A tale of two Futures

YEAR 2027

Woah, I don’t even know where to start.

This is the third time and now I’m starting to get really scared. How come? Two years ago, when the PVS (Permanent Vaccine Subscription) was implemented, they assured us actively and passively that no other “new virus” could be declared as a global pandemic ever again in the future.

Fuck, I pay my subscription religiously and get vaccinated every 3 months, just like everyone else! This is bullshit. Now we’re stuck at home again, until when? The president doesn’t even hide that it can be something semi-permanent, it’s incredible.

That we have to protect ourselves and it is for our own good, that it is time to make sacrifices for our community again, blablabla, the usual story.

When it all started with Covid back in 2020, it seemed that all the leaders were lost, changing the rules every now and then. It was a mess, nobody was prepared. But fuck me, when the Seipm appeared in 2024, nobody was caught by surprise.

Everyone knew what was coming, right away.

We were at home for 8 months straight locked up until they developed the new vaccine. Then no one was allowed to go out without having been previously vaccinated and, if you were caught in the street without a valid digital vaccination card (the CDV), the fine was between $3,000 and $60,000, depending on how many vaccinations you had missed. You even risked 6 months in prison. It was that tough.

Permanent masks at all times, of course. You couldn’t take it off to eat, drink or smoke. Those things are done at home, they said. By not complying with this simple recommendation you could kill someone, you fool.

But that was later….

In the beginning, when we were less than two weeks into that second “great confinement”, as they called it in the media, Google and Apple forced software updates on my cell phone, my iWatch, my digital bracelet and all the devices I had connected to the internet to download their new GPS tracking and continuous warning app (the so-called ‘Savelife’), created jointly with the government.

It couldn’t be turned off or anything.

I had 25 minutes a day to do the grocery shopping and take out the trash. From the moment I left the house the meter was automatically activated, with no action on my part. During the last 5 minutes, everything started to vibrate and would not stop and the last 2 minutes the cell phone would start beeping like crazy. The worst thing is that it could not be silenced or turned off. Of course, if you were on the street or in the supermarket, people looked at you badly, as if to say “go home, you’re putting us all in danger!”.

It seems that if you let the meter reach zero and you had not yet arrived home, the police would immediately show up at the door of your residence asking for explanations. The truth is that I never wanted to try it. I was always in a hurry. But of course, how were we going to pay for the groceries without any of these devices? It was impossible to leave home without them.

The problem is that as soon as the Seipm appeared, 3 years ago, cash was banned and withdrawn from circulation -as a security measure-, as well as credit and debit cards, and you could only pay for things that way, with the damn cell phone or watch, bracelet or VR glasses.

But well, it doesn’t matter, if you went out in the street without any electronic device you were immediately detected by the security mini-drones or the cameras that are in every doorway of every building. And then the same thing, you didn’t even know how but in less than 5 minutes a police patrol would appear on the corner with their lights on, they would ask you why you had gone out without them and they would escort you home with a warning.

I know because my friend Adam did it. And he never dared to do it a second time, because the fine was at least $3,500 for repeat offenses.

All the neighborhood stores disappeared, absolutely all of them, as well as restaurants, cinemas and theaters. The government forced them to close and none of them could withstand such a crisis. Only the supermarkets remained. Everything else was ordered, made or seen online.

On the street, you could only see Amazon vans or police cars. There was nothing else.

Well, it must be said that the VR glasses helped to cope with it. It was cool to be able to have the cinema or concert at home and be able to meet there virtually with colleagues. Or at least it was for a while.

The truth is that I never imagined that one day I might even miss those 25 minutes to go shopping. Now in this third great confinement, it is no longer possible to go out in the street. Ordering groceries online is mandatory by decree-law. They leave it at your door after one or two hours and you can only go out to pick it up when the delivery man has left.

Garbage is the same, the government gave us new guidelines even for that. You leave it out on the main entrance of your own house and some men dressed in that typical anti-virus space suit pick it up every other day in the middle of the night, around 3 or 4 o’clock. I know because I saw them through the peephole in the door, one day when I was curious and stayed awake. I don’t understand why they have to come by at those hours, I don’t like it being so late.

