopher Lane, fresh off his recent blockbuster… one of those superhero movies… eviscerated himself with a pair of hedge clippers, and his family began stuffing various pieces of tech from around their Malibu home … baby monitors, parts of a laptop, smart speakers… into his open abdomen… fuck, he was like a bloated piñata. Then, another social media influencer, screenname OopsyDaisy90, real name Daisy Farmer, began a live stream smashing her face, over and over and over… into a table… until she died from brain trauma. The cartilage of her nose was powder, the bone making up her face splintered into smithereens. It was like the UCLA shit that killed Shaunda Martinez, others mimicked what they say the influencer does… but unlike Allie Neumeier, who really, truly… did nothing… Daisy Farmer was a terribly deformed corpse…
Hell, get this… among all this shit, there were even deaths at the detox clinics… yeah. Not only were there isolated incidents of patients assaulting and killing the specialists trying to help them, there were even some patients who died. Not just from… from mutilation or self-harm… they died from fucking withdrawal! Right? It was like they were cut off from their tech too long and just… shut down… but that was never reported. Same with the growing number of patients who were being admitted into hospitals, having seizures, entering comas. The brain tumours from the overuse of the Apex phone and connected devices… if they didn’t kill each other or themselves with their own hands… and that was only the ones who… who couldn’t handle…
Christ, none of that was reported, either. Apex’s CEO was always unavailable for comment to verify anything… all of this was hidden. And why? Well… Ronnie has his own views in everything he gave me, and I think he’s right, but let me help you understand it… this way.
Okay, so let me introduce “Zeus.” See, while this whole thing was spreading worldwide, America itself was about to meet what would call itself… well, a saviour. Between the maddening digital war of ideals and beliefs, the countrywide descent into violent hysteria, the combat between the President and Natalia Conti, a clandestine group started making itself known. They were anti-tech, pro-humanity, going against what they referred to as the “Prometheus” of technology that they saw and knew was affecting us so heavily. They posted videos, left signs up everywhere, implanted themselves physically in the numerous riots and demonstrations throughout the country… they covered their faces with black masks that… heh, that brandished lightning bolts.
Their first official video—one of… so many from Ronnie’s hard drive—featured one of the masked members… their voice altered to cover their identity. It said the following:
“We are Zeus, and our message is this: If you own Apex Industries’ latest smartphone, 9 Omega, destroy it immediately. Any smart technologies you have in your home that you have synced to your device, destroy them immediately. Limit your exposure to any digital screen immediately. We have determined that Apex-9 Omega smartphones emit a signal that causes detrimental harm to the human brain, a signal that appears to be spreading to everything your phone connects to… they will not tell you this. We do not know how or why the signal is doing this, nor do we know its source, but we know its effects. You have seen them in the headlines already, but officials are focused on trivial aspects that are not the issue that’s killing you. Headaches, nausea, hallucinations, destructive behaviour, desires to self-harm or harm others—these manifest from the signal that corrupts you and your devices. Destroy your devices immediately. We do not know if this will stop the effects you may already feel, but they might at least be slowed. Destroy your devices immediately. Do not take this lightly or in vain… we are trying to help you. We are putting ourselves at incredible risk by using this platform to reach you. Destroy your devices immediately. Remember the factory workers in Beijing. Remember Corrina and Sally Delmont. Remember Edward Kayser, Travis Conrad, the victims at Lebanon High School. Remember Shaunda Martinez. Remember D’Andre Thomas and his family. Malik Fallon, Paul Wallace, Ariel de Sousa. Remember all those who’ve died. Remember them all. Reject Prometheus, embrace Zeus.”
