{"id":2218,"date":"2013-01-25T14:06:51","date_gmt":"2013-01-25T19:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/?p=2218"},"modified":"2013-01-25T16:31:11","modified_gmt":"2013-01-25T21:31:11","slug":"it-was-a-flash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/short-stories\/it-was-a-flash.htm","title":{"rendered":"It Was A Flash"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"It<\/a><\/p>\n


TRANSMISSION COMMENCING     <\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n

Report #3: Memo to the free ones, if any are left, transmitted via short wave radio<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\tThis is an urgent message to any soul that still wishes to fight for humanity\u2019s true freedom, after the disaster that took place only months ago. We the free ones are so few now, and it is so hard to determine enemy from friend. Therefore, this plea is one of desperation rather than one of patriotic zeal. For most of humanity has turned against us, corrupted as they have been by whatever enemy it is that has destroyed all but a few, in soul if not in body. <\/p>\n

\tWe seek whatever allies we can, if any remain, to fight against the pervasive mental disease that has poisoned most of our fellow humanity. We can only hope you are one of us, and not one of the diseased. Hope is the only thing we cling to now. If you have such hope, please listen further and know we are waiting for you. If you do not, and you are one of the corrupted, our fate is sealed. But this is a risk we must take. <\/p>\n

\tSince we find ourselves alone and isolated, yet aware we are the only ones left to preserve humanity, we have set up a makeshift government with our own hands. Of course, an endeavor such as this must be taken with much care. The threat of our being eliminated is not a hallucination, as some amongst us in the rebellion have been disappeared, never to be seen once again. Attempts have been made to infiltrate us, which means that our existence is well known to our enemies, and we are considered a threat until we are exterminated. Yet we still undertake our mission, despite the peril we voluntarily subject ourselves to. This report will show case studies of those whose souls who survived this disaster as we have, and what they witnessed. Are you one of those who have done the same? Were you one of the few that saw the flash, and witnessed everything that changed from that point on?<\/p>\n

\tSo, what is the disaster that has befallen us? This is the question that has plagued all of us, since the sudden cataclysm strangled all of us and modern civilization with one brief flicker of light. We of the new government are determined to find the source of what victimized us. Those of a scientific bent amongst us, such as the creators of this manifesto, are at work combing all possibilities that we can to find the answers we who are still free seek. The purpose of this classified report is to provide an overview of the predicament we now all are forced to survive in because of the strange phenomena that visited us several months ago. Secondarily, it strives to console those who are still free that they are not alone in this insane climate. <\/p>\n

\tTo restore the world we once knew, we must gather as much information as possible to even determine what this phenomenon is that took place. As we are choosing to keep it from the public eye that we are unsure what has happened, if you are hearing this document we are forcing you to silence under penalty of death. Do not, under any circumstance, tell anyone of what you hear in this document until you are certain you are amongst the free ones. If we discover your betrayal, we will be forced to eliminate you when we find you, as we have with several of the others who have tried to eliminate us and silence us. Please understand the hard stance we take. Our concern is for humanity as a whole, and if one threatens the whole, we need to eliminate the threat, just like a doctor removes a tumor which will bleed cancer in its host. If you are one of us, you understand this reality, and the hard choice we face if forced to execute one of our own fellow human beings.<\/p>\n

\tThe phenomenon in question that took place appears to be universal in nature, although the effect it has had on individuals, as we have seen, is not. Those who have been poisoned deny its very existence. But sporadic and haphazard as our surveying has been due to our hidden nature, we have managed to gather case studies of the flash from throughout the globe. We have reports from every country, developed or developing, East or West, of those who have seen the flash and its aftermath. Therefore, despite the numerous denials, it is safe to conclude that whatever occurred was global in nature. What this divide between those who have seen the flash, and those who deny it means, we have only seen the beginnings of, as the disappearances of those who have witnessed it are becoming more and more common by the day. <\/p>\n

