Page 57 - SurprisingTruthFinal

Nicholas Boothman
silent on air, unable to process the total collapse of their
institutional reality. Politicians, already reeling from
the previous week's exposures, fled the cameras. The
global, absolute demand for transparency, backed by
irrefutable fact, wasn't just a political movement, it was
a societal physics problem.
The revolution had won. The world was now
structurally committed to the truth.
Henry looked at the screens, watching the financial
markets drop to zero, the newsfeeds go dark, and the
political forums devolve into stunned, terrified silence.
He felt the victory, a pure, cold surge of power.
But then, Vincent looked at Henry, not with
triumph, but with a dawning horror. "They can't
function," Vincent whispered, his voice cracking. "The
machine is broken. They can't rebuild, because to
rebuild requires planning, and planning requires lying
about the certainty of the future."
The silence wasn't the peace of victory. It was the
terrifying absence of structure. The Truth Collective
had asked for the world to stop lying, and the world
had responded by simply stopping. Henry realized,
with a chilling dread, that he had demanded courage
from a species that was only capable of function
through comfort.
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