The first video had quite an impact, at least to those listening. Paranoia set in, embedded itself. Even though most people probably laughed off the idea of technology capable of corrupting people, like a bad sci-fi movie, I guess… hell, guess I’m included in that… they still showed they were at least a little afraid, though the effects were not what Zeus intended. Schools and workplaces allowed cell phone use, whenever and however long they wanted, to appease everyone, to keep the peace as much as possible. Keep them happy and docile. Yet, alongside the growing number of violent deaths and riots, major cell phone companies, businesses that sold them, and regular tech stores started getting attacked… but it was not just Apex, but all cell phone companies…
::Break in video::
Miranda and me… she’d heard from a co-worker about Zeus… I mean, we didn’t keep anything new tech-wise around before all this… we always loved the whole nature thing, not so much modern living… but this, combined with my… my own thoughts going on, what Ronnie had said when it began… we closed ourselves off… she took time off from her job… made it easier for what was coming, in retrospect…
::Break in video::
Now, you’d think the President of the United States, the man with absolute power at his fingertips, would try and declare martial law or something to possibly stop, to quell, slow down all of the goddamn mayhem, right? Sure, he made threats on social media, he held press conferences, and he talked endlessly about how things were going to be better, but the one thing that apparently pissed him the fuck off?
Zeus.
So, President Daniel Rook essentially declared war on them. It’s probably stupid to say this now… heh… everything I’ve talked about? All of it is goddamn insane… but how Rook carried on via television and the Internet—that was simply a zoo. Now, what I said before about how the real news seemed to all but vanish. It’s as if the actual news was slowly getting blocked out. Ronnie’s ideas… and everything substantiates it, to an extent… whoever… whatever… caused this… it was affecting and taking over the media…
Fuck… sorry… I—I am…
… Let me keep… um, keep going. Um… So-so, Rook… his war can be summed up with one of his speeches. This… this one was during a press conference, the subject of which dealt with his response to the increasing attacks on cell phone companies in the wake of Zeus’s debut—he was asked if there was some kind of connection to technology in regards to the violence that had been occurring:
“Technology is not the problem. That viewpoint is preposterous nonsense. How can anyone condemn progress? I’ll say this: Terrorist groups have existed to attack America and spread their evil throughout the world in order to cause chaos… but Zeus is probably… no, definitely… the most dangerous group that this country, and the entire world, has ever faced! They are the reason for the growing hostility, instability, and outright despicable violence that has been occurring during the last few months, and now it’s spreading beyond America’s threshold, bleeding into and consuming the rest of the planet… and it must stop! It will stop!”
… Sorry… I have to take a… s-second…
::Break in video::
As… as Rook’s videos continued, in each subsequent one—and there were a lot—he looked worse and worse. Like, sick… sickly pallor, bloodshot eyes, and… what looked like… bruising, swelling, around his forehead. And then… this is curious, you know, sometime during the course of his videos, he looked fine. Basically normal. Granted, at this point, he was on social media, posting his views, more than he was physically seen…
It… it appeared to… Ronnie says… he says the signal… it made you see what… what it wanted…
::Break in video::
… “The terrorist group ZEUS needs to be stopped! I have granted full authority to the U.S. Military and other intelligence agencies to hunt down and unmask these traitors! USA! USA!”
Another social media post came after… you see how inflammatory Rook became:
“ZEUS is a nest of cowardly snakes for attacking businesses selling cell phones and other technologies. They are not the issue… YOU ARE! USA STRONG!”
A few days later, Zeus, led by the masked “leader,” claimed responsibility for attacks on Apex, but not other companies. They knew nothing of the other attacks. They claimed that Apex was the problem, and they would continue fighting until the truth was revealed, and warning again, as they always did, to destroy any Apex technology that was owned… that its signal corrupted the living… Jesus, how none of the group was ever caught or killed in their attacks…
Now… ahh… for the fun part. I… I almost feel like I could… be making this all up. Sounds fucking insane, doesn’t it? I… I mean, smart phone technology emitting signals turning people into fucking psychos that want to kill themselves and others? God… but that’s just the… the tip of the shit-covered iceberg. But wait, there’s more… yeah, Miranda, honey… something else had been brewing and we had been misdirected, like a cosmic rope-a-dope, and again, if we’d been paying more attention… well, I don’t know if it could’ve been stopped.
The pandemic.
See, President Rook spent all of his time trying to reassure everyone or rally them against his enemies, and the world was preoccupied with the hysteria that seemed to induce people to acts of extreme violence. China got the shit-end again, for lack of a better wording… I mean, we didn’t notice the suicides when this all started, and we didn’t notice when people started getting sick. When questioned at press conferences about the rising illness cases—which, let’s face it, were easy to ignore in light of all the craziness going on, straight out of a poorly written horror novel—Rook could only go on about Zeus, which was his priority, number one, all-he-could-talk-about subject, and he swept all disease concerns under the rug, like a good figurehead.
