"Socrates: The Gadfly of Athens

The year was 2025, but something ancient stirred in the air. Amidst the skyscrapers, self-driving cars, and endless streams of digital noise, a man appeared in Athens. Not just any man—but one with a face eerily familiar from marble busts in museums. His robe was rough, his sandals dusty, and his eyes carried centuries of silence.

He said his name was Socrates.

At first, the world laughed. A performance artist, they assumed. Or perhaps an AI deepfake gone viral. But the man walked the streets of modern Athens asking the same questions he once posed centuries ago:

> “What is justice?”
“Can virtue be taught?”
“Do we live well, or merely live?”



Teenagers on scooters filmed him and posted videos online. “Old dude grilling random people – Part 1!” the captions read. But as views exploded into the millions, so did the realization that this wasn’t performance. His questions weren’t tricks. They were genuine. And disturbingly relevant.

He sat in coffee shops and asked executives if their jobs served the public good. He wandered through universities, quietly challenging professors on the foundations of their knowledge. He stood at protests and asked both sides if they understood the truth behind their convictions.

And people listened. Or rather—many argued, many mocked, but deep down, many were shaken.

One day, a famous tech billionaire invited him on a live podcast.

The host smirked, “So, you’re the great Socrates? What’s your opinion on artificial intelligence and the future of humanity?”

Socrates leaned forward gently. “I ask only: will your machines make us more wise, or merely more efficient in our folly?”

Silence. The clip went viral again.

But not everyone was pleased.

Politicians called him dangerous. “He undermines public confidence,” they said. “He offers no solutions, only questions.” Commentators labeled him a cynic, a destabilizer, a menace to rational progress.

When a crowd gathered outside Parliament, holding signs that read "We Know Nothing", the government acted.

A tribunal was formed. Charges? “Corruption of minds,” “Public disruption,” and the ambiguous but damning “Undermining social unity.”

It was happening again.

At the trial, broadcast live to millions, Socrates stood calmly.

They asked, “Are you not a threat to peace?”

He replied, “I threaten only illusion. If peace depends on ignorance, then perhaps it is not peace at all.”

They asked, “Why do you not give answers? Only questions?”

He smiled. “Because the disease of certainty is worse than doubt. I have never claimed to know. But I urge others to know that they do not know.”

A student in the crowd wept.

A minister scoffed.

The judge, after a pause, read the verdict.

“Guilty.”

He was offered a choice: exile from all digital platforms, isolation from society, and total silence—or punishment.

He chose punishment.

> “I would rather die asking questions than live as a slave to unchallenged beliefs.”



The sentence: digital deletion. All records, traces, and identities wiped. The modern hemlock.

And so, Socrates vanished again.

His accounts were removed. His videos disappeared. Search engines returned no results. To the world, he had never existed.

But for those who had heard him, the questions remained.

One university painted his words across a wall:

> “The unexamined life is not worth living.”



A group of teenagers began a podcast called “Digital Dialogues” — where every week they explored modern issues with the Socratic method. No rants. Just questions.

In hushed corners of the internet, encrypted groups now meet weekly to debate philosophy, ethics, and meaning. They call themselves The Gadflies.

And every so often, someone in a café, or on a train, or in a dark hallway hears a voice say:

> “What do you believe? And why?”