Robby made sure his face was in frame, then clicked the record icon.
“Hello Vidtube land, I’m Robby Ragestorm, and this episode 117 of the Ragestorm Flat Earth Chronicles.”
He tapped a button on his keyboard and the screen filled with an image of his whiteboard, with his bearded face retreating to a box in the corner. The whiteboard still held the diagrams from the previous episode, where he conclusively disproved one of the long-standing fallacies regarding the moon.
The establishment held that the moon was 238,900 miles away, but anyone with a pair of eyes could tell that this was absurd.
“In our last episode, we looked at some zoomed, photographic evidence, which I took with my Nikon P900. Long story short, we found that the moon was only about 3000 miles away. I can make out more detail on the moon with my lens than I can on the Nakatomi building, which as we stated is only 10 miles away. Go check out the video, I’ll leave a link in the description.”
He grabbed the eraser and swiped at the whiteboard, then turned back to the camera.
“Today, we’ll be going back to basics. We have a bunch of new subscribers and I’d like to get everyone up to speed.”
Robby drew a bullet point with a red marker and next to it in block capitals, wrote ‘THE LIE.’ He switched the screens so the whiteboard was in the corner and his face took up the frame.
“The Lie, ladies and gentlemen, is what the government has instituted. It’s what they’ve instructed the teachers to teach our kids. It’s what you and everyone you know has been told since you could first understand words, and in many respects, the Lie is one of the greatest accomplishments of mankind.”
He tapped a key and his face parked in the corner, the main view taken up by a still image of the Earth.
“And here it is. The Lie. The globe Earth.” Robby’s tiny face grew animated in the corner. “How… stupid… do they think we are? Look at this picture. Use your eyes, people! Use your brains! Ask yourself… what’s missing?”
He paused for dramatic effect.
“Show me a star. Show me one star. No? Don’t see any?”
Robby flicked through a few more images of the globe before settling on one seemingly at random.
“Now take a closer look. What else is missing?”
Again, he paused.
“According to the scientists, hundreds of thousands of man-made satellites are in orbit around the globe.” Robby accented the word globe with some rather effective finger quotes. “Show me one satellite. Just one.”
He flipped from one image of the globe to another, in rapid succession. “Do you see any? If you do, let me know in the comments below. But I won’t hold my breath. Because I tell you what, Ragers. You won’t find one.”
The whiteboard resumed its post center stage, and Robby ticked off his second point.
“We live on a beautiful disk. The people who know the truth call it the Flat Earth. It is surrounded by the Antarctic wall, a wall of ice which keeps the oceans on the disc and acts as a foundation for the Firmament, the glorious glass dome which encases this beautiful world.”
Robby added further bullet points, ticking them off on his fingers as he went.
"The sun and the moon are the same size, roughly 37 miles across, and circle above us, within the firmament."
"Gravity, as we were taught, does not exist. What we perceive as gravity is nothing but the constant upward acceleration of the disk."
"Outside the firmament is the Aether, which pretty much accounts for anything else that needs to be explained."
Robby lost focus for a few minutes, going on tangents about maps and distances and the levels of water, but eventually came to his final bullet point.
“So why the Lie? Who is behind it all?” Next to the final point, he wrote four letters.
NASA.
“The government agency tasked with keeping us from the truth. Nearly unlimited funding, unlimited resources, all devoted to one purpose. Creating the lie that keeps us in line, and keeps us from realizing the divine. But whether you believe in the divine or not, the disc is real, the firmament is real, and we…” he paused again, “will be the ones to bring the light to the world.”
Robby’s face took up the screen for the grand finale.
“‘So Robby,’ you ask, ‘why is NASA so intent on fooling us? What’s in it for the government?’” Robby sneered.
“Control! They want to control every aspect of our lives. From what we watch, what we learn, what we believe, even what we breathe. Check out my videos on the truth behind chemtrails for that last one.”
Robby smiled. “They want to keep us uneducated, so we can succumb to their whims. So they can keep an ever-growing populace under their thumbs.”
His voice grew softer. “But they will not succeed. We, ragers, will be the front line in the coming war. We will arm the people with the sword of truth, and bring down the establishment of lies and deceit.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Robby sat back in his chair. “This has been episode 117 of the Ragestorm Flat Earth Chronicles. The storm is coming, ragers. Get ready.”
He clicked the stop button and sat back, taking a deep breath.
He spent the next couple hours in post-production, adding the animated opening and ending screens one of his fans had made for him, and adjusting exposure and sound levels.
He was about to upload when a chime let him know he was receiving a video call from a very welcome visitor.
Sherri had been one of his followers from the beginning. She always made the wisest observations, and had won him over with a scaled-down version of the Bedford Level experiment. She uploaded a video where the entirety of a flagpole was visible at three miles away. Shooting down the crazy idea of observing the Earth’s curvature was one of Robby’s favorite past times, and to find a relatively attractive woman who was into the same stuff really ticked all of his boxes. He clicked the answer icon. “Hi Sherri.”
“Hey there, cutie. When’s 117 going up?”
