We worked methodically, reinforcing ideological extremism among the crowd. Rage spread like wildfire, drawing thousands. The military police arrived, but me and Joel amplified the anger on both sides, turning restraint into frenzy. Chaos erupted: people flung themselves into danger without thought, authorities struggled to contain them, lethal force only intensified the violence. Streets became battlefields, barricades crumbling under sheer numbers. Internet lines were cut, communication severed, but the protests only swelled. A quarter of the nation's ideological followers poured into the streets, vandalizing, committing arson, and maiming indiscriminately.
The opposing political leader who was believed to be behind the assassination, trapped in his convoy, was ambushed. Security forces opened fire, but the mob pressed on, dragging him to the center of the main protest. Hundreds of thousands surged around him, their rage unbridled. The man was torn apart by fists and feet, the crowd exalting in a gruesome victory.
They roared in triumph, their voices colliding in the air like thunder. Victory tasted savage on their tongues. Shouting like barbarians, they dragged the lifeless body of the fallen politician through the streets, the corpse swaying with every step. Onlookers gasped, hands pressed to mouths, horror etched across their faces. But the mob was already consumed. Reason had evaporated. The mass had surrendered itself to hysteria, that ancient plague of crowds where emotion spreads like fire, igniting cruelty that no single man would dare alone.
When they reached the city center, they hoisted the body high, ropes cutting into cold flesh, and hung him for all to see. Cheers erupted, a storm of madness, while children cried and the old turned their heads in silence. Joel, standing at the core of it all, closed his eyes for a moment and unleashed the last of his strength. He amplified what was already there,rage, joy, delirium, pushing the crowd past the threshold of control.
Suddenly, the mob convulsed with emotion. Some wept uncontrollably, their tears streaming as if salvation had arrived. Others screamed until their throats bled, voices breaking into animal shrieks. It was chaos without language, a spectacle stripped down to raw instinct. To the bystanders it no longer resembled a political act, but a zoo turned inside out, primates bashing against invisible cages, frenzy unchained.
Above, the media descended like vultures, helicopters circling, cameras capturing every deranged movement, every distorted face. Reporters shouted into microphones as if narrating the end of reason itself. Within minutes the military rolled in, armored trucks and barricades sealing off the streets. Sirens cut through the hysteria, but the crowd no longer heard. They were too far gone, a sea of bodies worshiping their own madness, oblivious to the steel tightening around them.
And then it happened. Me and Joel saw it simultaneously: a fissure in the sky, a literal glitch peeling back the world like paper to reveal streaming lines of computation. It shimmered with impossible clarity, codes and structures weaving across the void. We snapped a photo, hearts hammering, minds barely able to process what we saw. Then the world snapped back. An unanticipated, torrential storm erupted, dousing flames and flooding streets, leaving the mad crowd who were going crazy just a minute ago in shocked silence.
Me: "Is this it? Is this the proof? Undeniable… it's all… not real."
Joel (laughing, unhinged): "Oh, God… yes… yes! None of this is real! They've played us so perfectly… hahahaha!"
I stared at the frenzy slowly turning my gaze towards the bright split flashing codes, awe and fear wrestling within me. For a second, doubt crept in, but the sheer magnitude of the experience overwhelmed reason.
The storm came without warning. Heavy drops hammered the streets, the sky collapsing into darkness as clouds swallowed the last trace of light. In an instant the mob's frenzy broke. Their heightened state drained away, as if ripped out of their bodies. Faces turned blank, voices fell silent. Confusion spread, what had they done? Why were their hands stained, their throats raw? It was as if they had woken from someone else's nightmare, unable to reconcile the memories with their own and they all fled the scene.
The military loosened its grip as quickly as it had formed, retreating through sheets of rain, leaving the ruins behind as though the operation had never existed. All that remained was devastation: overturned cars, shattered glass, blood smeared across the pavement, broken barricades, graffiti scrawled like curses on the walls. And above it all, the lifeless body still swung from its rope, drenched and limp, a grotesque monument to what no one wanted to admit had just taken place.
The storm masked everything. The glitch dissolved under water, washed out of sight, as if someone, or something, had interfered, resetting the simulation. It felt deliberate, as though an invisible hand was watching closely, covering its tracks, patching the code before anyone could see the break. Or maybe it wasn't a hand at all but the system itself, maintaining order, erasing evidence with brute force.
For the rest of the day, the sky raged. Lightning split the horizon, streets turned into rivers, neighborhoods drowned beneath the flood. The fury from above consumed the wreckage, carrying away the stains, the shards, the wrecked signs of rebellion. By nightfall the city seemed to have been scrubbed clean, though the memory of screams still lingered like smoke.
The storm did not end until morning. When the first pale light crept through the clouds, the streets were empty, silent, drained of their spirit. The protest had dissolved into nothing. The flood had stolen its strength. What remained was only absence, an unsettling void, as if the city itself was pretending none of it had ever happened.
The next morning, I checked the photo. My fingers trembled as I opened the gallery.
Me: "What… what… what? It's… it's just a normal sky. Joel, it's gone."
Joel: "What?? Let me see… of course. They fixed it. Someone, or something, is monitoring, patching, correcting the simulation Actively. The simulation… it's alive, and it's watching us."
My mind raced. Every reinforced memory, every manipulated thought, every calculated chaos, was it all the system script? Yet for the first time, the scale of control, the precision, and the proof of a deeper framework made the impossible feel terrifyingly, undeniably real.
Vanz and James stormed into Ducce's house, fury radiating from every line of Vanz's body.
Vanz: "WTF, MAN??? You guys were behind all of it, right?" (He grabbed Joel by the collar, trembling.) "I'm gonna break your teeth, you scheming little bastard!"