A relentless beeping cut through the silence, pulling me from the embrace of Morpheus. Coldness seeped into my bones, and my body lay frozen, refusing to respond to my commands. Light pressed against my closed eyelids, which felt glued shut. The persistent rhythm prevented any hope of slipping back into the comforting darkness.

I tried to speak, but I discovered something strange obstructing my mouth. I let out a determined puff of air, and the intrusive tube covering my mouth got expelled. I coughed a dry rasping sound as I yearned for the lights and beeping to cease. Gradually, I managed to coax my eyelids open, reclaiming control over them.

Blurred shapes in white light slowly focused. They revealed a man hovering over me.

"Nurse, he's awake! Get the doctor!" The footsteps that followed his shout reverberated in my head, intensifying my discomfort. The man leaned in. "George, nephew, you are finally awake! How about some water?" It had to be Uncle Josh.

"I thought we'd lost you this time. I'll call Tom," he said while reaching for his phone, but I managed to rasp out a question before he could dial.

"Josh, what’s happening?" My voice was a parched whisper. Speaking was more painful than expected. He promptly poured water into my mouth, bringing some relief.

I scanned my surroundings. It had a major contrast from where I'd last been—a place of mud and blood, not this sanitized hospital room. I was for some reason in a hospital. Memories started flooding back, and I began to piece together the narrative aloud. That habit helped me find clarity.

"I was at the Tingalese frontlines, in the forests… I was filming in the trenches. The junta army launched their offensive on rebels. We couldn't evacuate. The route was under heavy fire, and then..."

"And then you got shot," Josh interrupted me. His lips were pursed, and his face portrayed concern. "You're in a hospital, about an hour's drive from my place. We medevacked you out of Tingal a few weeks ago. You took a bullet, George, and there's this photo of you, wounded, in a journalist vest, holding a rifle... It's been all over the internet. North Atlantic Times, they... they suspended your accreditation. I'm going to be looking after you until you're back on your feet."

Beep... Beep... Beep... His words echoed in my mind, "Suspended... Suspended... Suspended," confirming a harsh reality: my career, my reputation, all jeopardized while I was in a coma and couldn't respond.

"Fuck... I should have stayed in the secret services," I muttered, not willing to curse out loud near Josh.

"You were taking your topics too seriously. Journalism is an adventure where you uncover dark secrets and tell heartbreaking or heartwarming stories. Not when you dive into the trench and have to defend yourself from the war criminals of the Tingalese Army," Josh berated me from the moment I woke up. He didn't let the things he was reporting influence him, a skill I never learned. I was preparing a retort, something about the value of truth, and that Josh for sure didn't believe what he just said, but while I was grabbing air to answer, a stabbing pain ruptured through my chest.

The doctor rushed over, prompting Josh to step outside. As he left, he glanced back. "I'd rather have you here without accreditation than not have you at all, George."

As I slowly drifted back to sleep, I understood what he meant. It's nice to be alive.

In the two weeks of slow recovery, I read through hundreds of messages I wasn't able to respond to while I was in Tingal or unconscious, doing my best to answer them all. Mostly they were "How are you?", "Get better", and "Kill yourself" peppered with random death threats. One letter was from a colleague from MI6: "FYI. We have a desk job open, if you are still interested ofc." That was the only job offer I got aside from cheap propaganda agencies in case I would prefer to sell my integrity. A few old friends were asking for advice on their investigation cases.

The news wasn't kind either; the junta's propaganda machine had influenced North Atlantic Times to distance themselves from me, tarnishing my name. Job prospects seemed bleak, and to add insult to injury, my insurance barely covered the recovery costs.

When I finally managed to get out of bed, a glance in the mirror confirmed the toll the ordeal had taken: muscle loss, longer hair, and a paler complexion. The lack of strain, however, lent a striking clarity to my eyes, not a single red vein seen on my whites.

The severance package from NA Times was laughably insufficient, slashed to a mere month's worth. So, job hunting became my new focus as soon as I moved into Josh's place.

"Hello, my name is George Yossarian. I'm inquiring about the vacancy you've posted," became a refrain I repeated endlessly, with little success. The scandal attached to my name made each application a futile effort.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

I looked at the young Winston Churchill's portrait on my laptop's background and grabbed a similarly named cigarette pack. With a deep inhale, I started to calculate my possibilities.

Resorting to a blog seemed the only viable option, my wartime following providing some, albeit limited, financial relief. Still, I knew it wasn't sustainable. I needed a job, a place of my own; I couldn't burden Josh by living in his place like I did when I was in college.