\tFor those who witnessed the flash and acknowledge its existence, they describe it as such, just as it happened in their personal experience. It was a flash, they said. Everything electronic seemed to emit a blip, almost like a technical hiccup. This flash that was witnessed lasted only a microsecond. In fact, when questioned, individual witnesses believed they hallucinated it, sort of like an aural manifestation of a premonition. <\/p>\n

\tAs we have seen, those who have been poisoned by this flashing phenomenon say that it didn\u2019t even occur at all. These people even sound believable, earnest in their denials, if you do not catch the slight jerk in their movements, like they have been startled. This denial has made those who have perceived the flash to feel like they are losing their minds. But after gathering reports, it has been determined that what these individuals perceived was, in fact, not a hallucination at all. This flash seems to be a cosmic reality, a major clue as to why the catastrophe we find ourselves in now exists. <\/p>\n

\tOne of the most alarming consequences of this so-called flash seems to have been the effect it has had on some of those who witnessed it and seen its effect on others. It has been reported that some individuals, after encountering the flash, seem to have been hypnotized. Admittedly, there has been no scientific evidence to verify this, and only anecdotal and circumstantial evidence can be used to back this hypothesis. <\/p>\n

\tDespite this, there are numerous individuals who have born witness to trance. Those who have compiled this report are amongst those who have witnessed this startling trend, and for us it is the main catalyst as to why we wish to investigate this phenomenon further. This speculation of trance will be discussed later in the treatise, as there has been more universal evidence of the flash itself. If it turns out that this speculation of trance is true, in the long run the biggest mystery may be why some people have been so seduced, while others have had no effects whatsoever. <\/p>\n

\tIn the meantime, if we are to determine the cause of our predicament, and to combat its reality, we must start with what we know to be true. There is enough anecdotal evidence, it has been determined, for us to proceed with this so-called flash as our starting point. Let us begin with some of the reports that have been offered to us, and determine the commonalities of all of them.<\/p>\n

\tTake Mrs. M., for instance. Mrs. M. is a 48-year-old office manager, widowed mother of three, two of which are in junior high and one in third grade. When the flash occurred, she was just finishing uploading some news to her business\u2019s Facebook account. The youngest of her children, the third grader, had just boarded the school bus. The upload was nine seconds away from completion just before the flash. She knows this, because she happened to look up for that exact moment. She also was watching the morning news, and caught it in periphery of her vision. <\/p>\n

\tAt the time, the journalist was talking to an interior decorating expert about the best way to bring color and sunshine to one\u2019s rooms, based on whatever color the walls were. Mrs. M. was paying vague attention to it, she recalled. She has stated that she still enjoys interior decorating, even though her husband has passed, that it helps her remember him and the time they first bought their home together. So for this reason, Mrs. M. recalled the exact program that was on when the phenomena happened, and she encountered the flash.<\/p>\n

\tMrs. M. said that at first, she thought nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The flash, because she had not caught it directly in her vision, seemed like a strange blip. Her focus visually had been on her kitchen, reminiscing of memories of her marriage, which the television show provoked. But she noticed her computer screen, and her television go brighter, for just one second. Then, everything resumed back to normal. She almost thought she imagined it, and has no proof of it taking place other than her intuition told her it did. <\/p>\n

\tBut what was really odd is what Mrs. M. claims she noticed on the screen afterwards. The journalist and the interior designing expert she\u2019d been watching seemed much different to her. Previously to what Mrs. M. described as the flash we all are aware of, the participants on the news show seemed animated, the way many do on morning talk shows. They had been laughing together, touching each other in the familiar way that many women do to bond with one another. <\/p>\n

\tHowever, post flash, Mrs. M noticed an entire personality change in the women on the television. They seemed to suddenly be, as she described, wooden. Instead of moving about the decorating display they had been describing, they stood absolutely still, like statues sculpted like bound creatures. They stayed on focus regarding the topic they had been previously discussing, but spoke very, very slowly. It was as though, Mrs. M. said, she was watching a recording at the slowest speed possible, and for some reason, Mrs. M felt dizzy watching them, and so proceeded to turn off the television. Her disorientation stopped immediately, she reports. However, when she returned to her computer, the dizziness returned. She signed off her social media account, fully intending to shut her computer off. But interestingly enough, she found that once she had exited her internet programs, the dizziness left her. <\/p>\n

