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P. 221
Nicholas Boothman
Chapter 17:
The Human Solution
The first six hours after the vote was announced were chaos.
Extraction surged to an early lead, driven by fear and self- preservation. People who’d never considered themselves selfish found themselves thinking: If only ten percent can be saved, shouldn’t I try to be in that ten percent?
Reset gained traction among those who’d been most damaged by Verax’s truth revolution, people who’d lost jobs, relationships, their sense of identity. The promise of forgetting, of starting over, was seductive.
Graduation lagged behind both, dismissed as naive idealism by a species that had just proven it couldn’t handle the truth.
Henry watched the numbers with growing despair. They were going to fail. Not because they couldn’t create a solution, but because they couldn’t agree to try.
“We need to change the narrative,” Logan said. He’d shown up at the convention center uninvited, flanked by a team of PR specialists. “People are voting out of fear. We need to give them something to vote for.”
“I thought you were pushing for Extraction,” Henry said coldly.
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