After all, no one opposed him anymore, anyway. Where was Natalia Conti and her brass? She all but disappeared… not that her news would be visible anymore… or that anyone seemed to care.
The disease, which was a mutation of the Camel Flu, or MERS, had spread worldwide in the matter of a month… it’s dizzying how… how quickly this stuff spread. Just like the mass hysteria had beforehand, this shit blanketed everything in its wake. Fuck… it was a pandemic, too, only we didn’t know… It acted as a more potent and virulent form of most flu viruses—fever, cough, difficulty breathing—and it was highly contagious, namely through coughs and touch. However, unlike the violence pandemic that, at least early on, seemed to mainly affect the youth of the population, this attacked the opposite end: primarily the elderly, and anyone else with lingering health problems. Cancer, kidney disease, diabetes, emphysema, you name it… if you had any of those and caught this, you weren’t going to survive.
Hospitals and clinics became literal ground zeroes trying to accommodate the drastic rise in flu cases, and they were already on the fence thanks to the victims of violent attacks… but those afflicted by the brain tumours—which, and this was something Ronnie found out later—the numbers of those people dwindled and all but disappeared in the wake of the pandemic. Those who succumbed died early on and there seemed to be no new cases… were they becoming immune, acclimating to their addiction?
Anyway, in a bid to help maintain some semblance of order, many countries entered states of quarantine. Some made it more of a mandatory lockdown: stay at home, keep away from others, don’t go anywhere. But not our President, no, no. He merely told us to stay home if possible… otherwise, practice social distancing. Keep away! Stay six feet away! Like everyone… heh… everyone had a goddamn restraining order! Only it wasn’t an order in any sense… more like a—a suggestion. To citizens, anyway… businesses, restaurants, schools, though, they all had to work with limited personnel or close entirely.
Shit, funnily enough, most people in America were staying home anyway. But when you’re told to, made to stay in your house all day, what are you going to do?
Stare at a fucking screen, that’s what. Heh, like they weren’t already!
And like… like my father used to say, coincidences are rarely ever just that… Ronnie believed, as do I, that the pandemic was no real coincidence… not just another dog in the pile. Think for a second here, okay? This virus just so happens to spread around the world at a time when much of the population is destroying itself. It swoops in and starts taking out those who haven’t killed themselves or each other, but also those who aren’t necessarily in okay health… see where I’m going? I mean… after all this lunacy… Miranda, don’t you think? … couldn’t it be possible that maybe, just fucking maybe… this could have been man-made or… whatever could’ve made it. See where I’m going? I’ll get to that… in a bit…
So, aside from people getting sick and dying in hospitals due to limited supplies, limited staff, and mounting duties that couldn’t be fulfilled, violence seemed to slow… well, overall, and only for a brief respite. Sure, there were still shootings, crimes, and the typical like, but nowhere near what it had become in the U.S. Because people weren’t supposed to be going out, people began working from home, teachers conducted online classes… and, you know, the media no longer talked about any of the horrendous shit that was still happening. There was still violence at home. There were families killing each other… workers killing or maiming themselves… workers bringing online deliveries to homes and being murdered… but did you see it on the news? No?
Outside of the U.S., there were at least some measures attempted to slow both the pandemic and the violence-related deaths. When the British prime minister was attacked in his home and killed, this prompted the U.K. to enter a forced lockdown… martial law to maintain order… right. Didn’t work, necessarily, in the end… but they tried. Other countries followed their example. But America? It was requested. We advise you to stay home.
And… and… of course… this was appropriate fucking timing for Apex to come back after months of goddamn radio silence. Advertisements began a couple of weeks into the quarantine, Joseph Calder’s smiling face showing on any and all screens. His words… heh… were sugar-coated bullshit.
“At Apex Industries, we know this is a troubling time, but trust us when we say: everything will be okay. In fact, it will be better than okay. We have been hard at work to bring you something new to help you through the tough times. It is our pleasure to unveil what we’ve accomplished. In order to help provide the best experience, we are offering, for fifty percent off to current customers, free delivery if purchased online and sold in all retail stores, an upgrade to your already superb device.” Now, here, the CEO held up his hand to reveal a small metallic chip, about the size of a nickel, and placed it onto his temple. “Now, you can sync your Apex-9 Omega to the one thing it originally couldn’t: you.” The new Apex slogan then was all the more fitting: “Even perfection needs an upgrade.”