\tSimilar experiences have been described by other freemen amongst us. Scott P., a 35-year-old business executive, saw the flash while walking down the street in one of the larger cities with two of his colleagues. The street was as you would imagine a city street would be, with people pushing past one another, carelessly bumping into each other as they were texting and\/or talking on the phone. There was chatting and yelling going on amongst many of them, and on the street there were traffic jams where people were driving as fast as they could to get several inches ahead, most of those texting or speaking on the phone as well, from what Scott could see. <\/p>\n

\tScott and his colleagues were engaged in an animated conversation about a vacation that one of the colleagues had taken to a tropical country. At the moment of the flash, the vacationing colleague was showing a video he had uploaded to one of the video sharing websites on his smart phone to Scott\u2019s other colleague about some surfing misadventures he had experienced. Scott wished to see the video as well, but decided to wait until he could have the phone for himself to get a better view. He was staring straight ahead, making sure he didn\u2019t bump into pedestrians, when he witnessed the flash. Scott claims that all of the buildings seemed to illuminated a shade or two lighter than normal, and then the unusual saturation dissipated almost immediately. <\/p>\n

\tLike Mrs. M., what he encountered next was even more puzzling. The city street he walked no longer was disorganized and chaotic. Everyone seemed to be walking in perfect straight lines, conveniently ducking and veering amongst each other with no collisions whatsoever. The people he saw seemed to have wide, unblinking eyes, including his colleagues. When Scott questioned if they had seen the same thing as he, they both jerked suddenly as though they were taken off-guard by the question, and answered in the negative. They spoke in slow monotones, and stared directly at him without wavering a bit. One of the colleagues, the one who had been seeing the video for the first time, even questioned if Scott was drinking. What was strange to Scott about this is that this colleague was a reticent kind of man, one not inclined to joke around at all. And yet, here he was, doing just that, albeit in the tone of a disjointed robot. <\/p>\n

\tScott\u2019s reaction, as you may imagine, was one of disbelief and denial. He imagined he was overreacting to the situation. Perhaps his colleague was in a jovial mood today, he reasoned. Perhaps people were always walking neatly in strange lines, and he had only taken a negative attitude towards them because they were always in his way. Perhaps, also, he had imagined the flash. <\/p>\n

\tSo he proceeded to question his colleagues about their experience, if they had seen the flash as he had. As you may have guessed, they denied it. Considering Scott\u2019s wariness about his own perceptions, it would have been easy to believe that his colleagues\u2019 denial would assuage him, and he would have never thought of the flash again. But Scott says that it was the way that his colleagues denied the sighting and his individual perceptions of it that actually confirmed what he experienced wasn\u2019t a hallucination at all. The colleagues laughed at him, in the exact same pitch, with the exact same beat. That, Scott knew, was a statistical improbability, or as he says unlikely to happen. Then they both blinked together, like their optical nerves were fused together. And then, they said in a flat monotone, there is no flash. Nothing like that could ever, ever exist. <\/p>\n

\tThe colleagues\u2019 strange response, instead of convincing Scott of their position\u2019s veracity, reinforced Scott\u2019s original premise, that he had indeed witnessed the bizarre phenomenon known as the flash. What this all meant, he obviously had no way of understanding or knowing. All he knew was that he was walking amongst a sea of robots, and felt his life was very much in danger if he mentioned the flash anymore. He survived this experience, until he felt he could escape, by blending in with the automatons as well as he could, attempting to imitate them by speaking in slow monotones, and falling in step with everyone else. <\/p>\n

\tOthers amongst us survived the initial days after the flash in very much the same manner that Scott did. It was our only manner of survival. People like Mrs. M., whose two older children had been affected and now regarded her and her youngest suspiciously, and Scott as mentioned above, felt they had no choice. It was a crazed experience for those individuals until they found others like themselves. The creators of this manifesto also experienced this strange terror amongst their fellow brothers and sisters. <\/p>\n

