I need to share with you all an email I received three days ago. I thought it was a prank to begin with, but now I really don’t think it is. I’ve thought about nothing else since – I’m seriously spooked.
It’s a warning.
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If you are reading this, then this last-ditch attempt to change things may just have made it through to the right time, and place.
Time is a somewhat fluid thing as far as we can tell, so it could be days or weeks away. I do know you should have received this message before you decide, and I need you to choose a different path.
I am contacting you because you were one of the participants in the original clinical trial for the first commercial FeelGood^(TM) Patch. This is the start, when things begin to go wrong.
The technology came out of advancements in the field of pain management – specifically transdermal microneedle patches used to give highly complex molecules that essentially convince the brain it isn’t receiving the pain signals.
Once they had perfected this, it turned out it was a rather small step to convince the brain of other things. The first commercial ‘mood’ – the one you become involved with – was Happiness^(TM). A small, clear patch less than an inch across, bearing only its name in a jaunty font.
If you could apply one tiny, painless patch and guarantee yourself happiness for a whole day, would you? And once you’d experienced that, do you think you’d be able to live without it afterwards?
Happiness is a strange beast. Maybe you already know this – maybe this is why you agreed to sign up to the trial – it is fleeting and strangely hard to keep a hold of. That initial burst of joy, and then your brain looks for the next problem – that leaky tap, car trouble, paying that unexpected bill. Happiness just isn’t most people’s default setting. Happiness^(TM) took that feeling – true contentment – and stretched it out across twenty-four hours.
When it came to market after its years of clinical trials were completed successfully, it was an overnight hit. No, it didn’t fix your problems. But neither did the old antidepressants and they came with a huge list of side effects. They became so popular that the price of the technology soon tumbled, and at that point they became so widespread they were available in supermarkets and pharmacies for less than the cost of a six pack of beer.
It’s easy to see why. Your whole life doesn’t need to be on the rocks to want a little pick-me-up. Want to guarantee a happy day for a specific event? Take your wedding. Even if it rains and everything possible goes wrong you’ll still be happy. You’ll remember being happy despite those mishaps.
Once Happiness was cracked, it was easy, trivial even, to tweak it and branch out. Happiness version 2 was born. They called it Euphoria.
After that, the floodgates had been opened. Happiness XL (extra-long) was the first to play with the length of time a patch could affect your mood, stretching it out to forty-eight hours, followed by Happiness ER (extended release) which lasted up to a week.
Sleep – in 6, 8 and 12 hourly patches. Study. Motivation. Energy.
Forget.
This is where things started to get really out of hand. Imagine catching sight of yourself in the mirror and seeing a patch on the back of your arm. Confused, you reach around and peel it off. Forget4^(TM). Four unknown hours.
Please try to put yourself in that scenario. The absolute horror of a black hole in your memory. Did you put the patch on yourself, to save yourself the memory of something embarrassing that happened, or did someone else put it on without your knowledge? What was the last thing you remember doing? Who were you with? What happened to you in that time? This is the direct consequence of the trial you are soon to sign up to.
Crime exploded. From low-level offences through to the most heinous crimes I don’t think I need to spell out for you here. They were almost impossible for the police to solve most of the time – no memory of what happened, no description of the perpetrator. Or you slept through an entire ordeal. CCTV, and even body-worn cameras, started to take off as people attempted to protect themselves as they couldn’t trust their own memories or feelings.
Things were quickly becoming untenable. At this point the government realised it needed to do something. In its infinite wisdom, instead of taking control and tackling the real issues in this brave new world, it decided to use the FeelGood^(TM) Patches too. They started to give out Happiness to the masses, to quell the discord building at the state of affairs. At some point along the way, a shady deal between a biotech company and the government was done, and new ‘Happiness’ patches began to get distributed, only these were different. Though it was never officially admitted as such, there is high suspicion the patches were Apathy labelled up as Happiness.
The country speedily fell to rack and ruin, basically run by a dictatorship that most were okay with, thanks to Apathy. Why fight for your rights when you are content to accept whatever pitiful bone is thrown to you by a government ruling effectively via mind control. And why would you stop using the patches and be faced with the grim truth, that the situation was well beyond any chance of resistance?