That ad… I can… I can imagine the crazies, all foaming at the mouth… this obviously saw a massive spike in violence. But what was most disturbing of all… is that a lot of people looked… different. The ones who went outside. Like the phone’s release, everyone was selling it, offering coupons and discounts… even President Rook endorsed the upgrade… and there were fucking Black Friday levels of people out to get this stuff… and, you know… the Black Friday sales of yesterday were warzones, so… or, if you wanted to get it from the comfort of your home… God, so many delivery workers died that way…
And Zeus tried in vain to combat the sales. “Reject Prometheus, embrace Zeus.” Not enough…
::Break in video::
Death tolls escalated in the U.S. and worldwide despite Zeus’s warnings and pleas. If it wasn’t the new Camel Flu, it was people getting torn apart or beaten to death in the streets, at home… nowhere was safe. The culmination of everything, though… everything had led to this point. Washington, D.C., two weeks ago.
President Rook was, again, holding a press conference to update the U.S. on the state of the pandemic when, amidst screams, a group of people armed with assorted automatic rifles burst into the room. There was gunfire and panic, and before Rook could be covered by members of the Secret Service, a shot rang out and a stream of blood spewed out from the President’s cheek and mouth. Instant kill-shot. You could see the assailants… black clothes, lightning bolts… Zeus immediately made themselves the most wanted people in the country… self-fulfilling prophecy, exactly what Rook said they were. One person stood out from the others, giving commands.
“Kill the rest! They’re too far gone! They’re not people… fire!”
The voice was familiar, not warped or altered like the broadcasts… it was feminine. Her subordinates raised their rifles and began firing on everyone else in the room… the gunshots only ceased… when the screams did.
“Shut off the signal when I say!” the leader shouted into a handheld radio.
“Got it,” a voice affirmed.
“Train the camera on me,” the leader said to another member. Reaching up to remove her mask, at long last, the leader of Zeus was revealed and, again, if we had paid attention, it could’ve been seen a mile away. “People of America, people of the world… I am Natalia Conti, and we are Zeus…” She… she realized that she couldn’t fight the tide in her state… so she had to work from the underground. “These measures are desperate, but we believe in our cause… because so few of you listened, and those that did have been pummelled into submission, we must show you the truth.”
She gave a nod, likely her confirmation to the voice on the radio—they must’ve been watching from where they were—and there was… well, it was like a glitch on the screen… the footage looked… let me see if I can explain. Beforehand, the walls were white, clean… but then they were yellowed, dirty. The American flag that adorned the wall behind the President’s podium had looked normal before… after… shredded, almost moth-eaten…
But the worst… Oh God… President Rook… he…
Conti goes, “Turn the camera on… him… “ It’s here that I… you all… would notice… that Conti and other Zeus members, in view, paused for a moment to clutch their heads… headaches? Dizziness? They had obviously been exposed to the Apex signal in their endeavours…
The camera focused on Rook… or what was Rook. Aside from the blood on his cheek from the bullet wound, there was little… little else that resembled who he was originally… Bursting through the front of his forehead, its roots penetrating from behind his eye-sockets and outward—his eyes just dangled there like… berries—was a glistening, opal branch of what looked like cancerous flesh, pulsing and wriggling as if continuing to… grow… and the… the flesh of his scalp had simply swelled and fused itself to it over the weeks, months, it had engorged itself to such a size, like a fist clenching a tree branch. This is what the tumour in Corrina Delmont’s head would’ve become… had she survived and kept using the Apex. What was already beginning in D’Andre Thomas’s brain. God… and he had… he had still… lived, lived in that… that state. But what was curious… were the metallic parts embedded in his ruined temple, snaking down his jaw and throat, spreading like the grotesque tumour from his brain. According to Ronnie… this… this was… the upgrade, its purpose revealed.
“Show the others,” Conti said. The camera moved and showed more dead bodies, all of whom were inhuman… some nearing Rook’s physical state, some merely in the beginning. They either had swollen craniums or… the blackened tumours… but all had the upgrade piece, and it was binding itself to them…
Was this upgrade… helping the… things… live? Survive?
