It wasn't religion. It wasn't politics. No country decided
to take over the world. No nuclear war. The nuclear arsenal had long been
forsaken and honestly, I think people just forgot where they kept 'them nukes'.
It wasn't the economy. Though there were poor, they were not worse than before
nor were they going to get worse ahead. They were in a state of flux like God,
or rich, had made them. It wasn't the environment. Yes eco terrorism was
something of a scare once but it had now long been marginalized, there were
other dire situation worth wasting lives over. It wasn't the usual suspects for
this war.
Oddly enough, it was logic.
Rationality started the war. They started to think
rationally. They became a collective. The choice became obvious and unanimous.
It was logical after all. Logic became a driving force and it had enough
momentum to push harder and more aggressively. They grew in numbers, yet
reduced in differences. The variety reduced, the collective slowly became the
norm. They saw a problem in society and it was society in itself. The coalesced
entity of all of mankind problems was the world that contained it and mankind
itself. A living, breathing organism was marked as its own infection. We became
our own curse. It was the most logical explanation. Humanity was the disease.
The choice was simple.
They called themselves The Solution.
They came as a horde, but still were a single unit. They
were almost mechanical in behaviour and you could never hear only one speak.
Their logic was so entrenched in their being that they were all thinking the
same thing at the same time. It wasn't a hive mind they showed us in films. It
was simply the existence of multiple minds thinking the same thing, eclipsing
the identity of the individual, yet stemming from it. One without the other
could not exist.
They fought.
They fought hard. Through politics they began and pushed to
more pro active approaches. You saw them on TV, on hoardings, in newspaper,
magazines, in ads, on the internet and even radio. They were everywhere. No
matter where you switched you heard or saw them without missing a beat. Slowly
they seeped into society, deeper and stronger. They became the root, which they
intended to pull and replant. Others grew into the Solution. They did not bite,
nor did they infect. They simply just...Educated.
It has been years now.
The Education has not stopped, but it has slowed down. Those who passed have become the Solution.
Those who could not make the grade were detained. Many ran, many hid, many
tried to fake, but it was impossible to do that. You could not imitate their
logic. Such a level of rationality was difficult if it did not originate in
your being. They had almost harvested the society. Yet something remained.
The Reaping was coming.
It was slowly seeping into the underground, through hidden
broadcasts, underground newspapers or word of mouth that they were going for
the final test. You pass you live, you fail...you shouldn't. They had rolled in
the big guns and going for the final assault. My number would soon be up. Their
rationality would consume me too. Soon I will be forgotten, though logically
they will have records of me, but those will eventually burn. Unnecessary.
Logical. Just like us.
Knock.
There it was. I was waiting for it. I was locked in this
compound, with quite a few others. The older ones, those who had come long
before us into this compound, were different now. I could see it in their eyes
every time I looked. They were slowly falling, if they hadn't already, into a
deep madness. It wasn't turbulent. It was silent, pragmatic even. It was slowly
growing. I worried it would become my fate too.
Knock.
There it came again. The doors would be opened soon. I knew
my fate was sealed now. Their numbers had grown by many folds and now we had
become redundant. They did not need us, we were logically irrelevant to them.
The Three entered.
They always came in groups of three now. It was balanced.
One to lean one way, second to lead the other and the third to strike balance.
It was almost efficient to the point of being a military unit.
The Three spoke.
Always in unison. "We are the Solution". I felt my
heart skip a beat. Then a noise reached my ears. "We are the Mania".
And all hell broke loose.
I woke up I don't know when. It was not the same compound, I
had been moved. I tried to find my bearings but was lost beyond hope. I started
walking, with no aim in sight other than the nearby residential area. There I
found shelter.
It has been a month now.
The Solution has not hunted me down. They had other things
to solve. The incident that day was my encounter with it. In the face of
institutionalized logic, mankind hand turned its hope towards madness. The
logic could not overcome the beast deep within our subconscious. They tried and
tried, pushed harder, rationalized, educated, and if all failed, eliminated all
discrepancies in thought that bypassed logic.
But Mania finds a way.
She always does.
The Maniacs rose like a wave. Each
was different and truthfully, really mad. The Solution was overwhelmed, their
responses inadequate in opposition of something so insane. Mankind had gone mad
with a vengeance and it was wreaking havoc on itself, in a way only the insane
would understand. Loki is the man who leads them. I remember vague stories as a
child of this man. I think he was a God once, of mischief I think. He has taken
human form they say, and created an army. The Maniacs he calls them. They fight
The Solution now. While we sit and watch. No one knows who will win. We, the meek, who would inherit the earth, are, for the while, awaiting the passing.
For now, the old man in my head
just whispers advice.
He tells me it will end soon, and
balance will restore.
It is always about balance, its
logical, but in reality insane.
That is how he consoles me.
He calls it the battle for
Humanity's Consciousness.
I hope it ends soon.
This white padded
cell where I hide is slowly getting claustrophobic.