The ruling elite gleefully exported the product worldwide – what better way to keep people happy with nothing, in ramshackle housing with no prospects, than being drugged into not caring?
This was all bad enough, and was the status quo for several years, until a biohacking collective named Spiritus managed to get one of their operatives into the biggest production site of Apathy. He managed to contaminate three flasks with his modified Apathy strain before he was caught. What you must know, however, is that like all microneedle patches, FeelGood^(TM) Patches only require a tiny amount of drug per patch to be effective. One flask full of a liquid mood is enough to produce hundreds of millions of doses.
His modified strain switched Apathy to Rage.
What he didn’t know at the time was that the improperly modified Rage molecule bound irreversibly to receptors in the brain.
I am simply not able to describe to you the utter devastation that occurred in the following years.
The human race has never been brought so low. Over a billion people had used a contaminated patch. Entire cities burned as people fought and destroyed each other for no reason other than their insatiable, bloodthirsty rage.
Over time they became almost sub-human. They were zombie-like, neglecting their basic needs over committing violence at any opportunity. The ragged, scrawny, hollow-cheeked creatures left a trail of destruction in their wakes as their incurable rage marched on.
Once they barely resembled humans at all, a switch seemed to flip in the people who had never been exposed to Rage. They began to take it upon themselves to try to eliminate the Ragers, as they became known, though it wasn’t easy without conventional weapons – they didn’t go down without a fight, as a fight was exactly what they lived for.
I did not join the fight, I am ashamed to admit. Terror-stricken and fearing for my life, I fled my home and country – eventually winding up here and finding the others. I am now part of an elite team working underground, figuratively and literally, on technology that could help put a stop to this crisis before humanity burns itself out of existence entirely. It is clear now that the only way forward is for this timeline to never have occurred at all. Time travel is a hideously complicated concept, all our attempts to send living things through time have ended disastrously. We think we have perfected the art of sending a message through time, and if you’re reading this, we are correct.
I beg you, find a way to prevent this. I am contacting you, the original participants in the trial that started it all with a simple plea. If this technology becomes widespread, we are doomed, just over seventy years into your future.
Tamper with the data to cause unfavourable results and lead to the discontinuation of the project. If you must, resort to more intense means. At the end of this message is a list of the scientists involved in the project – do with this information what you will.
I don’t know exactly how we will be affected if you are successful, but I don’t think it can be worse than the dire straits humanity is in now.
If you choose not to act on this knowledge, just know you consign all of humanity to a future full of pain and suffering.
Good luck
Gabriel Thomas
Project Vita
Lead researchers for FeelGood^(TM) Patches
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I have redacted the researchers names for obvious reasons.
I was sent this email along with ten other people.
Should I reach out to some of the other people copied into the email? What would I even say to them? I’m not sure whether hearing any of their reactions would reassure me or terrify me even more. The vague reference to ‘do what you will’ with the names of the scientists sits uneasily with me, a ghoulish call to action without ever specifically asking for violence or bloodshed, but the implication lying heavy all the same.
I was already on edge after receiving this – I have not slept well these last few days, and when I have, I have been plagued by nightmares of angry skeletal men chasing me down burning city streets.
I already had a gut feeling that somehow this could be the real deal, then this morning – three days after I received the email, a flyer came through my letterbox. My blood ran cold when I turned over the glossy card.
BrightThought Pharma
Recruiting now
We are looking for volunteers
For our latest study into mood augmentation
Using our patented FeelGood**^(TM) Patch
Excellent rates of compensation
Call 555-XXXX to speak to an advisor
About your eligibility today!
I don’t know what to do. I do know that if I hadn’t gotten the email, that flyer would definitely have piqued my interest, and most likely I’d have been interested in signing up. I’ve Googled some of the scientists listed, and they are real people working in the pharmaceutical industry. Some of them appear to already be associated with BrightThought Pharma and the microneedle project.
I was just living my average life before I was sent this, now I am running scared and paralysed by indecision over what to do with this information. It’s a normal day – outside the birds are singing and the world is turning, and here I am burdened with the horrifying knowledge that if I don’t do something drastic and potentially ghastly in the here and now, I could be dooming everyone.
Should I risk ruining my life over one email with an apocalyptic warning?
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