I don’t have a dog, but all my friends who do have dogs can’t walk them either. They have to tie them up at the door of the house at certain hours and twice a day these men come by and walk them for 15 minutes. It’s normal, it’s for their own safety and everyone else’s. But I wouldn’t like to leave my dog with a stranger, to be honest.

I don’t know, I’m going crazy, I swear. For two months now, I’ve only been getting a few minutes of sunlight a day, when it comes in through the dining room window. I’m really sick of running on the treadmill (and I’m still lucky that after Seipm I bought it) and making video calls or virtual video meetings with the Oculus every now and then… the truth is that lately, I don’t want to talk to anyone.

I guess I don’t want to hear the damn message again either. Three times a day, randomly, whatever you’re watching on the internet or on TV is automatically cut off and the president or a health representative appears in a one-minute recording reminding us that it’s all for our own good, for the good of everyone.

Fuck, it’s only one minute, but I never want to listen to it again. Worst of all, you don’t know when it’s going to come up. It makes me anxious just remembering it!

I’m tempted to open the door, leave the house and start running around aimlessly. But if I do, I don’t even think I’ll make it two blocks, you can only hear sirens and on TV you can see constant police patrols on the street. Of course, there is no one else, everyone is at home, you can’t hide, they see you and you have no excuse.

The sanction for stepping on the street now for me is one month without receiving the UBI. And on top of that, it is cumulative. In other words, if I were to go out on the street three times today, for example, I would be without income for the next three months. I should never have accepted the UBI two years ago, but hell, how was I supposed to know.

I was presented with the option of being able to quit my job and live on a universal basic income of $1,800 per month. Without doing anything! Free money and without working! Who was the fool who didn’t accept it? I don’t know anyone who didn’t.

When the government phased out the UBI two years ago, my sector was one of the first to be able to benefit from it. I’ve always thought I was privileged, that the world was moving forward by leaps and bounds and that I was lucky to be at the forefront.

The last data I heard was that UBI implementation in the country was now 45%, that is, forty-five percent of the population living on permanent vacation. I always thought the rest were poor bastards, still working!

For them (the people who don’t have UBI) the fine now is an automatic fine of $5,000, just for stepping on the street, plus possible imprisonment if you don’t have enough savings to pay for it. Plus I guess now there is no way to not pay, with the new “digital dollar” issued by the FED, so…

I don’t understand how we got to this point. It’s like I just woke up from a dream, wtf am I doing here?

I still remember at the end of 2021, when “herd immunity” was reached with Covid and we all thought the nightmare was over. Is it possible that we were so relieved that we forgot about all the power the government had gained over our lives? Why didn’t anyone say anything?

I don’t know, I’ve been doing some research and I’m surprised, because in various Internet forums from those years I’ve found things that don’t add up, like the ones explained here.

For example with the masks, the WHO said at the beginning that you should only wear them if you were taking care of someone supposedly infected with Covid or you were infected yourself….

Then they adapted the narrative a bit, saying it was good to wear for everyone in closed public places….

However, the government said it was best to wear it at all times, whenever you were on the street, even if you were alone and no one was around. It could be waived in cases such as when you went to the mountains for a hike, to the beach or to play sports, but then they changed that too.

It was mandatory everywhere and in all circumstances.

You could take it off in extreme cases to blow your nose, eat, drink or smoke, but then… also! Those actions were also forbidden. Eat, smoke and drink at home. Anyway… I have always been a big fan of face masks and although this last thing seemed a bit extreme to me, I understood that it was for our own good.

And so on with everything else: mortality and contagion data, asymptomatic cases, vaccines… This is just a small example.

The problem is that I have only been able to find this data on rare websites, which they call “decentralized”. On Youtube there is nothing about this and on Google or Twitter either.

Why didn’t anyone notice all this back in the day? Nobody fucking warned me.

And how did we let it all happen again with Seipm, the same but on a larger scale?

I don’t understand anything. I have always followed the government’s recommendations! Why do I have to be locked up again? It’s not fair.

And what’s my alternative, what the fuck do I do? If I want to continue to have food and shelter and not get this new virus, the best thing to do is to listen, right?

YEAR 2027 (BIS)

This morning I watched the latest video on the government’s Youtube channel and they commented that the third pandemic of the decade had been declared. The title was “The most lethal pandemic has arrived. GET READY!”.

