While I still question how I ended up here in the first place, I can at least wrap my head around the “why.” “Turbulent times,” they called it. More like a full-blown existential clown car crash. Society had gone tits up, the economy belly-flopped into the abyss, and humanity decided to mainline despair.
Looking back, it’s almost laughable how good we had it. We lived in a society so privileged it was starting to sprout gills. Famine? Plague? Violent conflicts? Gone faster than a fad diet. We were practically gods compared to the generations that came before us. But like all great empires, we got cocky. We thought we’d tamed chaos, turned it into our own personal lap dog.
Then, as if the cosmos decided to remind us of our cosmic insignificance, the bottom fell out faster than a mime’s pants. The economy tanked harder than a toddler dropped from a skyscraper. Entire industries vanished like smoke signals, taking jobs with them. Companies started going belly-up like beached whales, and unemployment skyrocketed faster than squirrel on Red Bull. Meanwhile, the stock market resembled a heart monitor flatlining in slow motion, recording the death throes of our financial delusions.
I remember the day it hit home. Mr. Johnson, the banker next door, showed up at my doorstep. Always impeccably dressed and oozing confidence. Now his suit was rumpled, his eyes hollow. “They pink-slipped me,” he mumbled, looking like he’d swallowed a lemon whole. That’s when I knew – no one was safe. Not the suits, not the blue collars, not even the gig economy hustlers.
Ironically, while money woes were the talk of the town, the real problem ran deeper. Work wasn’t just about the paycheck anymore; it was our social life, our self-worth—basically the glue holding our sad, sackcloth souls together. We’d become human-shaped hamsters, running on the corporate wheel, mistaking motion for meaning.
Back in the good ol’ days, people took pride in their families and communities. Now? All that mattered was work-related success, especially in the cities. We met our spouses at the office, gossiped about our in-laws at the water cooler, and practically lived and breathed the corporate grind. Losing a job wasn’t just a career hiccup; it was social Siberia. You were cut off from everything, left to rot in the wasteland of unemployment. Cue the existential dread, isolation, and a good helping of depression on the side.
Society became one big identity crisis. Sure, not everyone lived in a cardboard box, but a whole lot of folks struggled to keep their heads above water—both literally and metaphorically. Young people, especially, got the shortest end of an already stubby stick. Without a foothold in the workforce, they’d barely had a life to begin with. Now, with the economic collapse, they couldn’t even get through the door. They were adrift in a sea of despair, their dreams of avocado toast and home ownership fading like mirages in a desert of debt.
But hey, cults love a good crisis! They swooped in like vultures, offering a sense of belonging to the newly unemployed and desperate. Those not into the whole Kool-Aid ritual were left scrambling for any way out. Some turned to virtual reality, living out digital fantasies while their physical bodies wasted away in dingy apartments, others gave up on life altogether.
The news became a constant parade of misery: rising unemployment, rising cult memberships—the whole nine yards. But it was the personal stories that stung the most: families falling apart, graduates with degrees as useless as a chocolate teapot in a sauna, retirees watching their nest eggs crack and ooze away. The death rate skyrocketed, especially among the young. Not because of some medical mystery, mind you, but because the whole damn world felt like a giant cosmic joke with an especially unfunny punchline.
It was in this climate of despair that Future City Inc. made its move. Every April, as society continued its downward spiral, they opened the application window to become a “Chosen One.” Now, don’t get any ideas of a heavenly choir or brainwashing scheme. These Chosen Ones were ordinary Joes and Janes picked for their very ordinariness. Lab rats for a social experiment cooked up by a mega-corporation. It was like “The Truman Show” meets “Brave New World,” with a sprinkle of “The Hunger Games” for good measure. Their plan? To be the center of humanity’s future, all wrapped up in a neat, profit-driven package.
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Decades ago, they’d built some weird little villages in the middle of nowhere, hoping to lure social outcasts with the promise of a life outside the rat race. Nobody cared then, and the villages promptly imploded, because, well, who wants to live in a self-sufficient commune when Netflix exists, right?
