Sleepwalking

Cora had always believed that people would resist. That they would see the truth when it was right in front of them, that at some point, the absurdity of it all would reach a breaking point. But the problem wasn’t that people had been forced into submission. The problem was that they had accepted it. They had welcomed it. The system had been designed not to shock or terrify, but to wear them down. To lull them into complacency with a slow, creeping erosion of everything that had once mattered.

It hadn’t happened overnight. There were no grand announcements, no dramatic moments where people took to the streets to fight for their freedoms. The human mind didn’t work that way. Instead, it was incremental. A ban here, a restriction there. An inconvenience. A requirement. Then another. Then another. It had started with social media accounts disappearing, financial transactions being flagged, job applications quietly rejected. Then came the curfews, the loyalty pledges, the mandatory community service for the “less productive.” The notifications on their phones reminded them daily, a gentle nudge that compliance was for their own good.

And people just… adapted.

They grew accustomed to the nonsense, to the blatant lies, to the policies that didn’t make sense but were easier to accept than to question. The slogans changed weekly. The official history of the nation rewrote itself in real-time. The enemies of the state rotated like a carousel—one month, it was illegal immigrants, the next, it was free thinkers, the next, it was the ones who regretted their vote. The population adjusted their outrage accordingly, turning their hatred where they were told to, never stopping to ask why. It was easier to obey.

There was no war. There was no grand purge. It was just… boredom. The system had figured out that people didn’t need to be controlled by fear alone. They could be controlled by apathy. By exhaustion. By an endless stream of distractions that numbed them to their own servitude. People had become too comfortable with the absurd. Too desensitized to care. The government could announce a new tax on breathing, and half the country would just shrug and say, “Well, what can you do?”

Cora had seen the signs years ago. The first time a government agency had openly admitted to using propaganda on its own people and no one batted an eye. The first time a corporation had rolled out a mandatory app that monitored daily activities, and everyone simply accepted it because it was “convenient.” The first time a political scandal broke that should have ended a career, and instead, it boosted poll numbers. People had stopped expecting anything to make sense.

And when nothing makes sense, nothing matters.

That was the trick. The Chairman didn’t rule by brute force. He ruled by making the truth feel irrelevant. By making people so exhausted by the sheer weight of it all that they simply stopped caring.

Even the suffering had become entertainment.

The PR arm of the Circle had turned executions into spectacle. A viral trend on Vail’s X-Comm platform had emerged under the guise of ASMR, featuring the distant moans of prisoners, the rattle of their chains, the soft murmur of guards discussing their fate. It was a sick joke, a parody of the real horrors unfolding, but no one cared. No one reacted. The comment sections were filled with laughing emojis, mindless engagement, arguments over whether the screams were AI-generated or real.

The videos never stayed up for long. They didn’t have to. They spread like wildfire in the moments before they were scrubbed, their existence undeniable, but their consequences nonexistent.

Cora had seen one. She had clicked on it without thinking, expecting some absurd prank or satirical post, but the moment the sound hit her ears, a chill ran down her spine. It was real. The subtle tremor in the voice of the man begging, the sharp intake of breath before the impact of a baton. It was real.

And yet, people kept scrolling.

She had wanted to scream. To shake the people around her and force them to see what was happening. But she knew how they would respond. A chuckle. A shrug. A dismissive, “It’s just propaganda.”

People weren’t afraid.

They were asleep.

And by the time they even thought about waking up, it would be too late.

And easier to just close their eyes again.