Page 52 - SurprisingTruthFinal

The Surprising Truth About Lying
Henry, hunkered down in the basement with Lina
and Vincent, watched the movement grow from a
trickle to a flood. He saw the shift in the global anxiety
curve not as a graph, but as millions of people
shedding their expensive, carefully managed
delusions.
"The pressure's building faster than the
infrastructure can handle," Lina said one morning,
looking drained but triumphant. "We’ve got a
thousand public officials resigning every day, not out
of guilt, but because they can't afford the legal risk of
opening their mouths. The banks are throttling trading
because every trade carries a liability risk if The Gaze
exposes the actual leverage."
"They're stalling," Henry grunted, nursing a
lukewarm coffee. "It's a holding action. They've put up
the 'Out of Order' signs, but they haven't surrendered
the power. They think if they sit tight, the public will
get tired and settle for a more reasonable lie."
"And they will," Vincent warned, polishing his worn
wooden cross, the only non-digital object in the bunker.
"A clean slate feels good for a week. Then they want to
know who is going to pay the bills and who is going to
tell them what happens after they die. We haven't
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