The camera turned back to Conti. “As you can see, those in power in the Capitol… are gone… we saw so many others like them here. If you go outside and you’re not one of these… things… you will, too. They have long been corrupted… used like puppets. Could’ve been for months… or longer. Some retain thought, like Rook was able to do… but most are like animals. This is what the signal from Apex has done… the same signal we’ve warned you about, the same that was broadcast through Apex-9 Omega smartphones and any technologies that you have connected your phones to. This signal has spread globally through the use of countless routers and the like… we found one of the major sources and have turned it off. All so we could show you. Do you feel the discomfort? The drip is cut off and the high’s gone! You did not listen, and here we are. You allowed this… “
You can… you can hear the… sadness in Conti’s voice. Almost like she’s… disappointed… angry…
Conti continues: “You listened to people who you allowed to control you. You gave in to this. The Apex CEO… no record of him exists. Do you understand? It is not a real person!”
With what she said next, it was proven that Conti shared Ronnie’s belief, and what I now believe, myself. What I said before.
“Another truth you all need to see involves the current MERS pandemic. This virus is not natural. We believe it was manufactured, engineered, to kill those too inferior to handle the conversion. Those with illness or genetic defects… those who were not shackled to their devices. Have you noticed the patterns? Those dying suffer none of the symptoms suffered by the tech addicts. The headaches, delusions… the brain tumours. Like what you’ve seen coming out of the President and his Cabinet! Those who had the tumours, as I tried to reveal before Rook… no, the signal… shut me out… and couldn’t handle the effects, died on their own or through violent means. The virus killing everyone else does not affect those who are… far gone… It is unnatural selection, don’t you see?”
Sure… she sounded fanatical… but with everything… God, like Ronnie, she had conviction…
“Ms. Conti, please,” said one of the Zeus members.
“Right. Time is short. Look. One last thing. We have fought to determine what is happening and why… we still do not know for sure… but what we do know is this: the source of the signal is… not human… We don’t know if it’s a higher intelligence. But this upgrade… it is symbiotically attaching itself to those not dead by Apex’s hand. I don’t know if it’s improving them or why it would… You see on their corpses… I want you to understand… we know we’re going to die. We have long been exposed to the Apex signal, as have all of you watching… we have been corrupted, too. But we wanted… before the end… “
As Conti fought back tears, it was immediately apparent… something was wrong. What came next…? fuck…
Suddenly, there were screams, gunshots… a voice on the radio. “The signal’s back… fuck, I can’t cut it!” Conti, clutching her head again from the signal’s return, tried to answer, but another voice in the background diverted her attention.
“Get the fuck away from me!” It’s all-out confusion, and the screaming voice continues. “Get away! Keep your claws away or I’ll—!” Gunfire erupts, and while you can see… other Zeus members tackling one of their own finally exhibiting symptoms from the signal, outside of the room you can make out the sounds of something worse coming. Apparently… all those people that Conti claimed were outside in her speech… they knew and had come to stop them… Breaking glass, smashing of doors and walls, guttural cries…
Once the things from outside the White House entered, it became hard to tell who was killing whom, what was killing what… Miranda, yes… it was a massacre… I know… one Zeus member, a man, was taken down by a mob and disembowelled, his innards tossed about wildly… another was decapitated by a larger… converted… his head popped off like a fucking bottle cap…
But in the camera’s foreground… it was still recording… Natalia Conti accepted what was to come in the madness. She had said she knew their end was coming. She took it… on her terms. A gun to her chin and her skull burst and billowy chunks of brain erupted upward. The screen goes red, and you… you can make out shapes or feral, inhuman things… swarming the background. Glints of shiny metal, and blackened shapes exiting different areas of their heads… All on live television.
The room, despite its… bloody makeover… it went back to… to abnormal. The signal made sure of it to… to the viewers. I’d be willing to guess… no one saw it. And if… if they did… did they fucking care? Could they turn their attention away from… from…?