Future City Inc. shelved the project after that disaster, waiting for the “right time.” Well, guess what? The economic meltdown was apparently that “right time” they were waiting for. Nothing like “turbulent times” to make people reconsider their life choices, I guess.
The company pounced, launching a massive ad campaign that would make a used car salesman blush. Billboards plastered every corner, commercials looped on repeat, websites practically paved with their ads. They wanted everyone to know about their not-so-little experiment. And they wanted everyone to apply. Race, religion, sexual orientation? Didn’t matter. They just wanted bodies. It was like Noah’s Ark, if Noah had been a Fortune 500 CEO with a god complex.
And humanity, in all its collective misery, ate it up. Even the most serious news network couldn’t resist the allure of Future City. Of course there was still the economic breakdown, still a murder or two a day, some VIP births and deaths - but the main story of the day was Future City. And of course water cooler conversations, if there were still water coolers left to gather around, buzzed with speculation and debate. Did we know anyone who would apply? Was your neighbor secretly filling out an application? How about that quiet guy from accounting? Your best friend? Your spouse? Hell, were you the only one who hadn’t applied yet? And the kicker: if everyone around you disappeared into Future City, what would happen to those left behind?
Funny how desperation can turn yesterday’s punchline into today’s golden ticket. Those weird little villages that had been a colossal flop? Suddenly, they didn’t seem so bad. In fact, they looked downright appealing when your alternative was fighting over scraps in the urban wasteland. Future City Inc., once the laughingstock of the corporate world, found itself with a captive audience. And boy, did they capitalize on it.
The once-failing utopia project became a runaway success. Applications flooded in by the thousands. The initial villages were soon replaced by futuristic mega cities, isolated on massive islands scattered across the oceans. Imagine Atlantis, but with more neon and corporate logos.
Year after year, the company expanded these metropoli of the future, desperately trying to accommodate the ever-growing number of applicants. Within a few short years, they had achieved their original goal: global captivation! It was like a pyramid scheme, but instead of losing money, you lost your entire previous life.
Initially, I scoffed at the project. The villages seemed like a bizarre experiment, a future dictated by a capitalist behemoth. Even with the relaunch, my interest remained purely voyeuristic – a morbid curiosity about what kind of desperate souls would sign up for this circus. Who, in their right mind, would volunteer for such an experiment?
I’d spend hours speculating about the mental state of the applicants. Were they naive optimists? Adrenaline junkies? Or just poor bastards so beaten down by life that even this insanity seemed like an upgrade? It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion, fascinating but horrifying.
But as the years crawled by, my amusement curdled into something darker. Tens of thousands abandoned their careers, families, possessions, and entire lives, disappearing into this unknown world, lured by utopian promises with no guarantee of reality. For many, it was enough. In a world where hope had become a scarce commodity, the promise of a fresh start, a purpose, was more intoxicating than any drug.
It took personal turmoil for me to understand the appeal. In our fractured society, anyone could become a candidate under the right circumstances - or rather, the wrong ones. Three weeks after the application window opened, I found myself among them. Funny how quickly principles crumble when reality comes knocking with brass knuckles.
The economic crisis that had ravaged our world finally sank its teeth into my life. My job vanished into the abyss of unemployment. Overnight, I transitioned from secure professional to unemployed outcast. Everything I might have sacrificed by joining Future City Inc. was already gone, swept away like leaves in an autumn storm.
No social life. No family. No career. The casual workplace interactions I’d taken for granted revealed themselves as a cruel illusion, shattered by the sudden, deafening silence of unemployment. The world I knew had become as alien and uninviting as a Martian landscape.
And so, here I am. Pen hovering over my diary, contemplating the twists of fate that led me here. Just another statistic in Future City Inc.’s grand spectacle. Was it worth it? I suppose that’s a question each of us has to answer for ourselves.
As I watch the last rays of sunlight glint off the solar farms stretching to the horizon, I can’t shake a nagging feeling. We’ve traded one form of desperation for another – sleeker, shinier, but somehow familiar. The faces around me wear the same masks of hope and fear I saw in the world we left behind.
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