Uncle was very rich, I've never understood how he managed to get so affluent doing journalism, but that didn't mean I had to sit on his neck. I was desperate for a story, something that could resurrect my career and overshadow the controversy that now defined me on the web. Something that wasn't soulless work at the desk in MI6.

I reached out to my old contacts in law enforcement, hoping for a lead, but the response was disheartening. It seemed my reputation preceded me, and not in a good way. The junta had been thorough, painting me as a villain and a liar in the most grotesque colors. It would have been fine, if not for NA Times taking their side.

Yet, all the free time allowed me to rekindle relationships with friends and family, some of whom I haven't seen in years. My brother finished his service, got engaged, and opened his psychological practice for veterans. For two years we haven't seen each other eye-to-eye.

During a catch-up at Josh's, a tipsy debate unfolded. The topic? The use of AI in journalism.

"AI's great for proofreading, but it's not infallible and is prone to hallucinations and CNN-style bias. It can't discern causation from correlation," Erika, Tom's fiancée and a former colleague in journalism, pointed out, eliciting laughter. Josh, ever the optimist, countered with a story of how a private AI of his friends he had access to had helped him crack a major political scandal. Intrigued, he decided to demonstrate this Wunderwaffen tool called "Enigma AI" he'd been working with.

I ran a few old cases I had regarding mid and low-level corruption. Well, the AI looked like it read my articles as it came to similar conclusions, so I went for something obscure.

I entered data about strange blackouts I'd experienced in Tokyo during my year-long investigative work as a foreign expert. "Analyzing possible causes, please wait..." So we went back to debating politics. In an hour, the notebook made a pinging sound; the answer was ready.

"There is a 95% correlation between Tokyo blackouts and fatal truck accidents three days prior." It made no sense, so I opened the links provided by the program. "Victory is mine! The machine is just hallucinating again!" I thought while lampooning in my mind.

“Fine,” I said to myself and for some reason decided to analyze the links—10 obituaries for this year, six belonging to teenage prodigies. In obituaries for the last three years, 2 out of 9 were prodigies. Overall this happened 22 times in the last 3 years and blackouts didn’t happen before that.

Well, maybe the machine just cherry-picked the ones that were high in search results. I checked the number of casualties on the roads in Tokyo - 200 fatal accidents related to pedestrians. 11 out of them involved the word "truck" usually referring to small transport vehicles.

I looked at the obituaries, one was for a math and physics Olympics winner, and there were some for a couple of others - rising athletes, a musician with a Tchaikovsky award…

"This is strange, but how does it relate to blackouts?" I asked myself.

This brought a memory. When I was working in intelligence, we would often use inconspicuous service trucks as a means of transportation and surveillance, this bugged me off. The probability that out of ten random accidents you will get six people from an extremely slim demographic of teenage prodigies is practically zero. It's usually elderly people who die in traffic accidents.

Something was off-putting about this whole thing, I looked up, and for some reason unknown to me decided to give this potential story a try.

"Guys, I found something strange. It looks like Japanese-gifted kids die a lot in truck accidents. Any suggestions?" I relayed the found information.

"Well, there is a trope in Japanese anime that if you die by a truck, you are reborn in a fantasy world. I guess these are over-achievers tired of life killing themselves. You were in Japan too, you have seen how unhealthy their working culture is." Tom shrugged.

"A spy program," Josh was in his element. "It's hard to naturalize someone over 16-17. Before that, you could claim that kids were homeschooled, that they haven't learned to drive, that's why they don't have a license, or for the same reason never voted or never had a banking card. Then you smuggle them into the country and give them one of the fake documents you were creating for years. Maybe the kids got their deaths faked, and now are already spying for Japanese governments somewhere in the US."

"Yeah, but that doesn't explain the blackouts," I retorted.

"Let's look from another perspective. Who are the truck drivers? Blue-collar workers, who by some Asian standards failed at life. So, someone like that could target kids, whom he believes have an easy life or a silver spoon. Serial killer, a similar expression of resentment against society to the school shooters in the US." Erika has covered school shootings and terror acts before, so it fell into her paradigm. She looked at something on her phone and smiled.

"Well, would you look at that? Truckers are quitting en masse due to overworking. Mystery solved!"

"This doesn't explain the blackouts either, but correlation is not causation. On the other hand, having more than half of victims being kids notable enough to get a mention in media is something hard to ignore," I responded thinking about all the possibilities, all three options made sense, even suicide cult. More importantly: two of the hypotheses could yield an article bringing me back to the industry. Aside from the espionage agency, that would lead to me getting hit by a truck or at least in a lot of trouble.

As I walked home, I pondered the reality of the situation. Was this just the desperate grasping of a man trying to get his life back, or had I stumbled upon something exciting?