\tBut what was the worst of it for all of us, worse than the dread of being found out and the fate that awaited that result, was the fear that one was the only one left with a sense of reality. We wondered if we were plagued with the prospect of hallucinations, and questioned if we were perceiving anything correctly at all. This double terror of isolation and confusion was a harrowing experience for each of us. We all hoped in our individual way that there was someone, anyone, who knew what it was we experienced, and would be an ally along the way. Are you searching for an ally, my friend? We are here, waiting for you.<\/p>\n

\tIf you wish to seek us out, look for us in the same manner that we found one another. Our diseased brothers and sisters seemed to be wiped clean of any emotion except a strangely contained elation. They all have weird bright smiles, and they all seem to be weirdly bonded and wired to one another. We who have been wearing disguises amongst them, searching for others like ourselves, have certain ways of betraying emotion that thankfully seem to escape those who have been compromised. We sometimes, when we feel we are not being watched, will look at others\u2019 faces when conversation has ceased. You may notice it in the cadence of our speech, where there is a slight blip of going off beat. Read our faces, and you will notice that our features sometimes alter within our conversations. This is how you will recognize us. You can be sure we will be looking to recognize you. <\/p>\n

\tNow, my friend, you understand why we are hoping you are ally, and not a foe. This missive you are listening to has divulged the exact mechanics by which we survive, and we have no way of knowing if you will use this information to betray us if you are one of the diseased ones. If we suspect you are trying to infiltrate us, we will have no choice but to exterminate you, as made clear earlier. Please understand our position, as we desperately hope that you are one of the allies we seek to recruit and bond with.<\/p>\n

\tAs of yet, we have not discovered the source or cause for the flash that has altered all that we know. None of our scientists have uncovered any cosmic reason for this particular occurrence to have taken place. No gamma or solar rays, no solar storm, no weapon so far as we know has caused this. We are aggressively seeking answers. By discovering the cause of this alarming reality, we will have a better chance how to combat it, and perhaps have a means of healing the human race back to health one day. <\/p>\n

\tThere appears to be some connection with focusing one\u2019s attention on radio or satellite signals and whether one witnesses the flash or is affected by it. Please recall Mrs. M.\u2019s daydreaming away from her social media, and Scott\u2019s attention to the pedestrians rather than the presentation on the video sharing website, and how they witnessed it while others they observed did not. <\/p>\n

\tIt is hard to know, as it is difficult to gather reports from other parts of the world, but it appears there is somewhat a higher proportion of those affected by trance in the developed world than those in the developing world. However, as stated earlier, many in those places less saturated with technology have been affected. In those places, witnesses have reported to us that the cities are more afflicted than the rural areas. Is direct attention to broadcast signals the culprit? We can only speculate at this point, and do not have enough evidence to conclude any theory, and hope our research will discover an answer in the near future.<\/p>\n

\tBut in the meantime, we need to bond together, we few who are still sane enough to distinguish reality from fiction. Those who disbelieve our experience about the flash will call us paranoid. They will call us the sick ones. They believe because they are more numerous than we that they are the healthy ones, and we are the ones who need to be sequestered away. <\/p>\n

\tYou, my listener, must take care to keep yourself safe until you find us. We will only survive if we bond together with our common experience. Our sanity, and our very existence, depend on this. Please take care until we find each other, and until you do know that we wait\u2014<\/p>\n

(Loud unspecified noise, muffled scream)<\/em><\/p>\n

TRANSMISSION TERMINATED     <\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TRANSMISSION COMMENCING      Report #3: Memo to the free ones, if any are left, transmitted via short wave radio This is an urgent message to any soul that still wishes to fight for humanity\u2019s true freedom, after the disaster that took place only months ago. We the free ones are so few now, and it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"views":5403,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2218"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2286,"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218\/revisions\/2286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}