#352 - Respond-Immediately-Please
How do you respond to pressure?
Magneto was right, he says as he cracks, and ten months later a head bounces on Otherworld sand. The world's population is not reduced to a mere fraction and made uniform, though the seeds of a different future are planted into the dust of the one now destroyed, and the planet goes on without knowing how close to the brink it was.
Magneto was right, he says, and exactly twelve months later, buried deep in the computer systems in various places around in the world - Xavier's, Frost Enterprises, the Baxter building, Genosha, and so on - turns on. Hidden binaries are activated. An alert starts to bleep on a phone that hasn't been touched for a year and goes unanswered. As days go by, more alerts start flashing up on computer screens around the world and are ignored or met with confusion. A week, and the alerts are frantic, bouncing from satellite to satellite, throwing up flashes on TV networks. There is still no response.
(Somewhere in Wiltshire, a fitfully sleeping man turns over and cuddles closer to his husband, burying into the warmth, oblivious to the world beyond the walls of their home.)
Ten days, and Halloween sweeps across the world. The blue and gold X's that interrupt every TV station at midnight (running East to West across the planet) for twelve seconds is eventually dismissed as a marketing stunt. The computers do not wait for a reply this time. They are busy peeling layer after layer from a hidden black-box code. Information mining bots hunt down contact details, names, email addresses, phones, physical locations.
After three hundred and eighty days of no contact, the same message is sent to everyone:
If you're reading this, I haven't logged in anywhere for an entire year, and am either dead or missing. NOTE: if I am not positively, definitely, absolutely dead, STOP READING THIS AND GO AND RESCUE ME, ASSHOLES. If nothing else, I have twelve months of email to read.
Anyway, if you're still reading this, I'm dead. So that sucks, huh? But I just wanted to say that I'm sorry, that I love you all, and that you're brilliant. Except you, Toad. And Sinister. You I still hate quite a bit. Everybody else, though. (NOTE TO SINISTER: if you clone me, I will come back from the dead just to make you give yourself genitals so I can punch you in them.) There are also a number of legal things following this, but different people are obviously getting different things, so read those attachments carefully, people.
But my main point is this. What is, is, but what will be has not been written. There will always be choices, and there will always be consequences, both bad and good, and you will muddle through as best you can, helping where you can, trying to harm as little as possible where you can't. And it will be hard, boy, will it be hard, because it's not like any of us can go more than a week without causing major trouble; seriously, work on that guys! And now I forgot what I was saying. Oh, no, my point is, you'll get through it. You will. And we'll all meet again in the AllNow, because what is loved, lives, and you are so very loved.
You can, you will, you do make the world a better place. I believe in you.
Your friend,
Michael Joseph Connor,
deceased
(BUT MAKE DAMN SURE I'M ACTUALLY DEAD, YOU BASTARDS. I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE LIKE!)
Only one letter does not get delivered. A confused owl circles the house for an hour before it gives up.
Magneto was right, he says as he cracks, and ten months later a head bounces on Otherworld sand. The world's population is not reduced to a mere fraction and made uniform, though the seeds of a different future are planted into the dust of the one now destroyed, and the planet goes on without knowing how close to the brink it was.
Magneto was right, he says, and exactly twelve months later, buried deep in the computer systems in various places around in the world - Xavier's, Frost Enterprises, the Baxter building, Genosha, and so on - turns on. Hidden binaries are activated. An alert starts to bleep on a phone that hasn't been touched for a year and goes unanswered. As days go by, more alerts start flashing up on computer screens around the world and are ignored or met with confusion. A week, and the alerts are frantic, bouncing from satellite to satellite, throwing up flashes on TV networks. There is still no response.
(Somewhere in Wiltshire, a fitfully sleeping man turns over and cuddles closer to his husband, burying into the warmth, oblivious to the world beyond the walls of their home.)
Ten days, and Halloween sweeps across the world. The blue and gold X's that interrupt every TV station at midnight (running East to West across the planet) for twelve seconds is eventually dismissed as a marketing stunt. The computers do not wait for a reply this time. They are busy peeling layer after layer from a hidden black-box code. Information mining bots hunt down contact details, names, email addresses, phones, physical locations.
After three hundred and eighty days of no contact, the same message is sent to everyone:
If you're reading this, I haven't logged in anywhere for an entire year, and am either dead or missing. NOTE: if I am not positively, definitely, absolutely dead, STOP READING THIS AND GO AND RESCUE ME, ASSHOLES. If nothing else, I have twelve months of email to read.
Anyway, if you're still reading this, I'm dead. So that sucks, huh? But I just wanted to say that I'm sorry, that I love you all, and that you're brilliant. Except you, Toad. And Sinister. You I still hate quite a bit. Everybody else, though. (NOTE TO SINISTER: if you clone me, I will come back from the dead just to make you give yourself genitals so I can punch you in them.) There are also a number of legal things following this, but different people are obviously getting different things, so read those attachments carefully, people.
But my main point is this. What is, is, but what will be has not been written. There will always be choices, and there will always be consequences, both bad and good, and you will muddle through as best you can, helping where you can, trying to harm as little as possible where you can't. And it will be hard, boy, will it be hard, because it's not like any of us can go more than a week without causing major trouble; seriously, work on that guys! And now I forgot what I was saying. Oh, no, my point is, you'll get through it. You will. And we'll all meet again in the AllNow, because what is loved, lives, and you are so very loved.
You can, you will, you do make the world a better place. I believe in you.
Your friend,
Michael Joseph Connor,
deceased
(BUT MAKE DAMN SURE I'M ACTUALLY DEAD, YOU BASTARDS. I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE LIKE!)
Only one letter does not get delivered. A confused owl circles the house for an hour before it gives up.