Page 64 - SurprisingTruthFinal

The Surprising Truth About Lying
Vincent nodded, his face mirroring Henry's dread.
"We asked them to choose courage over comfort. But
they chose silence over action. If every choice is
guaranteed pain, why move at all?"
The triumph was real. Henry had won the
revolution. But in doing so, he had engineered the
perfect social paralysis.
The lights in the city below, which had been
flickering back to life after the initial power crisis (now
truthfully reported as a structural failure, leading to the
immediate arrest of the Public Safety Director), began
to dim again. Not because of a technical failure, but
because nobody was willing to risk the truth of
ordering fuel, paying staff, or maintaining the grid.
Henry walked to the single air vent of the bunker,
sucking in the stale, recycled air. He had wanted the
truth to set the world free. Instead, he had given it a
terminal diagnosis.
He looked at his tools: The Gaze, running
perpetually, feeding absolute truth to a terrified,
stunned populace. The Scythe, sharp and precise,
ready to slice away any last whisper of comfort. He
had replaced the lie with a structural, self-imposed
catatonia.
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