Mairi Brinkman

Empathy Irrigation

The world didn’t end with a bang. It was such a subtle change, that it took a while for anyone to even realize what had happened. That had been the plan of course, no need for there to be nasty rebellions. Slowly, people began to feel less and less. They devoted their time and attention to devices and forgot what it was like to be alive. Existence was all that they knew. Once that happened, the next phase was put into place. Some of it was just survival, the other part was a gas that was carefully distributed into the air by AngeloCorp. This company was an underground society of the world's elite. This chemical took what had been in the works for years and escalated it. The cloud of existence that people found themselves became all consumed, and many took on sociopathic attitudes. It had brought their selfish impulses to the surface. A good deal of the population was killed as the level of violence escalated. Death by starvation was now common in countries that were once considered prosperous.