A story exploring time travel and societal issues in the wake of 9/11. This is chapter 38. See previous posts for chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, and 37.
When he was alive, T2 always made a point of warning people about catastrophes that were about to happen. Almost no one heeded these warnings, but he kept issuing them regardless, feeling a moral obligation to pass along to others the lessons he'd learned from his timeline. After T2 was killed, Thomas took over, warning people of the impending disasters that T2 had meticulously documented. Usually, people simply ignored Thomas as they'd ignored T2 before him.
When the pandemic began, nearly everyone staunchly ignored Thomas' warnings. It didn't help that these warnings were convoluted. His message was that the virus wasn't nearly as bad as it was made out to be, and that the thing to fear was actually society's response to the virus. Even with the full weight of AFN's news network behind him, this message mostly fell on deaf ears.
Scientists modeling the theoretical spread of the virus overestimated its dangers and recommended drastic policy measures guaranteed to do more harm than good. The so-called lockdowns and stay-at-home orders were among the worst of these measures. With information from T2 suggesting that lockdowns wouldn't meaningfully impact the spread of the virus, Thomas used AFN to oppose the lockdowns early on. The news network was consequently blacklisted by search engines and on social media.
No matter what The Federation did, the pandemic unfolded about how T2 had said it would, at least initially. Thomas found this intensely discouraging. But then something happened that surprised him. One of the warnings he issued actually made a difference.
In T2's timeline, as the pandemic was getting underway, four Minneapolis police officers casually murdered a Black man in broad daylight in front of a crowd of people. This had sparked the largest civil rights demonstrations in human history. Along with these demonstrations came civil unrest. In Minneapolis alone, angry mobs had burned down a police station and hundreds of other important buildings. The police stopped policing the city entirely and roving gangs of armed robbers took over.
Having warned many people of impending doom over the years to negligible effect, Thomas was surprised when the man he spoke to heeded his warning about the police. And when this man wasn't murdered on camera for the whole world to see, his death didn't become a catalyst for civil unrest to develop along lines that ultimately served the control regime's agenda of further power consolidation.
Instead, as the summer of 2020 wore on, more and more people began participating in demonstrations against pandemic policies, workplace exploitation and corporate welfare. These demonstrations had a strong civil rights component, but they weren't tied to legal proceedings related to a single man's murder. In a few cases, officials were pressured by protests to arrest criminal cops and charge them with crimes. But no matter how many problem officers were charged, the demonstrations continued gathering steam.
At the end of July, farmers got organized and poured one million gallons of spoiled milk all over Washington DC to protest policy decisions that harmed food producers. Amazon workers nationwide stopped work in August to protest poor working conditions and insufficient pay. Whistleblowers at news outlets and social media companies revealed a staggering level of press manipulation and censorship in support of the control regime's pandemic agenda. By September, in Minneapolis and most cities across the country, protests at the homes of elected officials were a regular occurrence, but the riots and looting of T2's timeline never materialized.
Trish had eventually decided to move in with Thomas permanently. Ana came to visit them in September. Trish continued running the TAP from Minneapolis, though she had signed over her Oregon treehouse to Pine Cone, who had been with the organization since the beginning. On a three season porch, sipping fresh juice, Ana was feeling reflective. "You know," she said. "Back when I first met T2, and the whole first part of being with him, I was still with the Bureau. Boy, was I convinced that they could do no wrong, even if they did make mistakes from time to time."
"And now?" asked Trish.
"Now I'm not sure," said Ana. "Back in 2014, an FBI informant hacked a major UK newspaper. That same year, it came out that they used a fake Associated Press story to catch one of their suspects. Mistakes are mistakes, but interfering with the free press should be off limits."
"Did you know that the only person locked up over the CIA's secret international network of torture prisons was a whistleblower trying to expose the wrongdoing?" asked Thomas.
"I know too many things like that," said Ana. "But the point I was getting around to making is that, with T2, he'd make mistakes all the time. We all did. But the way he set up The Federation, with NIS and TAP and the AFN, those mistakes were always contained. He never thought in terms of companies. He called the whole idea of companies magical thinking. To him, it was always just people in networks. An actual person was always accountable for the decisions that got made."
"You know what I've been thinking about?" asked Thomas. "We're not so many years away from the era T2 left when he went back in time to 9/11. I would've turned into him. But because he went back, I'll never be him. And, to be honest, I can't imagine taking a one way trip back in time for any reason."
"It probably helps that he made us all rich," said Trish.
"True, but the good we've done helps more," said Thomas. "We've created jobs and homes. Viable alternatives to predatory landlords. Financial services for the unbanked. The list goes on and on."
"We also prevented mind control technology from getting loose," said Ana. "T2's biggest mistake was paving the way for that tech, and it got him killed. But we made sure that it never fell into the wrong hands again. Speaking of that, Thomas, how's your research coming along."
"I've moved on from instant education to the production of religious experiences," said Thomas.
"It's totally cool," said Trish. "He started mimicking the effects of entheogens, and zeroed in on patterns that put you in touch with different parts of your divine nature. You should try it. I tried it and it was incredible."
"T2 would've loved that," said Ana. "He sometimes talked about wanting to do something similar, if he ever had the time. Tricking the mind into revealing the small gods within, he called it."
"I'm still working on the tuning," said Thomas. "It has to be tuned carefully to your neural signature, or the experience isn't as profound."
(Feature image from Pixabay.)
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