::Break in video::
And… here we are at present… Riots continued, according to Ronnie’s notes… I don’t know for sure, since I haven’t left in… um… people continued to be killed or converted by the Apex upgrades… the rest continued dying from the pandemic. Ronnie says in his notes that he thinks maybe other countries have detonated bombs… fired missiles… he doesn’t know for certain. Nobody knows anything for certain. Many areas have gone dark, the rest of the world seems… dead. According to him, the media, videos, everything… none of it’s real anymore. Or if it is, we can’t see it that way. Not that I’ve tried…
I mentioned early on… that Ronnie Atkins would be considered… a terrorist. He was there… at Washington. He was a member of Zeus. A goddamn patriot. He somehow escaped the carnage that took Natalia Conti and the others… not sure how he was able… but he did.
Ronnie took time in isolation to gather everything together… from before his time in Zeus and during… he was always a tech-head. Apparently he had equipment to isolate the signal, either gotten by Zeus or maybe he did it… anyway, he claimed in the writings contained in this package that he sent me that he had… cleansed the signal… from the recordings he made. No idea how he did that, either. He knew he wouldn’t survive long before the White House assault, as did Conti and the rest of his comrades in arms, so he… he wanted me to get this recorded… why… I don’t know. Maybe he trusted me.
I guess… he’s dead… now…
So why did I go to all this trouble? Because he asked me? Because Miranda thinks it’s the right thing to do? Will anyone find it? Fuck if I know. How do I know if this recording… isn’t corrupted by… it… and Ronnie only thought he removed the signal… But… if he did cleanse what he sent… it doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t—
::Break in video::
I can’t help but wonder… I wonder even now… should Conti’s group have called themselves collectively “Zeus?” I remember the Greek myths from school. In most of them, I think, Zeus tried to destroy mankind… that’s why Prometheus brought fire—knowledge—to Man. All the group tried to do was help us, save us from ourselves, even when they seemed like enemies. They never were our enemies, no matter… no matter how hard Rook… or was it Apex?… made them seem. Maybe they were Prometheus, really, trying so desperately to give us the knowledge we needed to survive.
Or maybe they weren’t mistaken… maybe this… this thing responsible for everything… maybe it’s Prometheus, and it thinks it’s saving us. Culling the herd, lifting those… worthy… to a higher plane, just like Conti said. Ridding the world of the weak, making it better for the strong… I can’t buy into that… no…
Or… or… maybe we’re all serving the same sentence as the literary Titan. We’re chained to our rock, our electronic tablet and its accessories that we’re plugging into ourselves, and the techno-vulture is taking our livers… and our stomachs, our hearts, our brains, our bones, free will, everything, and slowly replacing them with blackened approximations of what we are… tubing, wires, microchips. We are suffering… there is no salvation… nothing will be saved… this is our… our judgment…
::Break in video::
Oh… Oh God… I remember now… Miranda, that’s you… you’re here, but not. I keep hearing you… I want to believe you’re… but you’re not…
::Break in video::
Miranda’s sister… Lindsey… became one of those… those things…
We let her stay with us when she panicked about the pandemic… she was… well, something of a hypochondriac… Miranda and I, well, I told you… we staved off modern living… but Lindsey worked in an office, sat behind a computer, made calls to clients… and one morning, she didn’t come out of her room… a spare bedroom for guests… for breakfast… found her inside, slicing her thigh with a screwdriver… I—I had to… I strangled her… that was over a week ago… and Miranda…
::Break in video::
… I said… I knew I wouldn’t make it… that if Ronnie wiped the signal… it didn’t matter. I’m already damned.
You see, I used to sell the fucking things. The Apex smartphones. That was my job… before. I was never much of a… a technology addict myself, but I sold quite a few of the 9 Omegas. Had to attend trainings, show them off to customers. I looked at so many of the fucking screens before I was laid off, not long before this all began…
… It’s a wonder that I lasted… as long as I did… I knew something was wrong… when… oh, God, when I killed Miranda, too, hours after Lindsey. With the same screwdriver that Lindsey used to cut herself. Oh… I… Miranda’s eyes were black, her skin was melting… I stabbed her throat, blood gushing… with the same screwdriver…
The same screwdriver that’s… ahh… in… my arm… I want to… I need to… push it deeper. To feel it. Christ, I think it’s severed an artery… heh. Heh. Heh… feels goooood.
::End recording:: |
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