As always… trying to convey fear and urgency. I don’t know if they realize that nobody believes their speech anymore and nobody is interested in it either. Just look at the number of followers of the channel: less than 2 million. Any famous neighborhood Youtuber has more followers than them!

The truth is that seeing in recent years how such a great institution is falling apart by leaps and bounds and becomes a pantomime of itself continues to amaze me.

It is unbelievable…

Things were precipitated with Seipm — the evolution of Covid — back in 2024. “The second great confinement” the media called it.

A confinement that did not even last three weeks, as long as it took us to realize that the governments’ reaction to that second global pandemic was, once again, completely exaggerated and that it was going to lead us once again to economic disaster.

They wanted everyone to use ‘Savelife’, a GPS app that was automatically downloaded in a software update on all smartphones and tried to impose a 25-minute daily time frame for shopping and garbage disposal. Can you believe it?

I think that was one of the triggers.

It was like trying to deliver the coup de grace to the dying citizen, squeezing every last drop of their freedoms. No way, this is as far as we have come!

Everyone was aware that during Covid, the leaders of the vast majority of countries and international organizations had taken us for a ride, implementing measures that went against not only the economy and the dignity of the population but also against health, the very health they claimed to be preserving.

The whole cake was uncovered little by little.

Hell, so many people and families had lost everything! The crisis of 2023 was much worse than that of 2008, you only had to walk through the streets of any big city to realize it: half of the stores were closed, public services were not working properly, many of my acquaintances were unemployed, pensions and benefits did not reach the current accounts… luckily we could help grandma financially because in the social security centers they were constantly giving her delays.

But there were many people who were not so lucky.

The spark that triggered everything was missing. There was no fear, only anger and resentment.

The day the Savelife was downloaded, many people went out into the street and let the deafening beep of their cell phones ring and ring, without caring about the consequences. The beep signaled the end of the 25 minutes a day that anyone was allowed to be on the street.

The police began to arrest everyone, but soon there were so many that they could not cope. The whistle, that whistle specially designed to signal the person who was committing an infraction of their rules, soon became a whistle of protest.

In my neighborhood, and across the country, many of us left the house. The beeps sounded for hours, as did the police sirens. But the police no longer knew what to do. They told me that the police stations were so full that the detainees left on foot so calmly, the chaos was enormous and they could not hold so many people. I walked around for a while, cell phone in hand, letting my beep sound loudly.

Nobody slept that night. There were fires, riots and many wounded and several dead. A whole country was awake.

The next morning, however, was different. It seemed as if, collectively, we had been through a huge hangover. Most people left their cell phones at home and took to the streets.

Stores opened, people went for a walk and fixed the previous night’s damage, prepared acceptable recommendations and suggestions as to how to approach this second pandemic, and went on with their lives.

During the weekend, the government had no choice but to officially declare the end of that second confinement, which no one paid any attention to anymore.

A few days later, they tried to ban and remove cash from circulation. I suppose it was an attempt to maintain the status quo after the first general ‘insurrection’ and also to try to maintain control over the money itself, which had been slipping through their fingers for some time.

They wanted to force everyone to use the FED’s new ‘digital dollar’.

The problem was that bitcoin was by that time approaching one million USD at the exchange rate and by now almost everyone knew that it was a much more effective store of value than any fiat currency. Most companies and individuals tried as much as possible to cash in bitcoin, thus escaping inflation, control and draconian taxes.

In short, the next day a movement of peaceful rebellion was created, similar to that of the previous week. Not only did people not stop using banknotes and coins, but even though banks no longer allowed withdrawing them from their ATMs, people started using physical money even more than before. And suddenly you could pay with bitcoin in most places. I remember that was the first time I saw a price in satoshis in a store, which is now usual. I think it was the loaf of bread I bought that morning, valued at 260 sats, or 0.00000260 BTC.

Throughout the following months, we saw on the Internet a multitude of cases in which the government tried, by all means, to shut down companies that operated in bitcoin and even put prison sentences on individuals who did the same, alleging tax evasion. The only thing they achieved in the medium term was to strengthen the secondary market.

The funny thing is that, a year later, they were declaring bitcoin completely legal again and trying to collect most taxes in that currency, which did not work. Who would want to pay a tax in bitcoin, a currency that appreciated, when they could pay in dollars, a junk currency that was worthless?