Sherri had a round face framed by a blonde pixie cut, with thin lips made fuller by a wine-colored lipstick. She wore a flat earth t-shirt which Robby thought might have been a size too small, perhaps on purpose. Robby wasn’t complaining--she made the disc of the earth emblazoned on her chest look like an oblate spheroid.
“Hi Sherri. Was just about to hit the upload button. Want a sneak preview?”
She put a hand to her chest as if she’d been flattered.
Robby chuckled silently. Nothing flatter about this girl.
“Nah, I’ll just watch it when it goes up. What’s it on? Did you use the data I sent you regarding the speed of the moon last month in relation to the boats out on the harbor?”
Robby shook his head. “That’s some compelling evidence Sherri. I’m going to use it in a future video. But we have a bunch of new subscribers, and I wanted to get them caught up on the movement.”
Sherri’s eyes grew devilish. “Oooh, I love those videos. You always get so… passionate.” She touched a hand to her neck inadvertently.
“You think so?” Robby said as he looked down at his lap. “Thanks Sherri.”
She ran a hand over her chest and belly, and it disappeared off the bottom of the viewscreen. “You want to have a quick… session… to celebrate?”
Robby’s heart sped up. This girl could really make his blood race, for someone who lived on the opposite coast. “I’d love to, really. But I have to get the second website set up and upload a few documents I came across to Paymeon. Those guys are giving me good money; I gotta make it worth their while.”
She pouted. “Don’t you want to keep your fans…” she paused to suck on the tip of her finger, “satisfied?”
Robby gulped. “I.. I’d love to, but… I have to…”
Sherri sighed. “Fine. Don’t worry about it. Hey, guess what?”
Robby didn’t guess.
“I’m going to be out in Portland next week!”
Robby’s breath caught in his throat. “You’re coming here? For what?”
“Just a little holiday. You wanna show me around?”
Robby’s mind went into panic mode. If they weren’t on a screen, he was horrible with the ladies. Why would she book a ticket out here without asking him? What was he going to do? Sherri had been safe. She was out in Georgia, about as far away as you could get. Hell, the sun was closer. But now she wanted to come here? He put on his video face and played it cool.
“Awesome. Call me before you leave. And get some pics of the lack of curvature while you’re up there.”
She grinned. “Already planned on it.”
They said their goodbyes and Robby disconnected the call.
Sean blew out a long stream of air. He was 28, and had a couple occurrances of passion in high school, but since then didn’t have time for such frivolities. The thought of touching a woman, especially Sherri…
Robby came out of the bathroom four minutes after he went in, with a much clearer mind. He uploaded the video to Vidtube and Paymeon, adding some documents he had found on the web to the latter concerning the makeup of the Aether. His patrons ate that shit up.
He was about to read the latest posts on the Flat Earth Followers Forum when his screen went black.
No, no, no! I just bought this thing!
His anger was soon replaced with wide-eyed amazement as the first words of green text appeared on his black screen.
text1 [https://i.ibb.co/M6r6t8G/realrobert.png]
He stared at the text, unsure of what to do. The green cursor blinked on the left margin, about two inches below the sentence.
Hesitantly, he began to type.
text2 [https://i.ibb.co/1dBXhTD/whoisthis.png]
His index finger hovered over the enter key, unsure if he wanted to dive into this madness.
Who am I kidding? Of course I do.
He hit enter.
text3 [https://i.ibb.co/thZjyB0/TRUENATURE.png]
The cursor awaited his reply. He decided to humor whoever was on the other end of the conversation.
text4 [https://i.ibb.co/QJ7YPFj/simulation.png]
He had barely hit enter before the reply came.
TEXT5 [https://i.ibb.co/r03W13C/INCONTACT.png]
His screen flickered, and he was once again staring at his web browser.
What the ever-loving fuck was that?
“Robert! Robert, you up there?”
Robby shook his head to clear it, then shouted loud enough to be heard downstairs. “I’m busy, Mom! You know I don’t like to be bothered during production!”
“I, know, baby, but there’s a woman at the front door to see you!”
What?
Nobody ever came here. He never gave out his address to his fans. He scurried over to the window. There, parked next to his Honda Civic hatchback, was a white, unmarked van with tinted windows.
They are here. They will try to frighten you.
He grabbed his bugout bag from the closet and threw on a sweatshirt, then bolted for his mother's room. He threw open her window and tossed the backpack to the yard below, then climbed out on the ledge. He sidestepped over to the drainpipe, then began to slide down as he did when he used to sneak out back in junior high.
He’d put on a little weight since then. With a snap, the drainpipe came away from the wall, and the disc came up to meet him with a thump.
His head spun for a second, and he closed his eyes tightly until the ringing went away. When he opened them, a man in a black suit and brown-rimmed sunglasses was smiling down at him. He turned his head and yelled.
“Masters! He’s back here!”
The man in the suit turned his attention back to Robby.
“Hello Mr. Ragestorm. You may call me Mr. Fellows.”
The man reached for his breast pocket. Robby’s eyes went wide, expecting a gun.
Instead, the man pulled out a black leather billfold, which he flipped open.
Robby couldn’t make out the small writing, but could clearly see the man’s picture. And the four red letters printed next to it.
NASA.