Cigne Part 4

The results were bad. Terrible really. The blood samples they had turned over to the lab while in the city confirmed everyone’s worst fears. Not only were there not enough people taking the serum to stop the spread of the disease, it appeared to be mutating into stronger, more malignant strains.

The social wars, as they were now called, had started with the rise of a phenomena then known as “Social Media”. It started out well, giving voices to those who previously had no voice. Everyone talked about the “democratization of communications.” They were giddy times. They were naive times, and it wasn’t long before things started south. The decline started with advertisements and marketing. The profit model which delivered free social connections, hinged on people staying engaged so they could be targeted by revenue generating advertisements. The algorithms became so sophisticated that it was nearly impossible to avoid addiction unless you abstained altogether. But abstinence was just as impossible. As people turned more and more to their own affinity groups on social media, what had originally been a platform to connect with friends and post baby pictures for grandma turned into a vast, global echo chamber.

Governments, criminals, and extremist groups of all stripes began to develop their own algorithms. At first, they preyed on the most gullible, offering fake coupons and the like to steal passwords and hack bank accounts. But then the stakes got higher. Extremist groups began pushing conspiracy theories, using algorithms to develop lies and test them over and over until they almost mirrored the truth. The bots learned from the responses and kept tuning, tuning, and tuning, grabbing more and more people. It turned into a bloodless bot war, but the results were far from bloodless. People took action based on what they read. Reputations were ruined, one person with revenge on their mind could brand someone a criminal and it got swept up into the bots data sets and soon it became as good as truth.

People read things on social media and then took action. People died.

Governments began to disintegrate due to lack of trust, and so the more powerful nations took action, developing their own counter bots. This sounded good until it became clear that every government had their own version of truth. It became a global war for the minds of citizens. As it escalated there were a few researchers who became convinced that they could stop the spread, not through more information, but by altering the mind itself.  Lacking governmental sponsors, they launched it themselves.

They piloted on a cohort of volunteers; people dedicated to reverse the disintegration of the human race. But like most rushed experiments, it was flawed and instead of rendering people immune from social medias influence by blocking certain pathways in the brain, it rendered them immune to any suggestion. In short their minds were closed and they were left with the last set of convictions they’d held. Those who believed the experiment would be successful continued to believe that it was successful even after being presented with all evidence to the contrary. No worries though because the virus that carried the cure was designed not to spread.

It spread.

Not only did the virus spread, but it had been engineered so well to avoid the bodies defenses that there was no stopping it. In other words, it mutated, and it kept mutating.

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