Better to pay in fiat and get rid of it.

But of course, the problem for them is that other countries had started the race much earlier. El Salvador, Paraguay, Brazil, Panama, Nigeria, Estonia, Norway, Peru and Iran had given the go-ahead, abandoning their respective currencies to switch to the Bitcoin standard.

And the rest of the countries of the world had seen how they had passed them in economic terms, in spite of the trade sanctions they had initially imposed on them.

Soon many other countries and states joined in, leaving great powers such as the United States or the European Union broken and divided. A moribund Europe, with half of its countries leaving its treaty and its major institutions collapsing. It was well known that China, although it was not official, was one of the countries that mined and acquired more cryptocurrency. No one wanted to be left behind.

The second pandemic evolved as expected under normal conditions: the sick were isolated, hospitals were expanded and there was no need for confinements, masks or the closure of any business. The contagion curve was high, but it immediately went down and passed gradually, as expected. In less than a year, everything was under control.

And a little later came hyperbitcoinization. The price of bitcoin relative to the dollar rose in a very short time from one million to five million, then to ten and then to fifty. People who did not yet have bitcoin saw their life savings evaporate to nothing.

Nobody accepted dollars anymore, and although it was still the official currency, suddenly you couldn’t pay with them.

Stock markets and economic indicators around the world plummeted, as did house and office prices. Why would anyone invest their money in stock or real estate (risking losing it) when they could move it into bitcoin and keep it safe, safe from confiscation and steadily rising in value?

During those months, the government tried to implement UBI, a universal basic income. It seemed like free money for anyone who wanted it, but it backfired. The majority of the population was already aware that this money was not really free, but came from the printing of the central banks, a real confiscation by the leaders of the rest of the citizens through inflation.

In short, very few people accepted UBI, people preferred to continue working and getting paid in bitcoin, even if it was in black money, than having free USD that was worth absolutely nothing in their daily lives.

There was chaos for a long time. The prices of all things changed from one week to the next, institutions and services that were controlled or regulated by the government started to malfunction or directly stopped working, there were blackouts in many parts of the country and from time to time in big cities there were riots where the police did not show up….

Now I know that we experienced the live fragmentation of the government.

Policemen and members of the army left their jobs in disbandment, having to receive their salaries mandatorily in USD and seeing how they were impoverished by leaps and bounds compared to the rest of the population, who used bitcoin.

Without that fundamental part of their modus operandi to control everything else, leaders could not enforce or respect many of their laws.

The same thing happened in turn with politicians and officials of all kinds. One by one they left, never to return.

It seemed that the country had become a completely anarchic state and many were already predicting the end of the world. However, we began to see how small communities, generally made up of neighborhoods, began to regulate themselves, with the citizens themselves taking the initiative to fix what was not working and to organize everything so that all those services that were previously provided by the state -like security- would continue to be offered, but in a much more efficient way.

I don’t understand much about economics or politics, I only know that since then all taxes are voluntary and distributed by companies, some of them non-profit, organized using technologies like blockchain to make public money fully auditable, knowing where each satoshi ends up. People are happy to pay according to one’s situation, for those services they use.

Between the currency not devaluing and the government no longer taking 50% or more of what you earn in taxes, most people have stopped surviving month to month and are now thriving and saving.

A huge change has been noticed, many people have migrated from the city to the countryside and the first ones are no longer like before, you start to see much more green on every corner, optimism, friendliness and a kind of ‘controlled chaos’. And also more creativity… every day I see very rare motorcycles and cars on the street, the kind you couldn’t drive before. Yesterday I went into a store where people were taking naps, I saw how in the park next to my house some neighbors were starting a vegetable garden and I found out that next week there will be a big party for 3 days in what used to be the palace of the IRS in my city.

Since last year, many countries around the world have opened their borders 100%, accepting anyone who wants to enter and stay to live without restrictions or requirements, creating a healthy competition among them to see which country attracts more entrepreneurs. South America is doing great in that aspect.

Every day is new and vibrant, it feels like we are emerging from a decades-long state of gray apathy. For some a lifetime.

It’s a bit of a strange world, different from what I was used to… but I like it.